Misc/Documents/The Rise of Communism - Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius-1757139173355.jpg

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My Summary

Main Ideas, Takeaways & Similarities

Questions

I. What is the problem?
A. How is this problem formulated?
B. Why is this problem important?
C. What is the history of this problem?
D. Which prominent personalities have been interested in this problem?

II. What solutions to the problem are there?
A. What are the conclusions reached?
B. By what argument(s) is the conclusion reached?
C. What facts or assumptions serve as premises?
D. When a prominent personality offers a solution, does he also argue for or against other prominent personalities? Does he raise objections to alternative solutions? Does he consider objections to his own solutions?

III. Evaluation
A. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the alternative formulations to the problem?
B. Has the importance or history of the problem ever been misrepresented?
C. Are the solutions logically related to the premises?
D. Are the facts true? Are the assumptions acceptable? Are the objections answerable?

AI Summary

Highlights

Misc/Documents/The Rise of Communism - Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius-1752300724259.webp

DESCRIPTION

My Summary

Main Ideas, Takeaways & Similarities

Questions

AI Summary

Timeline

Here is a chronological timeline of key events covered in The Rise of Communism – From Marx to Lenin:

Early Foundations of Communism

1818 – Karl Marx is born in Trier, Prussia.
1844 – Marx collaborates with Friedrich Engels; they begin writing together.
1848 – The Communist Manifesto is published by Marx and Engels, calling for proletarian revolution.
1848 – European revolutions erupt; Marx is expelled from several countries.

Marx’s Intellectual Development and Death

1850s–60s – Marx develops his critique of capitalism in Das Kapital (Vol. 1 published in 1867).
1864 – First International (International Workingmen’s Association) is founded; Marx plays a central role.
1871 – The Paris Commune, a short-lived socialist government in France, becomes a pivotal moment for Marxist analysis.
1883 – Karl Marx dies in London.

Engels and the Second International

1889 – Second International is formed to carry on Marx’s legacy; Engels is influential in shaping its direction.
1895 – Engels dies, having edited and published later volumes of Das Kapital.

Rise of Russian Marxism

1890s – Marxism begins to spread in Russia; social and labor unrest grows under Tsarist rule.
1898 – Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) is founded to promote Marxist revolution in Russia.

Lenin’s Emergence

1902 – Lenin publishes What Is to Be Done?, advocating for a tightly organized revolutionary party.
1903 – RSDLP splits into:
- Bolsheviks (led by Lenin – advocated for a professional vanguard party)
- Mensheviks (advocated for a broader, more democratic movement)

Revolutionary Turmoil and World War

1905 – First Russian Revolution; leads to the creation of the Duma (parliament), but Tsar retains power.
1914 – World War I begins; socialist parties across Europe fracture on whether to support the war.
1917 (February/March) – First Russian Revolution of 1917; Tsar Nicholas II abdicates; a provisional government is formed.

Bolshevik Revolution

1917 (April) – Lenin returns to Russia from exile with the help of Germany (sealed train); publishes April Theses.
1917 (October/November) – Bolshevik Revolution (October Revolution); Lenin and Bolsheviks seize power from the provisional government.

Post-Revolution

1918 – Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Bolshevik Russia exits WWI by ceding vast territories to Germany.
1918–1921 – Russian Civil War between Bolsheviks (Reds) and anti-Bolshevik forces (Whites).
1922 – Founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
1924 – Lenin dies; Stalin begins consolidating power.

This timeline encapsulates the evolution from early communist theory under Marx to the practical realization of a Marxist state under Lenin. If you’d like a visual timeline or expansion on any specific event, just let me know.

