II. Lenin - organizer of the October Revolution

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (real surname Ulyanov, maternal surname - Blank)
Years of life: April 10 (22), 1870, Simbirsk - January 22, 1924, Gorki estate, Moscow province
Head of the Soviet government (1917–1924).

Revolutionary, founder of the Bolshevik Party, one of the organizers and leaders of the October Socialist Revolution of 1917, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR and the USSR. Marxist philosopher, publicist, founder of Leninism, ideologist and creator of the 3rd (Communist) International, founder of the Soviet state. One of the most famous political figures of the 20th century.
Founder of the USSR.

Biography of Vladimir Lenin

V. Ulyanov's father, Ilya Nikolaevich, was an inspector of public schools. After being awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, III degree, in 1882, he received the right to hereditary nobility. Mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank), was a teacher, but did not work. There were 5 children in the family, among whom Volodya was the third. There was a friendly atmosphere in the family; parents encouraged their children's curiosity and treated them with respect.

In 1879 - 1887 Volodya studied at the gymnasium, which he graduated with gold medal.

In 1887, his elder brother Alexander Ulyanov (a people's revolutionary revolutionary) was executed for preparing an attempt on the life of Emperor Alexander III. This event affected the lives of all members of the Ulyanov family (the formerly respected noble family was subsequently expelled from society). The death of his brother shocked Volodya, and from then on he became an enemy of the tsarist regime.

In the same year, V. Ulyanov entered the Faculty of Law at Kazan University, but in December he was expelled for participating in a student meeting.

In 1891, Ulyanov graduated as an external student from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Afterwards he came to Samara, where he began working as an assistant sworn attorney.

In 1893, in St. Petersburg, Vladimir joined one of the many revolutionary circles and soon became known as an ardent supporter of Marxism and a propagandist of this teaching in working-class circles. In St. Petersburg, his affair began with Apollinaria Yakubova, a revolutionary and friend of his older sister Olga.

In 1894 – 1895 Vladimir’s first major works were published, “What are “friends of the people” and how they fight against the Social Democrats” and “The Economic Content of Populism,” which criticized the populist movement in favor of Marxism. Soon Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov meets Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.

In the spring of 1895, Vladimir Ilyich went to Geneva to meet with members of the Liberation of Labor group. And in September 1895 he was arrested for creating the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

In 1897, Ulyanov was exiled to the village of Shushenskoye, Yenisei province, for 3 years. During his exile, Ulyanov married Nadezhda Krupskaya...

Many articles and books on revolutionary topics were written in Shushenskoye. The works were published under various pseudonyms, one of which was Lenin.

Lenin - years of life in exile

In 1903, the famous Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Russia took place, during which a split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks occurred. He became the head of the Bolsheviks, and soon created the Bolshevik Party.

In 1905, Vladimir Ilyich led the preparations for the revolution in Russia.
He directed the Bolsheviks to an armed uprising against tsarism and the establishment of a truly democratic republic.

During the revolution of 1905 - 1907. Ulyanov lived illegally in St. Petersburg and led the Bolshevik Party.

The years 1907 - 1917 were spent in exile.

In 1910, in Paris, he met Inessa Armand, the relationship with whom continued until Armand’s death from cholera in 1920.

In 1912, at the Social Democratic Party Conference in Prague, the left wing of the RSDLP was separated into a separate party, the RSDLP(b) - the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party of the Bolsheviks. He was immediately elected head of the central committee (CC) of the party.

During the same period, thanks to his initiative, the newspaper Pravda was created. Ulyanov organizes the life of his new party by encouraging the expropriation of funds (actually robbery) into the party fund.

In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, he was arrested in Austria-Hungary on suspicion of espionage for his country.

After his liberation, he went to Switzerland, where he put forward a slogan calling to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, to overthrow the government that dragged the state into the war.

In February 1917, I learned about the revolution that had taken place in Russia from the press. On April 3, 1917 he returned to Russia.

On April 4, 1917, in St. Petersburg, the communist theorist outlined a program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one (“All power to the soviets!” or “April Theses”). He began preparing for an armed uprising and put forward plans to overthrow the Provisional Government.

In June 1917, the First Congress of Soviets was held, at which only about 10% of those present supported him, but he declared that the Bolshevik Party was ready to take power in the country into its own hands.

On October 24, 1917, he led the uprising in the Smolny Palace. And on October 25 (November 7), 1917, the Provisional Government was overthrown. The Great October Socialist Revolution took place, after which Lenin became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars - the Council of People's Commissars. He built his policy, hoping for the support of the world proletariat, but did not receive it.

At the beginning of 1918, the leader of the revolution insisted on signing the Brest Peace Treaty. As a result, Germany lost a huge part of Russian territory. The disagreement of the majority of the Russian population with the policies of the Bolsheviks led to the Civil War of 1918–1922.

The left-SR rebellion that took place in St. Petersburg in July 1918 was brutally suppressed. After this, a one-party system is established in Russia. Now V. Lenin is the head of the Bolshevik Party and all of Russia.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on the life of the Head of the Party, he was seriously wounded. After which “Red Terror” was declared in the country.

Lenin developed the policy of "war communism".
Main ideas - quotes from his works:

• The main goal of the Communist Party is to carry out the communist revolution and subsequently build a classless society free from exploitation.
• There is no universal morality, but only class morality. The morality of the proletariat is what is moral that meets the interests of the proletariat (“our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat”).
• The revolution will not necessarily happen all over the world simultaneously, as Marx believed. It may first occur in one single country. This country will then help the revolution in other countries.
• Tactically, the success of the revolution depends on the rapid capture of communications (mail, telegraph, train stations).
• Before building communism, an intermediate stage is necessary - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism is divided into two periods: socialism and communism proper.

According to the policy of “war communism”, free trade was prohibited in Russia, natural exchange (instead of commodity-money relations) and surplus appropriation were introduced. At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-type enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation.

A wave of peasant uprisings took place across the country, but they were brutally suppressed. Soon, on the personal order of V. Lenin, persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church began. About 10 million people became victims of “war communism”. Russia's economic and industrial indicators have declined sharply.

In March 1921, at the Tenth Party Congress, V. Lenin put forward a program of “new economic policy” (NEP), which slightly changed the economic crisis.

In 1922, the leader of the world proletariat suffered 2 strokes, but did not stop leading the state. In the same year, Russia renamed itself the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

At the beginning of 1923, realizing that there was a split in the Bolshevik party and his health was deteriorating, Lenin wrote a “Letter to the Congress.” In the letter, he characterized all the leading figures of the Central Committee and proposed to remove Joseph Stalin from the post of General Secretary.

In March 1923, he suffered a third stroke, after which he was paralyzed.

January 21, 1924 V.I. Lenin died in the village. Gorki (Moscow region). His body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the question was raised about the need to remove the body and brain of the first leader of the USSR from the Mausoleum and bury it. In modern times, there are still discussions about this by various government officials, political parties and forces, as well as representatives of religious organizations.

V. Ulyanov had other pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, etc.

In addition to all his deeds, Lenin stood at the origins of the creation of the Red Army, which won the civil war.

The only official state award that the fiery Bolshevik was awarded was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Socialist Republic (1922).

Lenin's name

The name and image of V. I. Lenin was canonized by the Soviet government along with The October Revolution and Joseph Stalin. Many cities, towns and collective farms were named after him. There was a monument to him in every city. Numerous stories about “Grandfather Lenin” were written for Soviet children; the words “Leninists”, “Leniniada”, etc. came into use among the inhabitants of the country.

Images of the leader were on the front side of all tickets of the State Bank of the USSR in denominations from 10 to 100 rubles from 1937 to 1992, as well as on 200, 500 and 1 thousand “Pavlovian rubles” of the USSR issued in 1991 and 1992.

Lenin's works

According to a FOM survey in 1999, 65% of the Russian population considered the role of V. Lenin in the history of the country to be positive, and 23% - negative.
He wrote a huge number of works, the most famous:

• “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” (1899);
• "What to do?" (1902);
• “Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism)” (1914);
• “Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay)” (1916);
• "State and Revolution" (1917);
• “Tasks of youth unions” (1920);
• “On the pogrom persecution of Jews” (1924);
• “What is Soviet power?”;
• "About our revolution."

The speeches of the fiery revolutionary were recorded on many gramophone records.
Named after him:

• Tank "Freedom Fighter Comrade Lenin"
• Electric locomotive VL
• icebreaker "Lenin"
• "Electronics VL-100"
• Vladilena (852 Wladilena) - minor planet
• numerous cities, villages, collective farms, streets, monuments.

Where did Vladimir Ilyich get crazy money for party activities on the eve of the revolution and at its beginning? Interesting materials on this topic have been published over the past decades, but much still remains unclear...

Plots related to the theme “Lenin, money and revolution” are inexhaustible for a historian, a psychologist, and a satirist. After all, the man who called for making toilets in public toilets out of gold after the complete victory of communism, who never earned his own living through hard work, did not live in poverty even in prison and exile and, it seemed, did not know what money was, at the same time made a huge contribution to the theory of commodity-money relations.

What exactly? Not with his brochures and articles, of course, but with revolutionary practice. It was Lenin who introduced in revolutionary Russia in 1919-1921 a cashless natural product exchange between city and village. The consequence of this was the complete collapse of the economy, the paralysis of agriculture, mass hunger and - as a result - mass uprisings against the power of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It was then, shortly before his death, that Lenin finally understood the importance of money and launched the NEP - a kind of “managed capitalism” under the control of the Communist Party.

But now we are not talking about these interesting stories in themselves, but about something else. About where Vladimir Ilyich got crazy money for party activities on the eve of the revolution and at its beginning. Interesting materials on this topic have been published over the past decades, but much still remains unclear. For example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, money was given to the underground newspaper Iskra by a mysterious well-wisher (individual or collective), encrypted in the documents of the RSDLP as “California Gold Mines.” In the opinion of some researchers, we are talking about the support of radical Russian revolutionaries by American Jewish bankers, mostly immigrants from the Russian Empire, and their descendants, who hated the tsarist government for its official anti-Semitism. During the revolution of 1905 - 1907, the Bolsheviks were sponsored by American oil corporations in order to eliminate competitors from the world market (namely, Nobel's oil cartel from Baku). In those same years, by his own admission, the American banker Jacob Schiff gave money to the Bolsheviks. And also the Syzran manufacturer Ermasov and the Moscow region merchant and industrialist Morozov. Then Shmit, the owner of a furniture factory in Moscow, became one of the financiers of the Bolshevik party. Interestingly, both Savva Morozov and Nikolai Shmit eventually committed suicide, and a significant part of their inheritance went to the Bolsheviks. And, of course, quite large amounts of money (hundreds of thousands of rubles in those days or tens of millions of hryvnias, according to current purchasing power) were obtained as a result of the so-called exes, or more simply, robberies of banks, post offices, and train station ticket offices. At the head of these actions were two characters with thieves' nicknames Kamo and Koba - that is, Ter-Petrosyan and Dzhugashvili.

