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Vladímir Ilich Lenin
Lenin was the first person in put in practise Communism. He was the leader of the Bolsheviks and he was the responsible of the February and October revolutions (April Thesis) and the civil war. After the civil war he was the first president of the Soviet Union.
Interesting Fact: Lenin was so intelligent that was build a Brains Institute in Moscow for studyng his brain. -
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Russia starts thinking
The Government of the Russian Empire, the Tsar and the parliament, was unpopular because they attempted to make changes and people didn't liked them too much. It caused many problems and the the impact that First War World was one of them. -
The February Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 in Russia marked the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It caused the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, ended the Russian monarchy and led to the formation of an temoporary government which had problems.
Political parties in Russia:
SDLP: Marxist Party
Bolshevik: came out of the SDLP because of his ideas. Lenin, his leader, wrote 'April Thesis' which urged revolution.
They prepared for further war. -
The October Revolution
This revolution was the continuation of the February Revolution in which Bolsheviks broke down the provisional goverment. This then caused the Russian Civil War between bolsheviks and tsarists, winning the bolshevisk and making the Soviet Union. -
Ending the German War
The defeat of Germany and the spread of revolutionary outbreaks (Germany, Austria, Hungary ..) make the Bolsheviks conceive hopes of a world revolution. -
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The Civil War
The war was between Bolsheviks and tsarists. Bolshevisks fought in the Red Army and had left-wing allies while tsarists fought in the White Army with USA, England and France allied. The Red Army won the war due to they improved their organisation in the field.
Tsar and his familly were killed.
During the war Anti-Communist forces surrounded Red Russia.
War Communism was implanted to win the war but the results were famine and decline. -
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International Affairs
Communist Russia had been an outcast country because of its rude politic and with Stalin as president because he didn't want to spread his comunism around the world. The USSR tried to win back territory and came to its control lots of parts of Europe.
Japan was seen as another threat because it was allied just with their opponents, Germany and Italy. -
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Communist attitudes to the church
Communist people was against the Church. They thougt that ''religion is the opium of the people'' as Karl Marx published in his comunist and phylosophycal writes. Church was rich and communism dislike this because communism pretends the equal distribution of money and goods. -
The New Economic Policy (NEP)
Lenin decided to change Communist policy so he reverse the War Communis and implanted the NEP. It was thought to help the ''small business'' to have their own money. Lenin called the NEP ''State capitalism'' in which small business people could have their own benefits while big business were controlled by the state.
Communist political control grew. -
The Struggle for Power
Several leaders struggled to succeed Lenin. Two of them were Stalin from the bolsheviks and Trostky from the mensheviks (The Stalin's left-wing oppositor) Staling was the General Secretary of the Soviet Union and when Lenin died he used his position to take more and more power. And he do. He became the leader of the Soviet Union -
The Five Year Plans
The USSR still had a poor economy. The Five Year Plans were a series of international projects efficiently centralized in the economic development of the Soviet Union. This helped the rapid development of the industry.
The 1st FYP was from 1928 to 1933.
In 1932 a Second Five-Year Plan was started.
There were serious problems with the plans. -
Collectivization II
In collectivization the state talked to the kulak who owned the crop to point a quantity of food to give to the state. It didn't matter if there was a bad crop. The kulak and the peasants worked the crops.
There were two kinds of collectivization:
Sovjós: The crops were owned by the state and the benefits were almost all for the state.
Koljós: The crops were owned by a kulak but the benefits were almost for the state. In this kind of collectivization kulaks also worked in crops. -
Collectivisation I
Food production had to be increased and for that Stalin made collectivisation. It consisted in made the state the owner of the private crops of kulaks and distribute the food to the citizens. But it had problems. Many kulaks didn't want to leave their lands so Stalin declare them war, killing About 1.4 million kulaks or placing them in Gulags in Siberia.
Results:
The famine continued and in 1931 collectivisation began again. It provided the state with food but this food wasn't good distributed -
Purges
Stalin was ruthless in destroying rivals. Purges consisted in killing lots of people because they were against Stalin. For example the Kirov's murder which began a purge. Soon the people noticed that Stalin was killing people against him and consequently, Stalin controlled all the information (radio, newspapper...) Millions of people were killed or placed in Gulags.
Here we have a video about the purges of Stalin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ELeZJRGcs0 -
The Nazi-Soviet Pact
Germany signed with the Soviet Union this pact because both knew the arm capacity of each other and didn't want to be attacked. With this pact Germany ensure a piece of Poland when Hitler would invade it. But later Hitler broke the pact. He invaded the whole Poland and attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941. In this time Stalin rallied the country to talk about what Germany did and decided to join the war with USA, France and England.