Highlights

By the time of Marx’s death in 1883, a growing socialist movement was mobilized to carry his ideas forward, but it did so in an atmosphere of factional infighting, even as it pledged international solidarity. World War I shattered that socialist unity of purpose, and it brought to center stage previously unknown Russian revolutionaries. (Page 7)

If Marxists saw the backward Russian Empire as lagging in progress and an unlikely place for a modern industrial workers’ revolution, why was it that communism triumphed there first? (Page 7)

Russian revolutionaries fused homegrown traditions of rebellion against harsh tsarist rule with foreign ideological elements into a potent mix. (Page 7)

new state committed to the overthrow of all world governments. (Page 8)

The Locomotive of History Lecture 1 (Page 10)

Shortly after World War II, when communist regimes were at their peak, it is estimated that regimes espousing Marxism ruled over a third of the world. (Page 10)

abolition of private property and a market seeking profit with a new system of collective control of the means of production and resources. (Page 11)

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” (Page 11)

The meanings and association have shifted, but originally, communism was meant to signify a higher or full form of socialism. There were key moments when communists and socialists argued and clashed. (Page 11)

communist regimes revealed internal contradictions, which stressed their systems. When it comes to communism, five contradictions in particular are notable. (Page 11)

first has to do with the role of the individual in history. (Page 12)

second contradiction involved geography. (Page 12)

communism’s greatest influence came in less developed countries, beginning with Lenin’s rise to power in Russia. (Page 12)

third problem was that communism never entirely settled its relationship to nationalism. (Page 12)

Marx deplored nationalism; however, communist regimes tried to co‑opt nationalist sentiment to use it to reinforce their power. This saw mixed and sometimes contradictory results. (Page 12)

fourth contradiction was the way in which the communist project turned into a tradition, even when it promised radical breaks with the past. (Page 12)

fifth contradiction appeared that had everything to do with commitment to communism as a faith. While it promised scientific certainty and discarded religious dogma (Page 12)

Marx and Engels: An Intellectual Partnership Lecture 2 (Page 13)

French Political Revolution (Page 14)

Beginning in 1789, the French Revolution ushered in the era of ideological mass politics, which we are still in today. That revolution, its radicalism radiating out from Paris, haunted socialist and communist thinkers. It seemed both a model for how to make revolution and a cautionary tale. (Page 14)

First, revolutionaries sought to break with feudal privileges. Then, radicals deposed the king and executed him. (Page 14)

Reign of Terror from 1793–1794, tens of thousands were killed. (Page 14)

The Industrial Revolution in Britain (Page 15)

The world was being visibly and dramatically changed by science and technology. This made Marx and Engels eager for a theory that would describe human society as it changed and predict where the future was headed. (Page 15)

Industrialization also changed the social order. The aristocracy and peasants were still around, but they seemed less important. The new middle class, the bourgeoisie, arose in the cities and towns. In the cities, there also arose an industrial working class. At the extreme edge of survival lived a class of miserable poor and unemployed, denounced as dangerous or criminal classes. (Page 15)

German Philosophical Revolution (Page 16)

Especially huge was the impact of the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who proposed history with a direction and transcendent meaning. (Page 16)

Hegel’s scheme, a dialectical process (that is, a dynamic series of clashes) moves history forward. (Page 16)

Marx and Engels (Page 16)

Two thinkers addressed all of these elements: political revolution, industrialization, and philosophical transformation. (Page 16)

Marx’s future partner, Friedrich Engels, was a total contrast. (Page 17)

father was a fundamentalist Christian. (Page 17)

The Ideas of Marx and Engels (Page 17)

dialectical materialism. (Page 17)

science of revolution (Page 17)

scientific socialism (Page 17)

historical (or dialectical) materialism, seeing human reality as economic at its base. Ideas were merely superstructure built on top of the base, and ideas reflected economic interests, even if people were unaware of this. Thus, there could be no just law as such, but only a legal system protecting the interests of the ruling class. Art, morality, and ideas were the same. (Page 18)

Individuals, by contrast, played a lesser role. However, Marx and Engels worked in a disclaimer. With themselves in mind, they stated that certain exceptional individuals could rise above their class origins to survey and influence the historical process as a whole. (Page 18)

capitalism. A new working class (the proletariat) confronted the owning class (the bourgeoisie). The term proletarian Marx used is derived from the classical Latin term proles—that is, “offspring.” In ancient Rome, those who did not own property were listed in censuses as having only offspring, proles, so they were proletarians. In Marx’s usage, proletarians had nothing to sell but their labor, and thus they were the lowest class in society. (Page 18)

