Lenin's Rise and Rule in Russia

Timeline of Lenin's Rise and Rule in Russia

Click on each item of the timeline to explore this topic

New Economic Plan (NEP): A Temporary Retreat from Communism

Assassination Attempts and The Red Terror

Russia Leaves WWI: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

November Revolution: Bolsheviks Seize Power

1921

Sept. 1918

Nov. 1917

March 3, 1918

Dec. 1917

1917-1922

June 1918

Jan 21, 1924

April-November 1917

Cheka: The Soviet Secret Police Created

Lenin and Bolsheviks Gain Support Amongst Peasants, Workers, and Soldiers

Russian Civil War Demonstrates Bolshevik Military Superiority

Lenin Declares War Communism

Lenin’s Death

Assassination Attempts and The Red Terror

In 1918, there were two assassination attempts on Lenin’s life. In the second attempt, Lenin was shot twice. The doctors who treated him decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. He partially recovered, but his health never returned to full strength. The Communist government responded to the assassination attempts with what they termed the Red Terror. The Red Terror was a campaign of mass killings, torture, and oppression on all who opposed the Bolsheviks that took place from 1918 to 1922. Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror range from 50,000 to 140,000 to over one and half million.

The long years of war, the Bolshevik policy of War Communism, the Russian Famine of 1921, and the Civil War took their toll on Russia and much of the country lay in ruins. There were many peasant uprisings, the largest being the Tambov Rebellion. After an uprising by the sailors at Kronstadt in March 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in a successful attempt to rebuild industry and, especially, agriculture. Though the goal of Lenin and the Soviet government was to create a truly communist state in Russia, he realized that their economic policies were damaging the country and threatening the Bolshevik hold on Russia. The New Economic Policy included the return of most agriculture, retail trade, and small-scale light industry to private ownership and management while the state retained control of heavy industry, transport, banking, and foreign trade. The peasantry were allowed to own and cultivate their own land, while paying taxes to the state. The New Economic Policy reintroduced a measure of stability to the economy and allowed the Soviet people to recover from years of war, civil war, and governmental mismanagement. The small businessmen and managers who flourished in this period became known as NEP men. Though successful, the NEP was viewed by the Soviet government as merely a temporary measure to allow the economy to recover while the Communists solidified their hold on power and move the country towards a centralized communist government.

New Economic Plan (NEP): A Temporary Retreat from Communism

Lenin’s Death

Lenin died on January 21, 1924, at the age of 53. Most historians 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 Lenin’s honor three days after his death. This remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, Saint Petersburg. To memorialize him further, Lenin’s body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow on January 27, 1924. His body is still on display today.

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 several papers regarding the government to his wife. Most famous of these is Lenin's testament, which, among other things, criticized top-ranking communists, especially Joseph Stalin. Lenin said that Stalin, who had been the Communist Party's general secretary since April 1922, had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and suggested that "comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post."

Lenin and Bolsheviks Gain Support Amongst Peasants, Workers, and Soldiers

Lenin returned to Russia in 1917 after being in exile for his political beliefs. When he returned to lead the Bolsheviks, they were not a powerful political party, but they gained popular support from peasants, workers, and soldiers through meetings and speeches when they expounded upon their slogan, “Peace, Land, and Bread.” If in power, they promised peace by taking Russia out of WWI. They would take control of all of the land in Russia and re-distribute it evenly to peasants and workers, and end starvation by taking control of farms to produce more food and give it out equally to the population.

Lenin Declares War Communism

The Red Terror coincided with the escalation of the Civil War and the implementation of a policy known as “War Communism” which lasted from June 1918 to March 1921. War Communism’s chief feature was the nationalization of private businesses. Nationalization is the processes a government taking ownership of a private business. Nationalism is sometimes called centralization. For example, if a coal mine that was run by a business owner was nationalized, the government would then own that mine, decide who worked in the mine, and decide how to run it. Through war communism, Lenin hoped to accelerate the process of creating a Communist state where the government owns everything and divides it equally among the country’s inhabitants. To do this, the Soviet government took over people’s private businesses, especially industry, and forced peasant farmers to grow grain for the government and hand it over after it was harvested. These measures negatively affected both agricultural and industrial production. With no incentives [motivations like money] to grow surplus grain (since it would just be confiscated), the peasants’ production of it and other crops plummeted, with the result that starvation came to threaten many city dwellers. In the cities, a large and untrained bureaucracy was hastily created to supervise the newly centralized, state-owned economy, with the result that labor productivity and industrial output plummeted. By 1921 industrial production had dropped to one-fifth of its prewar levels (i.e., in 1913), and the real wages of urban workers had declined by an estimated two-thirds in just three years.

Russia Leaves WWI: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

On March 3, 1918, Lenin fulfilled one Bolshevik promise by removing Russia from World War I. They negotiated with the Germans and agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under which Russia lost significant territories in Europe.

November Revolution: Bolsheviks Seize Power

In November, 1917, the Bolshevik party leaders and a group of factory workers who supported them called the Red Guards, joined by some soldiers that left the Russian army, attacked the provisional government in Petrograd. Lenin the Bolsheviks took control of the government in a couple of days and several other similar actions were taken by Bolsheviks in other important Russian cities. The Bolsheviks set about transforming Russia into the world’s first Communist nation. They renamed Russia the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also known as the Soviet Union

To protect the newly-established Bolshevik government from counter-revolutionaries and other political opponents, the Bolsheviks created a secret police, the Cheka (from the Russian for extraordinary committee). One of the first important actions taken by the Cheka was to execute the Czar and his whole family.

Soon after the Bolsheviks took power, a civil war erupted in Russia. Supporters of a wide variety of political movements took up arms to support or overthrow the Soviet government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the pro-Imperialist White Army. Foreign powers such as France, Britain, the United States, and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army), though they had little impact. Eventually, the more organizationally proficient Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, won the civil war, defeating the White Army and their allies in 1920. Smaller fights, however, continued for several more years. Both White and Red Army forces, during this tumultuous time of war and revolution, "behaved with great brutality and cruelty in areas they controlled. Towns were burned, property destroyed or stolen, peasant farmers' crops and livestock taken by force—if people objected, they faced torture and execution."