Short Essay on Lenin

R.G. Williams

This short essay is a study of the life of Lenin – the Russian revolutionary, leader of the October Revolution. V.I. Lenin was one of the great Socialists – truly great. He was also one of the great revolutionaries of our times.  He was arguably, probably, and certainly, the greatest revolutionary Socialist of the 20th century. He clearly changed the world – for the better. Lenin stood for a better world – a world of revolution and freedom. He stood for Socialism, for Revolutionary Socialism, for Socialist Revolution, for workers’ politics, for workers’ struggle, for workers’ liberation, for internationalism, for solidarity, and for opposition to war and imperialism. These politics made Lenin a real radical – a real revolutionary. Lenin was both a great man and a great revolutionary. His leadership of the Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the first workers’ state — the Soviet Union. The revolutionary ideas and revolutionary politics of Lenin are still a useful base for thinking about working-class politics and working-class power — in the struggle for Socialism. In an age of crisis, imperialism, and war, such as today, the basic politics of Lenin are still needed.

  Vladimir Lenin, 1870-1924. Born in Simbirsk, Russia, in 1870, Lenin came from a modest middle-class Russian family. Originally Lenin’s name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. He adopted the name ‘Lenin’ in 1901, as a revolutionary pseudonym, due to his radical activity in opposition to the Russian Tsarist state. His father, Ilya Ulyanov, 1831-1886, was a schoolteacher and civil servant. His brother, Aleksandr Ulyanov, 1866-1887, was also a revolutionary — who was executed after a failed assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. Lenin became a Socialist and a Marxist in the late 1880s and early 1890s and studied law in Kazan (1887) and in St. Petersburg (1890-1892). He became actively involved in the politics of Russian Social Democracy in 1893. In 1895 Lenin helped to form the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, one of the first serious Marxist groups in Russia. In 1895 Lenin was arrested by the Tsarist authorities and exiled to Siberia in 1897. During his time in prison and exile, Lenin began to write his first major articles, essays, and books. In 1900, at the end of his Siberian exile, Lenin left Russia and became involved in building the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (1898). During the 1890s and 1900s Lenin built up the struggle for a revolutionary Socialist party in Russia, leading to the Bolshevik-Menshevik split of the RSDLP (1903) and the formation of the Bolshevik Party (1912) — which became the Russian Communist Party after the October Revolution. In 1905, Lenin returned to Russia to take part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 but left again in 1907 after the victory of the Tsarist counter-revolution. After the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914, Lenin attempted to rally the movements of international Socialism to the struggle against the war. Indeed, he was a major figure of consistent opposition to the barbarism of the War. In 1917 after the outbreak of the February Revolution, and the overthrow of the Tsar, Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917. Over the course of 1917 Lenin built up the revolutionary power of the Russian working class, and the Bolshevik Party, which led to the victory of the October Revolution in late 1917 and the formation of the Soviet Union in 1922. Lenin became the head of the Soviet government in 1917 and successfully led the defence of the Revolution in the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. Lenin successfully led the new Soviet government until suffering a series of strokes in 1922-1924. In January 1924 Lenin died.

  Lenin was a great revolutionary thinker. He was also a practical revolutionary. Lenin lived and struggled over a century or so ago, but his ideas remain revolutionary. He was a man who became committed to Socialism in the decades prior to the First World War. He was a man who was committed to actually achieving Socialism. His struggles in the 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, and in the Russian Revolution of 1917, make him one of the most important political thinkers of modern times. Indeed, the whole development of Socialism, both as theory and as practice, owes a great deal to Lenin.1 His life, his ideas, his struggle, his theory of politics, his theory of revolution, his theory of Imperialism, and his revolutionary thought, are crucial to any understanding of Socialism.2 Lenin is second only to Marx in terms of his importance to the struggle for Socialism. The ideas of Lenin are the basis of the struggle for Socialism. A century after his death he remains a hero and an inspiration to millions of workers and millions of Socialists.3 In simple terms, Lenin remains crucial to our times.4 Lenin lived! Lenin lives! Lenin will live forever!

Notes

1. V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, (1917)
2. V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, (1916)
3. G. Lukács, Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought, (1924)
4. C. Hill, Lenin and the Russian Revolution, (1947)

(2014)

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This post was written by R.G. Williams