The bourgeoisie became smaller, with once‑prosperous people dropping down into the proletariat. Over time, inevitably, the proletariat’s growing misery would drive it to revolution. (Page 18)

lumpenproletariat (Page 18)

ragged poor, unemployed, criminals, bohemians, and dropouts. (Page 18)

they called for working men across the globe to unite. (Page 19)

The state was to wither away, leaving a classless society free of private property, in which equal individuals would find fulfillment in work. The transition stage, as perfection approached, would be socialism, which then would give way to full, perfect communism. (Page 19)

The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital Lecture 3 (Page 20)

It came out a few months before the outbreak of great revolutions of 1848 throughout most of Europe. (Page 21)

The 1848 revolutionaries were liberals and nationalists seeking to overthrow old monarchies to establish new republics, constitutions, and national unification. First, revolt flared in France. That spread to Austria, Hungary, and Italy. (Page 21)

There was no revolt in Britain or in Russia. Britain was too liberal already, while Russia was the opposite: so conservative under the tsar that revolt was crushed immediately. (Page 21)

The revolutions began in February 1848, when the French government banned banquets held by reformers as a form of indirect protest. Parisians went to the barricades, and the monarchy crumbled. King Louis Philippe I fled to Britain. A second French republic was declared, mirroring the declaration of the first republic in 1792 following the French Revolution. (Page 21)

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte—the nephew of the general—was elected president in December 1848 because of his name recognition. When his term was about to end and he could not be reelected, he seized power on December 1, 1851. The following year, he declared himself the emperor Napoleon III. (Page 21)

The Communist Manifesto was mostly unknown at the time of the revolutions. Only in retrospect did it acquire immense significance. The pamphlet had been written for a small group of radical tailors and shoemakers in London. Several hundred copies were printed before the revolutions broke out. One historian estimates that at the time of the revolutions, only one in 100,000 revolutionaries read The Communist Manifesto. (Page 22)

In August 1849, Marx moved to London. Many other political exiles also were to be found in this liberal state. He would live in London until his death in 1883 (and indeed is buried there). For 34 years, Marx worked in the library of the British Museum, scribbling away at his desk. (Page 22)

The aim of historical evolution was the progressive liberation of human beings. This was to be a collective liberty—not the individual liberty championed by classical liberals, which Marx saw as selfish. (Page 23)

Industrialization as a means of production depended on a complicated division of labor, subdividing tasks and work. In the process, this alienated the worker. (Page 23)

During his life in exile, Marx and his family had a series of bad rented apartments around London. They lived in precarious circumstances. The children had to learn to lie about their father’s whereabouts when debt collectors came around. Several children of the family died in their penurious conditions: Of seven, only three survived to adulthood. (Page 24)

Marx only once actively sought a job, but he was turned down because of his terrible handwriting. He did do some journalism for an American newspaper in New York. In many cases, Engels would write the articles, which appeared under Marx’s name. When the first volume of Das Kapital appeared, Engels wrote reviews praising it, without revealing that he was the author’s intellectual partner. (Page 24)

Marx and Engels, as educated Germans, saw Slavic peoples as less civilized. Smaller nations would have to fuse with larger ones in the interest of progress. War with Russia would be progressive. (Page 25)

Engels wrote statements that were derisive of the Slavs. The historian A. J. P. Taylor states of Engels, “His views on the Slavs were indistinguishable from those of Hitler.” Later, statements deriding the Slavs were edited out by the Soviets—they would not have looked good. (Page 25)

Even greater was Marx’s excitement in 1871, when it seemed that the end of the established order was at hand. Paris went up in flames yet again, with the Paris Commune. It was also an event, mistakenly attributed to Marx, that would make him one of the most feared and hated men in the world. (Page 26)

The 1871 Paris Commune as a Model of Revolt (Page 27)

Marx and his foes both incorrectly saw the revolt as proof of Marx’s influence. (Page 27)

The reckless foreign policy of Napoleon III led to his downfall. (Page 28)

French armies surrendered in October, and the provisional government surrendered on January 28, 1871. Armistice negotiations began, and the Germans under Prussian leadership forced upon France a hard peace, demanding a huge indemnity (reparations), all of Alsace, and a third of Lorraine. (Page 28)

The commune supporters were called Communards, but they came in many different varieties. They included neo‑Jacobins, who looked back to the original French Revolution with hopes of reenacting it. (Page 30)

