Original subtitles

There are few individuals in modern history that have radically altered the

trajectory of the world as much as Lenin.

A middle -class boy from provincial Russia transformed into the fiery

of a revolution.

The story of his life is one of intellectual passion, uncompromising

relentless revolutionary activity.

A tale of exile and underground intrigue.

But bold theories, and even bolder actions, one that would change the

And today, we're here to talk about it, from start to finish.

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and helps us out more than you'd know.

So with that being said, let's begin.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, was born on April 22,

1870, in the town of Simbirsk on the Volga River, a town later renamed

Ulyanovsk in his honor.

He was the son of Ilya Ulyanov, a dedicated educator and school inspector,

Maria Alexandrovna, a well -educated and supportive mother.

Oh, and by the way, I'm going to do my best with the Russian pronunciation.

I don't speak Russian, so I had to do a little googling.

Anyway, bear with me.

Lenin grew up in a comfortable and pretty cultured household.

He was one of six siblings.

His family background was relatively privileged by the standard of Tsarist

Russia's repressive class system.

You see, the Ulyanov's were middle class.

and even held minor nobility status due to Ilya's service to the state.

Young Vladimir excelled at school, showing a gift for languages and a

disciplined and serious mind.

It was by the age of sixteen that he turned a gold medal upon graduation from

Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium, demonstrating the academic talent and

diligence that would characterize much of his life.

A defining trauma struck the Ulyanov family in Lenin's teenage years that

shape his path.

In March of 1887, Vladimir's beloved older brother, Alexander Sasha

Ulyanov, was arrested for taking part in student revolutionary groups that

plotted to assassinate Tsar Alexander III.

Despite coming from a family of loyal civil servants, Sasha had become

with radical narodnik or populist activities at university.

That spring he and his co -conspirators were caught before they could carry out

their plan.

After a brief trial, Alexander Ulyanov was executed by hanging, May 8,

1887.

He was twenty -one years old.

For this brutal loss of his brother, had an immense impact on the seventeen

-year -old Vladimir.

Family accounts recall how Sasha's martyrdom steeled Vladimir's resolve

the Tsarist autocracy.

Later in life, Lenin would rarely speak of his brother's execution, but

contemporaries noted a deep hardness that settled in him from that point on.

The personal tragedy convinced him that reforming the unjust Tsarist system

through petitions or appeals was going to be just a huge waste of time.

The only path was a revolutionary overthrow.

That was the only way he could avenge his brother and achieve justice for his

people.

Now, later in 1887, the same year his brother was hanged, that is, Young

Vladimir enrolled at Kazan University to study law.

He arrived on campus a quiet and serious student, but he soon gravitated toward

political discussion circles.

In December of 1887, Lenin joined a student protest against strict

regulations at universities.

For this act of defiance, he was arrested and swiftly expelled from

after only a few months of study.

Probably no refunds on the school fees either, one can imagine.

Anyway, the authorities exiled the seventeen -year -old to his

grandfather's estate in a small village, keeping him under surveillance at the

same time.

But rather than deterring him, this early brush with repression only

his radicalism.

Over the next few years he devoted himself to self -education.

voraciously reading revolutionary texts during his enforced hiatus from formal

studies.

It was during this period of exile in late 1888 that Lenin first delved into

works of Karl Marx.

Don't know if you heard that. Someone smashed a dish outside.

Anyway, another one.

Anyway, he poured over Marx's Capital and other writings.

sometimes reportedly reading aloud to local peasants in an effort to clarify

own understanding.

By 1889, Lenin had joined an underground Marxist discussion circle in Kazan,

once he was allowed to return from internal exile.

Marx's ideas of class struggle and proletarian revolution struck

with Lenin with the force of a revelation.

Here was a scientific explanation.

for the ills of society, and a blueprint for changing the world.

Not only was someone just complaining about the problems, they were offering a

different system.

Now, of course, this wasn't the only system at the time.

The 19th century was certainly a time of thinking, especially in between the

period of Napoleon and, well, if you want to go a little bit into the 20th

century, the First World War, when, well...

Things got shaken up quite a bit.

There was definitely a lot of time for people to think about what kind of world

they wanted to create.

Technology was moving so fast.

The Industrial Revolution had already definitely been in full swing by that

time.

And, well, things were changing, and people thought that it was probably

time that the system should change as well.

In any case...

The execution of his brother had emotionally primed him for revolution.

But it was Marxism that provided the intellectual framework and the purpose.

In 1890, Lenin managed to resume his formal education through special

to take external exams.

He moved to the city of Samara with his family and studied on his own intensely.

By the end of 1891, he passed the law examination at St. Petersburg

earning a law degree with high honors.

Though due to his political record, he was only allowed to take the exams

externally and not attend any classes.

Can't have someone like that influencing the other students, right?

As a newly minted lawyer in his early twenties, he briefly worked at a law

office in Samara.

