MULTIPLE ASSESSMENT
HISTORY
RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES
BY: TANMAY GUPTA
IX-H
44
KARL MARX (1818-1893)
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier in
western German, the son of a successful Jewish lawyer.
Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, but was also
introduced to the ideas of Hegel and Feuerbach. In 1841, he
received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of
Jena. In 1843, after a short spell as editor of a liberal
newspaper in Cologne, Marx and his wife Jenny moved to
Paris, a hotbed of radical thought.
PHILOSOPHY
There he became a revolutionary communist and befriended
his lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Expelled from
France, Marx spent two years in Brussels, where his
partnership with Engels intensified. They co-authored the
pamphlet 'The Communist Manifesto' which was published
in 1848 and asserted that all human history had been based
on class struggles, but that these would ultimately disappear
with the victory of the proletariat. In 1849, Marx moved to
London, where he was to spend the remainder of his life. For
a number of years, his family lived in poverty but the
wealthier Engels was able to support them to an increasing
extent.
BOOKS
Gradually, Marx emerged from his political and spiritual
isolation and produced his most important body of work,
'Das Kapital'. The first volume of this 'bible of the working
class' was published in his lifetime, while the remaining
volumes were edited by Engels after his friend's death.
DEATH
In his final years, Karl Marx was in creative and physical
decline. He spent time at health spas and was deeply
distressed by the death of his wife, in 1881, and one of his
daughters. He died on 14 March 1883 and was buried at
Highgate Cemetery in London.
VLADIMIR LENIN (1870-
1924)
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22
April 1870 into a well-educated family. He excelled at school and went on
to study law. At university, he was exposed to radical thinking, and his
views were also influenced by the execution of his elder brother, a
member of a revolutionary group. Expelled from university for his
radical policies, Lenin completed his law degree as an external student in
1891. He moved to St Petersburg and became a professional
revolutionary.
PHILOSOPHY
Like many of his contemporaries, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia,
where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his Siberian exile, Lenin -
the pseudonym he adopted in 1901 - spent most of the subsequent decade
and a half in Western Europe, where he emerged as a prominent figure
in the international revolutionary movement and became the leader of
the 'Bolshevik' faction of the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party.
In 1917, exhausted by World War One, Russia was ripe for change.
Assisted by the Germans, who hoped that he would undermine the
Russian war effort, Lenin returned home and started working against
the provisional government that had overthrown the tsarist regime. He
eventually led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution, but
was effectively a coup d'etat. Almost three years of civil war followed.
The Bolsheviks were victorious and assumed total control of the country.
During this period of revolution, war and famine, Lenin demonstrated a
chilling disregard for the sufferings of his fellow countrymen and
mercilessly crushed any opposition.
Although Lenin was ruthless he was also pragmatic. When his efforts to
transform the Russian economy to a socialist model stalled, he
introduced the New Economic Policy, where a measure of private
enterprise was again permitted, and a policy that continued for several
years after his death.
DEATH
In 1918, Lenin narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was
severely wounded. His long term health was affected, and in 1922 he
suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. In his declining
years, he worried about the bureaucratization of the regime and also
expressed concern over the increasing power of his eventual successor
Joseph Stalin. Lenin died on 24 January 1924. His corpse was embalmed
and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.
JOSEPH STALIN (1878-
1953)
EARLY LIFE
Joseph Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili on
December 18, 1878, in the small town of Gori, Georgia, then part of
the Russian empire. When he was in his 30s, he took the name
Stalin, from the Russian for “man of steel.”
As a teen, he earned a scholarship to attend a seminary in the
nearby city of Tblisi and study for the priesthood in the Georgian
Orthodox Church. While there he began secretly reading the work of
German social philosopher and “Communist Manifesto” author Karl
Marx, becoming interested in the revolutionary movement against
the Russian monarchy. In 1906, Stalin married Ekaterina “Kato”
Svanidze (1885-1907), a seamstress .
RISE TO POWER AND ROLE IN WW2
In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin
to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three
years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in
Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first
leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the
party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the
Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him
to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political
support. After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered
his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist
Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet
Union. In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Joseph Stalin and
German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) signed the German-
Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Then, in June 1941, Germany broke the
Nazi-Soviet pact and invaded the USSR, making significant early
inroads. As German troops approached the Soviet capital of
Moscow, Stalin remained there and directed a scorched earth
defensive policy, destroying any supplies or infrastructure that
might benefit the enemy. The tide turned for the Soviets with
the Battle of Stalingrad from August 1942 to February 1943, during
which the Red Army defeated the Germans and eventually drove
them from Russia. He established communist governments
throughout Eastern Europe, and in 1949 led the Soviets into the
nuclear age by exploding an atomic bomb.
DEATH
Stalin, who grew increasingly paranoid in his later years, died on
March 5, 1953, at age 74, after suffering a stroke.
