Madan Bhandari
- को हुन वास्तविक हत्यार ?
सम्पुर्ण रहस्यको पर्दाफास.............
अर्को हप्ता.....
By Kiran Thamsuhang
In 1945, World War II ended. It was the most terrible war in history. Much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins. About 55 million people had been killed in only six years. More than half of them were civilians (nonmilitary). But many people in many countries felt that they had met and destroyed a great evil.
World War II began in 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France then declared war on Germany. The United States entered the war in 1941, after Japan bombed a U.S. Navy base in Hawaii. The United States was on the side of Britain and France.
AN ANGRY PEACE
World War I helped cause World War II. World War I had ended with the defeat of Germany in 1918. Afterward, people in Germany were bitter. They believed that they had been unfairly blamed for the war. They were being made to pay money to victorious Britain and France. They were forbidden to rebuild their army.
Japan was bitter too. The Japanese had helped defeat Germany. They felt it was their right to expand their power in Asia. But Britain and the United States blocked them.
THE RISE OF DICTATORS
In Germany, the Nazis came to power in 1933. Their leader was Adolf Hitler. He blamed Germany’s problems on the Jews. The Nazis admired violence and war. They had no use for democracy.
Japan’s government was dominated by its army and navy. By 1940, it had treaties with Italy and Germany. These three countries came to be called the Axis. All three were run by dictators—rulers with total power.
In the 1930s, Japan seized parts of China and other Asian countries. Seeing that no one stopped Japan, Italy and Germany decided to expand their territory. Hitler, defying Britain and France, rebuilt Germany’s army. Still no one tried to stop him. In the late 1930s, he took over Austria and Czechoslovakia.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. World War II had begun.
LIGHTNING WAR
Britain remained free. Hitler wanted to destroy Britain’s air force before invading the country. During 1940 and 1941, German planes bombed England. British prime minister Winston Churchill rallied his people to resist. The British were helped by a secret invention, radar, which spotted German aircraft. Germany never invaded England.
.
WAR IN THE PACIFIC
In the United States, most people hated Hitler. But most Americans did not want to fight in any “foreign wars.”
Japan, meanwhile, was expanding its empire in Asia. The United States had stopped selling oil and metal to Japan. Japanese leaders planned to seize oil fields in Southeast Asia. They knew this would mean war with the United States. So they got in the first blow.
On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They sank or seriously damaged 21 ships. The United States now joined the Allies (the countries fighting the Axis).
TURNING POINTS
Japan had attacked the United States. But U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that Germany was the more powerful enemy. Hitler had to be defeated first.
Germany and Italy controlled much of North Africa. In 1942, American troops joined the Allies in North Africa. By May 1943, the Axis armies had fled. In July 1943, American, British, and Canadian troops invaded Italy. American and British planes began bombing Germany from airfields in England.
In November 1942, the Soviet armies stopped the German advance. Then they started to push the Germans back.
D-DAY AND AFTER
In 1944, Hitler was using most of his forces against the Soviet Union. Then on June 6, 1944—known as D-Day—British, American, and other Allied forces landed in northern France. Now Germany had to fight on two battlefronts—in France and the Soviet Union.
By the end of 1944, the Allies were advancing everywhere. The Soviets pushed into Germany from the east. The British and Americans led the drive from the west and south.
In the Pacific, U.S. forces were rolling back the Japanese empire. In fierce fighting, they captured island after island in the Pacific. They moved ever closer to Japan.
By early 1945, Axis cities were being heavily bombed by British and American planes.
THE WAR ENDS
On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allies. Hitler had killed himself a week earlier.
Japan still held out. The Americans had captured all the nearby islands. They were preparing to invade Japan itself.
On August 6, 1945, the United States introduced a terrible new weapon. An atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped, on the city of Nagasaki. On August 14, Japan agreed to surrender.
AFTER THE WAR
World War II caused enormous destruction. Much of Germany and Japan had to be rebuilt from rubble. Britain and many other nations suffered terrible damage.
The Axis suffered about 11 million military and civilian deaths. The victorious Allies lost four times as many. In the Soviet Union alone, more than 20 million died.
The world was shocked by Hitler’s death camps. In these camps, the Nazis had murdered about 6 million people. They included two-thirds of Europe’s Jews.
Germany and Japan were no longer military powers after the war. Neither were Britain and Russia |
United Kingdom |
World War II
World War II was fought from 1939 until 1945. It was one of the most terrible wars in history. This photo is a famous image from the war. It shows U.S. Marines raising the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during a battle in 1945.