However, hundreds of thousands and even millions of rubles invested in revolutionary activities could only shake the Russian Empire, despite all its weaknesses - the structure was too strong. But only in peacetime. With the outbreak of World War I, new financial and political opportunities opened up for the Bolsheviks, which they successfully took advantage of.

... On January 15, 1915, the German ambassador in Istanbul reported to Berlin about a meeting with Russian citizen Alexander Gelfand (aka Parvus), an active participant in the revolution of 1905 - 1907 and the owner of a large trading company. Parvus introduced the German ambassador to the plan for revolution in Russia. He was immediately invited to Berlin, where he met with influential members of the Cabinet and advisers to Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. Parvus offered to donate a significant amount to him: firstly, for the development of the national movement in Finland and Ukraine; secondly, in support of the Bolsheviks, who preached the idea of ​​defeating the Russian Empire in an unjust war in order to overthrow the “power of landowners and capitalists.” Parvus' proposals were accepted; By personal order of Kaiser Wilhelm, he was given two million marks as his first contribution to the “cause of the Russian revolution.” Then there were further cash injections, and more than one. So, according to Parvus’s receipt, on January 29 of the same 1915, he received a million rubles in Russian banknotes for the development of the revolutionary movement in Russia. The money arrived with German pedantry.

In Finland and Ukraine, the agents of Parvus (and the German General Staff) turned out to be figures of the second, if not third rank, so their influence on the processes of gaining independence by these countries turned out to be insignificant compared to the objective processes of nation-building in the Russian Empire. But Parvus-Gelfand made no mistake with Lenin. Parvus, according to him, told Lenin that revolution during this period was possible only in Russia and only as a result of the victory of Germany; in response, Lenin sent his trusted agent Furstenberg (Ganetsky) for close cooperation with Parvus, which continued until 1918. Another sum from Germany, not so significant, came to the Bolsheviks through the Swiss deputy Karl Moor, but here we were talking about only 35 thousand dollars. Money also flowed through the Nia bank in Stockholm; according to the order of the German Imperial Bank No. 2754, accounts of Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and other Bolshevik leaders were opened in this bank. And order No. 7433 of March 2, 1917 provided for payment of the “services” of Lenin, Zinoviev, Kollontai and others for public propaganda of peace in Russia, where the tsarist government had just been overthrown.

Enormous sums of money were used effectively: the Bolsheviks had their own newspapers, distributed free of charge, in every district, in every city; tens of thousands of their professional agitators operated throughout Russia; Red Guard detachments were formed quite openly. Of course, German gold was not enough here. Although the “poor” political emigrant Trotsky, who was returning from America to Russia in 1917, was seized by customs in the city of Halifax (Canada) 10 thousand dollars, it is clear that he sent some considerable money from the banker Jacob Schiff to his like-minded people. Even more funds were provided by the “expropriation of expropriators” (simply, the robbery of rich people and institutions), which began in the spring of 1917. Has anyone ever wondered by what right the Bolsheviks occupied the house-palace of the ballerina Kshesinskaya and the Smolny Institute in Petrograd?

But in general, the Russian democratic revolution broke out in the early spring of 1917, unexpectedly for all political subjects inside and outside the empire. This was a spontaneous process of genuine popular activity both in Petrograd and on the national outskirts of the state. Suffice it to say that a month before the start of the revolution, the Bolshevik leader Lenin, who was in exile in Switzerland, publicly expressed doubt that the politicians of his generation (that is, 40-50 years old) would live to see the revolution in Russia. However, it was the radical Russian politicians who rebuilt themselves faster than others and were ready to “ride” the revolution - using, as already mentioned, German support.

The Russian Revolution was not an accident; it is even surprising that it did not begin, say, a year earlier. All social, political and national problems in the Romanov Empire had already become aggravated to the limit, and this despite the fact that on the formal economic side, industry was developing dynamically, stocks of weapons, ammunition and ammunition had increased significantly. However, the extreme ineffectiveness of the central government and the corruption of the elite, inevitable under autocracy, took their toll. And then the deliberate disintegration of the army, the undermining of the rear, the sabotage of attempts to constructively resolve pressing problems, together with the incurable chauvinistic centralism of almost all Great Russian political forces, greatly aggravated the crisis.

During the 1917 campaign, Entente troops were supposed to simultaneously launch a general offensive on all European fronts in the spring. But the Russian army turned out to be unprepared for the offensive, therefore, the April attacks of the Anglo-French troops in the Reims area were defeated, the losses in killed and wounded exceeded 100 thousand people. In July, Russian troops attempted to go on the offensive in the Lviv direction, however, in the end they were forced to retreat from the territory of Galicia and Bukovina, and in the north they surrendered Riga almost without a fight. And finally, the battle near the village of Caporetto in October led to disaster for the Italian army. 130 thousand Italian soldiers died, 300 thousand surrendered, and only British and French divisions urgently transferred from French territory in vehicles were able to stabilize the front and prevent Italy from leaving the war. And finally, after the November coup in Petrograd, when the Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries came to power, a truce was declared on the Eastern Front, first de facto and then de jure, not only with Russia and Ukraine, but also with Romania.

In such changes on the Eastern Front, a significant role was played by the funds that Germany allocated for subversive work in the rear of the Russian army. “Military operations on the Eastern Front, prepared on a large scale and carried out with great success, were supported by significant subversive activities inside Russia, which were carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our main goal in this activity was to further strengthen nationalist and separatist sentiments and secure support for revolutionary elements. We are still continuing this activity and are finalizing an agreement with the political department of the General Staff in Berlin (Captain von Hülsen). Our joint work has produced significant results. Without our constant support, the Bolshevik movement would never have been able to achieve the scope and influence that it now has. Everything suggests that this movement will continue to grow.” These are the words of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Germany, Richard von Kühlmann, written by him on September 29, 1917, a month and a half before the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd.

Von Kuhlmann knew what he was writing about. After all, he was an active participant in all those events, a little later he conducted peace negotiations with Bolshevik Russia and the Ukrainian People's Republic in Berest at the beginning of 1918. A lot of money, tens of millions of marks, passed through his hands; he had contacts with a number of the main characters in this historical drama.

“I have the honor to ask Your Excellency to place the sum of 15 million marks at the disposal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the purpose of political propaganda in Russia, assigning this amount to paragraph 6, section II of the Emergency Budget. Depending on how events develop, I would like to discuss in advance the possibility of again contacting your Excellency in the near future with a view to providing additional funds,” von Kühlmann wrote on November 9, 1917.

As we see, as soon as the message about the coup in Petrograd, which would later be called the Great October Revolution, was received, Kaiser Germany allocated new funds for propaganda in Russia. These funds go primarily to support the Bolsheviks, who first dismantled the army and then took the Russian Republic out of the war, thus freeing millions of German soldiers for operations in the West. However, they still retain the image of selfless revolutionaries and romantic Marxists. Until now, not only regular, so to speak, adherents of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, but also a certain number of non-party left-wing intelligentsia are convinced: Vladimir Lenin and his like-minded people were sincere internationalists and highly moral fighters for the people's cause.

In general, an interesting situation is developing: there are secret documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kaiser Germany published by Oxford University in 1958, from which the telegrams of Richard von Kühlmann were taken and where you can find dozens of equally eloquent texts from the First World War, testifying to the enormous financial and organizational assistance that the German power was given to the Bolsheviks. Germany's goal was clear. Radical revolutionaries would undermine the combat potential of one of the main opponents of the central states, which included Germany, in the war - that is, the Russian Empire. Dozens of books have been published on this topic, containing other convincing evidence. But until now, not only communist historians, but also many liberal researchers deny historical self-evidence.

According to experts, the Kaiser’s Germany spent at least 382 million marks on so-called peaceful propaganda during the war. A colossal amount, as for the money of that time.

And again, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Richard von Kühlmann testifies.

“Only when the Bolsheviks began to receive a constant influx of funds from us through various channels and under different signs, did they become able to put their main organ, Pravda, on its feet, conduct energetic propaganda and significantly expand the initially narrow base of their party.” (Berlin, December 3, 1917). And indeed: the number of party members a year after the overthrow of tsarism increased 100 times!

As for the position of Lenin himself, the head of German military intelligence during the First World War, Colonel Walter Nikolai, spoke about him in his memoirs: “... At that time, like anyone else, I did not know anything about Bolshevism, but about Lenin I was “It is only known that he lives in Switzerland as a political emigrant “Ulyanov”, who provided my service with valuable information about the situation in Tsarist Russia, against which he fought.”

In other words, without constant help from the German side, the Bolsheviks would hardly have become one of the leading Russian parties in 1917. And this would mean a completely different course of events, probably much more anarchic, which would hardly lead to the establishment of any party dictatorship, much less a totalitarian regime. Most likely, another option for the collapse of the Russian Empire would have been realized, because the consequence of the First World War was precisely the destruction of empires. And the independence of Finland and Poland was a matter that was already decided de facto in 1916.

It is unlikely that the Russian Empire or even the Russian Republic would become an exception to the very process of the collapse of empires that began after the First World War. It is worth remembering that Britain had to grant independence to Ireland, that India moved by leaps and bounds towards its independence precisely after the First World War, and so on. And do not forget that the collapse of the Russian Empire began with the beginning of the 1917 revolution. Actually, this revolution itself to some extent bore the imprint of the national liberation struggle, because the Volynsky Life Guards Regiment was the first to rebel against the autocracy in Petrograd at the beginning of 1917.

The Bolsheviks were then a small and almost unknown party (four thousand members, mostly in exile and emigration) and had no influence on the overthrow of tsarism.

And after Lenin’s government came to power, support continued. “Please use large sums, as we are extremely interested in seeing the Bolsheviks survive. Riesler funds are at your disposal. If necessary, telegraph how much more is needed.” (Berlin, May 18, 1918). Von Kühlmann, as always, calls a spade a spade when contacting the German Embassy in Moscow. The Bolsheviks really held out and in the fall of 1918, they threw huge amounts of money from the treasury of the Russian Empire they had seized on revolutionary propaganda in Germany with the aim of sparking a world revolution.

