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Background
- Childhood - no indication he would be revolutionary or
rebellious
- Middle class - Marxist intellectual
- No interest in politics until his brother was executed for
assassination against Alexander III
- His family was shunned after his brother was arrested - his
mother was mostly affected by this = hatred for bourgeoise
- Radicalised at St Petersburg University - at the time Russia
was not democratic - completely autocratic state
- Demonstrations at university = he was punished which
radicalised him further
- Middle class liberals forced into radicalism due to autocracy
and incompetency of Nicholas II
-Liberals were not revolutionary enough for soldiers BUT they
should have been as they were in a Revolution!
Exile
- Sent to Siberia for 3 years
- Exile was not terrible - he was able to read and radicalise even more
- Joins series of revolutionary groups that were broken up by the Okhrana (Lenin’s Russia is a
mirror image of Tsarist autocracy - Okhrana and KGB)
- Exile in Europe - London, Paris, Switzerland
- Established leadership skills during exile
WW1
- Germany wanted Lenin to go back to Russia to ruin it and ask for peace - this would make
Russia pull out of war
- Germany could win war without Russia as an enemy - move all troops to Western Front
- Germany set up money for propaganda and Bolshevik campaign against the war
- Bolshevik view = Germans should win = want peace, land and food
Views
- Marxism was a religion to him
- Doing it for the greater good - the end justified the means
- Peasants didn’t agree with Lenin - he wanted to distribute the the land etc BUT were forced to
fight due to the circumstances
- Mensheviks - didn’t agree on anything. Bolsheviks - direct and had a clear revolutionary goal
for people to support
- Believed his Russian revolution couldn’t survive without other revolutions - needed to spread
communism
Polices
- New economic policy = reintroduced bits of capitalism (state capitalism)
- Most of his life had a small following but managed to overthrow a massive regime
- History driven by economic and social forces or individuals like Lenin (it is both) - Lenin
worked in the circumstances he saw (Both him and Nicholas can be causes for
Revolution)
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