However, he showed very little interest in the conventional legal path.

His real passion was activism.

In Samara he continued meeting with a small circle of Marxist enthusiasts,

honing his understanding of Russian economic conditions and the plight of

workers and peasants under the Tsar.

By this time, the early 1890s that is, the Russian Empire was truly beginning

industrialize.

An ancient industrial working class was emerging in cities like Moscow and St.

Petersburg.

Lenin became convinced that these urban workers could be the engine of a

revolution, guided by a Marxist organization.

And so, he translated and distributed illegal pamphlets.

And in 1893, he moved to the imperial capital, St. Petersburg, to immerse

himself fully.

in the underground revolutionary movement.

Lenin's move to St. Petersburg in 1893 marked the true beginning of his career

as a revolutionary.

At the age of 23, he joined forces with like -minded Marxists in the capital,

and soon proved himself an able organizer and theorist.

He helped form the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working

a clandestine group agitating among factory workers in St. Petersburg.

Lenin believed in spreading socialist ideas beyond intellectual circles and

the masses of the urban worker.

He was described as energetic and single -minded, spending long nights in heated

discussions and writing leaflets by candlelight.

During these years he earned the nickname Starik, the Old Man.

because of his serious demeanour and receding hairline even in youth,

unfortunately.

Now, to avoid the watchful eyes of the Tsar's secret police, Lenin wrote under

various pseudonyms.

One only alias was K.

Tulin, and later he began to use the pen name Lenin, which he would eventually

adopt as his primary nom de guerre.

Lenin's first taste of prison and Siberian exile came as a consequence of

underground activities.

In December of 1895, after returning from a trip abroad to meet other Russian

Marxists and smuggle in some socialist literature, he was arrested by the

Tsarist police, along with other members of the St. Petersburg League of

Struggle.

He had been under surveillance for coordinating the printing of illegal

newspapers and leaflets.

Lenin spent over a year in detention waiting trial, using the time to further

educate himself and draft party documents from his cell.

In early 1897, without a proper trial, Lenin was sentenced to administrative

exile in Siberia for a term of three years.

He was dispatched to a remote village in the frigid wilds of eastern Siberia.

Here, in a small wooden house near the banks of the Yenisei River, Lenin

exile, but he did so in relatively tolerable conditions, and with

undiminished revolutionary zeal.

The village he was in was called Shushanskoye, and life there was

in terms of intellectual pursuits, I suppose it was pretty productive.

Lenin was joined in exile by his lifelong companion and future wife,

Krupskaya, a fellow Marxist whom he married in July 1898 during their

banishment.

The couple were allowed certain freedoms.

They could receive books and periodicals, and Lenin spent his days

hiking, and above all, writing.

Gee, it doesn't sound too bad, doesn't it?

Send me away for exile.

In any case, in this quiet Siberian interlude,

Lenin undertook a major scholarly work analyzing Russia's economic development.

He wrote, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published in 1899, which

painstakingly documented how capitalism was taking root in the Russian

countryside and undermining the old feudal order.

This was more than an economic study.

It was a political argument against the populist notion that peasants could

liberate themselves through traditional communes.

Lenin's conclusion was that capitalism's growth was creating a proletariat

class, whose revolutionary role Marx had foretold, and that only a proletarian

-led movement, allied with poor peasants, could overthrow czarism.

The book established Lenin's reputation as a serious Marxist thinker.

But it also showcased his method, a fusion of empirical data and Marxist

all bundled up together to serve the goals of the revolution.

By the time his exile had ended in early 1900, he transformed from a promising

young radical into a hardened revolutionary strategist.

Eager to reconnect with the broader anti -Tsarist movement, he wasted no time

once back in European Russia.

Tsarist authorities forbade him from living in St. Petersburg or any other

cities, so Lenin initially operated from the provinces, while plotting his next

step.

He saw that Russian Marxists needed a nationwide underground organization and

cohesive voice to rally the far -flung revolutionaries.

Along with older Marxist elites like Georgy Plekhanov and Julius Mardov,

Lenin decided to launch a revolutionary newspaper abroad that could be smuggled

into Russia to unify the movement.

In late 1900, using a passport obtained through subterfuge, Lenin left Russia

for Western Europe, effectively beginning a second exile.

But this time it was one he chose for himself.

so he could build his revolution from abroad.

Lenin spent the next few years between 1900 and 1905 criss -crossing European

cities, Munich, London, Geneva, as he organized the publication of

Iskra, or The Spark, an underground Marxist newspaper.

Iskra's motto was, From a spark, a fire will flare up.

reflecting Lenin's belief that a small disciplined corps of revolutionaries

could ignite a mass revolt.

As one of Iskra's chief editors and writers, he poured his formidable energy

into the paper's production and distribution.