Some 20,000 Parisians were killed in the suppression of the commune. Some of the dead were rebels, and some were not. About 750 government troops were killed. After the suppression of the commune, the government had about 38,000 survivors arrested. It deported more than 7,000. (Page 31)

In 1870, Karl Marx was living obscurely in his London exile. However, after the commune, which he was blamed for, he became famous and notorious overnight. (Page 31)

Once the commune was declared, Marx was electrified and supported it from a distance. (Page 31)

In it, Marx hailed the commune as the greatest moment in history so far. He claimed that the commune was a sign of his predictions coming to pass. The working class had showed it understood it needed to seize governmental power. (Page 31)

represented “a magic formula for freedom.” (Page 31)

turned into a distinct legend, which diverged from reality and then became part of revolutionary theory. (Page 32)

In the historic year of 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, Vladimir Lenin was breathlessly determined to outlast the days of the Paris Commune. The Bolsheviks treasured relics of the Paris Commune. (Page 32)

When Engels died in 1895, he willed his considerable fortune to Marx’s two surviving daughters. They did not have a happy fate: Both daughters died by suicide. (Page 33)

Marxism after Marx Lecture 5 (Page 34)

“The period of the Second International (1889–1914) may be called without exaggeration the golden age of Marxism.” (Page 35)

Middle‑class people and conservative elites assumed, incorrectly, that there was a causal tie between The Communist Manifesto and the commune. (Page 35)

Germany would lead this new wave of industrialization. The second wave was based on new advanced technologies, the production of steel, chemicals, electricity, and the combustion engine. In this period up to World War I, Europe saw a 260 percent increase in industrial production. (Page 35)

This period saw the rise of new social groupings: office workers, technical experts, and a growing middle class. In addition, capitalist societies demonstrated the capacity for reform and improvement of living conditions. For instance, Britain’s Factories Act of 1847 limited how long women and teenagers could work in textile factories. (Page 36)

Unions and trade organizations sought improvements now for their members on the factory floor or in workshops, while socialist thinkers and leaders kept their vision on the long‑term goal of revolutionary transformation. (Page 36)

After the death of Marx, and with the blessing of Engels, these parties united in the Second International, also known as the Socialist International, which was established in 1889—the 100‑year anniversary of the outbreak of the French Revolution. The parties represented in the Second International were committed to meeting in periodic congresses and avowing their solidarity across borders. (Page 36)

The most impressive of the national parties was the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which originated in 1875. (Page 36)

As for Britain, even though Marx had settled in exile there, his ideas never gained strong adherence. By contrast, British socialism was heavily influenced by Fabianism. The Fabian Society in Britain, founded in 1884, emphasized gradualism, methodical preparation for social reform, and coordination and waiting—not revolt. (Page 38)

America, too, diverged from general European patterns, without a mass socialist movement. (Page 38)

This event led to what has been called the first Red Scare in America, from 1886 to 1887. Anarchists and socialists were lumped together in the common perception. They were seen as foreign, exotic, and dangerous. (Page 39)

This was a debate over revisionism—that is, whether Marx’s outlines of thought needed to be revised, updated, and corrected in view of changes in the present. (Page 39)

In his writings, he denied that general crisis and world revolution were near, and he pointed out that Marx’s expectations on the inevitable concentration of capital and pauperization of society were not coming true. Economic crises were getting less frequent, not more common. (Page 39)

Bernstein proposed that incremental reforms could actually over time turn the capitalist system into a more socialistic one, even in cooperation with bourgeois parties. This could be advanced through parliamentary reform. In his view, the answer lay in constant reform, not in violent overthrow. Bernstein’s ideas were furiously rejected by Karl Kautsky and other theorists in an ideological showdown. (Page 39)

On the face of it, those condemning revisionism or evolutionary socialism won, formally. At a congress in Dresden, the Social Democratic Party of Germany condemned revisionism. At the Amsterdam congress of the Second International, the majority voted against revisionism. In spite of this, Bernstein and like‑minded comrades remained in the party. Its leadership did not want to provoke a rift. In practice, while talking revolution, the Social Democratic Party of Germany often practiced revisionism while rejecting the label. (Page 40)

