Lenins Rise to Power Essay

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Rawand Helmi        HL History  January 30th 2012

Lenin’s Rise to Power Essay

Vladimir Lenin is the founder of the Bolshevik Party; a radical political party that split from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903. The Bolshevik Party favored a closed party consisting of and run by professional revolutionaries and supported the idea of a dictatorship that would accelerate the transition to socialism. It placed an emphasis on the working class, from which it drew much of its support. Lenin was as well the organizer of the October Revolution, and the first leader of the Soviet Union. He spent most of the early twentieth century living in exile in and he was a follower of Marxism, he also believed that once a Communist revolution took place in Russia, Communism would spread rapidly around the world. Even though he didn’t take part in the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April1917 and devised the October Revolution that turned Russia into a Communist state. When Lenin and the Bolsheviks got to power; Russia was in a very bad shape economically, politically and socially. Which to the Bolsheviks and Lenin that they needed to strengthen their own position in terms of economics, the political situation, their foreign and domestic policy and socially; therefore this essay will discuss how they did so.

At the time of the Bolshevik Communist seizure of power in October 1917 Russia had, for more than three years, been involved in the First World War. The turmoils associated with this major war inevitably produced much economic dislocation and many shortages of essential items including food, fuel and clothing. Agricultural and Industrial production were down from the levels of 1913. Perhaps a third of Russia's working horses had been diverted towards direct services associated with the war. The railways were suffering from disrepair and parts shortages. Wartime inflation had seriously eroded the purchasing power of the Russian trouble. As social and political conditions developed in Russia however there was an increasing tendency towards nationalization of many industries including Sugar, Oil, the control of Foreign Trade, spices, coffee, clothing materials and matches. This tendency, as institutionalized in a decree of General Nationalization of June 1918, had two main roots; the displacement of those independent workers committees that had gone beyond the Bolsheviks decree of Workers Control of November 1917 to closely supervise the operation of privately owned industry and the establishment of state control in the hope that this would facilitate the Bolshevization of Russia at a time of civil war.

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The term - War Communism - was coined to refer to what ultimately became a most pervasive system of wartime state control over productive activity and economic resources that soon grew up more so from the seeming necessities of the times than traditional communist theory. After the Kronstadt revolt Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy. The early stages of the development of this policy contemplated how the peasantry could be encouraged to produce more food for the towns and, in the later stages of planning, was extended towards encouraging economic exchange between town and country and to encouraging industrial ...

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