Changes

==Revolution==

==Revolution==

In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a [[coup d'etat]] which overthrew the [[Provisional Government]] which had replaced the [[Russian Empire]]. In what historian [[Simon Sebag Montefiore]] has described as a comedy of errors, the Winter Palace was shelled and the Provisional Cabinet was placed under arrest by a mixture of Red Guards and radical sailors from the Kronstadt Naval Base. In the aftermath, the victorious beseigers engaged in a drunken celebration in the Palace's wine cellars and gang raped the units of female volunteers who had been gaurding the Cabinet.

In October 1917, Lenin masterminded a [[coup d'etat]] which overthrew the [[Provisional Government]] which had replaced the [[Russian Empire]]. In what historian [[Simon Sebag Montefiore]] has described as a comedy of errors, the Winter Palace was shelled and the Provisional Cabinet was placed under arrest by a mixture of Red Guards and radical sailors from the Kronstadt Naval Base.  

 

==Dictator==

==Dictator==

(In the night of July 16-17, 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police murdered Russia's last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his wife, Tsaritsa Alexandra, their 14-year-old son, Tsarevich Alexis, and their four daughters.)<ref>[http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html Assessing the Grim Legacy of Soviet Communism]</ref> He then ruled the [[Soviet Union]] under Marxism-Leninism, until 1922, when he retired due to ill health.  Lenin's government was notable for placing a woman, Alexandra Kollontai, as Commissar of Social Welfare at a time when positions of authority routinely went to men.  She resigned early the following year over a difference of opinion where she was in the minority, but continued to be active in Soviet politics.<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/into.htm]</ref>.  Lenin's government also denounced anti-Semitism by the old Russian government in a speech in March 1919 <ref>[http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/718/1/78]</ref>.

(In the night of July 16-17, 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police murdered Russia's last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II, along with his family.

Lenin died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes. 

Lenin ruled the [[Soviet Union]] under Marxism-Leninism, until 1922, when he had a debilitating stroke and retired.

 

Lenin used [[concentration camp]]s and "reeducation" to impose the atheistic ideology upon the population.

{{Cquote|A wide campaign of "education" was undertaken to show the people why "workers' rule" meant, in practice, [[Nomenklatura|managers]]' rule. Where necessary, the education by the word was supplemented with education by [[firing squad]] or [[concentration camp]] or forced labour battalion. <ref>James Burnham, ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham 1966.</ref> }}

{{Cquote|A wide campaign of "education" was undertaken to show the people why "workers' rule" meant, in practice, [[Nomenklatura|managers]]' rule. Where necessary, the education by the word was supplemented with education by [[firing squad]] or [[concentration camp]] or forced labour battalion. <ref>James Burnham, ''The Managerial Revolution'', Indiana University Press, Bloomingham 1966.</ref> }}

 

The régime of [[Josef Stalin]], the next [[Premier]] of the USSR, continued the oppression of the masses initiated by Lenin.

Lenin died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes.  [[Josef Stalin]] was his even morre brutal successor.

== See also ==

== See also ==