He wrote fiery articles under various pseudonyms, attacking the autocracy, but

also criticizing more moderate socialists, who, in his view, wavered in

commitment. They just... weren't socialist enough.

Through Iskra, Lenin argued for a party of professional revolutionaries who

would lead the workers, an idea that would soon split the Russian Marxist

movement.

And then the decisive moment came at the Second Congress of the Russian Social

Democratic Labour Party, held in 1903 mainly in London.

At this Congress of exiled revolutionaries, Lenin forcefully argued

tightly organized party with a clear revolutionary program.

A dispute arose between Lenin and his longtime comrade Julius Martov over the

definition of a party membership.

Lenin wanted a smaller party of active revolutionaries, while Martov argued for

a broader and more inclusive approach.

The argument might have seemed procedural.

but it reflected a deeper divide in revolutionary strategy.

The delegates narrowly sided with Lenin on some key votes, and Lenin's faction

dubbed themselves the Bolsheviks, from the Russian Bolshintsov,

Russian for a majority, while Matov's faction became known as the Mensheviks,

the minority.

Now this Bolshevik -Menshevik split

would only widen in the subsequent years.

Though both factions were socialist, and vehemently anti -Tsarist, the

Bolsheviks under Lenin stressed disciplined organization and readiness

power, whereas the Mensheviks leaned toward a more democratic, mass -movement

approach, and initially believed Russia might need a liberal -capitalist phase

before socialism.

Lenin's intransigence and uncompromising vision at the Congress, earned him both

ardent supporters.

He also embittered critics.

But it cemented his role as the leader of the Bolshevik wing, a role he would

retain for the rest of his life.

During these pre -1917 years, Lenin also developed his distinctive theories that

adapted Marxism to Russia's circumstance.

Perhaps his most famous.

influential pamphlet.

Then the time was, What is to be done?

written in 1902.

Basically, he spelled out his view that a revolutionary vanguard party was

essential. The masses alone, he argued, would not achieve political

consciousness without good leadership.

Lenin wrote, Give us an organization of revolutionaries and we will overturn the

whole of Russia.

In this work he controversially insisted that socialist consciousness had to be

brought up to workers from without, by educated revolutionaries rather than

sprung up spontaneously from trade union struggles.

These ideas were contentious, even among Marxists.

But Lenin, at least in his own eyes, was vindicated when events in Russia seemed

to call for bold action.

The revolution of 1905 was the first major test of Lenin's theories against

reality.

In 1905, the month of January, a massacre of peaceful protesters in St.

Petersburg, i .e. Bloody Sunday, look it up, ignited strikes and uprisings

across the empire.

Lenin, who was then living in Switzerland, lucky boy, followed the

excitement.

By the autumn of 1905,

With the Tsar's regime destabilized, Lenin hastened back to Russia, his first

return home in five years.

He arrived in St. Petersburg in November of 1905, just after Tsar Nicholas II

had been forced to issue the October Manifesto, which granted a constitution

parliament, the Duma, in an effort to appease the protesters.

Sensing an opening to push the revolution further, Lenin threw himself

organizing workers' Soviets, i .e. councils, and encouraging armed

He urged the Bolsheviks to take an uncompromising stance against any merely

liberal reforms.

Nothing watered down.

They had to go the whole way.

However, by late 1905 and early 1906, the Tsarist government regained the

hand, crushing armed uprisings.

mostly dramatically in Moscow in December of 1905, and rolling back many

confessions, the brief revolutionary upsurge ebbed, and reaction set

in.

As for Lenin, well, he was bitterly disappointed.

Didn't quite go the way he wanted it, that's for sure.

The masses had shown heroic energy, but in his view, poor coordination and

hesitant leadership, especially by the moderate, factions of the socialists,

squandered the opportunity to truly overthrow czarism.

The crackdowns intensified, and Lenin fled Russia again in early 1906 to avoid

arrest, back to Western Europe.

The experience of 1905 nonetheless taught Lenin valuable lessons.

He saw how workers' councils, or Soviets,

could serve as organs of revolutionary power.

And he understood the need for the revolutionaries to win the allegiance of

peasantry and the military.

Lenin later called 1905 the dress rehearsal for the real revolution to

It stilled his convictions that a well -timed resolute insurrection could

succeed if the revolutionary party did not waver.

It also heartened him.

During the reactionary years of 19—after 1905, rather, Lenin kept the Bolshevik

faction alive in exile, always preparing for the next revolutionary moment.

Though many comrades grew discouraged in the dark years of Tsarist repression

that followed, Lenin never lost faith that another and even greater revolution

was right around the corner.

The decade following the 1905 revolution,

was probably the most challenging for Lenin and his Bolsheviks.

Bazaarist repression was fierce, revolutionary parties were banned, and a

those old activists were sent to prison, or Siberia.

And hopes for immediate change were not looking good.

Lenin spent these years once again as a bit of a vagabond in Europe, moving

through Geneva, Paris.