Revolutionary Russias Lecture 6 (Page 42)

feudal assembly of a vastly diverse population of 164 million, divided into some 200 ethnic groups large and small, with ethnic Russians less than half the overall population. Far from being industrialized, the Russian Empire was about 80 percent rural, and Russian agriculture was primitive. (Page 43)

Economic and population pressures steadily grew in the countryside, as evidenced by the dreadful famine of 1891–1892. Bad weather led to failed harvests and mass hunger. The government’s response was ineffective and halting. Industrialization and the growth of a middle class were only in their beginnings in Russia, in new factories concentrated in some urban centers like St. Petersburg, Moscow, or Warsaw. (Page 43)

Russia’s political system also was reactionary and authoritarian. The Romanov dynasty of tsars had ruled for three centuries and thought of themselves as ruling by divine right, a concept that was by now archaic in Western Europe. (Page 43)

Russia was marked by poverty, underdevelopment, and repression. This was a combustible mix. Periodically, the government tolerated or encouraged discrimination and violence against the empire’s large Jewish minority, as a cynical safety valve of sorts. (Page 44)

intelligentsia (Page 44)

university enrollments skyrocketed (Page 44)

Their deep sense of duty and obligation to society often led the intelligentsia into opposition with the autocratic regime, as during the famine of 1891. Would‑be reformers, frustrated at slow results and persecuted by the heavy‑handed and uncompromising state, often turned into revolutionaries and terrorists. (Page 44)

Long before Vladimir Lenin came on the stage, there was an indigenous revolutionary tradition in Russia. (Page 44)

In Russia in the 1860s, middle‑class students and intellectuals were attracted by the message of populism or narodnichestvo. (Page 44)

nihilists (Page 45)

In 1869, he crafted the infamous manifesto entitled “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” blending religious devotion with politics. In 26 points of faith, Nechayev outlined what it took to be a professional revolutionary. (Page 45)

In place of rural utopias and the notion that the elemental violence of terrorist acts would reshape society, Marxism arriving in Russia proposed the certainty of regular social development according to the laws of economic progress. With calm determination, Marxists counseled that in Russia, a long process of development and years of industrialization would be needed to bring that country to the point of social democracy. (Page 46)

The figure who did the most to bring Marx’s teachings to Russia was Georgi Plekhanov. Born to minor nobility and later joining the intelligentsia, Plekhanov had at first devoted himself to populist revolutionary activity. To avoid capture, Plekhanov left Russia in 1880 (and would only return in 1917). Settling in Switzerland, he and comrades established the first Russian Marxist group, Liberation of Labor, in 1883, the same year that Marx died. Another member of that group was Vera Zasulich, who corresponded with Marx. (Page 46)

From Western exile, the writings and theories of Plekhanov filtered back to Russia. In his works, Plekhanov insisted that Russia needed to go through two stages. The first stage was to topple the tsar and establish a middle‑class democratic regime, which would develop capitalism in Russia. Then, in the necessary following stage, Marxists would organize the working class to overthrow democratic capitalist Russia to usher in socialism. (Page 46)

In spite of his intellectual prominence, Plekhanov would soon be eclipsed in leadership by a younger man who had followed in his footsteps, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. This man is best known by the revolutionary pseudonym he took in 1901: Lenin. He was a significant part of the answer to the big question of why Marxism took hold in Russia. (Page 47)

At the start of the 20th century, the situation was this: Multiple groups of Russian revolutionaries were dreaming of and planning for different visions of Russian revolution. However, when the Russian Revolution indeed broke out in 1905, it did so unexpectedly, catching the revolutionaries by surprise. While they had been debating, theorizing, and arguing, a crisis had exploded. (Page 47)

The precipitating cause was a series of government‑produced disasters that gripped Russia and demonstrated the callous incompetence of the authorities, chief among them the tsar himself. In 1904, Russia had gone to war against the rising imperialist power of Japan. Russian military planners assumed that their triumph was assured. Instead of a quick Russian victory, Japan sank two Russian fleets. (Page 47)

vital spark came on January 9, 1905. On this Sunday, a loyal and peaceful workers’ demonstration of some 100,000 protestors gathered in St. Petersburg outside the Winter Palace to humbly petition the tsar for reforms. Nervous imperial troops deployed in front of the palace and fired on the crowd. This atrocity came to be known as Bloody Sunday. The people’s traditional trust in the tsar was broken forever. (Page 47)