The situation was mirrored. In Germany, revolution broke out in early November 1918. Money, weapons and qualified personnel of professional revolutionaries brought from Moscow played a role in inciting it. But local communists failed to lead this revolution. Subjective and, most importantly, objective factors worked against them. The totalitarian regime in Germany was established only 15 years later. But that is another topic.

Meanwhile, in the democratic Weimar Republic, the famous Social Democrat Eduard Bernstein published in 1921 in the central organ of his party, the newspaper Vorwärts, an article “Dark History”, in which he reported that back in December 1917 he received an affirmative answer from “one competent persons" when asked whether Germany gave money to Lenin.

According to him, more than 50 million gold marks were paid to the Bolsheviks alone. Then this amount was officially announced during a meeting of the Reichstag Committee on Foreign Policy. In response to accusations of "slander" by the communist press, Bernstein proposed to sue him, after which the campaign immediately ceased.

But Germany really needed friendly relations with Soviet Russia, therefore, discussion of this topic in the press did not resume.

One of the main political opponents of the Bolshevik leader, Alexander Kerensky, based on his investigation into the case of the Kaiser’s millions for Lenin, concluded: the total amount of money received by the Bolsheviks before they seized power and immediately after that to strengthen power was 80 million marks in gold (by today’s standards, we should be talking about hundreds of millions, if not billions of hryvnia). Actually, Ulyanov-Lenin never hid this from his circle of party colleagues: for example, in November 1918, at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (Bolshevik quasi-parliament), the communist leader said: “I am often accused of having made our revolution with German money; I don’t deny this, but with Russian money I will make the same revolution in Germany.”

And he tried, sparing tens of millions of gold rubles. But it didn’t work out: the German Social Democrats, unlike the Russians, understood what was going on, and in time they organized the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and then the disarmament of the Red Guard and the physical destruction of its leaders. There was no other way out in that situation; perhaps if Kerensky had plucked up the courage and ordered the Smolny along with all its “red” inhabitants to be shot from cannon, the Kaiser’s millions would not have helped.

This could have been the end, if not for the information of the New York Times from April 1921 that Lenin’s account in one of the Swiss banks received 75 million Swiss francs in 1920 alone. According to the newspaper, there were 11 million dollars and 90 million francs in Trotsky’s accounts, 80 million francs in Zinoviev’s accounts, 80 million in the accounts of the “knight of the revolution” Dzerzhinsky, and 60 million francs and 10 million dollars in Ganetsky-Furstenberg’s accounts. Lenin, in a secret note dated April 24, 1921, to the KGB leaders Unshlikht and Bokiy, resolutely demanded to find the source of the information leak. Not found.

I wonder if this money was also intended to be used for the world revolution? Or are we talking about a kind of “rollback” from politicians and financiers of those states where the “red horses”, by the will of Lenin and Trotsky, did not go, although they could have gone? Here we can only build hypotheses. Because a significant amount of Lenin’s documents have not yet been declassified.

... More than 90 years have passed since those events. But revolutionary romantics around the world continue to argue that the Bolsheviks were highly moral and fiery revolutionaries, patriots of Russia and supporters of the freedom of Ukraine. And to this day in the center of Kyiv there is a monument to Lenin, on which it is written that in the union of Russian and Ukrainian workers, a free Ukraine is possible, and without such a union there can be no talk of it. And to this day, flowers are brought to this monument to a man who received money from the German intelligence services on “revolutionary” holidays. And until now, unfortunately, a significant part of Ukrainian society is not able to realize the big difference between the leaders of the October Revolution and the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917, which was that the Ukrainian Revolution was really not financed by anyone from the outside.

And the October Revolution. But its lessons do not become less relevant. Moreover, their relevance is increasing.

The reason is simple: firstly, the contradictions that the world communist revolution, begun by the Russian October Revolution, but strangled by world capitalism, its three main forces, fascism, Stalinism and bourgeois democracy, have not been resolved; secondly, a new period of the rise of capitalism has come to an end, when the features of its new general crisis are taking shape, when the question of “who will win” will again arise. No matter how distant the experience of this first worldwide attempt to overthrow capital, it remains, if not the only one, then, in any case, the main one. And returning to it is a necessary condition for a new attempt to be crowned with success. Therefore, on the eve of future revolutionary storms, celebrating the next anniversary of the leader of the October Revolution, we will draw attention to the main feature of Leninism, its internationalism.

Internationalism, of course, was understood by the Bolsheviks not in the philistine sense such as “there are no bad nations”, “all people are brothers”, etc. Like all Marxists, Russian revolutionary social democrats of the early twentieth century understood it in the sense that the overthrow of the world capitalist system is the common cause of the entire world working class.

Already in the program adopted at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, from which Bolshevism originated, it was said:

“The development of exchange has established such a close connection between all the peoples of the civilized world that the great liberation movement of the proletariat should have become, and has long since become, international.

Considering itself one of the detachments of the world army of the proletariat, Russian Social Democracy pursues the same ultimate goal to which the Social Democrats of all other countries strive.”(“CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee”, 8th edition, publishing house of political literature, M. 1970, vol. 1, p. 60).

That is, as can be seen from the first sentence of the above quote, it was not at all about fidelity to a beautiful but abstract idea, but about a completely practical understanding of the fact that the overthrow of capitalism, which has become a world system, is just as impossible within national borders as it was impossible in a single city block. The situation with the understanding of this fact was extremely confused by the efforts of Stalin’s agitprop, which, for the sake of preserving the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy and for the sake of giving it (for the stated purpose) a “socialist” image, pulled quotes from Lenin taken from the international context in order to attribute to him the non-existent theory of “socialism in one country."

At the same time, the statements of the same Lenin in these same articles, or in works of the same time, which directly stated the impossibility of national socialism, were completely ignored. We will dwell on these elementary Marxist truths of that era, presented in Lenin’s works.

The Russian Revolution turned out to be the intersection of two historical processes, national and global, a reflection of which are all disputes about the nature of both the revolution itself and the society that emerged from it. By 1917, Russian society had long been ripe and overripe for a bourgeois revolution. At the same time, the general crisis of capitalism, which found its expression in the world war, raised the historical question of the exhaustion of the capitalist stage in the life of mankind, simultaneously creating objective conditions for the proletarian revolution with the goal of overthrowing capitalism and beginning the transition to communism. This intersection was superimposed by the fact that, frightened by the scale of the labor movement, the Russian bourgeoisie did not want to carry out its own revolution. And this task also had to be taken on by the working class. But, given the global crisis of the entire capitalist system, the Russian working class naturally had reason to hope that the workers of advanced countries, in turn, would make their own revolution and help the workers of more backward countries, incl. and Russia, begin to build socialism, without stopping at the long stage of capitalist development.

Based on this Lenin and sets the following tasks in the fall of 1915: “The task of the Russian proletariat is to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia in order to ignite the socialist revolution in Europe. This second task has now come extremely close to the first, but it still remains a special and second task, for we are talking about different classes collaborating with the proletariat of Russia, for the first task the collaborator is the petty-bourgeois peasantry of Russia, for the second - the proletariat of other countries.”(V.I. Lenin, PSS, t.27, pp.49-50).

Already here lies the turn that came as a surprise to the “old Bolsheviks,” who, after the February revolution, still thought in the categories of 1905 and were going to establish a “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” to carry out a bourgeois revolution. Lenin, like Trotsky, saw in the global crisis associated with the war an opportunity to combine, thanks to the help of the international proletariat, the tasks of the national bourgeois and international socialist revolution. Before leaving for Russia in early April 1917, Lenin writes "Farewell letter to Swiss workers". He notes:

“Russia is a peasant country, one of the most backward European countries. Socialism cannot immediately win in it. But the peasant character of the country, with the enormous remaining land fund of the noble landowners, based on the experience of 1905, can give enormous scope to the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia and make our revolution a prologue to the world socialist revolution, a step towards it.”(V.I. Lenin, PSS, vol. 31, pp. 91-92).

In his short speech at the opening of the April Conference, Lenin states: “The Russian proletariat has the great honor of starting, but it must not forget that its movement and revolution constitute only part of the worldwide revolutionary proletarian movement, which, for example, in Germany is growing stronger and stronger every day. Only from this angle can we determine our tasks.”(ibid., p. 341). On the same day, in the Current Situation Report, he justifies his “bias” on a global scale: “...we are now connected with all other countries, and it is impossible to break out of this tangle: either the proletariat will break out as a whole, or it will be strangled”(ibid., p. 354). Concluding his report, which is mainly devoted to the necessary steps of the revolution, he emphasizes: “The complete success of these steps is possible only with a world revolution, if the revolution strangles the war, and if the workers in all countries support it, therefore taking power is the only concrete measure, this is the only way out.”(ibid., p. 358).

The understanding of the impossibility of winning even a socialist revolution, not to mention building a socialist society in a single country, especially one as backward as Russia, runs through all of Lenin’s works, right down to the very last - "Less is better". Not sure that he will be able to return to active work, he writes about what worries him: “Thus, we are now faced with the question: will we be able to hold out with our small and minute peasant production, with our ruin, until the Western European capitalist countries complete their development towards socialism?”(ibid., vol. 45, p. 402).

No illusions! And the same alarm sounds in him "Letter to the Congress" where he is concerned about one issue: the stability of the party leadership, the need to avoid its split during the period of painful anticipation of revolution in developed countries. And the fact that if the revolution is delayed, a split is inevitable due to the internal development of the country, Lenin understands perfectly:

“Our party relies on two classes and therefore its instability is possible and its fall is inevitable if an agreement could not take place between these two classes. In this case, it is useless to take certain measures or even talk about the stability of our Central Committee. No measures in this case will be able to prevent a split » (ibid., p. 344).

Only impenetrable dogmatism and reluctance to give up illusions force today’s Stalinists to again and again bring to light Lenin’s words about “building socialism”, completely ignoring those quotes of his where he directly speaks about the victory of the international revolution, like necessary condition of this “construction”.

But this condition was reflected not just in his speeches, but directly in the program of the RCP (b), adopted in the spring of 1919. Those. in the main official party document, where every word is carefully weighed. This is not a speech at a rally, where, for the sake of inspiring listeners, one can shout about “building socialism” without specifying when and under what conditions it is possible. The program speaks of the social revolution as “upcoming,” and Lenin defended this description against Podbelsky’s attacks, pointing out that “in our program we are talking about social revolution on a global scale” (ibid., v. 38, p.175). In a programme Russian communists, i.e. Bolsheviks, speech about national The social revolution is not even underway!

