The early establishment of the Soviet Union was a very stressful time for Vladimir Lenin, a stressful time that all occurred within the span of 3 months. In those three months he had overthrown the Provisional government, had to give a lot of land to Germany which crippled the economy and had started a civil war with the White Army. Ultimately, his stress lead to his health declining. Most notably, he had a series of strokes, starting on May 26th, 1922 and ending on January 21st, 1924.
Lenin’s last photo before dying
Due to that final stroke, Lenin died, opening up a power vacuum. However there were two main options when it came to replacing Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.
Leon Trotsky
A photo of Trotsky
Trotsky seemed to be a relatively obvious choice. He was the Commissar for War and had lead the Red Army to victory during the Civil War. He was also a powerful speaker and a charming man. He believed that in order to maintain Communism in the USSR, it needed to spread to other countries. Many thought that Trotsky was the natural replacement, that is until we meet…
Joseph Stalin
A photo of Stalin
Stalin was the exact opposite of Trotsky in every way. He was not particularly charming, he wasn’t a great public speaker and his job was, to put it bluntly, lame. He was given the job of General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party. While on the surface being a secretary doesn’t seem like the world’s greatest job, once analysed, it was the most powerful job in the country. Stalin would give jobs to people who were loyal to him, giving him more power, so he could hire more people loyal to him, ending up in a cycle wherein he had ultimate power.
However, Lenin did not trust Stalin and requested that he never become leader of the Soviet Union. However, the person who had the final say on who got the jobs was Stalin, who hid any evidence of Lenin saying this. Stalin was too powerful to be stopped, and had all his enemies arrested, exiled or killed. He even exiled Trotsky to Mexico, who was then assassinated in 1940. He had Lenin mummified and embalmed to put on display in Red Square in Moscow, in a building called Lenin’s Mausoleum, where it still is to this day.
While Lenin was cutthroat and ruthless, he did truly believe that Communism was the way forward. Stalin however took the USSR down a different path, of a tyrannical rule, more akin to Fascism than Communism, setting up a secret police called the NKVD and setting up prison camps called Gulags, where many suffered, starved and, eventually, died. Due to Stalin’s actions, Lenin’s “Communist Utopia” never saw the light of day.
Lenin had set up a dictatorship, but was still enacting many of his socialist policies, like giving the poor land and food. However, he had still not gotten them out of the war so began to negotiate with the Germans, with Trotsky as the middle man. Germany demanded a large chunk of territory that, if lost, would cripple the Russian Economy. Lenin called this an insult to Russia, so Trotsky thought of a new idea. If they simply stopped fighting then the Germans would see that they wanted to just stop and not fight anymore. Obviously, this plan failed and Germany advanced thousands of more troops into their territory. When peace was offered again, they demanded even more land. The Soviets had to accept.
Being in a more exposed position, the capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow. Lenin then established the Communist International or Comintern, an effort to expand communism in other countries. However, many non-Bolshevik groups were not a fan of the Bolshevik Policies, and formed the White Army, thrusting Russia into a civil war. The two main factions were the Red Army, made up of the Bolsheviks and their militias, and the White Army who was made up of basically everyone else, mainly the regions controlled by the Russian Empire, like Poland, Ukraine, Finland and Belarus, or the anti-Bolsheviks, like the more moderate Socialists, the Monarchists and the Republicans.
Due to a lack of coordination inside the White Army and the Red Army controlling the industrial heartland, the Red Army made quick progress. However, the Tsar, who was being kept in Ipatiev House this entire time, was a concern of the Bolsheviks. They believed that if the White Army captured the Tsar, they could reestablish the monarchy they fought so hard to abolish.
At around midnight on July 17th, 1918, the Romanovs were woken up and got told they were moving to a safe location due to the war. Believing Nicholas’ cousin, King George V of Britain, had come to rescue them, they excitedly got dressed. The Romanovs were told to go into the basement and stand against the wall, under the pretext of a photograph being taken to assure that they were safe and well. The group was as follows.
