Lenin’s impact on Russia and the Russian people
Lenin had a great impact on Russia, he created a world power house and he is still seen by many historians as an icon. While Russia was in a civil war, Lenin was setting up a communist state run according to the communist principles. He immediately made peace with Germany and took Russia’s best industrial and agricultural land, e.g. Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Land was taken from the rich and given to the poor, all industries were taken over by the state and given control to government run committees and he introduce a new Labour Law was stated that workers could only work a maximum of eight hours a day, Lenin also banned religion and killed priests and tried to destroy the orthodox church. He allowed free love, divorce and abortion. He launched a huge campaign to try to teach people of reading and he encouraged the education of science in schools, however his strict new policies was met by rebellion in 1921 when the sailors at the Kronstasdt Naval Base, Lenin’s greatest supporters rebelled, only then did Lenin realize that he had pushed the people too far with these new policies, so he relaxed his war communism policy and introduced the ‘New Economic Plan’. Peasants were allowed to sell their left over food for a profit, this lead to the birth of the kulaks which benefited most of this new policy by becoming one of the richest groups in Russia. Lenin was one of the first people in Russia to start a revolution and he was the leading figure that helped overthrow the Tsar. One of the first things Lenin did when he came to power was he made peace with Germany, many people in Russia felt betrayed because they considered Germany their biggest enemy. Lenin’s opposition grew more and more each day and then the civil war started and it was the whites verses the reds (the communists) , The Reds eventually won but Russia’s economy was in disarray and people’s happiness was dangerously low so Lenin chose to relax the war communism policies and ended up creating the New Economic plan. At Lenin started to age, Russia’s communist rule was getting in more trouble, the communist party’s popularity was falling and Russia was extremely weak economically and Lenin experienced one of the worst disasters of Russian history, the great famine which was caused by Lenin’s new law on farming prices so farmers started growing on enough for themselves and there was a huge shortage of food and then the great famine started killing 27 million Russians, the situation in Russia was so bad that the US had to give food aid which saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Lenin helped improve living conditions in Russia which was missing when the Tsar was on thrown, Lenin claims that he killed all of the Tsar’s family, but that has been under intense speculation as historians believe that Anastasia one of the daughters of the Tsar is still alive as historians have not found Anastasia’s remains where the family was found. Lenin had such a good impact that when he died the Russian people decided to dedicate a city in his name which is Leningrad. Lenin created the Soviet Union which was one of the most powerful forces after World War 2, so this proved that although Lenin was ruthless he also helped make the USSR the biggest force in the world at that period of time. Before Lenin’s death he wanted to make sure that Russia would be able to sustain it growth as a power house and he thought that the right person to help the growth would be Trotsky and Lenin was afraid of Stalin’s rising popularity as Lenin did not have faith in Stalin and Lenin wanted to make sure that Trotsky got hold of power but Stalin proved to be too wise for Lenin and Trotsky and he used his rising popularity to gain hold of power, which proved to be in one way or another a turning point in Russia’s history. Lenin made sure that the people did try to revolt against him by taking out the influence of the media by imposing censorship and deploying propaganda schemes in order to make he look like a brave and helpful leader capable of turning Russia into a power house. When Lenin learned about the ideas of Karl Marx he wanted to use it in Russia however he realized that Russia wasn’t qualified to use the ideas of Karl Marx so he decided to change his ideas slightly and then he came up with communism (later called Leninism) so he incorporated this to Russia’s political system. Lenin believed that the only reason why Russia wasn’t a superpower yet is because that the political system wasn’t lead properly and the Tsar wasn’t concentrating the Russian people, the reason why he didn’t use capitalism is because he was afraid that Rival Parties will waste too much time trying to gain votes for the people that they wouldn’t concentrate in helping out the Russian people also Lenin wanted total and complete rule over Russia as he believed it is the only way Russia would be able to turn itself into a world powerhouse.
Stalin’s Impact on Russia and the Russian People
Stalin had a huge impact on Russia, both negatively and positively. Stalin wanted to make Russia to modernize at a fast rate that Russia could make up a 50 year gap in just 10 years. He wanted to change the industry to such an extent that instead of relying the agriculture and farming he wanted Russia to depend more on the industry, while Russia was still recovering from the first world war Stalin noticed that it’s industrial production was extremely low compared to other western countries and he wanted, Stalin believed that if the industries don’t improved than Russia wouldn’t be able to defend itself from western countries that hated communism, he believe that industrialization would bring about defence. In order to become a strong industrial economy Stalin believed that the agricultural sector need to be modernized in order to provide food to the new work force, it would also be used to raise money in order to finance industrialization, any surplus food was exported and the money gain would be used to buy machinery for agriculture, so that meant that less workers were needed in the farms so they could be moved to the new industries thus industrialization could take place more rapidly, unfortunately Lenin’s New Economic Plan hadn’t worked as first hope so Stalin decided to get rid of the idea and dubbed the pal as an impediment to communism and he argued that it had to be scrapped. Industrialization would bring two benefits to Stalin:
- Communist support would increase as workers were the communists greatest supporters
- It would eliminate any opposition such as the Kulaks.