In the Political Report of the Central Committee to the Seventh Congress of the RCP (b), Lenin said: “International imperialism, with all the might of its capital, with its highly organized military equipment, which represents the real strength, the real fortress of international capital, could in no case, under any conditions, coexist next to the Soviet Republic, both in its objective position and in the economic interests of that the capitalist class, which was embodied in it, could not due to trade ties and international financial relations. Here conflict is inevitable. Here is the greatest difficulty of the Russian revolution, its greatest historical problem: the need to solve international problems, the need to cause an international revolution, to make this transition from our revolution, as a narrowly national one, to a world one.”(ibid., v. 36, p.8). And a little further: “If you look at the world-historical scale, there is no doubt that the final victory of the revolution, if it had remained alone, if there had been no revolutionary movement in other countries, would have been hopeless... Our salvation from all these difficulties - I repeat - in the pan-European revolution"(ibid., vol. 36 p.11).”

“Salvation... of the pan-European revolution” did not come, the split that Lenin feared occurred, and the party of the proletariat was destroyed. There was only one thing he was wrong about. The gravedigger party of the proletarian power turned out to be not the party of the peasants, but the party of the bureaucracy, whose bourgeois nature inevitably resulted from the bourgeois character of the Russian revolution, which failed to fulfill the task of developing into a world socialist revolution.

The ability to face the truth, not to create the illusion that a revolution can be won without something fundamentally important, is an absolutely necessary thing for a Marxist if he wants to achieve results. And we still need to learn this skill for a long time from Lenin.

The October Revolution occurred in the midst of a world war, when the internationalism of most parties of the Second International was abandoned for the sake of “defense of the fatherland.” Therefore, along with the concept of the impossibility of national socialism in the internationalist approach Lenin The most important issue is occupied by the issue of revolutionary defeatism, which is a particular but extremely important example of the preservation of the class independence of the proletariat in relation to the bourgeoisie.

The tactics of revolutionary defeatism, the tactics of transforming an imperialist war into a civil war, were directly derived both from the general necessary condition for the class independence of the proletariat and from the specific decisions of the congresses of the Second International:

“The opportunists thwarted the decisions of the Stuttgart, Copenhagen and Basel congresses, which obligated socialists of all countries to fight against chauvinism under any and all conditions, obliging socialists to respond to any war started by the bourgeoisie and governments by intensified preaching of civil war and social revolution.”(ibid., vol. 26, p. 20), proclaims the Manifesto of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) written by Lenin. "War and Russian Social Democracy".

And further: “The transformation of the modern imperialist war into a civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan, indicated by the experience of the Commune, outlined by the Basel (1912) resolution and resulting from all the conditions of the imperialist war between highly developed bourgeois countries”(ibid., p. 22).

This is the meaning of revolutionary defeatism: to use the defeat of your government to turn the mass mutual beating of each other by the working people on the fronts of the imperialist war, into a war of these working people against their bourgeois governments, for their overthrow and the establishment of the power of the working people themselves, which will put an end to all wars and capitalist exploitation.

Of course, we are not talking, and never have been, about somehow helping the military enemy for the sake of defeatism. And bourgeois propaganda often interprets this issue exactly this way, presenting the Bolsheviks as “German spies.” Just like in Germany, “Russian spies” were considered Karl Liebknecht And Rosa Luxemburg. Such an accusation is absurd, since the principle of revolutionary defeatism comes from the reactionary nature of all the warring parties and, therefore, it makes no sense to help another imperialist state in return for “our own.”

And, by the way, it was precisely this parody of revolutionary defeatism that, shortly before Germany’s attack on the USSR, the Stalinist regime imposed on the French Communist Party. Communist deputies were forced, under the conditions of fascist occupation, to switch to a legal position and begin receiving voters. They were all shot after June 22, 1941! As well as the party activists who communicated with them. There was also a request for permission to legally publish L'Humanite. Fortunately for the PCF, the fascists did not agree to this. But it is Stalin’s followers who will be ready to tear me to pieces for the position of defeatism in the Second World War, which will be discussed below.

In fact, we are talking about exposing in every possible way the jingoistic propaganda that justified the war on its part as “just.”

The point is to continue and strengthen the workers’ struggle for their rights and, ultimately, for their power, despite the accusations of patriots that by doing so they are “weakening the front” and “contributing” to military defeat. Yes, they contribute, but precisely through this struggle, and nothing else! Lenin explains these points quite clearly: “The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot help but desire the defeat of its government. ... “Revolutionary struggle against war” is an empty and meaningless exclamation, to which such masters are the heroes of the Second International, if by it we do not mean revolutionary actions against their government and during the war. It only takes a little thought to understand this. And revolutionary actions during the war against one’s government, undoubtedly, indisputably, mean not only the desire for defeat, but in fact also assistance in such defeat. (For the “astute reader”: this does not mean at all that it is necessary to “blow up bridges”, organize unsuccessful military strikes and generally help the government defeat the revolutionaries)”(ibid., p. 286). With these words Lenin, in his article "On the defeat of one's government in the imperialist war", pounces on the initially half-hearted position Trotsky.

The point is to corrupt the army of “your” imperialist power with your propaganda (and this is a condition for revolutionaries of all (!) countries), proving the senselessness and criminality of this war from all sides. The most complete result of such propaganda was the fraternization of soldiers of the armies at war with each other.

“The proletarian can neither inflict a class blow on his government, nor extend (in fact) a hand to his brother, the proletarian of a “foreign” country at war with “us,” without committing “high treason,” without contributing to defeat, without helping the disintegration of “his own.” imperialist "great" power"(ibid., p. 290).

The most striking example of the effectiveness of the latter was Bolshevik propaganda in relation to the German army. In Russia the German army seemed to be the victor, but it was here that the revolutionary example of Russian workers and soldiers had the greatest effect. The units transferred from Russia to the western front turned out to be completely ineffective, accelerating Germany’s defeat in the war and the revolution in it.

Revolutionary defeatism is not just a revolutionary phrase. This is a practical position, without which it is impossible (impossible!) to separate the working class from the ideological and political influence of “their” bourgeoisie: “ Supporters of the slogan “no victories, no defeats” actually stand on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, “not believing” in the possibility of international revolutionary actions of the working class against their governments, not wanting to help the development of such actions - a task that is undoubtedly not easy, but the only one worthy of the proletarian , the only socialist task. It was the proletariat of the most backward of the warring great powers that had, especially in the face of the shameful betrayal of the German and French Social Democrats, in the person of its party, to come out with revolutionary tactics, which are absolutely impossible without “promoting the defeat” of their government, but which alone leads to European revolution, to the lasting peace of socialism, to the deliverance of humanity from the horrors, disasters, savagery, bestiality that reigns today"(ibid., p. 291).

It was the transition “in practice” to the policy of defeatism, “promoting” it, that led to revolutions in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. But the absence of a political force to defend it turned out to be a disaster for the world proletariat during the Second World War. The chauvinistic, jingoistic frenzy contributed to the start of both the first and second world wars. It is very difficult to reverse it, especially for a revolutionary minority operating underground. However, when, taught by the bitter experience of war, the working people, both in the rear and at the front, themselves over time begin to intuitively realize the correctness of this approach, then without a revolutionary vanguard they can fall into the hands of completely different ideologists and practitioners. 2 million citizens of the USSR, a state-capitalist imperialist power, during the Second World War, if they did not fight on the side of Nazi Germany, then, in any case, were listed in collaborationist military units. And far (very far!) not everyone was anti-communists and enemies of socialism. Many bought into the “socialist” phraseology of General Vlasov. The same thing happened in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. And how many soldiers, workers and peasants of the USSR were there who would have been happy to oppose the Stalinist regime, but who had enough understanding that it was pointless to do this under the flag of fascism?!

The potential for the tactics of revolutionary defeatism in our country was very great, but there was no political force - the Bolshevik Party was wiped out almost entirely. Worse, few among her understood the capitalist nature of the USSR. Indicative in this regard is the example of the Trotskyists, the only, at least relatively numerous, anti-Stalinist political force in the labor movement. Operating in Europe, it also had the human potential for revolutionary propaganda to transform the imperialist war into a civil war. In particular, in France and Italy. Here, even many ordinary Stalinists, even participating in a completely patriotic resistance movement, hoped that after the end of the war they would be able to use their organization and authority for the socialist revolution. Not so! Thorez, Tolyatti and Co., who arrived from Moscow, quickly put everything “in place,” imposing the continuation of the policy of the anti-fascist Popular Fronts even after the defeat of fascism.

And if some part of the working class still had revolutionary sentiments, the Trotskyists helped overcome them with their slogan of “unconditional defense of the USSR.” If the USSR is a workers' state, then it is necessary to protect both it and its allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. This logic finally gave way to hopes for a new revolutionary wave as a response to the second world imperialist war. The world working class found itself subordinate to the tasks of its national capitalist detachments. Only a few representatives of the Trotskyist Fourth International, as well as representatives of the Italian communist Left, took revolutionary positions, but remained practically isolated. Without revolutionary defeatism, as well as without the defeat of Stalinism, the continuation of the world revolution begun in October 1917 was impossible.

“The “unconditional defense of the USSR” turns out to be incompatible with the defense of the world revolution. The defense of Russia must be left as a matter of special urgency, since it binds our entire movement, puts pressure on our theoretical development and gives us a Stalinized physiognomy in the eyes of the masses. It is impossible to defend the world revolution and Russia at the same time. Either one or the other. We stand for world revolution, against the defense of Russia, and we call on you to speak out in the same direction [...] in order to remain faithful to the revolutionary tradition of the Fourth International, we must abandon the Trotskyist theory of defense of the USSR; We are thus carrying out in the International the ideological revolution necessary for the success of the world revolution.” These are quotes from the "Open Letter to the Internationalist Communist Party" dated June 1947. The party operated in France, affiliated with the Fourth Trotskyist International and included both those who shared the Trotskyist theory of a “deformed workers’ state” and those who already understood the capitalist nature of the USSR. Among the latter were the authors of this letter - Grandiso Muniz, Benjamin Pere And Natalia Sedova-Trotskaya, widow Leon Trotsky.