VLADIMIR LENIN BIOGRAPHY
Vladimir Lenin was born May 4, 1870. He was the son of a Russian nobleman.
Vladimir Lenin was a bright student in school. He read the writings of Goethe and Turgenev, that would affect him for life.
His father died in 1886. Then in 1887, his brother was hung for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Vladimir Lenin renounced religion and the political system.
Lenin attended Kazan University where he studied law, but was later expelled. He chose to study law on his own, passing the exam and coming first in the class.
Lenin moved to St. Petersburg, where he began practising law. Vladimir Lenin began to develop a Marxist underground movement. He met Nadezhda Krupskaya, who he married in 1898. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (Annals of Communism Series)
In 1895, Vladimir Lenin travelled to Switzerland to meet Social Democrats. When Vladimir Lenin arrived back in Russia, Lenin planned to start a revolutionary paper, but he and the other leaders were arrested. He served 15 months in a prison, after which Vladimir Lenin was exiled to Siberia.
In 1900 they moved to Switzerland where they established their paper, Iskra (Spark). Lenin rose to a position of power in the Social Democratic party.
In 1917, the revolution happened in Russia. In March, steelworkers in St. Petersburg went on strike, with thousands of people lining the streets. The Tsar’s power collapsed and the Duma, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. Vladimir Lenin came to power, after a coup.
Vladimir Lenin was named president of the Society of People’s Commissars (Communist Party). Land was redistributed, some as collective farms. Factories, mines, banks and utilities were taken over by the state.
In May, 1922, Vladimir Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes. In his two remaining years, Vladimir Lenin tried to ensure that Trotsky, not Stalin, succeeded him, but failed. Vladimir Lenin died of a cerebral haemorrhage on January 21, 1924. Lenin: A Biography
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, and also known by the pseudonyms Nikolai Lenin and N. Lenin, (April 10, 1870 - January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1922, the first de facto leader of the Soviet Union. His contributions to Marxist theory are commonly referred to as Leninism.
Born in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (now Ulyanovsk), Vladimir Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova. His father was a successful Russian official in public education who wanted democracy. Lenin was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1886, Lenin’s father died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and, in May 1887, when Lenin was 17 years old, his eldest brother Alexander was arrested and hanged for participating in a terrorist bomb plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. His sister Anna, who was with Alexander at the time of his arrest, was banished to his family estate in the village of Kokushkino, about 40 km (25 mi.) from Kazan. This event radicalized Lenin, and his official Soviet biographies describe it as being central to the revolutionary track of his life. It is also significant, perhaps, that this emotional upheaval transpired in the same year as that which saw him enroll at the Kazan State University. A famous painting by Belousov, “We Will Follow a Different Path”, reprinted in millions of Soviet textbooks, depicted young Lenin and his mother grieving the loss of his elder brother. The phrase “We will follow a different path” refers to Lenin choosing a Marxist approach to popular revolution, instead of anarchist or individualist methods. As Lenin became interested in Marxism, he was involved in student protests and was subsequently arrested. Vladimir Lenin was then expelled from Kazan University for his political ideas. He continued to study independently, however, and it was during this period of exile that he first familiarized himself with Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Lenin was later permitted to continue his studies, this time at the University of Saint Petersburg, and, by 1891, had been admitted to the Bar. Vladimir Lenin also distinguished himself in Latin and Greek, and learned German, French and English. His knowledge of the latter two languages was limited: he relied on Inessa Armand to translate an article into French and into English in 1917. In the same year he also wrote to S. N. Ravich in Geneva I am unable to lecture in French.
