The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels was published in 1848 and called for the seizure of all
personal property by the mob.
The Communist takeover of Russia was underway
as Nicholas II became Czar in 1894. Russia’s defeat in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War
was followed by defeating Germany in World War I in 1914 that left Russia in
tatters. He abdicated the throne in 1917.
Nicholas II and his entire family were executed in 1918. His downfall only took
12 years.
The Communist takeover of the US has been
underway since 1890 with the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It accelerated in 1913 with the creation of
the Federal Reserve and the passage of the US Income Tax and Inheritance Tax. It made
strides in the 1930s with the passage of the Social Security Act, the 1960s with
the passage of Welfare and the 1990s by signing on to UN Agenda 21 and
off-shoring US manufacturing.
The Progressive Movement has been the proponent
of the US Communist takeover and resides in the Democrat Party. All 45 of the
American Communist Party Goals have been achieved. The election in November 2020 will determine
whether or not these goals will be advanced or rejected by US voters.
Bolsheviks
Revolt in Russia
Led by
Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin,
leftist revolutionaries launch a nearly bloodless coup d’État against Russia’s
ineffectual Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied
government buildings and other strategic locations in the Russian capital of
Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and within two days had formed a new government
with Lenin as its head. Bolshevik Russia, later renamed the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR), was the world’s first Marxist state.
Born
Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in 1870, Lenin was drawn to the revolutionary cause
after his brother was executed in 1887 for plotting to assassinate Czar
Alexander III. He studied law and took up practice in Petrograd, where he
associated with revolutionary Marxist circles. In 1895, he helped organize
Marxist groups in the capital into the “Union for the Struggle for the
Liberation of the Working Class,” which attempted to enlist workers to the
Marxist cause. In December 1895, Lenin and the other leaders of the Union were
arrested. Lenin was jailed for a year and then exiled to Siberia for a term of
three years.
After
the end of his exile, in 1900, Lenin went to Western Europe, where he continued
his revolutionary activity. It was during this time that he adopted the
pseudonym Lenin. In 1902, he published a pamphlet titled What Is to Be Done? which
argued that only a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries could
bring socialism to Russia. In 1903, he met with other Russian Marxists in
London and established the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP).
However, from the start there was a split between Lenin’s Bolsheviks (Majoritarians),
who advocated militarism, and the Mensheviks (Minoritarians), who advocated
a democratic movement toward socialism. These two groups increasingly opposed
each other within the framework of the RSDWP, and Lenin made the split official
at a 1912 conference of the Bolshevik Party.
After the outbreak of
the Russian Revolution of 1905,
Lenin returned to Russia. The revolution, which consisted mainly of strikes
throughout the Russian empire, came to an end when Nicholas II promised
reforms, including the adoption of a Russian constitution and the establishment
of an elected legislature. However, once order was restored, the czar nullified
most of these reforms, and in 1907 Lenin was again forced into exile.
Lenin
opposed World War I, which began in 1914, as an imperialistic conflict
and called on proletariat soldiers to turn their guns on the capitalist leaders
who sent them down into the murderous trenches. For Russia, World War I was an
unprecedented disaster: Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by
any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the Russian economy was hopelessly
disrupted by the costly war effort, and in March 1917 riots and strikes broke
out in Petrograd over the scarcity of food. Demoralized army troops joined the
strikers, and on March 15, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, ending centuries
of czarist rule. In the aftermath of the February Revolution (known as such
because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar), power was shared between the
weak Provisional Government and the soviets, or “councils,” of soldiers’ and
workers’ committees.
After
the outbreak of the February Revolution, German authorities allowed Lenin and
his lieutenants to cross Germany en route from Switzerland to Sweden in a
sealed railway car. Berlin hoped (correctly) that the return of the anti-war
Socialists to Russia would undermine the Russian war effort, which was
continuing under the Provisional Government. Lenin called for the overthrow of
the Provisional Government by the soviets, and he was condemned as a “German
agent” by the government’s leaders. In July, he was forced to flee to Finland,
but his call for “peace, land, and bread” met with increasing popular support,
and the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd soviet. In October, Lenin
secretly returned to Petrograd, and on November 6-8 the Bolshevik-led Red
Guards deposed the Provisional Government and proclaimed soviet rule.
Lenin became the virtual
dictator of the first Marxist state in the world. His government made peace
with Germany, nationalized industry, and distributed land, but beginning in
1918 had to fight a devastating civil war against czarist forces. In 1920, the
czarists were defeated, and in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) was established. Upon Lenin’s death, in early 1924, his body was
embalmed and placed in a mausoleum near the Moscow Kremlin. Petrograd was
renamed Leningrad in his honor. After a struggle for succession, fellow
revolutionary Joseph Stalin succeeded Lenin as leader of
the Soviet Union.
Bolshevik is translated as “one of the
majority”.
Bolshevik. Bolshevik, (Russian: “One of
the Majority”), plural Bolsheviks, or Bolsheviki, member of a wing of the
Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party, which, led by Vladimir Lenin, seized
control of the government in Russia (October 1917) and became the dominant
political power.
The Bolsheviks were a revolutionary
party, committed to the ideas of Karl Marx. They believed that the working
classes would, at some point, liberate themselves from the economic and
political control of the ruling classes.
What changes did the Bolsheviks make
immediately? They ended private ownership of land, gave land to peasants to
use, and gave workers control of factories and mines. What
mistakes did the provisional government make?
Bloody Sunday in 1905 and
the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War both helped lead to the
1917 revolution. After taking over, the Bolsheviks promised 'peace,
land, and bread' to the Russian people. In 1917 Lenin returned to
Russia from exile with German help.
The situation climaxed with the October
Revolution in 1917, a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection by workers and
soldiers in Petrograd that successfully overthrew the Provisional
Government, transferring all its authority to the Soviets.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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