However, it was already too late. Taking advantage of its victory in the Second World War, capitalism completed the redistribution of the world, united most of the world market under the auspices of the United States and a smaller part of the USSR, thereby providing the conditions for the collapse of the world colonial system and the inclusion of its countries in the system of the world capitalist market. In short, capitalism created the conditions for its transition to a higher stage of its development, which lasted 60 years, and which begins to burst at the seams again, preparing new big and small wars. This was a period of prolonged counter-revolution on all fronts. But the growing crisis, economic, military, political, ideological, again requires revolutionary leadership. And this leadership must be formed fully armed with the entire revolutionary experience of the past, and the experience of Bolshevism in the first place. And the center of this experience has been and will be the emphasis on the world socialist revolution and the political class independence of the proletariat, the most integral part of which is the categorical rejection of any form of patriotism and revolutionary defeatism. 13.01.2020

Saturday, April 22, 2017 12:50 + to quote book

On this day, April 22, 1870, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was born. His entire life and work became a myth, or rather, they were turned into a myth. Under Soviet power, we lived in an atmosphere of the myth of Lenin, but with the fall of Soviet power, this myth began to collapse. Today, the Lenin myth is experiencing a renaissance.
According to VTsIOM data for 2016, to the question “Do you rather like Lenin or rather dislike him?” 63% expressed sympathy, and 24% - dislike.
Recently, a reconstruction of the 1917 revolution was staged near our house. There were revolutionary soldiers and sailors, and Lenin on an armored car. Plunging into the events of a hundred years ago, I could not help but ask the reenactors about their attitude to Lenin and the world revolution.

St. Petersburg is literally permeated with the myth of Lenin.
I was born in Leningrad, on Obukhovskaya Oborona Avenue, and lived for thirty years on Krupskaya Street. The houses where Nadezhda Konstantinovna held Sunday meetings of factory workers still remain. Walking around the city, you will inevitably see a monument or memorial plaque dedicated to Lenin. “Every stone here knows Lenin...” wrote Mayakovsky. Even in the new buildings where I now live next to the Prospekt Bolshevikov metro station, there is a street of Kollontai, Dybenko, Krylenko, Antonov-Ovseenko and other Bolsheviks.

As a child, like all Soviet people, I lived in an atmosphere of the myth of Lenin. In kindergarten, the ever-living Ilyich looked at us from portraits. The first thing I memorized at school were the words of Lenin, posted at the entrance: “Study, study and study again.”
For good studies and active work, I was repeatedly awarded with books. One of them was Zoya Voskresenskaya’s book about Lenin, “Bonfires.”

Like everyone else, I was first an October boy, then a pioneer, then a Komsomol member. Some were accepted as pioneers on the cruiser "Author", others in the Museum of the Revolution.
When joining the Komsomol, we were required to know Lenin’s work “Tasks of Youth Unions.” I still remember many of the theses of Lenin’s works by heart.
“You can become a communist only when you enrich your memory with the knowledge of the riches that humanity has developed.”
“It is necessary that the whole matter of upbringing, education and studying of modern youth should be the inculcation in them of communist morality.”

We were taken to films about Lenin, to theaters to see plays about Lenin, and the whole class was taken to the opening of a new monument to Lenin. For extracurricular reading, we read “A Mother’s Heart” by the writer Zoya Voskresenskaya. We were told how Ilyich loved children and animals, how he once saved hares. In fact, the hares themselves jumped into the boat to escape the flood, and Lenin drowned them out with an oar.

Lenin was held up as an example for us. For some reason, “The Clean Plate Society” was especially memorable. In high school we studied Gorky's essay "Lenin" and Mayakovsky's poem. I remember the lines: “Lenin is still more alive than all the living. Our knowledge is strength and weapon.” “I am purifying myself under Lenin in order to swim further into the revolution.”

When I was resting in a pioneer camp, we were taken on an excursion to Razliv, where Lenin was hiding. And now, when I’m traveling by train to Sestroretsk, the announcer announces: “Razliv, V.I. Lenin Memorial Museum.”

In the school drama club, I read with great enthusiasm the poem “Lenin and the Stove Man” by Alexander Tvardovsky from the stage. For my success in studies and amateur performances, I was given the book “Life as a Torch” about Alexander Ulyanov. The book suggested a conclusion: the execution of his brother made Vladimir an avenger of the tsarist regime. The words “We will go a different way” remained with me forever.

Lenin made a great impression on me. The power of his intellect, conviction, spiritual independence, and independence in study encouraged us to follow the example of this man. His belief in his mission, commitment to his idea and dedication were inspiring. I told younger schoolchildren about Ilyich’s childhood, for which I was awarded the badge “Excellence in the Lenin Test.”

Volodya Ulyanov graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal. The only "B" - logically - was given to him by the director of the gymnasium, Fyodor Kerensky (father of the future minister of the provisional government).
Lenin was a proud and ambitious person, and perhaps his attitude towards Minister A.F. Kerensky in 1917 was of the nature of personal rivalry.

Of all the films about Lenin that were endlessly shown on television, the film that made the greatest impression on me was “6th of July,” about the attempted coup of the left Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918. “The Most Human Man” seemed the most human to me.

They convinced us: “Lenin lived, Lenin is alive, Lenin will live...”
“Lenin is always alive, Lenin is always with you -
In grief, in hope and joy.
Lenin in your spring,
Every happy day
Lenin is in you and in me!”

While serving in the Northern Fleet, I read a lot, studied the biography of Lenin, and then became a member of the party. After perestroika, I didn’t throw away my party card, as some did.

I learned that married Lenin also had a mistress, Inessa Armand, after perestroika.

After the service, I entered the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University, passing the exams with all A's.
Vladimir Ulyanov also graduated from the Faculty of Law, passing the exams as an external student. The university has preserved a picture of this historical event.

Having become a certified lawyer, Ulyanov got a job as an assistant to a sworn attorney. Out of 16 cases, he won only 3.
According to experts, Lenin’s work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” suffers from numerous errors.

The leader of the world proletariat had about 150 pseudonyms. The most famous - Lenin - he took from his cousin Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin, using whose passport he intended to travel abroad.
The name - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - is the fruit of Soviet myth-makers. The leader of the world proletariat never signed this pseudonym. After coming to power, official party and state documents were signed by “V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin).”

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Lenin was a rare phenomenon of a man of iron will, indomitable energy, merging fanatical faith in the movement, in the cause, with no less faith in himself. A “nondescript and rude” man, devoid of charm, had a “hypnotic effect.”

This unattractive man radiated such inner strength that people quickly forgot about the first impression. The amazing effect that the combination of willpower, relentless discipline, energy, asceticism and unshakable faith in the cause produced in him can only be described by the word “charisma”.

“Lenin was obsessed with obsessions,” “he was very authoritarian, very inflexible, and did not tolerate disagreement with his opinions,” writes historian Helen Rappaport, author of a book about Lenin. - “Lenin was a cynical opportunist - he changed his party tactics depending on circumstances and political gain. Perhaps this was his extraordinary talent as a tactician.” “He was ruthless and cruel, shamelessly using people for his own purposes.”

According to Maxim Gorky’s description: “for him the working class is like ore for a blacksmith.”

Perhaps Ilyich’s outspoken leadership, unshakable confidence in his own rightness and his historical mission, had genetic roots. Ilyich’s mother (nee Blank) was from a family of half Germans, half Jews.

“The main practical goal of Lenin’s life was henceforth to achieve a revolution in Russia, regardless of whether the material conditions there were ripe for new relations of production.
The young man was not embarrassed by what was a stumbling block for other Russian Marxists of that time. Even if Russia is backward, he believed, even if its proletariat is weak, even if Russian capitalism is far from developing all its productive forces - that’s not the point. The main thing is to make a revolution!

Lenin was a professional revolutionary, and therefore the accomplishment of the revolution was the work and meaning of his whole life. Power was needed at any cost. Lenin said that there is no morality in politics; here the end justifies the means. Everything that serves the cause of building communism is moral. “We say that our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.” (vol. 25, pp. 390-391)

When I was studying at the law faculty of the university, I subscribed to the complete works of Lenin.

The idea of ​​a world revolution turned out to be a mistake. The proletarian revolution in Russia was a bluff, since in an agricultural country the proletariat made up only about 10 percent.

The fighter for the happiness of the working people, Vladimir Ulyanov, destroyed the best part of the working people of Russia. Ilyich simply called the intelligentsia “the shit of the nation.”

Why did Lenin take the path of forcibly building happiness for people?

Despite calls, the proletarians of all countries did not want to unite. But Lenin knew how to admit his mistakes and change policies. This was the case with the NEP, then with the idea of ​​“peaceful coexistence.”

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Desires to create democracy following the example of Athens and a just society similar to the Platonic state were doomed to failure.
Attempts to build a just society on earth led to the construction of the Gulag. Human nature got in the way, as always. Instincts turned out to be stronger than culture.
People don't change, so history repeats itself, developing in a spiral.

Gradually, the image of a heroic person grew into the image of a tragic person.
The revolution, as we know, devours its children. Lenin became its victim. He was destroyed by vanity and a manic desire for absolute power.

Power naturally strives for its absolutization. The cult of personality appears as a justification for absolute power.

The dragon slayer became a dragon! The tsarist monarchy was replaced by the “red monarchy” - one king was replaced by another.

They say that in the last months before his death, Ilyich critically assessed what had been done and wanted to change everything. But I did not find understanding or support.
Krupskaya asked not to erect monuments or name streets after the leader. But her comrades did not listen to her. “There is a logic of intentions and a logic of circumstances, and the logic of circumstances is always stronger than the logic of intentions,” said I.V. Stalin.

After Lenin's death, he was deified and turned into a pagan idol. They made a mausoleum, embalmed the body and placed it in a glass sarcophagus.

I visited the mausoleum already during perestroika. The experiment to preserve the body of Ulyanov (Lenin) is still ongoing.

Next to my father’s grave in the cemetery of the victims of January 9, there is the grave of Vladimir Lenin. A handsome man of about fifty looks out from the photo.
When will Volodya Ulyanov be given a proper burial?

Previously, they worshiped the incorruptible relics of saints, now they worship the incorruptible body of the leader. It is impossible to change the archetypes of consciousness; you can only change the external forms of worship.

Having abandoned one religion, the Bolsheviks created their own religion, where Marx was God the Father, Lenin was God the Son, and the apostles were members of the Politburo. Their own “anti-church” was created. They even borrowed sayings from the Gospel: “he who does not work does not eat,” “he who is not with us is against us,” etc.

It is noted that Lenin had a fanatical belief in the possibility of a revolutionary reorganization of Russia.
“We old people may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can express the hope that young people will have the happiness of not only fighting, but also winning.” Lenin spoke these words on January 22, 1917 in Zurich. At that moment it seemed to him that the revolutionary movement was almost crushed.