Nicholas II, former Tsar of Russia
Alexandra Feodorovna, the former Princess of the Rhine and Tsarina of Russia
Their 5 children, Olga, Anastasia, Alexsei, Maria and Tatiana
Court Physician Eugene Botkin
Lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova
Footman Alexei Trupp
Head Cook Ivan Kharitonov
Then, a group of slightly drunk executioners entered the room. The leader pulled out a Colt M1911, and fired three shots at Nicholas, who fell to the floor dead. The rest of the Royal Family and the entourage were shot dead against the wall. The loud gunfire alerted others around the large house. Due to the smoke, the firing was ceased, only to find that the children were still alive, with Tatiana only being injured. They were then ordered to bayonet the children. This proved to be highly ineffective.
Alexsei, who was still in shock in his seat was shot point blank in the head. Tatiana and Olga were both shot in the head too. Maria, cowering in the corner was also killed. Anna, who survived the initial attack, was stabbed to death against the wall. The last to die was Anastasia, who cried out as the bodies were being taken away. She was hit with the butt of a rifle in her chest before being shot in the head with a revolver. The bodies were then carried out to the woods where there were put in a mass grave, covered in acid and buried. The bodies were not discovered until the 1970s and only identified in the 1990s. Boris Yeltsin, future President of Russia ordered the demolition of the house. It is unknown if they were acting on Lenin’s orders or their own.
The wall of the basement after the execution. The wall was torn apart by investigators in 1919 in search of bullets
The allied powers, wanting to not spread the ideas of Communism, sent their own troops to assist the White Army. However, with the end of WW1, the map of Europe was redrawn, and many states that the Russian Empire used to own became their own countries. Russia recognised the independence of the Baltics but the southern state of Georgia, a key point of the White Army due to its oil fields was attacking the Red Army. Lenin made a deal with one of the minor factions in the war, the Black Army and an alliance was formed. Eventually, they crushed the Southern and Western front, bringing more nations into the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or, as it’s more commonly known, the Soviet Union by 1922.
Despite the Tsar being deposed, one of the main issues that the Russian People still had wasn’t resolved, they were still in the war. In order to concentrate the war onto one front, the Germans actively sent Lenin back on a train to Petrograd from Switzerland in order to start a revolution and get Russia out of the war.
With the Tsar gone, the Duma believed they should be in power, setting up a provisional government. However, the Soviets claimed that they were the government, setting up local establishments run by Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who would command the workers and soldiers. It was a delicate but fragile power balance. And Lenin was not a fan.
[There should be no] support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear. [This government is] a government of capitalists, [and] should cease to be an imperialist government.
Lenin’s writings about the Government in his April Theses
Whilst many of their policies still left people starving and soldiers still fighting in the war, progress was slow and steady. The secret police was disbanded, a democracy was being established and the death penalty was abolished. However, Lenin thought this needed to change, promising the people everything that the Provisional Government wasn’t giving them, that being Peace, Land and Bread, and declared all power should be given to the Soviets. People began supporting his radical ideals and the Provisional Government began to panic. Instead of backing out of the war, they decided to launch the Kerensky Offensive, named after minister of war, Alexander Kerensky, believing that a victory would help support for the Provisional Government. This offensive was a massive failure and crashed the economy. The people, still starving with their husbands, sons and brothers dying out on the front, began to riot riots once more.
A photo of the July 1917 protests
A group of armed protestors went out onto the streets and were subsequently shot by the Government soldiers. Lenin and the Soviets wanted to distance themselves from the violence. However, they marched under Soviet slogans and Kerensky, now the Prime Minister decided to use this to lock up the Soviets and accuse Lenin of being a German Agent, whereupon he fled to Finland in disguise.
The violence was eventually repressed by Kerensky but the workers were still supporting Communist ideals, which worried the liberals and factory owners. In order to help ease the tension, Kerensky appointed anti-Socialist General Kornilov to Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. However, Kornilov hated the even slightly socialist policies of the Government so much that he grabbed his army and began to march on Petrograd. Panicking, Kerensky pulled Trotsky, who had defected to the Bolshevik cause, out of prison, armed them and told them to deal with Kornilov. It was a swift victory for Trotsky, by sabotaging railway and communications lines and convincing Kornilov’s men to desert. But when Kerensky asked for the guns back, Trotsky refused and Kerensky had now accidentally just armed the party that the working class were looking for. And due to the victory against Kornilov, party popularity sky rocketed.
