He wrote reams of text about Marxist philosophy, much of it now unintelligible. But he loved mountains almost as much as he loved making revolution, and wrote lyrically about walking through the countryside. One of the reasons he remained in Switzerland for so long during his exile from Russia was to be near the Alps. He loved nature, hunting, shooting and fishing. He could identify hundreds of species of plants.
For a decade Lenin had an on-off love affair with a glamorous, intelligent and beautiful woman, Inessa Armand, who became a close friend of his wife. Lenin wanted power, and he wanted to change the world. He retained power personally for just over four years before failing health rendered him physically and mentally incapable.
But, as he predicted that it would, the Bolshevik revolution turned the world upside down. Russia never recovered, and nor did many of its neighbours. Lenin was the product of his time and place: a violent, tyrannical and corrupt Russia. The revolutionary state he created was less the socialist utopia he dreamed of than a mirror image of the Romanov autocracy into which he was born. The fact that Lenin was Russian is as significant as his Marxist faith.
He was not a monster, a sadist or personally vicious. In personal relationships he was invariably kind, and his behaviour reflected the way he was brought up — like an upper-middle-class gentleman. He was not vain. He could laugh — even, occasionally, at himself.
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Search within work. The Russian Revolution also profoundly affected U. The son of a government official, Lenin was a bright student. He entered Kazan University at Kazan in Lenin was deeply influenced by his brother's actions. Within three months, he was expelled from school for protesting the lack of freedom in the university. He moved to St. Petersburg and entered St. Petersburg University, from which he graduated with a law degree in In Lenin joined the Social Democratic group, which believed in Marxist principles.
A gifted writer and speaker, Lenin soon traveled to Western Europe to meet with other Marxists. He was arrested by the czar's police in for revolutionary activities and sent into Siberian exile in During his exile Lenin wrote one of his most important works, The Development of Capitalism in Russia Lenin was allowed to leave Russia in Eventually, Lenin received his law degree, finishing his schoolwork in He moved to the city of Samara, where his client base was largely composed of Russian peasants.
Their struggles against what Lenin saw as a class-biased legal system only reinforced his Marxist beliefs. In time, Lenin focused more of his energy on revolutionary politics. He left Samara in the mids for a new life in St. Petersburg, the Russian capital at the time. There, Lenin connected with other like-minded Marxists and began to take an increasingly active role in their activities. The work did not go unnoticed, and in December Lenin and several other Marxist leaders were arrested.
Lenin was exiled to Siberia for three years. Following his release from exile and then a stint in Munich, where Lenin and others co-founded a newspaper, Iskra, to unify Russian and European Marxists, he returned to St. Petersburg and stepped up his leadership role in the revolutionary movement. At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in , a forceful Lenin argued for a streamlined party leadership community, one that would lead a network of lower party organizations and their workers.
In Russia went to war with Japan. The conflict had a profound impact on Russian society. The situation was heightened on January 9, , when a group of unarmed workers in St. They were met by security forces, who fired on the group, killing and wounding hundreds. The crisis set the stage for what would be called the Russian Revolution of Hoping to placate his citizens, the emperor issued his October Manifesto, offering up several political concessions, most notably the creation of an elected legislative assembly known as the Duma.
But Lenin was far from satisfied.
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