Krakow and other cities, working to keep his party intact and ideologically

sharp. While Bolsheviks within Russia operated in clandestine conditions,

hunted by the police,

Lenin and a handful of leaders abroad debated strategy and doctrine.

Quarrels and splits were frequent, even within the Bolshevik camp. Some members

disagreed with the strict methods that Lenin was pushing.

Yet Lenin had a certain way of using his intellect and force of will that always

kept him in the top job.

He wrote incessantly, producing party newsletters, theoretical essays, and

polemical tracts that kept the far -flung Bolshevik network directed and

informed.

In these years he also crossed paths with other notable revolutionaries who

would later join him.

For example, Leon Trotsky.

who, after a period of independence, aligned with Lenin's camp by 1917.

And, of course, Joseph Stalin.

Sure you all know him, a tough Bolshevik organiser from the Caucasus, who met

Lenin at a party conference in 1906 and increasingly rose in the ranks.

Lenin mentored many of these younger revolutionaries, appreciating political

practical talents and...

loyalty to the cause.

And despite his political exile, Lenin remained acutely attuned to events

Russia. In 1912, he and the Bolsheviks scored a significant victory.

They gained effective control of a legal Bolshevik newspaper in St. Petersburg

called Pravda, which means truth in Russian.

Through Pravda, Bolshevik influence among the workers in Russia grew on the

of World War I.

This period also saw Lenin refining his revolutionary theory.

One significant work from this era was Imperialism, the Highest Stage of

Capitalism, wrote in 1916.

In this pamphlet, Lenin analyzed how global capitalism had evolved into a

of competing great powers carving up colonies, a situation that, in his view,

led directly to the outbreak of World War I.

He argued that imperialist war was an inevitable product of capitalist

for resources and markets, and that socialists should oppose the war not by

supporting their own governments, as many European socialist parties sadly

but by turning the war into class war against the ruling classes.

This dance set Lenin apart.

as one of the fiercest anti -war socialists when the Great War did

erupt. Now, speaking of which, World War I was a crucible that tested Lenin's

convictions to the limit.

When the war began in 1914, most socialist leaders across Europe rallied

their national governments in a wave of patriotism, betraying the anti -war

resolutions they had passed pre -war.

Lenin was outraged.

and almost isolated in his refusal to support the bourgeois governments in the

war.

From this exile, first in Galicia, then Switzerland after 1914, he adopted the

slogan, Turn the imperialist war into a civil war.

Well, what did he mean by that?

Basically, he meant that workers and peasants should use the opportunity of

with its misery and discontent, to rise up and overthrow their ruling classes.

He famously wrote that the main enemy was at home, not in some foreign land.

In 1915, Lenin attended the Zimmerwald Conference, a small gathering of anti

-war socialists in Switzerland.

There he found himself a leader of the radical minority, who wanted a rather

unambiguous call for revolutionary struggle against the war.

Not only a handful of delegates—the Zimmerwald Left, as they were

with his extreme position at the time.

Lenin's consistency on the war would become a huge asset when the Russian

began collapsing a few years later.

By early 1917, Lenin was in his late forties, living in Zurich, Switzerland,

cut off from his homeland, and, as he himself feared, possibly destined to

see a revolution in Russia with his own eyes.

He spent his days in the Zurich library, scribbling notes for future uprisings

that seemed to be a distant dream.

He even famously remarked to the young comrades that they might not live to see

the decisive revolution, not actually realizing how close it was.

Of course, we knew there was a surprise in store.

War weariness and economic breakdown in Russia had set the stage for an upheaval

that caught even Lenin off guard.

In March 1917, February by the old Russian candor, the Tsarist regime

suddenly collapsed under the weight of popular protests, strikes, and a

munity based in Petrograd.

The February Revolution erupted spontaneously with women, workers, and

pouring into the streets, demanding bread and peace.

Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, ending over 300 years of the Romanov monarchy in a

matter of days.

A liberal provisional government took charge, vowing to continue the war but

implement democratic reforms.

while at the same time grassroots councils of workers and soldiers, the

began to spring up in cities and army units, clamoring for more radical

When news of the February Revolution reached Lenin in Switzerland, he was

ecstatic, yet frustrated by his physical absence.

He immediately set plans in motion to return to Russia and guide the next

of the revolution.

This would require an extraordinary journey.

With World War I raging, normal travel to Russia was blocked.

So, in a controversial move, he secured passage through Germany, Russia's enemy,

with the help of German authorities who were keen to ferment unrest in Russia.

In early April 1917,

Lenin... and about thirty other exiled revolutionaries boarded a sealed train

provided by the German government, which carried them across Germany to the

Baltic coast.

This arrangement of this sealed train was politically explosive, related to

accusations that Lenin was a German agent.

