The Philosophy of Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin's political personality
In 1907, Vladimir Lenin moved to Finland for security reasons and later moved to Switzerland. He continued to travel throughout Europe and participated in socialist meetings and activities. In 1912, he attended the Prague Party Conference and the Zimmerwald Conference. After his return to Russia, Lenin began writing articles and books about the Russian Revolution.While the public may remember him for his political career, Lenin was also an avid outdoorsman. He enjoyed fishing, hunting, and shooting. He was able to identify hundreds of plants, and kept nature notebooks. His letters to his family also reveal a more personal side of Lenin.The strains of the revolution affected Lenin's physical health. He was shot in the neck in an assassination attempt, but the bullet struck too close to the spine for medical personnel to remove it. In May 1922, Lenin suffered his first stroke. His first stroke left him partially paralyzed on his right side. The second stroke occurred a year later, and he resigned from active politics. In March 1923, he suffered his third stroke. He died the next year, bedridden and no longer able to speak.His radical activities
Vladimir Lenin's radical activities began in his early twenties. Born into a family of modest means in 1870, he was the son of a member of the tsarist civil service. The young Lenin used several aliases, including Lenin, which became his official name in 1900. While Lenin enjoyed an idyllic childhood, the murder of his elder brother pushed him to radicalism.Lenin was also an avid reader of radical political literature. He read a novel called What is to Be Done? by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. This book, written in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, made Lenin very radical and he would later use it as a guide to his political life.By 1903, Lenin had become a leading figure in the socialist contingency in Russia. He advocated violent action against the ruling classes in order to establish a communist society. Although he broke with traditional Marxist thinking, Lenin's radical ideas proved to be revolutionary and successful.His assassination attempts
A 28-year-old anarchist named Fanny Kaplan was accused of plotting to assassinate Vladimir Lenin. Kaplan had fired three shots at the Communist leader, and one of them missed Lenin's face while another went into his left shoulder and neck. The attempt was foiled, and the Communist party was able to consolidate its power.The second of the two plots, involving the SR, failed. In the early part of the 20th century, the SR was in turmoil. Lenin's popularity was eroding, and there was a sour mood in the government. But this wasn't to last long. The Bolshevik government decided to conduct an open political trial, and two of the SR leaders testified in the trial.Stalin faced as many as four assassination attempts, including one that ended in his death. However, the NKVD decided to cover up the evidence, fearing that the NKVD would be a martyr for anti-communist groups. Lenin's assassins also targeted him, but he survived. In November of 1918, the Provisional Government of Russia was deposed and soviet rule was proclaimed.His philosophy
Lenin's philosophy is essentially one of dialectics, with one exception. Hegel's Logic is an early work on dialectics, which Lenin claimed to have embraced. Although Hegel and Marx criticized each other, their ideas were quite similar. Both authors believed that dialectics was necessary for the development of capitalism and their philosophy of politics reflects this. Nevertheless, some differences are discernible.Lenin was a strong supporter of Kautsky before the Russian Revolution, and he also drew his philosophical line from Plekhanov. However, Plekhanov, an influential Russian philosopher who helped establish Russian 'Marxism' in the 1880s, rejected Mikhailovsky's subjectivism and the belief that capitalism was necessary for the development of socialism. Lenin's philosophy was incompatible with the philosophy of Kautsky and Mikhailovsky, whose ideas were more 'progressive' than Lenin's.In the fall of 1914, Lenin began studying Hegel's Science of Logic. He spent three months studying it, and his notes became more detailed as he continued to read. He also studied Aristotle's Metaphysics and the Philosophy of History.