The entire vast empire of Russia erupted in disorder. Mutinies swept the fleet and the army, and massive strikes wracked the cities. Rural revolts took a brutal turn as peasants sacked manor houses, destroying nearly 3,000 estates. They burned land records and attacked their former landlords. (Page 47)

workers’ councils called soviets were established (Page 48)

central soviet under the Social Democrat Leon Trotsky became ever more influential. (Page 48)

Lenin, who had been absent, arrived back in Russia in November, too late to decisively affect events. However, years later, Lenin would call the 1905 revolution an indispensable “dress rehearsal” for the successful revolution he himself would later seize hold of in 1917. (Page 49)

The Making of Lenin Lecture 7 (Page 50)

man essentially worked himself to death. For Vladimir Ilyich, growing resentment set in against the state structure and traditional authority that had overtaxed his father’s health and brought him to an early grave. The second event was even more searing: the execution of his beloved and admired older brother. (Page 51)

Vladimir’s brother Aleksandr, a student at St. Petersburg, was executed by the government in 1887 as a terrorist. He had been part of a revolutionary group planning to kill Tsar Alexander III. In addition to losing Aleksandr, the family was ostracized socially. (Page 51)

Vladimir rejected traditional religion, denounced liberalism, and turned toward radical, revolutionary politics with remarkable single‑mindedness. (Page 51)

He read Das Kapital and by 1889 was an avowed Marxist. (Page 51)

One moment of Lenin’s deliberate hardness shocked even his fellow revolutionaries. In 1891–1892, famine raged in the Russian Empire, especially in the Volga region, which saw some 400,000 die. Given the fecklessness and slowness of the government response, influential activists and writers like the great novelist Leo Tolstoy organized voluntary relief efforts to bring food, help, and medical aid. Lenin disagreed with this. He said no relief efforts should be mounted. He explained that the famine was no accident or random occurrence, but rather was an absolutely inevitable result of industrialization and the dislocations produced by capitalism. By the laws of history, it had to happen, so that with growing misery on a massive scale, the revolution would be brought closer. (Page 52)

In 1895, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia. (Page 52)

Lenin led his Bolshevik faction, labeling his foes as Mensheviks. These terms reveal how astute he was at factional infighting. The term Bolshevik means “majoritarian.” The term Menshevik means “the minoritarian group.” Despite these names, the Bolshevik group was smaller than the alleged minority, the Mensheviks. (Page 54)

After the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander, the Okhrana, a secret police that had earlier been organized to quell radicalism, now surged into action on an international scale. The organization had a staff of 20,000 and a huge budget. (Page 54)

The Okhrana also undertook psychological warfare operations, including spreading conspiracy theories. In 1903, in Russia, there appeared the notorious text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed a global conspiracy of Jews to take over the world. It has long been suspected that Okhrana agents produced this, scapegoating the Jews, a persecuted minority, to divert dissatisfaction from the Romanovs. (Page 54)

industrial proletariat should ally with the peasantry, who formed the masses of Russia’s population. This would be only a tactical alliance, because the industrial proletariat were the ascendant class. (Page 55)

World War I as a Revolutionary Opportunity Lecture 8 (Page 57)

When World War I did break out in late July and August 1914, the war broke the Second International and destroyed the ideological promise of internationalism. In every major European country (with one exception), socialists discovered that they had competing loyalties. They were not only followers of socialism; they were also patriots who wanted to defend their countries. Only the Russian socialists held firm and followed the prewar plan. (Page 58)

Like Marx, Lenin had always been saying that the revolution was imminent. Now it seemed the war would go on forever, deferring the revolution indefinitely. In this case, Lenin was simply wrong. (Page 60)

One month later, the Russian Empire was gripped by the February Revolution. The news electrified Russian revolutionaries in Swiss exile. Russia’s war effort had put huge strains on its society. Some 12 million men were mobilized. They were poorly equipped, sometimes sent to the front without rifles. (Page 60)

