Word: lenin
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...Lenin is always alive...
Resigned Ministers. When his first coup against the Kerensky government failed, Lenin told Trotsky: "Now they will shoot us. This is the best time for it." But the government dithered, and by the time it issued an order for his arrest he was hiding in a haystack. Three months later, a second coup succeeded when the Bolsheviks stormed the Czar's Winter Palace, then the seat of the provisional government, and forced Kerensky's ministers to resign at gunpoint...
Meanwhile elections had been held for the Constituent Assembly-the only democratic vote in Russian history-which clearly rejected the Bolsheviks in favor of the liberals. Lenin simply sent troops to disperse the assembly. Thereafter the "Little Robespierre," as Trotsky called him, launched his own Terror. The Czar and his family were executed, and Lenin systematically began the liquidation of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Comrade Zinoviev cried triumphantly: "The capitalists killed separate individuals. But we kill whole classes." The Cheka (secret police) was organized. Sometimes, mistakes were made, but from Lenin's point of view they were just...
...Every Happy Day. Not even Communist historians are sure how Lenin's regime managed to survive the invasion by allied armies from all sides, the civil war, the total economic chaos resulting from Lenin's belief that "any cook can run a state." He had made literally no plans for governing. He told his Bolshevik high command, "Try to nationalize the banks, and then see what to do next. We'll learn from experience...
...sailors of Kronstadt, who had helped to bring about the revolution and to dissolve the Constituent Assembly, rose against the Lenin regime, crying: "Enough shooting of our brothers!" Lenin crushed the revolt. By conservative estimate, 5,000,000 died in the first few years of his rule. But Lenin realized that the time had come for changes. Politically, the regime stayed as dictatorial as before, but he instituted the New Economic Policy, a right turn toward partial capitalism that gave groaning Russia a brief respite. It was to be among Lenin's last official acts...