They were eventually elected to the leader of the Soviets, allowing Lenin to return from Finland to enact his Communist Revolution. They were very loud about their uprising, alerting Kerensky who had Bolsheviks arrested. With their numbers rapidly dwindling due to being sent to prison, Lenin decided it was now or never. Trotsky got to work arming the Bolshevik Militias, who would storm government buildings, easily seizing control. They eventually seized control of most buildings in Petrograd and, as Kerensky ran out of the city, the Bolsheviks surrounded the Winter Palace.
The Bolsheviks beginning to storm the Winter Palace
Having finally come out of hiding, Lenin decided it was time to storm the palace. The guards gave up, and practically allowed Lenin and the Bolshevik Militia through, arresting the politicians inside. Lenin was now the leader of Russia, now called the Soviet Union. He decided to hold an election, the first of which he lost, called the other parties anti-Revolutionary, arrested their leaders and had no more elections after that. The Russian people began to suspect that Lenin was setting up a dictatorship.
On August 30, 1918, Lenin was speaking at a plant in Moscow. As he finished, he left the plant, when Fanny Kaplan fired 3 shots at him. Lenin survived and Kaplan was arrested and executed. This was not the first attempt on Lenin’s life, nor would it be the last. The newly established Bolshevik secret police ramped up their repression because of this. But, in the end, that was the Russian Revolution. It was not a great act of patriotism and bravery like in the United States. Nor was it a brutal, violent uprising like in France. Communist art may make you think that but ultimately, the Russian Revolution was one man with an idea, who wanted to depose a totalitarian rule and replace it with his own one, who simply did it by walking into buildings and asking what he wanted.
By 1917, soldiers began deserting, the economy was through the floor and people were starving due to the war. As Commander in Chief, Nicholas was getting even more blame than he usually did. On March 8th, or February 23rd on the Julian Calendar that Russia used at the time, a large group of women took to the streets, protesting the starvation they were going through. The next day, many of the men joined in too. They demanded to stop the food rationing and the war, whilst also deposing the Tsar.
In situations such as these, soldiers would usually take care of them, but tired of the war themselves and firing on their own people they’re meant to protect, they turned on their own generals. Members of the Duma also joined in, tired of the Tsar dissolving them whenever he wanted. All of these groups had one thing in common. They wanted the Tsar to abdicate.
As the violence escalated the Soviets were reestablished to manage riots. Nicholas decided to return to Petrograd, but was stopped on the way there, by a group of politicians and generals, who all said he needed to abdicate right now, in order to quell the violence. Eventually he agreed and three centuries of Romanov rule in Russia fizzled out like that.
Even though many people were not a big fan of the Imperialist government run by the Tsar, a Russian loss in WW1 would almost certainly mean the Tsar being replaced by the Imperialist government of Germany, lead by the Kaiser. Due to the war being against Germany, the capital of St Petersburg was renamed to Petrograd to sound less German. However, one person who did not support Russia’s success in the war was Vladimir Lenin, who despised the Tsar so much even if it meant the country was reduced to ash and ruin getting him deposed.
However, unlike the Western front, the Central powers had made a decent advance into Russian Territory, due to poor leadership and logistical problems. The Tsar declared himself Commander in Chief of the Army, leaving Petrograd to go to the front lines, leaving his wife, a German, and Rasputin, a crazy, homeless “wizard”, in charge of the country, which isn’t something you really want to do ever, especially when you’re at war and even more so a war with Germany.
Tsar Nicholas observing his troops on the Front Line
A group of nobles, tired of Rasputin’s antics, believing he was secretly destroying Russia and having sex with the Tsarina, decided to act. Some of the conspirators included Felix Yusopov, a Russian Prince and Count, and Dmitry Pavlovich, a Grand Duke and the grandson of Tsar Alexander II.
On December 29th, 1916, the pair invited Rasputin to a small party in a palace. From this moment on, the story becomes hearsay and rumours. Some believe that because of the events that unfolded, that Rasputin actually was a wizard. Once Rasputin arrived, they offered him tea and cakes, all laced with enough cyanide to kill 3-4 men. However, Rasputin ate it all and seemed fine. The Prince then gave him some wine, also laced with cyanide. Rasputin drank 3 glasses and was still perfectly fine. Tired of this, Yusopov went a bit less subtle, grabbing a revolver and shooting Rasputin in the chest.