On February 28, Lenin learned from the newspapers about the revolution in Petrograd. Ilyich was confused and did not know how to behave in the new situation. He realized that he had to quickly go to Russia, otherwise the revolution would take place without him. But it was impossible to get to Russia through warring Germany without being considered a traitor.

They are still arguing: Lenin is a savior or a traitor?

The German ambassador to Denmark, Count Brockford-Rantschau, sent a sensational dispatch to Berlin, in which he reported that, in collaboration with Dr. Helphand (Parvus), he had “developed a wonderful plan for organizing a revolution in Russia,” adding at the end of the dispatch: “Victory and subsequent world domination for by us, if we succeed in revolutionizing Russia in time and thereby destroying the coalition.”

On March 27, 1917, 32 Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, arrived at the Zurich station to proceed through Germany in a sealed carriage.
Friedrich Platten, who organized the passage of Russian revolutionaries in a “sealed carriage,” assessed the Bolsheviks’ chances this way: “As fighters, you seem to me to be something like the gladiators of Ancient Rome, entering the arena to face death. I bow to the strength of your faith in victory."

Winston Churchill wrote: “The Germans transported Lenin from Switzerland to Russia in a sealed carriage, like a plague bacillus.”

German Foreign Minister Baron von Kühlmann addressed Kaiser Wilhelm with the following message: “... it is necessary to promote separatist tendencies in every possible way and provide support to the Bolsheviks.”
The total amount of money received by the Bolsheviks from the Germans before and after their seizure of power was determined by Professor Fritz Fischer to be eight million marks in gold.

So was Lenin a German spy?

The German General Staff really counted on Lenin's activities in Russia. Deputy Chief of the German General Staff Erich von Ludendorff wrote:
“I have often dreamed of this revolution, which should ease the hardships of our war. When my dream came true, a very big burden was lifted from me. However, I could not even imagine that it would become the tomb of our power.”

No one had any particular hopes that Lenin and a handful of revolutionaries would be able to influence the course of events in Russia. The Germans said about them this way: “A bunch of fanatics striving to make the world happy and devoid of any sense of reality.”

On April 8, 1917, one of the leaders of German intelligence in Stockholm telegraphed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin: “Lenin’s arrival in Russia is successful. It works exactly the way we would like it to.”

The Germans wanted to use Lenin to conclude a separate peace with Germany. The Entente wanted to use Lenin against Germany. And Lenin used both Germany and the Entente for his own purposes - to carry out a social revolution.

Historians still argue in whose interests the Brest Peace Treaty was concluded. In the interests of an exhausted Germany or in the interests of an exhausted Russia?

We are still captivated by historical myths about the 1917 revolution.
Everything we were taught in school is at best a half-truth, and sometimes just a lie. Many historical documents have still not been found or declassified. Perhaps if they are published, our understanding of the revolution will change.

My grandmother lived in St. Petersburg in 1917 and witnessed the revolutionary events. The home archive contains documents and photographs from those years.
My grandfather, Nikolai Kofirin, led a detachment of revolutionary workers and soldiers.

To meet Lenin at the Finlyandsky Station and the procession that followed through the streets of Petrograd, 7,000 soldiers were mobilized “alongside.” However, later the soldiers allegedly doubted the correctness of their ovation for the leader who had passed through hostile Germany.

The triumphant meeting of Lenin at the Finland Station and his speech on an armored car in front of a crowd of thousands is a myth. According to Zinoviev’s recollections, he and Ilyich got into an armored car and drove to the Kshesinskaya palace, where the Bolshevik headquarters was located.

In mid-April 1917, the French Minister of Military Supply Albert Thomas arrived in Petrograd. He conveyed to Prince Lvov important information about the connections of the Bolshevik group led by Lenin with numerous German agents. Prince Lvov ordered Nekrasov, Tereshchenko and Kerensky to investigate this matter.
Kerensky ordered the arrest of Lenin as a German spy. Lenin refused to appear in court and hid in Finland at the Razliv station.

At the Udelnaya station there is still a memorial plaque with the inscription that Lenin illegally left this station on a steam locomotive in Finland, and returned on October 7 to lead an armed uprising.

The capture of the Winter Palace by armed soldiers and sailors also turned out to be a myth. It was no coincidence that Lenin said that “the most important of the arts for us is cinema.” Ten years after the revolution, Sergei Eisenstein made the film “October”. In the film, from the rostrum of the Second Congress of Soviets, Lenin says: “the workers’ and peasants’ revolution, the need for which the Bolsheviks kept talking about, has happened!”
However, according to Trotsky’s memoirs, Lenin never showed up in the meeting room and did not make speeches, and at 4 o’clock in the morning he went to bed with the Bonch-Bruevichs.
What kind of “special forces” under the command of Antonov-Ovseenko arrested members of the provisional government still remains a mystery.

Why is the myth of Lenin experiencing a renaissance today?
Doctor of Philosophy Sergei Lvovich Firsov suggested answering this question. At the “Russian Thought” seminar at the Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy, he gave a report on Lenin’s myth.

Was revolution inevitable?
Is revolution a result of external forces or a consequence of internal causes?

Every revolution is a desperate attempt to resolve painful issues of social life. And those who do not feel these problems and do not try to eliminate them (for example, the acute stratification of property in society) will inevitably find themselves buried under the destructive tornado of the revolution.

What surprises me most is that a hundred years ago, during the war, people abandoned the monarchy, and now we are being asked to recreate the monarchy, citing the fact that in the conditions of the war being waged against Russia, a monolithic government is needed.

All the talk about the overthrow of totalitarianism in the USSR and the need for democracy ultimately led to the proposal to introduce a lifelong presidency. This is exactly what Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky dreamed of - the creation of a presidential republic in Russia with himself at its head.

“Which hell is better: the republic of devils or the autocracy of Satan is difficult to decide. Both are disgusting,” wrote Evgeny Trubetskoy a hundred years ago.

Archetypes of the subconscious are ineradicable. Our people still have “a king in their head.” Well, we cannot live without a “monarch,” even if he is called “Secretary General” or “President for Life.”

As a public opinion poll conducted on March 16-18, 2017 showed, the overwhelming majority of citizens are not ready for the restoration of the monarchy in Russia. 68% of Russians were categorically against autocracy as a form of government.
22% of respondents “in principle are not against the monarchy,” but do not see a suitable candidate.
6% of the country's residents know a person who could become the new Russian monarch.
And who is it?

On the issue of the monarchy in Russia, the political technology “Overton Window” is used. First, they offer public opinion an absurd idea, then they conduct sociological research to determine its approval, then they propose to the legislator to approve it as a norm, etc.

Participation in one revolution in 1991 was enough for me to understand how fighters against privilege and corruption turn into corrupt officials. They are fighting for power, not for the interests of the people!

The problem is that power can be seized. This means that we need to make sure that power is not something that can be illegitimately appropriated. That is, power should not be vertical, but horizontal.

In 1920, in his speech “Tasks of Youth Unions,” Lenin argued that communism would be built in 1930-1940.
For the first time in Russian history, workers received the right to old-age pensions. The right to free education and healthcare was established. The Cultural Revolution made the masses literate.
But with his solution to the national question, Lenin planted a bomb under Russia, which exploded 70 years later - in 1991, when the USSR collapsed.

No false theory can survive for a long time without its creator, and usually disappears with his death. Only that teaching is omnipotent which is true. Only those ideas are eternal that are in tune with the thoughts and feelings of living people. After all, if they find a response in the souls of millions, it means there is something in these ideas.

According to Doctor of Philosophy Leonid Polyakov, “today many of Lenin’s ideas are very relevant. For example, criticism of bourgeois democracy as a hidden form of dictatorship of capital. He wrote: whoever owns, rules. In such a situation, talking about people's power is simply a lie. Lenin's theory of imperialism is also relevant, especially with regard to its transition to financial capitalism. This is a self-devouring monster, an economy that produces money that ends up with bankers. This is what caused the current global crisis. Read Lenin, he predicted this.”

“Both Lenin and Christ addressed the disadvantaged, the most fallen, called for equality and brotherhood, both promised people a bright future - the coming kingdom of freedom. Only one called it communism, and the other the kingdom of heaven. Both of them were repeatedly forced to suffer, were persecuted and persecuted for their beliefs. They sacrificed themselves and tried not for themselves, but most importantly, there was no self-interest in them. Both of them dedicated their entire lives to the cause of liberation of humanity and, in the end, were killed because they wanted to make people happy. Only everyone understood happiness in their own way. After all, Christ was for the poor against the rich and advised to give away your property to the poor in order to follow him.

What they made of Jesus of Nazareth after his death is reminiscent of the fate that befell Vladimir Ulyanov. And the Inquisition in the form of state security, and persecution for dissent, and the dogmatization of teaching and turning it into a soulless law requiring unconditional compliance, and the appearance of numerous scribes and Pharisees, that is, I wanted to say, ideologists, and the crusades for the sake of the world communist revolution? Aren't there similarities?

What is more fair: to take away from a handful of rich people and distribute to the masses of the poor, or to take away from the poor to distribute to the rich - nationalization or privatization? Maybe the trouble is that Lenin wanted to do this as quickly as possible, even using force where necessary. But can you really blame a person for wanting to feed the disadvantaged and make everyone equal and free? Was he trying for himself or did he want to become famous?
(from my novel “Stranger Strange Incomprehensible Extraordinary Stranger” on the New Russian Literature website

In the year of the anniversary of the revolution, many doubt: will memories of the events of a hundred years ago awaken protest activity in Russia?

General Secretary of the Communists of Russia party Maxim Suraikin believes:
“Theoretically, against the backdrop of a deep socio-economic crisis and increasing protest sentiments, a socialist revolution in 2017 is possible.”

The famous literary critic, historian and public figure Marietta Omarovna Chudakova believes that the centenary anniversary of the 1917 revolution should not go unnoticed. On March 29, 2017, she gave a lecture at the European University in St. Petersburg “What do we not know about 1917?”

I am against revolutions. Any revolution gives rise to unrest, terror and repression. Nobody wants a revolution except desperate troublemakers who want to climb to power over other people's corpses. But if revolutions do happen, then they are inevitable. And the authorities are primarily to blame for this, since popular indignation is a consequence of the mistakes of the ruling regime.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said: “History repeats itself twice. The first time in the form of a tragedy, the second - in the form of a farce.”
Hegel said that the only thing that history teaches is that no one has ever learned anything from it.

