Vladimir+Lenin

Mitsu Tsuyama

**Vladimir Lenin** . Russia also had a Marxist Social Democratic Party, which was divided in 1903 into two factions, known as the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The Bolshevik’s lead by Vladimir Lenin, who believed that violent revolution, was needed to destroy the Capitalist system. .He printed the ‘April Theses’, who presented a blueprint for revolutionary action based on his own version of Marxist theory. According to him it was not necessary to experience a bourgeois revolution before it could move toward socialism. Calling the soviets ‘instruments of power’, he attempted to overthrow the Provisional Government.
 * The March Revolution:**
 * .** March 8th – International Women’s Day. Women marched into the Russian capital of Petrograd, demanding ‘Peace and Bread’, forcing the Tsar to abdicate, setting up the Provisional Government in its place.

July 1917: Lenin was forced to flee to England after charges of inciting the overthrow of the Provisional Government. November 6, 7 : Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik seized the Winter Palace and the Provisional Government collapsed. Lenin broke through the Constituent Assembly, and immediately tried to gain support by nationalizing the land and turned it over to rural Soviets. This ensured the peasants support of the Bolsheviks. .Permitted abortions, legalized divorce, made women and men equal. March 3,1918: The new Communist government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany that gave up Poland, Ukraine, Finland and the Baltic Provinces.
 * The Bolshevik Revolution:**


 * Lenin’s Era:**
 * .Lenin** pursued a plan of ‘war communism’, and nationalized transportation and communication facilities as well as banks, mines and factories.
 * The New Economic Policy: a modified version of the old Capitalist system. Lenin stopped the forced requisitioning of peasants. They were now allowed to sell openly. Retail stores could operate under private ownership.**
 * .The NEP had saved Russia from economic collapse.**
 * . The Politburo had been divided whether to continue the NEP between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Stalin succeeded Lenin as leader of the USSR.**


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