But in reality, Lenin saw it as more of a desperate necessity, and

the German general Eric Lundendorff later admitted, Our government, in

Lenin to Russia, took upon itself a tremendous responsibility.

But he added bluntly, From a military point of view, his journey was

for it was imperative that Russia should fall.

So, as the train departed, Lenin's comrades recalled him being in high

The socialist activist, Willy Munzenberg, who saw him off, remembered

leaning out of the carriage window and quipping with grim resolve, Either we'll

be hanged by the gallows in three months, or we'll be in power.

This remark captured his awareness of the immense risks and stakes involved.

It was time to go all in on the revolution.

So Lenin arrived in Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg,

on April 16, 1917, stepping onto the platform at Finland Station to a hero's

welcome by the Bolshevik supporters.

Eyewitness accounts describe him with mounting an armored car to address the

jubilant crowd, beginning with the words, Long live the worldwide socialist

revolution!

Instead of congratulating the nation on its new freedom from czarism, Lenin

characteristically pushed further.

In the following days, he unveiled his April Theses, a bold blueprint that

shocked even many Bolsheviks. In his program, Lenin called for a complete

transfer of power to the Soviets, an immediate end to Russia's participation

the imperialist war, and sweeping land reform to give estates to the peasantry.

He denounced the provisional government.

a coalition of liberals and moralist socialists, as bourgeois and

demanding no support for it whatsoever.

And this was a radical stance, because most political figures, including

socialists, were at that time working with or tolerating the provisional

government in hopes of a more stable transition.

Lenin was having none of it.

He saw the dual -power situation,

with the Provisional Government on one hand and the Soviets on the other, as

inherently unstable, and an opportunity for the Bolsheviks to lead a second

revolution.

Many Bolshevik leaders, who had only recently been freed from prison or

by the February overturn, were initially hesitant about Lenin's extremist line.

But Lenin's fervor and clear vision won them over in time.

He possessed a singular focus, to turn the popular discontent into a socialist

uprising, before that opportunity slipped away.

Throughout the turbulent summer of 1917,

Lenin worked tirelessly to expand Bolshevik influence.

He crisscrossed Petrograd -making speeches, wrote relentless polemics in

and appealed to soldiers and sailors, promising to end the war and improve

lot.

Under his leadership, the Bolshevik party's slogan, Peace, Land and Bread,

to resonate with the war -weary, hungry population.

The party's membership swelled, and they won majorities in key Soviets,

including in Petrograd and Moscow by September.

But the road was not smooth.

In July 1917,

An uncontrolled uprising of soldiers and workers in Petrograd attempted to push

power to the Soviets prematurely.

The rebellion lacked coordination and was suppressed by forces loyal to the

provisional government.

The Bolsheviks were blamed for this unrest, and Lenin, identified by

as an instigator, was forced into hiding to avoid arrest.

He fled to the Finnish countryside.

donning a wig for disguise, and living under clandestine conditions.

It was during this period in hiding that Lenin wrote one of his most seminal

works, The State and Revolution, elaborating how capitalist states would

to be smashed and replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat as a

transitional stage towards socialism.

The irony was, that even as he theorized about the withering away of the state,

he was preparing to seize state power of his own.

By the fall of 1917, the provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky was

teetering.

The war effort was in chaos.

The economy was deteriorating and the conservative forces were plotting a

counter -revolution, as seen in General Kornilov's failed coup attempt in

August.

Sensing the decisive moment had come,

Lenin secretly returned to Petrograd in early October.

At clandestine meetings of Bolshevik central committees, he passionately

that they should organize an armed insurrection to overthrow the Kerensky

government.

Some colleagues were anxious.

Prominent Bolsheviks like Zinoviev and Kamenev feared a premature uprising

be disastrous.

But Lenin's resolve won out in the end.

He insisted, History will not forgive us if we do not assume power now.

So the plan was to coordinate the uprising with the upcoming Second All

Congress of Soviets, so that once the Bolsheviks seized key points in the

capital, they could legitimize power transfer through the Soviet Congress.

In the early hours of October 25th, 1917,

the

Bolshevik -led

October Revolution commenced.

Red Guard militias composed of workers and mutinous soldiers guided by

organizers, and brilliantly marshaled in Petrograd by Leon Trotsky.

took control of strategic locations, telegraph stations, train stations,

bridges, and eventually the seat of government.

By the end of that day, Bolshevik forces had surrounded the Winter Palace, the

last holdout of the provisional government.

That night, as a blank from the cruiser Aurora boomed on the Neva River,

Bolshevik fighters stormed the palace.

The ministers of the provisional government were arrested.

Except for Kerensky, he'd already fled.

Effectively, the old authority was now decapitated.

The coup in Petrograd was almost bloodless, and met with little

Most ordinary people were apathetic or quietly supportive of the Bolsheviks.

