Lenin wanted to be a dictator from the beginning and he showed this when the Bolsheviks split from the Mensheviks. He did not want any democracy in Russia. Before the November Revolution the Provisional Government planned elections in Russia and the Bolsheviks lost to the Social-Revolutionaries. Lenin’s decision was to destroy democracy and make Russia one- party state. And this party should be Communist party. He achieved this by closing down, with Red Guards solders, the Constituent Assembly on the first day it met.
Most Russian people hated the war. First of all the solders fought for 3 years and they wanted to come back home. From the beginning of the war Lenin had been against it. When he came to the power in Russia he started organize a peace treaty. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was horrible for Russia. People got what they wanted, the war was finished and solders could come back home. But Russia lost 26% of its total population, 27% of farmland, 26% of railways, 74% of iron ore and coal. These factors caused economic problems, and economic problems cause people problems. 5 million people died of starvation. A lot of people disliked this treaty. But Lenin was lucky and the war finished next year after the peace treaty.
The next difficulty, which involved Lenin, was the Civil War. It was helpful for the Bolsheviks that the First World War finished, because solders were free. And actually solders went from one war to another. But Lenin was not leader of the solders. It was Trotsky. Lenin was more like the symbol of communist Russia.
Civil War caused a lot of problems for the average Russian person. First of all solders need to eat something. And Lenin’s government wanted to keep their solders in good health. Because of that Lenin introduced War Communism. Private trade was banned. Any spare corn had to be sold to the government at fixed price. At the end of the Civil war 5 millions of people had starved to death but Lenin had won the war, so his aim has been done.
By 1921, Lenin realized that War Communism had failed. He stopped it and introduced New Economic Policy (NEP). The idea of the NEP was that each peasant would give a fixed amount of his corn to the government as a tax. The rest he could sell for as much as he wanted. As the result production went up. And Lenin regained the support of the peasants. Also Kulaks began to appear again.
In conclusion Lenin ruled USSR in its hardest period. And actually he saved the country. So I think his impact was huge on Russia and Russian people. If you will compare life for average person you can see the huge difference between Russia in 1900 and the USSR in 1924. And all of this Lenin reached since 1917 and until 1923 when he died. But actually he did not rule the country in the last 1 year because of his injury.