Introduction: V. I. Lenin's Life and Legacy, Introduction p. 1-12.

• Lenin was born under a divine right monarchy
• state was no longer chief owner and employer
• power went to Party officials from wealthy elites
• his rule was seen as an aberration
• system spread to China, Indochina, North Korea and Cuba
• it its heydey, the Soviet Union challenged America: technologically and militarily
• the Bolsheviks lauded Lenin as a secular saint-way to socialism.
  
• initiator and architect of the Soviet System
• left a long paper trail of written instructions

Youth

• grew up at a rebellious time
• Russia lost the Crimean War, painful memory of defeat
• Lenin's father was a school inspector-educated
• Tsar Alexander II carried out Great Reforms to address shortcomings:
  
• 1) abolished serfdom: 20M peasants freed
• 2) judicial system of trial by peers
• 3) fiscal reform
• 4) a liberalization of censorship
  
• 5) measures to improve and expand education
  
• 6) Universal Military Service Statute of 1874

• nobles, priests, merchants, and lower-class city residents were above peasants in a) law, b) education, and c) economic life.
  
• considerable growth> but Russian Empire was behind Britain, France, and Germany.
  
• Asia, Latin America, and Africa: stagnant economies
• Russia's borders went into the Ottoman Empire, Afghanistan(S.), China and Pacific Ocean(E), Artic Ocean(N), Germany, Austro Hungary and Romania(W, SW)
• 1913: only 1/2 of economy was agriculture
• 1914: Moscow is almost 2,000,000
• ostentatious displays of wealth-obscene with the grinding poverty of the day.
  
• more education, less likely to support the czar
• 1913: 68% of army recruits were literate
• 1910: 75% of St. Petersburg and 66% of Moscow were literate
• intelligentsia: critics of autocracy. Highly educated, critically-minded elites.
• liberals wanted a parliamentary democracy
• populists wanted an egalitarian society
• Tsar Alexander II was killed by populists
• the next czar, Alexander III rejected reform almost entirely
• Lenin began learning law but was expelled for belonging to a radical organization
• The German Social Democratic Party(SPD) believed in Marx, got 1.47M votes
• German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck(conservative) tried to crush the Social Democrats but he was unsuccessful
• populists valued morally committed individuals as agents of change (Social reform)
• Marxists believed state power was needed
• populists didn't want capitalist industrialization
• Marxists believed development went a) primitive, b) slave-holding, c) feudal, d) capitalist, e) communist
• Marxists wanted a classless Communist society
• 1) Russia would be rescued by revolutions in advanced industrial countries
• 2) Lenin wanted a socialist state in Russia alone
• 3) Lenin wrote anti-populist pamphlets
• Lenin was exiled to Siberia
• Krupskaia-skilled and loyal helpmate to Lenin
• Lenin wrote, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, gained him reputation as an economist
• peasants adopted iron plows, harrows and improved houses with brick stoves and tin roofs and wore machine made clothing
• founded the newspaper, The Spark (Iskra) and pamphlet, What Is To Be Done?
• professional revolutionaries would lead the masses to socialism
• Mensheviks(the minority), Bolsheviks(the majority)
• Revolution of 1905, spurred by unpopular war in Japan
• the czar fired on peaceful protests in Bloody Sunday
• czar promised basic civil freedoms as well as representative assembly
• moderates were pleased
• the trade union movement for an 8 hour day was ignored
• Lenin wrote for the Bolshevik, New Life
• Tsar Nicholas II ignored the October Manifesto and announced a more limited electoral system
• two State Dumas were democratically elected, the czar dissolved the two for being overly radical
• the bourgeois liberals failed to improve conditions for the workers
• Bolshevik activities were financed by bank robberies, etc.
  
• Lenin and wife left for Helsinki in November, 1907
• Lenin published "The Truth"
• Lenin wrote, Imperialism: The Highest Stage Of Capitalism and The State and Revolution
• he argued that imperialist wars would bring down European capitalism
• the second book was about a state that engaged in a social and economic revolution