Lenin practiced as a lawyer for some years in Samara, a port on the Volga river, before moving to St Petersburg in 1893. Rather than pursuing a legal career, he became increasingly involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts, joining the local Marxist group. On December 7, 1895, Lenin was arrested, held by authorities for fourteen months and then released and exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia, where he mingled with such notable Marxists as Georgy Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia. In July 1898, Lenin married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya and he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia in April of 1899. In 1900, his exile came to an end, and he began his travels throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. Lenin lived in Zurich, Geneva (where he lectured and studied at Geneva State University), Munich, Prague, Vienna, Manchester and London, and, during this time, he co-founded the newspaper Iskra (The Spark) with Julius Martov, who later became a leading opponent. He also wrote several articles and books related to the revolutionary movement, striving to recruit future Social Democrats. He began using various aliases, finally settling upon ‘Lenin’ ‘N. Lenin’ in full. Lenin was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and, in 1903, led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks. The names ‘Bolshevik’, or ‘Majority’, and ‘Menshevik’, or ‘Minority’, referred to the narrow outvoting of the Mensheviks in the decision to limit party membership to revolutionary professionals, rather than including sympathizers. The division was inspired partly by Lenin’s pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1901-02), which focused on his revolutionary strategy. It is said to have been one of the most influential pamphlets in pre-revolutionary Russia, with Lenin himself claiming that three out of five workers had either read it or had had it read to them. In 1906, Lenin was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP but, almost from then right up until the revolutions of 1917, he spent the majority of his time exiled in Europe, where, despite a hard and bitter existence, he managed to continue his political writings. This self-imposed exile began in 1907, when he moved to Finland for security reasons. In response to philosophical debates on the proper course of a socialist revolution, Lenin completed Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909 a work which became fundamental in the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Lenin continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Prague Party Conference of 1912. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile, and it is believed that she was Lenin’s lover during this time. As writer Neil Harding points out however, although much has been made of this relationship, despite the slender stock of evidence we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate. When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist, and including luminaries such as Karl Kautsky) supported their various countries’ war efforts, Lenin was absolutely stunned, refusing to believe at first that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the Second International, which was composed of these parties. Lenin (against the war in his belief that the peasants and workers were fighting the battle of the bourgeoisie for them) adopted the stance that what he described as an mperialist war ought to be turned into a civil war between the classes. As war broke out, Lenin was briefly detained by the Austrian authorities in the town of Poronin, where he was residing at the time. On 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland, residing first at Berne and then Zurich. In 1915 he attended the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, convened in the Swiss town of that name. Lenin was the main leader of the Zimmerwald Left. It was in Zurich in the spring of 1916 that Lenin wrote the important theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. According to Lenin, in the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature.
After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin realized that he must return to Russia as soon as possible, but this was problematic because he was isolated in neutral Switzerland as the First World War raged throughout neighboring states. The Swiss communist Fritz Platten nonetheless managed to negotiate with the German government for Lenin and his company to travel through Germany by rail, on the so-called sealed train. The German government clearly hoped Lenin’s return would create political unrest back in Russia, which would help to end the war on the Eastern front, allowing Germany to concentrate on defeating the Western allies. Once through Germany, Lenin continued by ferry to Sweden; the remainder of the journey through Scandinavia was subsequently arranged by Swedish communists. On April 16, 1917, Lenin arrived by train to a tumultuous reception at Finland Station, in Petrograd. Vladimir Lenin immediately took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses, which called for an uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. Initially, Lenin isolated his party through this lurch to the left. However, this uncompromising stand meant that the Bolsheviks were to become the obvious home for all those who became disillusioned with the provisional government, and with the luxury of opposition the Bolsheviks did not have to assume responsibility for any policies implemented by the government. Meanwhile, Aleksandr Kerensky, Grigory Aleksinsky and other opponents of the Bolsheviks accused them and Lenin in particular of being paid German agents. In response Leon Trotsky, a prominent new Bolshevik leader, made a defensive speech on July 17. An intolerable atmosphere has been created, in which you as well as we are choking. They are throwing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. Lenin has fought thirty years for the revolution. I have fought twenty years against the oppression of the people. And we cannot but cherish a hatred for German militarism. I have been sentenced by a German court to eight months’ imprisonment for my struggle against German militarism. This everybody knows. Let nobody in this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany. After turmoil of the July Days, when workers and soldiers in the capital clashed with government troops, Lenin had to flee to Finland for safety, to avoid arrest by Kerensky. The Bolsheviks had not arranged the July Uprising. The time was still not ripe for revolution, claimed Lenin: the workers in the city were willing, but the Bolsheviks still needed to wait for the support of the peasants. During his short time in Finland, Lenin finished his book State and Revolution, which called for a new form of government based on workers’ councils, or soviets elected and revocable at all moments by the workers. Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd in October, inspiring the October Revolution with the slogan All Power to the Soviets! Lenin directed the overthrow of the Provisional Government from the Smolny Institute from the 6th to the 8th of November 1917. The storming and capitulation of the Winter Palace on the night of the 7th to 8th of November marked the beginning of Soviet rule. Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings
In March 1919, Vladimir Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement. From that point onwards, they would become known as communists. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which eventually became the CPSU. Meanwhile, the civil war raged across Russia. A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (traditionalists). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, the United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Eventually, the more organizationally proficient Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920. Smaller battles continued for several more years, however. Between battles, executions, famine and epidemics, many millions would perish. In late 1919, successes against the White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. With the revolution in Germany and the Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this as the perfect time and place to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army. Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. However the defeat of Soviet Russia in the Polish-Soviet War invalidated these plans. Lenin was a harsh critic of imperialism. In 1917 he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and separation for national minorities and oppressed nations. However, when the Russian Civil War was won he used military force to assimilate the newly independent states of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. During the civil war, as an attempt to maintain food supply to the cities and the army in the conditions of economic collapse, the Bolsheviks adopted the policy of war communism.