The two then left the palace, with another conspirator wearing Rasputin’s clothes and hat, to make it seem as though Rasputin had left the palace alive. Upon returning to the palace, they were shocked to find that Rasputin was still alive, who lept up from the floor and attacked them, before running out into the snowy courtyard. He was shot twice more, whereupon he fell on the ground. Yusopov then allegedly began beating Rasputin of the head with a dumbell. Eventually, they carried him to a nearby bridge, throwing him into the icy water. It is not known if he was still alive by the time he was thrown in the water, despite rumours claiming he was thrashing around in the freezing cold water, but his body was found on January 1st underneath the ice.
Once it was found that Yusopov and Pavlovich were part of the conspiracy, Yusopov was exiled to his country estate and Pavlovich was sent to a garrison in Persia, modern day Iran. Rasputin was buried on January 2nd.
Back in St Petersburg, one of the Tsars advisors, Sergei Witte, began industrialising the nation, despite the Tsar thinking it was a waste of time. He borrowed some money from France and used it to build factories. Despite these attempts to modernise, the conditions in these factories were awful. Rats were frequent sights to be seen, workers would sleep in smelly cramped dormitories and arms could be torn off in the heavy machinery. And they all went on strike. The liberals asked for reform, the farmers were all starving and the workers now wanted better working conditions. In order to distract them from the crisis, Nicholas decided to go to war with Japan to bring in some Russian pride, a plan that backfired as Japan won the war relatively quickly, taking a part of Russia’s land. Revolution was right around the corner and all it needed was one little push.
An Orthodox Priest by the name of Father Gapon lead a peaceful march to the palace on January 22nd, 1905, wanting to deliver a petition to Nicholas, asking for freedom and better working conditions. Nicholas, however, had left the palace a few days before, sending in troops to stop Gapon’s protest from getting to the palace. In response to this non-violent protest, the Russian army fired upon the protestors
A drawing of Father Gapon’s march facing down the Russian military
Around 200 people died on the day that would later become known as Bloody Sunday. Despite not having issued the order, all the blame was placed on Nicholas. The nation erupted into political unrest, as rumours of soldiers defecting to the revolutionaries, all while Russia was still losing to Japan. During all this, Marxists established local elected councils called Soviets who coordinated strikes and supplied workers, created by Leon Trotsky. Eventually, Sergei allowed the Liberals to form a government called the Duma, who would help the Tsar decide important issues. He ended the war with Japan and brought the military forces back to violently quell the remaining uprisings. Meanwhile, Nicholas also wrote new laws, allowing him to dissolve the Duma whenever he pleased, something that tended to happen a lot. Still in exile, Lenin believed that Russia had missed its chance at a true revolution and the only way to get that was through a violent armed uprising from the working class.
After the revolution, the Tsar replaced Sergei with Pyotr Stolypin, who thought that to stop more uprisings, the people must be beaten into submission, more than they already were. Some who disagreed with the Tsar were even hanged. Despite the repression, positive reforms were managing to get passed and the economy was on the rise. Lenin soon found that, without the suffering of the people, a Communist uprising would never occur and they would never get enough funding. Around this time was when he met a handsome Georgian by the name of Joseph Dzhugashvili or, as many people know him today, Stalin. Stalin would hold up banks, rob people and commit other such crimes in order to get more party funding. Stalin’s loud antics, while gaining party funding, also got him exiled to Siberia.
A photo of the young Stalin
While Russia’s economy was on the up, Nicholas acquired a new ally, Grigori Rasputin.
A picture of Grigori Rasputin
Rasputin was a man of mystery. He was, ultimately a peasant who was practically homeless but claimed to have magic powers that were healing Nicholas’ sickly son, Alexei. Surprisingly, this allegedly worked, perhaps because he took him off his doctor prescribed meds but that’s besides the point. The point is that Nicholas had found this random homeless man off the street who claimed to be magic and brought him into the Russian Royal Family like one of their own, an action that began to turn heads.
But ultimately, if this crazy wizard’s powers did “work” in healing Alexei, and the economy was on the up, as long as Nicholas didn’t do anything too stupid, there would be no more revolutions. Unfortunately, a Serbian terrorist had to shoot an Austrian Archduke in Bosnia, thrusting Russia into World War 1.
