Two Bullets for Lenin | toritto

Fanya Kaplan was a poor peasant girl born in Tsarist Russia on February 10, 1890.  She never went to school; what education she received she got at home.  Her four brothers and two sisters lived the same peasant life.

And she soon learned to hate her life and the Tsarist officials who treated them like the Russian dirt beneath their feet.

In her teens she became involved in radical politics, joining the Socialist Revolutionary Party and in 1906 she took part in a plot to kill a Tsarist official in Kiev.

She was arrested by the secret police and sentenced to…

Source: Two Bullets for Lenin | toritto

Lenin’s Wife | toritto

Everyone knows of Lenin.  His body is still on display in the great Kremlin square, once known as Red Square, for those with a bit of ghoulishness in their souls to see.  His name and statues have been taken down everywhere in Russia and just about everywhere else as well.  He has been written out of history kind of like Pharaoh Akhenaten’s name was chiseled off of Egyptian walls.

Yet his body is still there on display.Yes, every one, save perhaps our current crop of high school kids drudging their way through what is euphemistically known as the public educational system, knows something of Lenin.

Few however, outside of left wingers, communists and historians know of Lenin’s wife – or even that he had a wife.

Nadezhda “Nadya” Krupskaya was Lenin’s wife – and Nadya was a revolutionary to the

Source: Lenin’s Wife | toritto

Stalin’s Cult of Personality: Its Origins and Progression

The York Historian

Nikita Khrushchev’s ‘Secret Speech’ given at the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956 denounced Josef Stalin for “[perverting] Party principles” by creating a “cult of the person of Stalin”. Though the term ‘cult of personality’ was coined in the 19^th century, it was popularised in its use as a referral to Josef Stalin’s regime. For me, ‘cult of personality’ means the veneration of one omnipotent, infallible leader – a belief ingrained in society, visually and culturally. Autocratic totalitarianism, enshrined in propaganda. This article will take us through an analysis of how Stalin established and maintained a cult of personality, touching on how successful it was.

Establishing a ‘Cult of Personality’ – the legacy of autocracy

Looking backwards from the rule of Stalin, to Lenin and the Tsarist regime, it is clear that modern Russia had a history of autocratic rule, making it easier for Stalin to establish himself as…

View original post 2,213 more words

Kronstadt and the End of the Revolution

toritto

It was the first weeks of March, 1921 in the new Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Kronstadt was and still is a naval fortress on an island in the Gulf of Finland. It served as headquarters of Russia’s Baltic Fleet during Tsarist times and was built to protect the aproach from the sea to St. Petersburg, some 30 miles away.  In 1921, St. Petersburg was called Petrograd, later to be changed to Leningrad and then back to St. Petersburg.

The Kronstadt sailors had been in the vanguard of the revolutionary events of 1905 and 1917. In 1917, the sailors again joined revolutionary forces and fired upon the Winter Palace from battleships at sea. Trotsky called them the “pride and glory of the Russian Revolution.” The inhabitants of Kronstadt had been early supporters and practitioners of soviet power, forming a free commune in 1917 which was relatively independent of the…

View original post 1,119 more words

Barry Sheppard: Recovering the revolutionary legacy of Malcolm X

Dancing in the Eye of the Storm

toritto

Originally posted several years ago

Alexander Ulyanov  – executed by Tsar Alexander III in 1887

Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by an organization known as The People’s Will. Instead of hoped for reforms his successor Alexander III imposed repression and executions,

On the sixth anniversary of the assassination, March 1, 1887 radical students attempted to kill Alexander III. They failed.

Five of the conspirators were caught and hanged. One of them was Alexander Ulyanov. He was 21 years old. His mother begged for the Tsar’s mercy. Alexander would not beg. His younger brother, 17 year old Vladimir understood his older brother,

Vladimir was being educated at the Simbirsk Gymnasium where the head master was F. I. Kerensky. Vladimir hated the Head Master’s royalist politics. His son, Alexander Kerensky would be head of the Provisional government upon the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II.

Vladimir Ulyanov would also take part…

View original post 1,070 more words