When the Congress of Soviets convened later that evening, Lenin emerged to

announce that the exploit had succeeded, the provisional government was no more,

and the Soviets would now assume power.

In a moment bathed in both tension and triumph, Lenin addressed the Soviet

delegates. The room erupted in a standing ovation that lasted minutes.

Only after the cheering subsided did Lenin characteristically concise

make his first proclamation to the Congress and the nation.

His words, We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order,

described by an American eyewitness, journalist John Reed, as spoken in a

and matter -of -a -fact voice to an electrified crowd.

And with that, Lenin heralded the beginning of a new era.

Thus, in October of 1917,

Lenin and the Bolsheviks fulfilled what he saw as life's mission, to overthrow

the old regime and establish a government of workers and peasants.

It was an achievement of immense historical magnitude.

But the hardest challenges, as Lenin knew, were still to come,

consolidating and defending this newborn revolution in a very

war -torn country.

So here's Lenin, standing at the head of a revolutionary government, and that

was a role that brought about an array of daunting problems that required both

ideological commitment and pragmatic adjustment.

He became chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, effectively the

minister of the new Soviet Russia.

Immediately, Lenin set about turning Bolshevik slogans into decrees.

In the first days after seizing power, his government issued the Decree of

Peace. Now that was calling for an immediate ceasefire, negotiations to end

World War I, and the Decree on Land, which legitimized the peasants' seizures

noble estates, and in essence abolished landed proprietorship.

Bad luck if you bought just before that, right?

These measures were immensely popular among the war -weary soldiers and the

-hungry peasants, fulfilling key promises of the revolution.

Lenin's regime also introduced laws to improve workers' rights, establishing an

eight -hour workday in social insurance.

In those heady early weeks, a utopian spirit gripped the Bolsheviks.

Even Lenin, a stern realist in every sense, spoke of building a socialist

society on the ashes of the old.

But then there's the reality, and reality entered swiftly to slap everyone

the face.

Ending Russia's involvement with the war proved to be urgent and costly.

Lenin was absolutely determined to make peace with the central powers at any

price, but even the survival of the revolution depended on it.

This led to the controversial Treaty of Brest -Litovsk

in March 1918, the treaty which Lenin pushed through

against the ejections of many in his own party. He did vast swaths of territory

in today's Poland, Ukraine, the Baltics, etc., and resources to Germany in

exchange for Russia's exit from the war.

Now, this did not make him very popular.

In no uncertain terms, it was a humiliating sacrifice of land and

Critics, including left socialist revolutionaries and even some

denounced Lenin's stance as capitulation.

And it's really hard to see it as anything else.

Unless you ask Lenin, of course.

He insisted that saving the revolution was paramount.

You see, Russia could afford to lose the territory, he argued.

I mean, look on the map, they've got plenty of territory, if it could buy

to consolidate the new socialist government.

But it was more about the quality of that territory, and, like we said, the

resources and everything else.

In the end, his view prevailed within the party, and peace was made.

Only for Germany to lose war on the Western Front months later, rendering

treaty terms completely moot, but it's a story for another time.

Still, it achieved Lenin's aim, i .e. it freed the Bolsheviks to focus on

internal enemies.

And according to the Bolsheviks, they were absolutely everywhere.

Almost as soon as foreign war ended, civil war erupted in Russia.

By mid -1918,

Former Tsarist officers, disaffected Cossacks, Nationalists, Separatists, and

various anti -Bolshevik forces, collectively known as the Whites, rose

the vast country, backed in many regions by foreign powers, Britain, France,

United States, Japan even.

And, well, they also intervened to strangle the Bolshevik experiment before

even left the cradle, pardon the phrasing.

The Russian Civil War of 1918 -1921 was a fight for survival for Lenin's

government.

Lenin demonstrated a single -minded ruthlessness in this struggle.

He helped create a centralized war effort.

Trotsky was put in charge of the Red Army, which was built from scratch and

enforced with iron discipline.

To supply the cities and armies, Lenin's regime introduced the War Communism.

An emergency economic policy that involved the forceful requisition of

from peasants.

Well, of course, the peasants were not happy about this.

But also there was the nationalization of industries, rationing, and even a ban

on private trade.

Hold on a minute.

This is all coming up pretty much like a shock to these people now.

because it was extremely harsh and very coercive.

It was essentially putting the economy on a war footing.

And they just got out of a war to get rid of these problems.

And now Lenin's showing up to farms and saying, well, we're requisitioning this

because we're at war.

The policy certainly kept the Red Army fed and armed, but it generated

resentment.

especially in the countryside where requisite and squads sometimes left

villagers starving.

And starve they did.

Within the cities, Lenin's government tolerated no dissent in this period.

Opposition newspapers were shut down.

Opposing political parties, even other socialist factions like the Mensheviks

and the socialist revolutionaries, were gradually outlawed or suppressed.