Lenin was impatient to return, but warring countries surrounded neutral Switzerland, so returning to Russia was daunting. Eventually, the German government made Lenin an offer: They promised to ship him to Russia in return for his spreading the message of Russia leaving the war. (Page 61)

Red October: How the Bolsheviks Seized Power Lecture 9 (Page 64)

April 1917, in his sealed train, Lenin returned to Russia to help the Bolsheviks seize power. They did so in October 1917, which they celebrated afterward as the Great October Socialist Revolution, or Red October. The Bolshevik coup was a pivotal event of the century, for communism did much to shape the ideological discourse of the modern age; states and societies were forced to respond to it. (Page 64)

failed attempt at an uprising in July 1917 by the Bolsheviks. (Page 65)

After the failed uprising, Lenin fled to Finland to escape arrest by the Provisional Government. (Page 65)

Lenin returned to Petrograd from Finland, wearing a series of wigs as disguises. By October 1917, Bolsheviks had achieved a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. Motivated by Lenin’s fierce words, they moved to seize power throughout Russia. (Page 65)

The plan was to use the upcoming Second Congress of Soviets as cover, to take power in its name, and to then dominate it from within. The Bolsheviks would not rule in alliance with other parties—rather, they would be a vanguard, justifying a one‑party state. The decision to strike was made. Lenin had returned to Petrograd and moved about awkwardly in hiding, wearing an ill‑fitting wig. (Page 66)

In Moscow, days of fighting erupted, but ultimately the Bolsheviks took control in the Kremlin, the old seat of power. The coup had been timed for the second all‑Russian congress of soviets, the grassroots councils. Lenin announced, “The oppressed masses themselves will form a government. The old state apparatus will be destroyed root and branch.” (Page 66)

At 47, Lenin, who had lived for revolution, was in charge. He saw the need for dictatorship, which he defined as “authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force.” (Page 67)

In December 1917, the Bolsheviks established a new secret police force, the Cheka. Charged with defending the revolution, Cheka officers considered themselves the “sword and the shield of the party.” (Page 67)

Later, Trotsky came to lead the negotiations, and he astonished the Germans by telling them that he would not bargain any more. Instead, his formula was “neither peace nor war,” and then he walked out. After the Germans got over their surprise, German armies simply resumed their advance, and the Bolsheviks had to plead for more negotiations. In other words, Trotsky’s propaganda move for world sympathy failed. (Page 68)

After leaving World War I, Russia saw dissent grow against the Bolsheviks. Many civil wars ensued on many different fronts, and these would rage with great ferocity until 1920. The costs were enormous. Somewhere between 9 and 14 million died in the turmoil, killed or brought down by disease and starvation. Millions more fled as refugees. (Page 69)

The Bolsheviks also faced surly peasants who fought back when government forces came to requisition the food they had grown. The Bolsheviks also confronted foreign intervention, including British, French, Japanese, and American expeditionary forces. Finally, former prisoners of war from the collapsing Austro‑Hungarian army formed their own force, the Czech Legion. When the Czechs clashed with Bolshevik forces, the Czechs seized control of the Trans‑Siberian Railway. (Page 69)

The Bolsheviks saw violence and terror as necessary, legitimate tools of statecraft and a response to resistance. The Cheka started rounding people up into camps. This was the start of the Soviet gulag system that would expand under Stalin. (Page 70)

Rosa Luxemburg: A Revolutionary Martyr Lecture 10 (Page 72)

Polish‑German socialist Rosa Luxemburg. (Page 73)

most famous woman radical in history. (Page 73)

Though her family was not religiously observant, their ethnic origins also set them apart in heavily Christian surroundings. In 1881, there was a wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire after Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Jews were blamed. Rosa never talked about fearing these murderous mobs, but some scholars argue that this was a formative experience for her, which made her identify with victimized people everywhere and reject national belonging as too narrow and exclusive. (Page 73)

she said ugly things about Russian Jews (Page 73)

The Red Bridge to World Revolution Lecture 11 (Page 79)