Lenin’s health had already been severely damaged by the strains of revolution and war. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. The bullet was still lodged in his neck, too close to his spine for medical techniques of the time to remove. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed on his right side, and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December of the same year, he resigned from active politics. In March 1923, he suffered his third stroke and was left bedridden for the remainder of his life, no longer able to speak. After his first stroke, Lenin dictated to his wife several papers regarding the government. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament, which was partially inspired by the 1922 Georgian Affair and among other things criticized top-ranking communists, including Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky. Of Stalin, who had been the Communist Party’s general secretary since April 1922, Lenin said that he had unlimited authority concentrated in his hands and suggested that comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post. Upon Lenin’s death, his wife mailed his Testament to the central committee, to be read at the 13th Party Congress in May 1924. However, the committee and especially the ruling triumvirate Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev had a vested interest in not releasing the will to the wider public. Lenin’s Testament was first officially published in 1925 in the United States by Max Eastman. In the same year, Trotsky wrote an article that downplayed its significance, stating that Lenin’s notes should not be regarded as a will and had neither been concealed nor violated. He did invoke it in his polemic against Stalin on later occasions, while in exile. Lenin died at 18:50 Moscow time on January 21, 1924, aged 53, at his estate in Gorki Leninskiye. The official cause given for Lenin’s death was cerebral arteriosclerosis, or a fourth stroke. But out of the 27 physicians who treated him, only eight signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward. Most historians still agree that the most likely cause of his death was a stroke induced by the bullet still lodged in his neck from the assassination attempt. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor three days after Lenin’s death. This remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg.
Vladimir Lenin was a bright student in school. He read the writings of Goethe and Turgenev, that would affect him for life.
His father died in 1886. Then in 1887, his brother was hung for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Vladimir Lenin renounced religion and the political system.
Lenin attended Kazan University where he studied law, but was later expelled. He chose to study law on his own, passing the exam and coming first in the class.
Lenin moved to St. Petersburg, where he began practising law. Vladimir Lenin began to develop a Marxist underground movement. He met Nadezhda Krupskaya, who he married in 1898. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (Annals of Communism Series)
In 1895, Vladimir Lenin travelled to Switzerland to meet Social Democrats. When Vladimir Lenin arrived back in Russia, Lenin planned to start a revolutionary paper, but he and the other leaders were arrested. He served 15 months in a prison, after which Vladimir Lenin was exiled to Siberia.
In 1900 they moved to Switzerland where they established their paper, Iskra (Spark). Lenin rose to a position of power in the Social Democratic party.
In 1917, the revolution happened in Russia. In March, steelworkers in St. Petersburg went on strike, with thousands of people lining the streets. The Tsar’s power collapsed and the Duma, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. Vladimir Lenin came to power, after a coup.
Vladimir Lenin was named president of the Society of People’s Commissars (Communist Party). Land was redistributed, some as collective farms. Factories, mines, banks and utilities were taken over by the state.
In May, 1922, Vladimir Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes. In his two remaining years, Vladimir Lenin tried to ensure that Trotsky, not Stalin, succeeded him, but failed. Vladimir Lenin died of a cerebral haemorrhage on January 21, 1924. Lenin: A Biography
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, and also known by the pseudonyms Nikolai Lenin and N. Lenin, (April 10, 1870 - January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1922, the first de facto leader of the Soviet Union. His contributions to Marxist theory are commonly referred to as Leninism.