In January of 1918, when a democratically elected Constituent

which Lenin had reluctantly allowed elections, met in Petrograd and refused

rubber -stamp Bolshevik power, Lenin simply ordered the Assembly to be

by force.

To the Bolsheviks, this act was justified by their belief that Soviet

direct councils of workers and peasants, was a higher form of democracy than any

bourgeois parliament.

But to many outside observers, it signalled the onset of nothing more than

-party dictatorship.

But perhaps the most chilling aspect of Lenin's rule during the Civil War was

the initiation of the systematic Red Terror, which sounds as bad as it is.

After surviving a near -fatal assassination attempt in August of 1918,

When Fanny Kaplan, a socialist revolutionary, shot and wounded him,

decided to unleash the security apparatus on both real and perceived

the revolution.

The Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB, had been

established in late 1917 under Lenin's encouragement to root out counter

-revolutionaries.

Now, in the fall of 1918, it was given carte blanche to imprison or execute

those deemed class enemies, conspirators or saboteurs.

Lenin didn't shy away from the use of terror.

Indeed, he explicitly endorsed it as a necessary weapon.

In one telegram, sent to Bolshevik authorities in a rebellious rural region

August 1918,

Lenin demanded exemplary punishment of well -to -do peasants.

Quote, You need to hang, hang without fail, so that the people see no fewer

than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers, he wrote.

The goal, he said, was to make people tremble at the new order.

But this directive, now famous as Lenin's Hanging Order, chose the

uncompromising and violent methods he was willing to employ to secure

rule.

During the Red Terror, thousands of class enemies, former nobles, priests,

merchants, anti -Bolshevik politicians, even ordinary citizens caught on the

wrong side, were summarily executed or imprisoned by the Cheka.

Lenin argued that such merciless tactics were imposed by extreme pressures of

civil war and foreign intervention.

He maintained that the revolution was literally fighting for its life, against

forces that would restore the old oppression, as opposed to uphold the new

oppression, and thus extraordinary measures were justified.

But here's the thing critical historians have since debated Lenin's legacy on

this front.

Was the Red Terror?

A pragmatic response to a wartime emergency, or did it set the template

mass repression of the Stalinist era?

Maybe you can make your own mind up on that.

Regardless, in any case it demonstrated Lenin's belief that revolutionary ends

could sanction brutal means.

By 1920, the tide of the Civil War turned decisively in favor of the

The Red Army...

despite initial chaos, had defeated most white armies and pushed back foreign

interventions, which were half -hearted and soon withdrawn.

In 1920, Soviet Russia even invaded the newly independent Poland in hopes of

sparking a revolution there, though that ended in failure.

As the Civil War came to a close, in late 1920 and 21, Lenin was victorious.

But it was at a staggering cost.

Russia was in ruins, famine was sweeping the land, industrial production had

plummeted to a fraction of pre -war levels, and discontent was brewing, even

among former supporters of the revolution due to the hardships of war

The peasantry in particular was rested.

Having supported the Reds against the landlords, many peasants now felt

by the Bolshevik grain requisitions and dictatorial controls.

Sensing the need for a recalibration, Lenin showed a pragmatic flexibility.

In March 1921, as peasant uprisings flickered and a serious revolt by

Kronstadt, previously staunch Bolshevik allies, demanded Soviets without

Bolsheviks. Lenin took a dramatic step.

He introduced the New Economic Policy, or the NEP.

Now, the NEP was essentially a strategic retreat from pure socialist doctrine, a

partial restoration of private enterprise and market incentives to

shattered economy.

Under NEP, peasants were allowed to sell their surplus produce on the open

market after paying a tax.

rather than just surrendering it all up to the state.

Small businesses and light industries could operate privately, and a degree of

normal commerce returned.

Lenin explained to the communist cadres, we are taking one step backward, to

later take two steps forward.

Framing the NEP as a tactical retreat.

He likened it to breathing space.

A chance for the Soviet state to recuperate and solidify itself

before advancing again towards socialism.

Many hardline Bolsheviks were shocked or dismayed by the NEP, seeing it as a

betrayal of communist principles, but Lenin's political intuition was pretty

much on target. The NEP succeeded, and the economy was rejuvenated to an

Famine was alleviated.

and widespread unrest was somewhat calmed.

It showed Lenin's willingness to be pragmatic when ideology alone threatened

revolution's survival.

He famously said, The NEP is only a temporary deviation,

reasserting his comrades that it was just a means to an end, not the end

Now, politically, Lenin also tightened control during this period.

In 1921, alongside the NEP, he pushed through a ban on factionalism within the

Communist Party at the Tenth Party Congress.

Different opinions could be discussed internally, but once a decision was

no dissenting factions were allowed to publicly campaign against it.

Now, this ban on factions was aimed at preserving unity in a tumultuous time,

but it had the long -term effect of stifling healthy debate.

and consolidating authority at the top, the president that would enable

authoritarian rule under his successors.

