Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin (Russian: Владимир Ильич Улянов, Ленин) (1870-1924) was the 1st Premier of the USSR.
Revolution
In November 1917, Lenin, the leader of the Communist Party, led a Proletarian Revolution to overthrew the Provisional Government that had replaced the Russian Empire.
Lenin became a Marxist, as previously by Karl Marx, in 1889. He obtained a law degree shortly afterwards, and by 1895 was arrested and sent to Siberia as punishment for subversion. Once he served his time he left for Western Europe, where he developed his plans further and became a leader of the Bolsheviks. He was sent to Russia after the tsar abdicated in March 1917, and led the Bolsheviks to power in the "October Revolution" (November in the Gregorian calendar) by overthrowing the government. (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.)[1] 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.[2]. Lenin's government also denounced anti-Semitism by the old Russian government in a speech in March 1919 [3].
Lenin died in 1924 following a series of progressively more serious strokes.
Lenin used concentration camps and "reeducation" to impose the atheistic ideology upon the population.
| “ | A wide campaign of "education" was undertaken to show the people why "workers' rule" meant, in practice, managers' rule. Where necessary, the education by the word was supplemented with education by firing squad or concentration camp or forced labour battalion. [4] | ” |
The régime of Josef Stalin, the next Premier of the USSR, continued the oppression of the masses initiated by Lenin.