Born in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (now Ulyanovsk), Vladimir Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova. His father was a successful Russian official in public education who wanted democracy. Lenin was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1886, Lenin’s father died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and, in May 1887, when Lenin was 17 years old, his eldest brother Alexander was arrested and hanged for participating in a terrorist bomb plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. His sister Anna, who was with Alexander at the time of his arrest, was banished to his family estate in the village of Kokushkino, about 40 km (25 mi.) from Kazan. This event radicalized Lenin, and his official Soviet biographies describe it as being central to the revolutionary track of his life. It is also significant, perhaps, that this emotional upheaval transpired in the same year as that which saw him enroll at the Kazan State University. A famous painting by Belousov, “We Will Follow a Different Path”, reprinted in millions of Soviet textbooks, depicted young Lenin and his mother grieving the loss of his elder brother. The phrase “We will follow a different path” refers to Lenin choosing a Marxist approach to popular revolution, instead of anarchist or individualist methods. As Lenin became interested in Marxism, he was involved in student protests and was subsequently arrested. Vladimir Lenin was then expelled from Kazan University for his political ideas. He continued to study independently, however, and it was during this period of exile that he first familiarized himself with Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. Lenin was later permitted to continue his studies, this time at the University of Saint Petersburg, and, by 1891, had been admitted to the Bar. Vladimir Lenin also distinguished himself in Latin and Greek, and learned German, French and English. His knowledge of the latter two languages was limited: he relied on Inessa Armand to translate an article into French and into English in 1917. In the same year he also wrote to S. N. Ravich in Geneva I am unable to lecture in French.
Lenin practiced as a lawyer for some years in Samara, a port on the Volga river, before moving to St Petersburg in 1893. Rather than pursuing a legal career, he became increasingly involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts, joining the local Marxist group. On December 7, 1895, Lenin was arrested, held by authorities for fourteen months and then released and exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia, where he mingled with such notable Marxists as Georgy Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia. In July 1898, Lenin married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya and he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia in April of 1899. In 1900, his exile came to an end, and he began his travels throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. Lenin lived in Zurich, Geneva (where he lectured and studied at Geneva State University), Munich, Prague, Vienna, Manchester and London, and, during this time, he co-founded the newspaper Iskra (The Spark) with Julius Martov, who later became a leading opponent. He also wrote several articles and books related to the revolutionary movement, striving to recruit future Social Democrats. He began using various aliases, finally settling upon ‘Lenin’ ‘N. Lenin’ in full. Lenin was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and, in 1903, led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks. The names ‘Bolshevik’, or ‘Majority’, and ‘Menshevik’, or ‘Minority’, referred to the narrow outvoting of the Mensheviks in the decision to limit party membership to revolutionary professionals, rather than including sympathizers. The division was inspired partly by Lenin’s pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1901-02), which focused on his revolutionary strategy. It is said to have been one of the most influential pamphlets in pre-revolutionary Russia, with Lenin himself claiming that three out of five workers had either read it or had had it read to them. In 1906, Lenin was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP but, almost from then right up until the revolutions of 1917, he spent the majority of his time exiled in Europe, where, despite a hard and bitter existence, he managed to continue his political writings. This self-imposed exile began in 1907, when he moved to Finland for security reasons. In response to philosophical debates on the proper course of a socialist revolution, Lenin completed Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909 a work which became fundamental in the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Lenin continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Prague Party Conference of 1912. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile, and it is believed that she was Lenin’s lover during this time. As writer Neil Harding points out however, although much has been made of this relationship, despite the slender stock of evidence we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate. When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist, and including luminaries such as Karl Kautsky) supported their various countries’ war efforts, Lenin was absolutely stunned, refusing to believe at first that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the Second International, which was composed of these parties. Lenin (against the war in his belief that the peasants and workers were fighting the battle of the bourgeoisie for them) adopted the stance that what he described as an mperialist war ought to be turned into a civil war between the classes. As war broke out, Lenin was briefly detained by the Austrian authorities in the town of Poronin, where he was residing at the time. On 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland, residing first at Berne and then Zurich. In 1915 he attended the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, convened in the Swiss town of that name. Lenin was the main leader of the Zimmerwald Left. It was in Zurich in the spring of 1916 that Lenin wrote the important theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. In this work Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. According to Lenin, in the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of which colonialism is one feature.
