When Communism Woke Up

Prelude

The shadows of the nighttime stalk me as I walk into the Imperial Palace of the Romanovs and can almost see them walking through the halls.  You can feel their presence in the rooms and paintings.  I can hear their voices, the children laughing, and Nicholas whispering to himself in his study.  The palace is alive with color and I am taken back in time to when the Romanov family was still alive.  While outside the palace walls the stage was being set for the rise of something appealing on the surface, but one could sense the dangerous and hidden ideas beneath its crimson skin……..Communism.

In its pure form, Communism is a form of socialism.  It is based on the ideas developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, in a document called the Communist Manifesto.  Communism as described by Marx and Engel  is  the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the rewards of labor are shared with all members of society.  

The ideas behind communism were appealing to the starving and poor people of Russia.  They were ready to be lead out of poverty and famine into something better.

The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 launched the spread of communism.  The Revolution was the beginning of a dramatic play, with the world as communism’s center stage.   This play had several tragic acts; including communism’s spread upon modern civilization, the wars that it caused, and the paralyzing fear it cast.

Act 1

World War I had been taking a toll on the people of Russia.    Nicholas II did little to dispel hostility to his government; the war went from bad to worse.  Land was left untilled, the cities went hungry.  The railway system threatened to collapse, towns were swamped with new workers who could not be adequately paid or housed.  In February 1917 there were strikes and demonstrations in Petrograd, the army withdrew support, and the parliament called for a new order.  In the face of the revolution Nicholas II gave up the thrown.

The country was widespread with famine and economic depression and the people were ready to be led into something better.  The ideas behind communism were appealing to them.  Vladimir Lenin, a known Tsarist enemy and socialist, returned from Germany to take power of the Bolsheviks.  With powerful slogans like 'Peace, land and bread', Vladimir Lenin began to win the hearts of the Russians. Led by Lenin, the Bolsheviks stormed the government building on October 25, 1917 and seized power and established an emergency dictatorship.    This started a civil war that lasted between the Bolsheviks (the Reds) and the Nationalists (the Whites) Russian armies, which were really foreign forces sent to crush the revolution. This is what the peasant leader Maxim Gorky thought of Lenin and of the situation at hand with Russia, “The working man must know that there really are no miracles, and that he will have to confront hunger, complete disorganization of industry, prolonged and bloody anarchy followed by reaction no less sanguinary and dark. That is where the proletariat is being led… one must understand that Lenin is not an all-powerful magician, but a deliberate juggler, who has no feeling of the lives or the honor of the proletariat.”1 (Maxim Gorky 1917, The Complete History of the World p 282)  In March of 1918, unable to continue involvement in World War 1, the new Russian government signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany and pulled out of the war. A civil war broke out over the next several years. Lenin and the Bolshevik power extended only over the heartland of Russia, but the Bolsheviks defeated one enemy after another and the war was over by 1920. The Bolsheviks had won the battle and in 1922 the Soviet Union was formed.  It included Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, along with the Transcaucasia Republics, which included Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.  The Soviet Union was a socialist country that was led by Joseph Stalin and covered a large part of northern Asia and Europe.2 (The Complete History of the World pg. 282)

Act 2

In 1923 Vladimir Lenin died, but his general secretary, Joseph Stalin, was there to take his place. Under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin communism had its first foothold of the 20th Century. Stalin was intent on creating an industrial power, and ordered most of the crops to be sold for export.  When millions on the verge of starvation resisted, he had them killed or sent to Siberian exile, a fate that more often than not was a death sentence.  Through propaganda, terror, the army, and a secret police force, Stalin would bring Russia greatness, and bring communism to the world.