Stalin and Lenin

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Lenin and Stalin’s Characters and beliefs

They were many similarities and differences between Lenin’s and Stalin’s characters and beliefs. Stalin grew up in a harsh environment and lived like all the peasants used to live in Russia during that period of time, he was the fourth child that his mother had given birth to in less than four years yet all of the first three died so his mother was understandably overprotective of her child, while in the other hand Lenin lived a much more luxurious life, his father was a local school inspector and his father was very conservative and he was a devoted member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Lenin’s older brother  Alexander Ulyanov helped him get interested in the political scene where he was introduced to the ideas of Karl Marx. While Lenin was ta university he started studying politics and he was also involved in demonstrating against the tsar after one demonstration Lenin was arrested and the police man asked him :"Why are you rebelling, young man? After all, there is a wall in front of you." Lenin confidently replied: "The wall is tottering; you only have to push it for it to fall over." After his arrest he was expelled from his university, it became apparent that during his time in university he wasn’t exactly loved by the staff members, as this quote shows, “The university authorities commented upon his attitude: He attracted attention by his secretiveness, inattentiveness and indeed rudeness…” Meanwhile Stalin managed to get into a local church school and despite his poor health he managed to do very well and eventually earned a free scholar-ship. Stalin was introduced to the ideas of Karl Marx when he was studying at a seminary. In May 1899 Stalin was expelled from the seminary and the authorities gave many conflicting reasons while Stalin said the he got expelled for trying to convert a student into Marxism. Both Lenin and Stalin were extremely passionate about the Marxist idea and they both loved using brutal method to remain in control, Stalin used it to eliminate all of the opposition and the authorities who he suspected to be spies while Lenin used it to gain control of Russia. Lenin was arrogant about his intellectual knowledge but even after all the propaganda reports where stripped away from him after his death he was revealed to be a modest hard working person who worked 16 hours a day and read an extensive amount of books which from he managed to get his methods on how to keep the country in control, after Lenin’s death many people had hated his the same also happened to Stalin but the last secretary of the Communist party had admitted: "I can only say that cruelty was the main problem with Lenin." Stalin believed that the country should only be run by ne government and that everything must be owned by the government and all distributed evenly, he even started collectivization which he believed would help farmers grow more food, he setup the Secret police in order to secretly eliminate his opponents and his opposing factions and to make sure he went unopposed, Lenin’s structure of the new Russian Government helped created a Russian dictatorship which, in his opinion would help Russia grow into a powerful state but he wanted Trotsky to take over the helm after his death but Stalin firmly believed that he was the only one in Russia who would be able to save the Russian economy and help make Russia both an economic and a military powerhouse, Stalin seemed to be a very unintelligent man who didn’t speak Russian well at all, he believed that Netherlands and Holland where two different country’s but because of Stalin’s brutal ways of eliminate people who Stalin thought to be spies they were too afraid to put him straight. So Stalin really depended on his paranoid trait which proved to help him in the end to keep power for as long as he did, but it seems that Stalin’s dream of powerful Russia might of gotten him overexcited and made him do all of these horrible war crimes against the people. Lenin was extremely careful in using the secret police, while Stalin felt more felt more secure to use the secret police to eliminate any member of opposition, he even held ‘show trails’ in order to eliminate his opponents in front of the publics, Stalin was obviously considered less popular to the people of Russia than Lenin, Lenin was extremely popular mainly because he helped overthrow the Tsar, while Stalin was hated due to the way he treated the people of Russia. Stalin and Lenin both believed in state control of Agriculture and Industry. Both Lenin and Stalin released schemes in order to improve the economy, for example Stalin’s Five Year Plan and they also believed in a one party government because history in their view was all about struggles between rival parties and revolution so they wanted to eliminate any opposition and wanted to impose a dictatorship. A difference is that Lenin was prepared to change his policies whenever the country needed it the most, for example he introduced the “The New Economic Plan” in March 1921 to enable Russia to recover from “War Communism”, while Stalin was stubborn and he rarely ever changed his economic policies and was unwilling to compromise, Lenin believed in world Revolution and hoped Communism would spread around the world, however when Stalin came into power he changed Lenin’s idea of ‘World Revolution’ and changed it into his own plans, which was known as later to be ‘Socialism in One Country’

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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 ...

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