History teaches nothing because people do not change, because instincts are stronger than culture.
Revolutions don't change anything essentially. The laws of existence cannot be changed by any good wishes. Some rulers replace others, trying to transform something, as they say, “for the better,” but sooner or later everything returns to normal.

Many people ask the question: has the limit on despotism in Russia been exhausted?

When the preservation of personal power becomes more important than the interests of the people and the state, when loyalty to power becomes more important than professionalism, then revolutions happen.

On December 28, 2016, at the St. Petersburg book club “Word Order,” an independent and authoritative St. Petersburg economist, professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, Dmitry Travin, gave a lecture “Russia-1917 and Russia-2017.” I asked the listeners whether the revolution would happen again in Russia?

It is obvious that the role of the individual in history has been underestimated. If Lenin had not become the leader of the revolution, history could have gone according to a different scenario (perhaps without a civil war).
It was Lenin, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, who raised the banner of the civil war. The idea of ​​​​transforming the imperialist war into a civil war was formulated in the work “Socialism and War”, written back in July-August 1915. Some of Lenin's orders and letters during the ongoing civil war are striking in their cruelty and cynicism. But how could it be otherwise? “Either we them, or they us”!

On August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee: “It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; those who are dubious will be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.”

“...it is necessary to put an end to priests and religion as quickly as possible. Popovs should be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, and shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible."

In the article “How the bourgeoisie uses renegades” V.I. Lenin wrote:
“... It is an outright lie that the Bolsheviks were opponents of the death penalty for the era of the revolution. ... in 1917, during the Kerensky regime, I wrote in Pravda that not a single revolutionary government can do without the death penalty and that the whole question is only against which class is the weapon of the death penalty directed by this government ... "

From the speech of V.I. Lenin at the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets:
“They refer to decrees abolishing the death penalty. But a bad revolutionary is one who, at a moment of acute struggle, stops before the inviolability of the law. Laws in transitional times have temporary significance. And if a law hinders the development of the revolution, it is repealed or amended.”

“Dictatorship is power based directly on violence, not bound by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is power won and maintained by the violence of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, power not bound by any laws.”

“Freedom must be limited - such is the necessity! Otherwise there will be anarchy that will destroy the state. Democracy must be controlled! However, democracy, dictatorship - there is no difference, these are all words; The main thing is to maintain controllability...

Any reform is a necessity, and almost always it requires coercion. Power is coercion, and coercion is force. Power without strength is not power. Strength is the basis of power! The ruler does not ask, he orders! Only force brings consent! Therefore, in the name of great goals, violence can be justified, moreover, it is necessary. It is impossible to carry out changes without strong power in a situation of disputes and disagreements. And power is not the first person, and not the second, and not the third, power is bureaucracy. By strengthening it, you involuntarily obey it, and there is nothing you can do about it. The authorities have their own laws!

Power is judged by its results. Power requires you to be flexible and follow necessity, and not a given word or ideas about honor and morality. Success justifies all means! The people need a leader in whom they can believe, who would protect and take care of everyone.

A ruler must be capable of everything that a common man is not capable of.
The ruler becomes the one who is not afraid to step over morality and conscience, who is capable of taking any measures necessary for the state.
When it comes to preserving the state, there is no place for morality. For the sake of the state, any evil is good.
Power is a sacrifice!
(from my true-life novel “The Wanderer” (mystery) on the New Russian Literature website

I do not pretend to be objective in my assessment of Ulyanov (Lenin).

So what did you want to say with your post? - they will ask me.

Everything I want to tell people is contained in three main ideas:
1\ The goal of life is to learn to love, to love no matter what
2\ Meaning is everywhere
3\ Love to create is a necessity.

How do you personally feel about the MYTH OF LENIN?

© Nikolay Kofirin – New Russian Literature –

He led the country from October 26th Art. Art. 1917 to January 21, 1924 Positions held: Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR
Lenin (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich (born April 22, 1870, died January 21, 1924) - the greatest genius of mankind, successor to the work and teachings of Marx and Engels, founder of Bolshevism, founder and leader of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Communist International, organizer and leader of the first dictatorship of the proletariat in the history of the state, leader, teacher and friend of the working people of the whole world. Never since Marx has the history of the liberation movement of the proletariat produced such a gigantic figure as Lenin. Lenin's entire life was an example of an irreconcilable struggle against the enemies of the people for the happiness of all working humanity. Lenin was born on April 22 (10), 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). His father, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, was a teacher, school inspector, and then director of public schools. Lenin's elder brother, revolutionary Alexander Ilyich, was executed in 1887 for his participation in preparing the assassination attempt on Alexander III. After graduating from high school in 1887, Lenin entered the law faculty of Kazan University.

A few months later he was expelled for active participation in student unrest, arrested and exiled to a village near Kazan. (Later, in 1891, after self-study, Lenin passed all the exams for the law faculty at St. Petersburg University.) After staying in the village for about a year, Lenin returned to Kazan, began studying Marx’s “Capital” and joined the Marxist revolutionary circle. In May 1889, Lenin moved to Samara, where he organized the first Marxist circle. Even then, Lenin amazed everyone with his deep knowledge of Marxism. In 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg. Here in 1894 He wrote his brilliant work “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?”

In it, Lenin defeated the populists, pointed out the leading role (hegemony) of the Russian working class in the struggle against tsarism and capitalism, for a victorious communist revolution, and for the first time put forward the idea of ​​a revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants as the main means of overthrowing tsarism, landowners, and the bourgeoisie. Lenin saw that to accomplish these tasks a proletarian party was needed. In 1895, he created the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” - the beginning of a revolutionary proletarian party in Russia. In December 1895, Lenin was arrested, imprisoned, and... then in 1897 he was exiled to Siberia, to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, where N.K. Krupskaya came into exile.

V.I. Lenin in his student years.

In prison and exile, Lenin continued to carry out revolutionary work, writing books, articles, and leaflets. In 1899, Lenin’s famous book “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” was published. Returning from exile in 1900, Lenin went abroad, where he founded the newspaper Iskra. “Iskra” launched a struggle for Lenin’s organizational plan for building a proletarian party in Russia, crushing the enemies of the working class - the “Economists” and Socialist Revolutionaries. Lenin’s first, still absentee, acquaintance with Stalin dates back to this same period. The lives and activities of Lenin and Stalin closely merged in the struggle for the cause of the revolution. The greatest role in the victory of Iskra was played by Lenin’s remarkable work “What is to be done?”, in which Lenin gave an ingenious development of the ideological foundations of the Marxist party. Lenin's Iskra united around itself the majority of social democratic organizations in Russia and prepared the convening of the Second Party Congress, which took place in 1903. At this congress, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was created. In the struggle against the opportunists for a new type of party, Lenin created a group of Bolsheviks at the congress. Smashing the Mensheviks, after the congress Lenin wrote the book “One Step Forward - Two Steps Back,” in which for the first time in the history of Marxism he developed the doctrine of the party as the leading organization of the proletariat, without which it is impossible to win the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship, and laid the organizational foundations of the Bolshevik Party.

When the revolution began in Russia in 1905, Lenin directed all the work of the Bolsheviks to lead the masses in the revolution. With his immortal work “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” Lenin enriched Marxism with a new theory of socialist revolution, he developed a theory of the development of a bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one, and laid the tactical foundations of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin mercilessly exposed the Mensheviks and the most vile of them, Trotsky, who instilled in the workers disbelief in the strength of the working class, was an opponent of the union of workers and peasants and led the way to disrupt the revolution.In order to directly lead the struggle of the working class in the revolution, Lenin returned to Russia in November 1905. Soon, at the Tammerfors Conference of the Bolsheviks, Lenin met for the first time with Stalin, who was then leading the revolutionary struggle in Transcaucasia.

After the defeat of the first Russian revolution, Lenin was forced to go abroad again in 1907, where he stayed for more than 9 years. During the difficult years of the Stolypin reaction, in the context of the decline of the labor movement, the flight of intellectuals from the party, and the Mensheviks’ attempts to liquidate the party, Lenin gathered the forces of the party in the fight against anti-party trends in the labor movement. Lenin, fighting against the revisionists, degenerates in the field of Marxist theory, wrote his famous book “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.” In this work he defended the theoretical foundations of the Marxist party. Under the leadership of Lenin, the Bolsheviks convened the Prague Conference in January 1912, at which they expelled the Mensheviks from the party and formed a separate independent Bolshevik party. With the beginning of a new upsurge in the labor movement and the publication of the newspaper Pravda, Lenin moved from Paris to Krakow, closer to the border, in June 1912, in order to directly supervise all the work of the party. When the imperialist war began, Lenin was arrested by the Austrian police and was in prison for 11 days, and then went to Switzerland, where he lived until the February Revolution of 1917.

Lenin sharply and irreconcilably opposed the war, exposing its predatory nature. He called for turning the imperialist war into a civil war and put forward the slogan of the defeat of “his” governments in the imperialist war. Lenin exposed the treason of the leaders of the Second International, who, with the beginning of the imperialist war, switched to the service of the bourgeoisie and became supporters of the war. He also exposed the hidden social chauvinists - the so-called centrists - Kautsky, Trotsky and other traitors to Marxism who defended the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie. From the very first days of the war, Lenin began to gather forces to create a new, Third International. During the war (1916), Lenin wrote the book “Imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism,” in which he gave the deepest Marxist analysis of imperialism. Based on his theory of imperialism, Lenin scientifically substantiated the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country and the impossibility of the simultaneous victory of socialism in all countries After the overthrow of the autocracy in February 1917, Lenin, despite the opposition of the imperialist governments, returned to Russia. Arriving in Petrograd on April 3, he was enthusiastically greeted by the working masses, who saw him as their leader. On April 4, Lenin announced his famous April resolutions at a meeting of the Bolsheviks theses in which he outlined a brilliant plan for the party’s struggle for the transition from a bourgeois-democratic revolution to a socialist revolution, putting forward the slogan: “All power to the Soviets.” Based on this plan, the Bolsheviks launched combat work to prepare socialist revolutions.

After the July days, the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin. The bourgeoisie, which madly hated Lenin, and its Menynevist-Socialist Revolutionary agents decided to kill him. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, together with Trotsky, Kamenev, and Rykov, insisted on handing over Lenin to the authorities. Stalin insisted that Lenin go into hiding and leave Petrograd. While in hiding, Lenin continued to lead the party. During these days, he wrote his wonderful book “State and Revolution”, in which he further developed Marx’s teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat. In September 1917, given the enormous growth of Bolshevik influence among the masses, Lenin indicated that an uprising was ripe.

