Marx was the 'ultimate father of Communism', but many of his 'sons' used his theory not as an absolute, but to serve their own interests.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin (1870-1924) grew up in a comfortable middle class background and was educated in Law at St. Petersburg University. When he was 17, his brother was hung for his part in an attempt to assassinate Tsar (Czar) Alexander III, which likely fuelled his anger for the Tsar registration at the time. After his education, he became a disciple for Marx and would end up in Siberia for three years because of his view and activities. He left Russia in 1900, lived in Brussels, Paris, and London, settled in Germany, and soaked up Marxist teachings from across Europe. In 1903, when the Russian Social Democrats split into two groups (the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks), Lenin became the leader of the more militant radical group – the Bolsheviks.
The term Marxism-Leninism is often used in reference to the history of the USSR, but this communist ideology is still the official ideology of the leading parties of China, Vietnam, Laos, Vietnam, and Nepal. "MLs" as they know call themselves, generally support proletarian internationalism and socialist democracy.
Unlike Marx, Lenin insisted on a tight-knit body of dedicated professional revolutionaries with clear lines of command and military discipline. He believed that the peasants could not sit around and wait for a revolution – they had to be directed from the top-down. He recognised the peasantry as key to any Russian Revolution (sound familiar from our Maoism episode?), a clear departure from Marx's view of a working class revolution, and would talk discouragingly of the "idiocy of rural life". Marxism was focused on the urban working class itself as the "vanguard of the revolution", but Lenin believed that the organisation of peasant based revolution would require a "vanguard party". The vanguard party would be responsible for educating the illiterate masses and organising the post-revolutionary period, a clear deviation from Marxism that would lay the template for a rigid, top-down totalitarian state.
Lenin wrote extensively on Marxism, particularly about imperialism. He tried to bring Marxism up to date to account for such recent developments of the 20th century of intense colonial rivalry, international crises, and WWI. Instead of the original Marxist vision of the victorious socialist revolution as the simple expropriation of a few factory owners, Lenin described the dying stage of capitalism as an age of gigantic conflicts. He argued that capitalism had reached the bottom of the barrel, that the only way the imperial powers (France, Britain, Germany) could sustain wealth was to go to underdeveloped nations and exploit labour for capital. Lenin recognised colonialism as a life support system for the capitalist economies of Western Europe and he saw the only way to break free of capitalism was to encourage revolutionary thought in colonised countries (Vietnam, China, etc.). Essentially, Lenin wanted to ally the proletariat of Europe with the multitudes of colonised peoples to overthrow Western capitalism. He concluded that in its ultimate form capitalism becomes imperialism, and believed inspiring a revolution of the colonies would lead to the collapse of the West because of their dependence on them.
Lenin's distinct teachings from Marxism inspired the Bolsheviks to incite a coup d'état, which started in St. Petersburg, with the Bolsheviks taking over the House of Romanov of the Russian Empire, and led to two smaller Revolutions (February and October Revolutions), the Civil War, the Russian Revolution (1917-1922), and finally, the establishment of the Soviet Union.
What happened after that is perhaps a matter for another newsletter.
Happy researching!