During this period Russia economy had completely transformed, the entire economy was planned by the state planning commission or Gosplan. They are the one who made drew up plan which Stalin called the five year plan. The three five year plans were targets and goals that the industry had to achieve, in reality the plans very ambitions and unrealistic but the purpose was to put a plan in place rather than achieve the goal. The government controlled the resources it needed to achieve these economic goals, all of the industry was state owned e.g. Factories, mines, transport and farms. The government high extremely strict disciplines over the work forces, ordinary workers were harshly punished and poor output and absence from work only made things worse. Millions of peasants were moved from the country side to cities and towns in order to work in factories and mines, the consumer industry was completely ignored as the heavy industries were the main focus of this plan and the agricultural sector was re-organized to suit this plan. The aim of the first five year plan was to expand and modernize existing industries, create new one and move those in the west further east in order to be protect from the vast land of Russia if the west ever attacked, the plans set by the five year plan were extremely unrealistic for example there was to be a 250% increase in total industrial output and a 350% increase in heavy industry, the workers were allowed to leave and any absentees were trailed for treason, and many workers had to workers had to work for eleven hours. Despite all the horrible conditions no one revolted this mainly because their pay was food rations and if they didn’t work they would get any food. Propaganda was used by Stalin to boost worker morale. The result of the first five year pal proved to be a success even though the Russian government greatly exaggerated and the plan was achieved in only 4 years, new dams were built and the power capacity was increased due to the industrial demands and Russia was for the first time able to use steel to make war machinery to help prepare it for the future against western attacks. However the five year plan only proved to make social conditions in Russia worse, this is due to the increase demand of industrial goods so worker often found themselves in very harsh working conditions, due to raise of production of industrial goods most shops were left empty and most clothes stores were in short supply and many household time weren’t available, and also because of the huge influx of people to cities medical Centre weren’t equipped to deal with these many people and there wasn’t enough house or schools. According to Stalin the reason why the five year plan was such a success was because they got rid of the kulaks and the have moved closer to communism .Collectivization was also included in these plans but it wasn’t as successful as industrialization and this eventually caused a famine which killed 7 million people. Stalin claim that the Russian constitution is the fairest one in the world, everyone over 18 years old were allowed to vote every four for a national assembly called the Supreme Soviet, this assembly met for two weeks a year. It elected a smaller body called the Praesidium to act on its behalf. Throughout the 1930s Stalin used propaganda to build up his mage, poems were published to praise his deeds. Education was closely monitored, it was free but it was compulsory and it tends to teach people the communist way of thinking. Under Stalin’s government of the 1930s, many mass killing were held (also called as the purges) killing millions, the main reason for the purges was because Stalin was extremely paranoid and he always felt like someone was spying on him, so Stalin passed down a law that ordered that anyone who was accused of terrorism or plotting against the government would be arrested and executed immediately after conviction. So Stalin used this law in 1934 and launched huge purges of all the people in the communist party and top government officials, who were rivals and threats to him, than Stalin out these people on a show trial in order to give a message of warning to anyone who opposed him, they were held in Moscow and were filmed at times to show in other parts of Russia so they can receive the same message, the great purges had affected Russian as they constantly lived in fear that they would be arrested tortured or shot, over 10 million people were sent to labour camps where they often died while million were executed. So Stalin did have a big effect on Russia however he also managed to kill a lot of Russians.
Who was more important Lenin or Stalin
I think that Lenin was more important mainly because that he treated the people better and he creates a new governmental system which was able to last for 65 years, while Stalin took advantage of the system to take power away from people who deserve power and he tortured and shot millions of people mainly because he felt insecure. Lenin had the unenviable task of trying to create a revolutionary group large enough to overthrow the Tsar, but luckily for him the was hated and it seemed that the people were desperate for a change, but in the first revolution he didn’t gain much support and his attempt to overthrow the Tsar failed and he was arrested and ordered to exile for three years, when the second revolution started his punishment was finished so he entered Russia with the help of Germany and he manage to take siege of the palace he killed all of the Tars family(?) and gained control of Russia and the first thing he did was that he signed a peace treaty with Germany which proved to be costly as Russian lost 15% of its agricultural land and also 85% of its industrial mines, but at least gave Lenin time to recover Russia from its bad economy and it’s living conditions, and he was hopeful that he would be able to turn Russia into a powerhouse but his goal failed due to his failing health and he had survived 3 strokes but he luck had caught up with him as his last stroke rendered him paralysed and speechless, and this also gave Stalin an opportunity to take over power without the permission of Lenin, Lenin died before he made it clear that Trotsky should succeed him and not Stalin, and Stalin managed to get power because of his popularity within the party and when he gain power he immediately changed everything. Firstly he scrapped Lenin’s New Economic Plan and he introduce the Five year plan which proved to be successful but it was the Russian people who suffered greatly because of extremely harsh working conditions and because of the fear of the corrupt justice system which executed any opposition of Stalin, they was also the great purges which killed about 7 million people while Stalin managed to kill 20 million Russian people and 14.5 million of those died of starvation during a famine which Stalin was thought to be responsible for due to the fact that his five year plan didn’t upgrade farms and agriculture enough to be able to create enough food for the population and he also deported about 28 million people out of Russia, Stalin’s Five Year plan yet successful way extremely harsh, it didn’t allow managers to be creative and everything was done as said on the letter, works weren’t given any leave and any absentees were arrested and executed for treason, and the managers were also required to punish the employees harshly and despite all the bad conditions they didn’t revolt because their pay was with food rations so if they revolt they won’t get any food and propaganda was used to increase people’s morale in the industry once claiming that worker worked 400% more efficient than any average workers but money people were killed because of jealous co-worker and most of these figures were exaggerated. Stalin’s emphasis on industry that all the other important commodities were forgotten, clothing was in short supply and many household items were no longer available and this lack of consumer product mad the living conditions in Russia to fall dramatically, now because of the purges Stalin grew even more powerful than before he got rid of all the politicians that dared to oppose him and after that nobody dared to challenge his authority, even when Russia was suffering in the second world war nobody questioned his authority.
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