When World War I ended on November 11, 1918, the Red Army was set on the move. Soviet forces invaded the newly independent Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine, stretching to link up with an expected revolt in Germany. These efforts continued and merged with the ongoing Russian Civil War, a confused series of clashes between Lenin’s Bolsheviks and different sets of opponents. These included Russian monarchists, social revolutionaries, anarchists, peasant partisans, and foreigners: some 200,000 soldiers from Britain, France, Japan, the US, and the Czech Legion. (Page 80)

To spread the message of global revolution, the Bolsheviks sponsored an entire institution tasked with that goal. This was their newly organized Third International, or the Comintern, short for Communist International. The founding congress of the Third International started on March 2, 1919, in Moscow, and the Comintern would be based there. One year earlier, the capital had been moved from Petrograd to the old city of Moscow, set more deeply in Russian territory. (Page 80)

The Comintern united and encouraged new communist parties. Such parties were already being formed in Germany, France, and the US. The Chinese Communist Party was organized in 1921. In Moscow, Sun Yat‑sen University was founded for Chinese youth, with Radek as provost. He described this as equivalent of Christian missionary schools, but for Marxism. (Page 82)

The later Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was a founding member of the French Communist Party, and then he came to Moscow to work in the Comintern. A remarkable Japanese man, Sen Katayama, helped found the Japanese Communist Party in 1922. (Page 82)

A final measure that acknowledged the delay of the worldwide revolution was, paradoxically, the founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The Moscow communists did not give up on worldwide revolution (Page 85)

They would need to rebuild and wait. Instead of presiding over the withering away of the state, they founded a new one. The USSR was founded on December 30, 1922. An unprecedented experiment in politics, it would last 69 years, until 1991. (Page 86)

Toward a New Communist Civilization Lecture 12 (Page 87)

The victor of the civil war, Leon Trotsky, turned to these social questions and wrote the following in his 1924 book Literature and Revolution: “The human species … will once more enter into a state of radical transformation.” (Page 88)

As different visions were articulated for what future society would look like, a large debate opened up about proletarian culture. Karl Marx had not been specific about the culture that would be produced by the victorious proletarian revolution. (Page 88)

The status of women was to be revolutionized, too. Legally, women were given full equal rights with men. The Communist Party instituted a women’s department, the Zhenotdel, to focus on women’s affairs. Divorce, which had been rare and difficult, was now streamlined and made routine. Abortions, which had been illegal, were legalized and became common. However, in spite of promises to create equality for women, the Soviet state and party leaderships remained overwhelmingly male. (Page 89)

Family life was to be revolutionized. Collective kitchens and daycare were instituted. All housing was nationalized. In the cities, apartments were subdivided and assigned to multiple families, with shared kitchens and toilets. (Page 89)

A prominent feature of social change from the very outset was propaganda to create enthusiasm for the state’s plans. Lenin’s so‑called monumental propaganda plan was announced on April 14, 1918. It changed the very appearance of Russia. (Page 90)

The people’s commissar for nationalities was Joseph Stalin, a Bolshevik of non‑Russian origins. He was Georgian, from the southern reaches of the former Russian Empire. His ethnic identity was assumed to give him insights into the national question, but his true interest was in maneuvering to power. In April 1922, Lenin had Stalin made general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. This post gave him control over personnel issues and assignments. (Page 91)

As church and monastery lands were nationalized, some churches were taken over and turned into museums of atheism. Clergy were persecuted and arrested. Even funerary monuments were affected, as tombstones were taken to be used in construction, a vivid symbol of the destruction of the old world. In March 1922, at a time of famine, Lenin engineered a demand that the Orthodox Church give up its ceremonial objects to fund relief, knowing that these were indispensable to ritual. (Page 91)

In a decisive moment, at the 10th party congress in 1921, Lenin pushed through a resolution banning all factions in the party. Bolshevik activists were wracked with anxiety about the growing bureaucratic character of their own movement as it secured power. (Page 92)

Boris Pasternak’s famous novel Doctor Zhivago, written decades later, dealt with this period of upheaval in Russian history and traced the disillusionment of many. The Bolshevik activist Angelica Balabanov also turned against her own movement, seeing its violence. In her biography, My Life as a Rebel, she declared that the tragedy began “when terror became a habit rather than an act of self‑defense.” She, too, left Russia. (Page 92)