Lenin Understood What Is To Be Done

He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov

and raised in the town of Simbirsk, Russia.

His father was an educator

and Vladimir Ilyich became a diligent student.

At that time, Russia was

an extremely repressive place to live.  

Peasants, who were treated miserably,

needed a passport just to travel in the land of their birth.

People could be arrested

merely for attending meetings to discuss politics.

Jews were restricted to living in certain areas

and experienced the horrors of pogroms.

Under these conditions many people

developed a hatred for the monarch known as the Czar.

Vladimir Ilyich’s brother Alexander

understood that hatred.

He attempted to assassinate the Czar,

in an effort that would have benefited no one, but failed.

His life would have been spared,

if he cooperated with the authorities,

But he refused,

and Alexander Ulyanov

who dedicated his life to the liberation of his people

was executed.

Vladimir Ilyich learned several lessons

from the example of his brother. 

He learned not be afraid to

stand alone defending a point of view.

He also learned that only a realistic

program for action would have a chance of success,

and for the rest of his life he would dedicate

himself to bringing about this realistic program for action.

However, being a political activist in Czarist Russia

was not an easy task.

Vladimir Illyich needed to change his name

and became Lenin.

He was arrested for participating in a discussion group,

sent to prison, and exiled to Siberia.

This experience and many others led Lenin

to advocate for a new kind of political organization.

He wrote, What is to be done?

where he argued that Russia needed

a national organization with a newspaper,

and a national leadership that would coordinate activities.

Many were repulsed by this approach

arguing that Russia was already

a tightly controlled society

that needed to be freed from oppression.

  

However, workers understood how unions

were organized by a leadership

where everyone had a say,

but when decisions were reached, all worked to achieve common goals.

Lenin also argued that a national leadership

would help workers develop a class consciousness

where they would begin to understand

how their interests were completely opposed to capitalism.

While Lenin understood that

economic demands were necessary,

he also understood that economic concessions

were the easiest thing for the capitalists to part with.

The Bolshevik party also made political demands

supporting the rights of peasants,

opposing censorship,

and defending the right of workers to demonstrate.

In the year 1905 a revolution erupted in Russia.

The workers were not properly organized,

and the Czar drowned

the uprising in blood.

During this revolution a workers organization

called the Soviets was organized.

The Soviets were confederations of workers

designed to politically defend workers in any way necessary.

Lenin learned many things from this revolution

and wrote his pamphlet,

Two Tactics of Social Democracy

in the Democratic Revolution.

Lenin argued that the bourgeoisie

which controls most corporations

will not advance a democratic course

when a revolution erupts.

 

On the other hand,

workers have a distinct interest in breaking

from the past and advancing

along genuinely democratic lines.

Lenin also understood how Czarist Russia

was a prison-house of many nations,

which experienced profound discrimination,

so the Czar and the affluent could remain in power.

So Lenin wrote another pamphlet called

The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

where he argued that the Bolsheviks

needed to be the staunchest opponents of oppression.

But Lenin didn’t just write pamphlets.

While he was forced to live outside Russia

he did everything in his power to organize

the Bolsheviks and publish their newspaper.

He then attempted to explain why

the first world war was unfolding

in his pamphlet, Imperialism,

the Highest State of Capitalism.

He showed how the so called

free enterprise system

evolved into a system where

monopolies controlled industrial production.

Cartels controlled the

distribution of commodities.

Finance capital controlled

the economies of nations with loans.

This state of affairs led several

nations to go to war with one another

in order to decide which one

would control the world.

While the capitalists advocated war.

Lenin advocated support for workers and farmers

in underdeveloped nations, and immigrant workers

who seek employment where they can find it.  

The first world war cost the lives

of millions in Russia,

and the economy of that nation

was destroyed.

Revolution erupted and

a provisional government took power.

After several months,

Lenin was able to return to his homeland.

But the Provisional Government

made no real change in the lives of the people,

and continued the war

which was tearing the nation apart.

Lenin argued that the war

needed to be ended immediately

and advanced the demand

Peace, Bread, and Land.

Lenin also showed how capitalists

were reaping huge profits from the war,

and the task was not just to argue for socialism,

but to expose the plunder of the state.

Someone who didn’t like Lenin said

“A man who talks this

kind of stupidity is not dangerous.”

Working people in Russia were learning that Lenin in no way was stupid.

The Provisional Government responded

by charging Lenin with treason

and ordered his arrest

for advocating and end to the holocaust.

But the workers and farmers also

wanted peace, bread, and land,

so another revolution erupted

and the Bolsheviks took power.

On the day of the Revolution

Lenin was still in hiding disguised

as a woman wearing a wig.

After the revolution they said he could take the wig off.

That was a long day,

but in the end Lenin had one more thing to do.

He wrote a proclamation giving land

to the peasants whose families worked that land for centuries. 

Lenin understood that when the Bolsheviks

adopted this proclamation

there would be no force on earth

which would remove them from power.

He then wrote, The State and Revolution

where Lenin showed how the state

was created by the capitalist system

and used as an instrument of repression against workers.

When workers take power the state will continue to exist,

but now the state will be used to repress the old order

just as the American revolutionary government

repressed British interests after that revolution.

Czarist Russia became the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics

where each republic had its own government

working in union with all others.

At this time, Germany demanded a huge area

of the Soviet Union

and most of the Bolsheviks were unwilling

to grant this concession.

Lenin understood than a continuation of the war

could only mean disaster,

and said he would resign from the government

if the war was not ended.

Once the Bolsheviks delivered on the demands

Peace and land, they then had to deliver the bread.

Here there was another problem.

The Soviet economy was in shambles.

Russia had experienced a world war,

two revolutions, a civil war would erupt,

and fourteen nations would invade

the Soviet Union.

The entire infrastructure of the economy was destroyed.

In this vast agricultural nation

the people experienced hunger

and the Bolsheviks did everything the could to give the people food.

Some factory owners refused to pay workers their Christmas bonus.

The Bolsheviks declared that if they

did not come up with one-million rubles in twenty-four hours,

they would be sent to mine coal.  The owners came up with the money. 

During this period Lenin was shot by an assassin

and survived but was debilitated.

Yakov M. Sverdlov was the secretary to the party,

but died as a result of an epidemic that killed millions throughout the world.

Joseph Stalin replaced Sverdlov

and placed his personal advancement

before the revolution

and the needs of workers and farmers.

Many people of the middle classes

lost their possessions in the course of the revolution.

Stalin gave these people economic incentives

if they joined the Communist Party and did what they were told.

After everything the Soviet Union had been through,

the people were not able to overcome

this last challenge

and Stalin managed to betray the Revolution.

Even though Lenin was debilitated,

he managed to criticize

Stalin’s political course.

Only death prevented him from continuing the struggle.

But a transformation had taken place

in the Soviet Union.

The large enterprises had been confiscated

by the state.

Corporate interests no longer had power.

This change meant that

many aspects of poverty could be eliminated,

but capitalists would never cease in their attempts to regain that property. 

The Soviet Union lost 27 million human beings

defending itself against fascist Germany,

which was the most powerful military nation

of its times.

But the Stalinist regime eventually collapsed

and many capitalist corporations emerged,

but most enterprises continued to be controlled

by the government.

Today the world is on the eve of another capitalist crisis.

The ideas of Lenin have never been more relevant.

Workers and farmers all over the world

can learn many invaluable lessons by studying the life of Lenin.