After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin realized that he must return to Russia as soon as possible, but this was problematic because he was isolated in neutral Switzerland as the First World War raged throughout neighboring states. The Swiss communist Fritz Platten nonetheless managed to negotiate with the German government for Lenin and his company to travel through Germany by rail, on the so-called sealed train. The German government clearly hoped Lenin’s return would create political unrest back in Russia, which would help to end the war on the Eastern front, allowing Germany to concentrate on defeating the Western allies. Once through Germany, Lenin continued by ferry to Sweden; the remainder of the journey through Scandinavia was subsequently arranged by Swedish communists. On April 16, 1917, Lenin arrived by train to a tumultuous reception at Finland Station, in Petrograd. Vladimir Lenin immediately took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses, which called for an uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. Initially, Lenin isolated his party through this lurch to the left. However, this uncompromising stand meant that the Bolsheviks were to become the obvious home for all those who became disillusioned with the provisional government, and with the luxury of opposition the Bolsheviks did not have to assume responsibility for any policies implemented by the government. Meanwhile, Aleksandr Kerensky, Grigory Aleksinsky and other opponents of the Bolsheviks accused them and Lenin in particular of being paid German agents. In response Leon Trotsky, a prominent new Bolshevik leader, made a defensive speech on July 17. An intolerable atmosphere has been created, in which you as well as we are choking. They are throwing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. Lenin has fought thirty years for the revolution. I have fought twenty years against the oppression of the people. And we cannot but cherish a hatred for German militarism. I have been sentenced by a German court to eight months’ imprisonment for my struggle against German militarism. This everybody knows. Let nobody in this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany. After turmoil of the July Days, when workers and soldiers in the capital clashed with government troops, Lenin had to flee to Finland for safety, to avoid arrest by Kerensky. The Bolsheviks had not arranged the July Uprising. The time was still not ripe for revolution, claimed Lenin: the workers in the city were willing, but the Bolsheviks still needed to wait for the support of the peasants. During his short time in Finland, Lenin finished his book State and Revolution, which called for a new form of government based on workers’ councils, or soviets elected and revocable at all moments by the workers. Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd in October, inspiring the October Revolution with the slogan All Power to the Soviets! Lenin directed the overthrow of the Provisional Government from the Smolny Institute from the 6th to the 8th of November 1917. The storming and capitulation of the Winter Palace on the night of the 7th to 8th of November marked the beginning of Soviet rule. Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings
In March 1919, Vladimir Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement. From that point onwards, they would become known as communists. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which eventually became the CPSU. Meanwhile, the civil war raged across Russia. A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (traditionalists). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, the United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Eventually, the more organizationally proficient Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920. Smaller battles continued for several more years, however. Between battles, executions, famine and epidemics, many millions would perish. In late 1919, successes against the White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. With the revolution in Germany and the Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this as the perfect time and place to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army. Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. However the defeat of Soviet Russia in the Polish-Soviet War invalidated these plans. Lenin was a harsh critic of imperialism. In 1917 he declared the unconditional right of self-determination and separation for national minorities and oppressed nations. However, when the Russian Civil War was won he used military force to assimilate the newly independent states of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. During the civil war, as an attempt to maintain food supply to the cities and the army in the conditions of economic collapse, the Bolsheviks adopted the policy of war communism.
Navajo Code Talkers
During World War II (1939-1945), United States Marines trained Navajo soldiers to talk in code. The Navajo soldiers sent secret messages by telephone and radio in the Navajo language. The Japanese were never able to break the code.
National Archives
Lenin’s health had already been severely damaged by the strains of revolution and war. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. The bullet was still lodged in his neck, too close to his spine for medical techniques of the time to remove. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed on his right side, and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December of the same year, he resigned from active politics. In March 1923, he suffered his third stroke and was left bedridden for the remainder of his life, no longer able to speak. After his first stroke, Lenin dictated to his wife several papers regarding the government. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament, which was partially inspired by the 1922 Georgian Affair and among other things criticized top-ranking communists, including Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin and Leon Trotsky. Of Stalin, who had been the Communist Party’s general secretary since April 1922, Lenin said that he had unlimited authority concentrated in his hands and suggested that comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post. Upon Lenin’s death, his wife mailed his Testament to the central committee, to be read at the 13th Party Congress in May 1924. However, the committee and especially the ruling triumvirate Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev had a vested interest in not releasing the will to the wider public. Lenin’s Testament was first officially published in 1925 in the United States by Max Eastman. In the same year, Trotsky wrote an article that downplayed its significance, stating that Lenin’s notes should not be regarded as a will and had neither been concealed nor violated. He did invoke it in his polemic against Stalin on later occasions, while in exile. Lenin died at 18:50 Moscow time on January 21, 1924, aged 53, at his estate in Gorki Leninskiye. The official cause given for Lenin’s death was cerebral arteriosclerosis, or a fourth stroke. But out of the 27 physicians who treated him, only eight signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward. Most historians still agree that the most likely cause of his death was a stroke induced by the bullet still lodged in his neck from the assassination attempt. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor three days after Lenin’s death. This remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg.
By Kiran Thamsuhang
Prangbung 3 Panchthar Mechi Zone