In the 19th century, Russia was, compared to the rest of the world, highly underdeveloped. Whilst many other European powers enjoyed the Industrial Revolution, Russia was still stuck in their feudalist roots. Many offers came across their desk to free the serfs and modernise, the Russians, like many an autocrat before them were too busy partying. And, if you know your history, a suffering, impoverished majority and a careless, party animal elite tend not to mix well.
However, unlike many other European Autocracies, it almost seemed as though the nobility wanted the poor to suffer instead of just neglecting them. They prohibited the people from getting educations, out of fear they may rebel against them, whilst also exporting mass amounts of grain, despite having a shortage themselves, causing a famine in 1891 that killed almost half a million people. With tensions rising between many European superpowers, Russia needed to act now before they were left in the dust. Meet Tsar Alexander II.
A photograph of Tsar Alexander II
Tsar Alexander, unlike many Tsars before him, actually understood the serf’s troubles and wanted to do something to fix it by deciding to free the serfs. However, the land owners weren’t happy about losing their free labour so the serfs had to pay exorbitant amount of money to their former bosses over the next 49 years. However, many people were not a fan of one man ruling the country, so blew him up in his carriage while on the way to a military roll call in 1881. He died shortly afterwards and was replaced by his son, Alexander III
A photograph of Tsar Alexander III
Alexander III was the complete opposite of his father. Due to Russia’s vast size, many ethnic groups resided within its borders, groups that Alexander believed should be more Russian and more loyal to him. He achieved this by repressing this ethnic and religious groups with the help of his new secret police, who also helped crush any anti-Tsar rhetoric. In order to become Tsar, Nicholas, who Alexander called a “girlie girl” in front of his peers, needed to man up in his father’s eyes. So he went to Japan, got a dragon tattoo and got part of his head cut open by a police officer before returning to St Petersburg. But, before his father could teach him anything about ruling this vast empire, Alexander died of kidney inflammation in 1894, making the highly inept Nicholas II the new Tsar.
A photograph of Tsar Nicholas II
Even Nicholas knew he was inexperienced but believed it was his duty to his family and his people to be a good Tsar. On the 27th of May, 1896, 100,000 citizens of Moscow gathered in a field in Khodynka in the outskirts of Moscow, in celebration of the recent coronation of the new Tsar, where free pretzels and beer were offered by Nicholas to his people. Rumours circulated around the field that there would not be enough food and beer for all the attendees. In a rush to get the food and drink first, over 1,000 people were crushed and trampled to death. That night, a gala with the French Ambassador was planned. While Nicholas wanted to stay in his chambers, praying for the lives lost, his uncles believed that if he did not attend this gala, relationships would be strained between France and Russia. Nicholas attended the party. The Russian people, from then on, saw the Tsar as heartless and uncaring of his people. Many also began questioning if there needed to be a Tsardom at all.
Some looked west, at all the republics, constitutional monarchies and democracies, thinking they could emulate them. However, a group of left leaning radicals thought otherwise. They believed what Russia needed now was this new idea called Communism. The idea was initially proposed by Karl Marx in 1848, in his book called the Communist Manifesto.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and [the working class]. The immediate aim of the Communist [is for the working class to] overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the [working class]
Karl Marx writing in The Communist Manifesto
One of the main leaders of the Communists in Russia was a man by the name of Vladimir Lenin. Lenin was known for his short temper, and aggressive outbursts whenever you disagreed with him. He was not unfamiliar with political unrest either, as his brother had been hanged from plotting to kill the Tsar whilst Lenin himself was expelled from university after engaging in multiple anti-Tsar student protests.
A photo of Vladimir Lenin
Lenin was very open about his passion towards Marx. However, due to his pro-Marx and anti-Tsar ideals, Lenin and his family were exiled to Siberia, the snowy tundra in the east of Russia. Eventually, he was freed from his exile in Siberia and moved to Europe, where he could freely talk with other Russian Communists about Communist ideals and write Socialist pamphlets, in an attempt to overthrow the Tsar. However, a split began to form in the Russian Socialist party, the more moderate Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, the latter of which was run by Lenin and his more radical ideas for reform.