On October 7, Lenin returned to Petrograd, and on October 10, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, after Lenin’s report, adopted his resolution on an armed uprising. On October 24, the Central Committee gave the signal for an uprising. Lenin became the head of the uprising. Together with Lenin, the victory of the October Socialist Revolution was organized by his faithful comrade-in-arms, Stalin. Under the banner of Lenin, the working class won the Great October Socialist Revolution. The Second Congress of Soviets enthusiastically adopted the historical decrees written by Lenin on peace and land and formed the world's first workers' and peasants' government - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government achieved the respite necessary to strengthen the Soviet Republic by making peace with Germany and defeating the Trotskyist-Bukharin war provocateurs. With a firm hand, Lenin built the Soviet state, suppressing the resistance of the overthrown classes - the bourgeoisie and landowners. More than once enemies of the people made attempts on Lenin's life. On August 30, 1918, Lenin was seriously wounded by a terrorist Socialist Revolutionary. This villainous assassination attempt was organized with the complicity of Trotsky and Bukharin.

In the most difficult conditions, Lenin led the struggle of workers and peasants for Soviet power and the independence of our homeland, against foreign invaders and White Guard hordes and, directly leading the defense of the country, hand in hand with Stalin, organized the victory of the Red Army in the civil war. Under Lenin's leadership, the workers and peasants liquidated the landowner class, defeated the bourgeoisie, and dealt a severe blow to the kulaks. In the fight against the enemies of the working class, Lenin created in 1919 the combat headquarters of the world labor movement - the Communist International - and led the first congresses of the Comintern, where its ideological and organizational foundations were forged. After the end of the civil war, under the leadership of Lenin, the country transitioned to peaceful work to restore the national economy. The VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets in December 1920 adopted Lenin’s plan for the electrification of the country. Lenin pointed out the path of a new economic policy that ensured the construction of socialism in our country. More than once the Trotskyists, Bukharinites and other traitors, who later became agents of foreign intelligence services, tried to undermine the unity of the Bolshevik Party and force it to deviate from the Leninist path.

Each time, under the leadership of Lenin, the Bolshevik Party dealt brutal blows to these agents of the class enemy in its ranks. At Lenin's suggestion, the party adopted a resolution on party unity at the Tenth Congress in 1921 - an iron law protecting the unity of the Bolshevik ranks.

Lenin's wound during the assassination attempt in 1918 and continuous hard work undermined his health. Beginning in 1922, Lenin was forced to interrupt his work more and more often. On November 20, 1922, Lenin spoke at the plenum of the Moscow Council. This was his last speech, which he ended with the words: “from NEP Russia there will be socialist Russia.” At the end of 1922, Lenin became seriously ill. But even during his illness, he did not stop working for the benefit of the revolution, to which he devoted all his strength, his entire life. Being already seriously ill, Lenin wrote a number of important articles (“Pages from the Diary”), in which he summed up the work done and outlined a plan for building socialism in our country. On January 21, 1924 at 6:50 pm Lenin died. With deepest sorrow, the working people of the USSR and the whole world saw off their father and teacher, best friend and protector - Lenin - to the grave. The working class and peasantry of the Soviet country responded to the death of Lenin by even greater unity around the Leninist party. The Bolshevik party raised the banner of Lenin high and carried it further. The faithful successor and great continuer of Lenin's work and teachings, Stalin, in Lenin's mourning days, on behalf of the Bolshevik Party, took a great oath at the Second Congress of Soviets of the USSR - to fulfill Lenin's behests without sparing his strength. The Bolshevik Party fulfilled this great oath of Stalin with honor. Under the leadership of Stalin, the Bolsheviks ensured that socialism won in the Soviet country.

Lenin - the greatest statesman and political figure in the history of mankind, a powerful leader and organizer of the revolutionary struggle and victories of the working class, his brilliant theorist, luminary of science - in the new conditions of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, raised the revolutionary theory of Marx to the highest level. Lenin's teaching summarizes the gigantic experience of the proletariat in its struggle to overthrow the capitalist system and to build a new, socialist society. Lenin's rich theoretical heritage is invaluable. Lenin's most important works have been translated into all major languages ​​of the world.

Marxism-Leninism illuminates the path for the proletarians and working people of the whole world to fight for the abolition of all exploitation, for the happiness of mankind.

Listen to the poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Part 1:
Mayakovsky V.V. 1925

Listen to the poem Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Part 2:
Mayakovsky V.V. 1925
FROM THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE OF V.I. LENIN. PERSONAL LIFE EVENTS
1870, April 10 (22). Born in Simbirsk in the family of public school inspector I.N. Ulyanov and the daughter of a doctor M.A. Ulyanova, nee Blank. He is their fourth child.

1886, January 12 (24). Death of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov from cerebral hemorrhage. January 15 (27). Participates in his father's funeral. September 19 (October 1). Confirmation by the Simbirsk District Court of inheritance rights to movable property of I.N. Ulyanov - M.A. Ulyanova in one fourth part, daughters Olga and Maria in one eighth part and sons Alexander, Vladimir and Dmitry in one sixth part.

1887, May 8 (20). In the courtyard of the Shlisselburg prison, A.I. Ulyanov, convicted in the case of the assassination attempt on Alexander III, is executed along with four comrades.

June 10 (22). The Pedagogical Council of the Simbirsk Gymnasium awards V.I. Ulyanov a certificate of maturity and awards him a gold medal. August 10 (22). The director of the Simbirsk gymnasium, F.M. Kerensky, sends the characteristics of those who graduated from the gymnasium to Kazan University; among them is the characteristic of V.I. Ulyanov.

August 11 (23). F.M. Kerensky sends to the manager of the Kazan educational district a list of students who have completed the 8th grade and have “moral maturity”; Among them, V.I. Ulyanov was named.

December 4 (16). Participates in a student meeting at Kazan University, organized in support of student protests that began in Moscow against the reactionary university charter. Hands over his entrance ticket to the university.

December 5 (17). He writes a petition to the rector of Kazan University to expel him from the student body due to the impossibility of continuing his education under the existing conditions of university life.

1889, January-February. M.A. Ulyanova uses the money received from the sale of a house in Simbirsk to purchase a small farm in the Samara province of Bogdanovskaya volost near the village of Alapaevka.

November 15 (27). The testing commission of the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University awards V.I. Ulyanov a first-degree diploma after passing the required exams as an external student.

1894, end of February. Meets N.K. Krupskaya in St. Petersburg at the apartment of engineer Klasson during a meeting of St. Petersburg Marxists.

1898, January 8 (20). In a telegram he asks the director of the police department to allow his fiancée N.K. Krupskaya to serve exile in the village of Shushenskoye.

June 7 (19). Reported by M.A. Ulyanova about postponing her wedding with N.K. Krupskaya due to the lack of necessary documents. Early July. The police department puts forward as a condition for living with N.K. Krupskaya in Shushenskoye the immediate conclusion of a church marriage with her.

1909. V.I. Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya meet I.F. Armand during her visit from Brussels to Paris.

1915, early March. Death in Switzerland of N.K. Krupskaya’s mother, Elizaveta Vasilievna.

March 10 (23). Participates together with N.K. Krupskaya in the funeral of her mother at the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern (Switzerland).

1916, July 12 (25). The death of her mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, in Petrograd at the age of 82. V.I. Lenin learns about this in Zurich (Switzerland).

1917, April 4 (17). Upon arrival from Switzerland, he visits the graves of his mother, Maria Alexandrovna and sister, Olga Ilyinichna, at the Volkov cemetery in Petrograd.

1919, March 13. Takes part in the funeral at the Volkov cemetery in Petrograd of M.T. Elizarova, the husband of his elder sister, A.I. Ulyanova-Elizarova.

1922, April 23. Professor N. Rozanov at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow removes from the body of V.I. Lenin the bullet with which he was wounded on August 30, 1918. End of May. General weakness, loss of speech, sharp weakening of the movement of the right limbs, which lasted three weeks. December 16. Second cerebral hemorrhage. Paralysis of the right arm and right leg.

1923, March 10. Third cerebral hemorrhage. Severe paralysis of the right half of the body and speech impairment.

March 14th. A government message is published indicating that V.I. Lenin’s health has undergone a significant deterioration, as a result of which the government has deemed it necessary to establish the publication of medical bulletins on the state of his health.

1924, January 21. The fourth cerebral hemorrhage in the quadrigeminal region. The death of V.I. Lenin at 6:50 pm in Gorki near Moscow.

January 27. The sarcophagus with the body of V.I. Lenin is installed in the Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.

GOVERNMENT POSTS HELD BY V.I. LENIN
1917, night from October 26 to 27. Elected by the II All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the head of the Soviet government - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

1918, early July. The V All-Russian Congress of Soviets adopts the Constitution of the RSFSR, which clarifies the status of the post of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, which is occupied by V.I. Lenin. November 30th. At the plenary meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense is approved, and the Council is given full rights in mobilizing the country's forces and resources for its defense. V.I. Lenin is confirmed as the Chairman of the Council.

1920, April. The Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense is transformed into the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) of the RSFSR under the chairmanship of V.I. Lenin.

1923, July 6. The session of the Central Executive Committee elects V.I. Lenin as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. July 7. The session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR elects V.I. Lenin as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. July 17th. The Council of Labor and Defense is created under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR under the chairmanship of V.I. Lenin.

PARTY CONGRESSES HELD UNDER SOVIET AUTHORITY WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF V.I. LENIN
1918, March 6–8. VII emergency party congress. Questions about the revision of the party program, about the new name of the party - RCP (b). Controversy about the Brest-Litovsk peace.
1919, March 18–23. VIII Party Congress. V.I. Lenin delivers a report to the Central Committee on work in the countryside on the military issue. Adoption of the second Party Program.
1920, March 29 – April 5. IX Party Congress. The next tasks of economic development and the issue of cooperation were discussed.
1921, March 8–16. X Party Congress. Questions about replacing appropriation with a tax in kind, about party unity. Adoption of the NEP.
1922, March 27 – April 2. XI Party Congress. In the report of the Central Committee, V.I. Lenin states that the retreat is over, that the alliance of the working class and the peasantry is strengthening. Thesis: “who - whom.”

Source of information: A.A. Dantsev. Rulers of Russia: 20th century. Rostov-on-Don, Phoenix publishing house, 2000.