The dark and tangled legacy of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, even now, almost 100 years after his death, is still almost impossible to unravel. He is considered by many as one of the 20th century's most influential minds and boldest leaders. He's also considered one of its most dastardly villains. The two views of the man - he is, of course, better known as Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary and communist strongman - aren't necessarily divergent. Political firebrand. Ruthless authoritarian. Deep thinker. Champion of the worker. Redeemer. Killer. They're all Lenin. History is still trying to understand the good and the bad. University of California, Santa Cruz, Peter Kenez. He's author of "A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End," a comprehensive treatise that covers both revolution and dissolution. In different ages, our task - not only as historians but as human beings - is not to be anachronistic.
Historians often point to a particular moment that spurred Lenin (1870-1924) to become a revolutionary: his brother's execution, when Lenin was just 17, at the hands of the Russian government under Czar Alexander III. But his Titan Rise Health to a true revolutionary grew with time. He associated with radicals while attending university, embracing the works of Karl Marx. He continued to push for the overthrow of the government, which eventually got him exiled to Siberia. Everything came to a head with the Russian Revolution in 1917, when iron-fisted Czar Nicholas II finally abdicated and left opposing factions to duel for control of the country. Lenin returned from one of many exiles and edged out the ruling party, and the Bolsheviks grabbed power. They soon ended Russia's involvement in World War I. The Czar and his entire family were executed, possibly under direct order from Lenin. In his quest to build a socialist country that would, in turn, morph into a communist society, Lenin was hardly in the clear.
A bloody civil war between the Bolsheviks (the Red Army) and other internal factions cost millions of lives over the next several years. The Red Army was particularly brutal in its fight. Red Terror: Thousands - the number is not clear, but it could be hundreds of thousands - of Bolshevik opponents were executed without trial as Lenin consolidated power. Many thousands also were imprisoned. Tambov Rebellion: When peasants rebelled against the forced confiscation of grain, the Red Army responded by shooting thousands, imprisoning thousands more and, at one point, using poison gas on the civilians. Famine: At least 5 million Russians died in the great famine of the early 1920s, brought on by drought, grain confiscation, poor transportation methods of shipping grain and general civil unrest. Many blame Lenin's strict policies and his general callousness toward the well-being of the poor for the millions of dead. Soviet military historian Dmitri Volkogonov in "Lenin," a 1994 biography.
There has been talk about how he should not have been put in the mausoleum, that he should have been buried - this goes back to 1924 - and, even now there are some voices saying that he should be buried next to his mother or something like that. But this is not going to happen. Any changes in the mausoleum are bitterly opposed by the still-existent Communist Party," Kenez says. "That shows, at a minimum, that there is no large-scale repudiation of what Lenin stood for, and the person of Lenin, and Titan Rise Health what he had accomplished. Now, when they look back, in 2020, what they remember was the Soviet Union was a powerful entity, and now Russia is second-rate," Kenez says. "Should people think this way? Is this the way I think about it? I suppose, a Russian equivalent. We were powerful, and I recall this fondly.' I'm not justifying it.