By 1922, the Communist Party, as the Bolsheviks renamed themselves, had

become the unchallenged ruling organization, and the foundations of a

state were firmly laid.

Lenin also oversaw the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the

USSR in December 1922, which unified Russia with Ukraine, Belarus, and the

Transcaucasian Republics under a federal system.

In theory, it was a voluntary union of equal socialist republics, but

in practice, power was centralized in Moscow, though it acknowledged the multi

-ethnic makeup of the old empire.

While Lenin successfully navigated the revolution through its most perilous

years, the immense stress took a toll on his health.

In August of 1918, he had been shot twice by an assassin.

Though he recovered then, the injury likely weakened him.

Years of ceaseless work, privation, and the strain of leading a country at war,

it all took its toll.

In May of 1922, At only 52 years old, he suffered a stroke that partially

paralyzed his right side and affected his speech.

Though he made some recovery and returned to work, he endured at least

strokes over the next months.

By late 1922, Lenin was largely incapacitated and withdrew from active

leadership, moving to a quieter state at Gorky, near Moscow, to recuperate.

During these final months, Lenin grew alarmed by certain trends in the state

that he had founded, especially the growing power in the bureaucracy and the

dictatorial tendencies of some of his lieutenants.

In December of 1922 and January of the following year, he dictated a series of

notes and letters to his secretaries that became famous as Lenin's Testament.

In his documents, Lenin candidly assessed his top associates and issued

warnings.

Now, most notably, he criticized Joseph Stalin, who by then held a key post of

General Secretary of the Communist Party for being, quote, too rude and

accumulating enormous power.

Lenin suggested that Stalin should be removed from that position, and he urged

the other leaders to find a way to reduce the bureaucratic degeneration of

party.

He also spoke favorably of Leon Trotsky's talents, though cautioning

arrogance, and he pressed for unity among the remaining leadership after his

death.

Tragically, for Lenin's intentions, his worsening illness prevented him from

taking further action.

Stalin and the inner circle managed to keep Lenin isolated, especially after

Lenin angrily broke off personal relations with Stalin in March 1923,

Stalin insulted Lenin's wife over the telephone.

Lenin never recovered enough to intervene in party affairs again.

On January 21st, 1924, Vladimir Lenin died at the age of 53,

after lapsing into a coma from yet another stroke.

His death was announced to the nation and the world.

eliciting an outpouring of grief among the Soviet populace.

Despite the hardships of the preceding years, many ordinary people genuinely

mourn the man who had given a voice to their hopes for a more just society.

How many of them believe they got the more just society?

Well, I suppose you never really know.

In any case, massive crowds did throng the streets of Moscow during his

braving the freezing winter.

to pay their respects.

In a scene almost reminiscent of a religious reverence, Maul has wept and

fainted as Lenin's body lay in a state.

The Bolshevik leadership, now headed de facto by Stalin, decided to embalm

Lenin's body and place it on permanent display in a mausoleum in Red Square, a

decision somewhat contrary to Lenin's own modest wishes.

He had actually expressed the desire to be buried next to his mother in St.

Petersburg.

Nevertheless, the Lenin Mausoleum became a shrine of the new state, and Lenin

himself was soon elevated to a mythic status as the founding father of the

Soviet communism.

Petrograd was renamed to Leningrad in 1924 in his honor, and across the

statues and portraits of Lenin began to multiply, and Leninism was enshrined as

the guiding ideology alongside Marxism.

Even in death, Lenin's influence was carefully maintained by his successors

legitimize their rule, though as subsequent events showed, some of his

warnings in the Testament would go unheeded in the years to come.

But that is a story for...

Another time.

The thing about Lenin is that it's a bit complex.

I mean, he lived through a very tumultuous era.

And when you look back on a few things, there's a lot of retrospection, I

suppose.

I mean, at the simplest level, you know, his life work resulted in the Bolshevik

Revolution.

He took Marxist theory, transplanted it into Russian soil, and through force of

intellect and will, he forged a revolutionary movement.

And that's pretty impressive, right?

But then there's all the other stuff.

And that's what makes it a bit complicated.

There's all the bad stuff, anyway.

Well, it was good of you to join me today, and perhaps you can pass your own

judgments upon Lenin.

We've all got our own sort of opinions about it.

And he's one of those figures. This is the problem when we get into modern

history.

The people are going to have very strong opinions.

No one has these really strong opinions about, I don't know, Genghis Khan or

Julius Caesar or maybe even Elizabeth Bathory or something like that.

But when it's modern history, people tend to think, well, if you say this

certain thing, then...

You have to be aligned with a certain political movement or something like

For me, I'm pretty detached from it.

I just don't really care too much to make a judgment.

Anyway, thank you for joining me, and I will see you when you feel inclined to

return to the channel.

I've been your host.

Good night, and farewell.