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Communist International

Communist International

The Comintern (from Russian Коммунистический Интернационал (Kommunisticheskiy Internatsional) – Communist International), also known as the Third International, was an "independent" international Communist organization founded in March 1919 by Lenin, Trotsky and the Russian Communist Party (bolshevik), which intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State." The Comintern represented a split from the Second International in response to the latter's failure to form a unified coalition against the First World War, which the Third Internationalists regarded as a bourgeois imperialist war. The Comintern held seven World Congresses, the first in March 1919 and the last in 1935, until it was "officially" dissolved in 1943. Groups coming from the tradition of Left Communism today recognise only the first two congresses, and groups coming out of the Trotskyist movement recognize the decisions of the first four only. Communist Parties of the Stalinist or Maoist persuasion recognize all seven congresses.

Origins of the Communist International

The origins of the Communist International are to be found in the split in the workers' movement that surfaced in 1914 with the beginning of the First World War, although divisions between revolutionary and reformist minded elements had been developing for some considerable time. For example, as far back as 1899, reformist or right wing elements in the socialist movement had supported the entry of French socialist Millerand into the government of the day. On the other hand, revolutionary or left wing elements were fiercely opposed to this development. Also of importance was the literary controversy over the publication of Eduard Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism, which espoused a reformist path to socialism and received powerful criticism from, among others, Karl Kautsky and the young Rosa Luxemburg. The Russian Revolution of 1905 had the effect of radicalising many socialist parties, as did a number of General Strikes in pursuit of universal suffrage in Western European countries. At this point the Second or Socialist International appeared to be a united body that was growing at every election and in every advanced country. Karl Kautsky, aptly dubbed the Pope of Marxism, was at his most radical as the editor of the highly influential Die Neue Zeit (New Times), the theoretical journal of the massive Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) which was the flagship of the International. However, by 1910, divisions were appearing in the left of Social Democracy (as the Marxists who dominated the International described themselves), and left-wing thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Dutch theoretician Anton Pannekoek were becoming ever more critical of Kautsky. From this point onwards then it is possible to speak of there being a reformist right, a centre and a revolutionary left within the International. Interestingly, from the point of view of later events, both the Menshevik and Bolshevik wings of the Russian Social Democracy were counted amongst the revolutionary left wing. The quarreling groups of emigres were not held in high regard by the leaders of the International and were unknown to the general public. World War I was to prove the issue which finally and irrevocably separated the revolutionary and reformist wings of the workers movement. Despite massive majorities voting in favor of resolutions that stated the Socialist International would call upon the international working class to resist war should it be declared, within hours of the declaration of war almost all the socialist parties of the combatant states had announced their support for their own countries - the only exceptions being the socialist parties of the Balkans, Russia and tiny minorities in other countries. The socialist parties of the neutral countries for the most part continued to argue for neutrality and against total opposition to the war. As before the war, the divisions within the socialist movement were between a revolutionary left, a reformist right and a centre which wavered between the two opposite poles. Amongst the most vociferous opponents of the war was Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik faction of Russian socialists who, observing the collapse of the Socialist International, declared that a new Third International had now to be constructed to take its place. It was Lenin who condemned reformist socialists as Social-Chauvinists (socialist in their words but chauvinist in their deeds) as well as much of the centre, which often opposed the war but refused to break party discipline and therefore voted war credits, as social-pacifists. This latter term was aimed in particular at Ramsay MacDonald (leader of the Independent Labour Party in Britain) who did in fact oppose the war on grounds of pacifism but did nothing to resist it. Following Lenin's advice, the Russian Bolsheviks, who adopted the name "Communists", officially split from the Socialist International and founded the Third International - the Comintern. A central policy of the Comintern was that Communist parties should be established across the world to aid the international proletarian revolution. They also shared the idea of democratic centralism, which essentially boils down to the principle that all revolutions must be based on "grass roots" efforts, but Comintern could intervene as neccessary. The Comintern Electronic Archives cites the organization as "The General Staff of the world revolution". [http://www.comintern-online.com/Files%20of%20the%20Communist%20Party%20of%20the%20USA.html] The following parties and movements were invited to the First Congress of the Communist International:
- Spartacus League (Germany)
- The Communist Party (Bolshevik) Russia
- The Communist Party of German Austria
- The Hungarian Communist Workers' Party
- The Finnish CP
- The Polish Communist Workers' Party
- The Communist Party of Estonia
- The Latvian CP
- The Lithuanian CP
- The Belarusian CP
- The Ukrainian CP
- The revolutionary elements of the Czech social democracy
- The Bulgarian Social-Democratic Party (Tesnjaki)
- The Romanian SDP
- The Left-wing of the Serbian SDP
- The Social Democratic Left Party of Sweden
- The Norwegian Labour Party
- For Denmark, the Klassenkampen group
- The Communist Party of Holland
- The revolutionary elements of the Belgian Workers Party
- The groups and organisations within the French socialist and syndicalist movements
- The social-democratic Left of Switzerland
- the Italian Socialist Party
- The revolutionary elements of the Spanish SP
- The revolutionary elements of the Portuguese SP
- The British socialist parties (particularly the current represented by MacLean)
- The Socialist Labour Party (Britain)
- Industrial Workers of the World (Britain)
- The revolutionary elements of the workers' organisations of Ireland
- The revolutionary elements among the shop stewards (Britain)
- The Socialist Labor Party of the United States
- The Left elements of the Socialist Party of America (the tendency represented by Debs and the League for Socialist Propaganda)
- IWW (United States)
- IWW (Australia)
- Workers' International Industrial Union (America)
- The Socialist groups of Tokyo and Yokohama (Japan, represented by Comrade Katayama)
- The Socialist Youth International (represented by Willi Münzenberg) For a party to join the Comintern, it had to accept the Twenty-one Conditions, which were intended to delimit revolutionary communists from the reformist and centrist forces which sought to join the Comintern in the wake of the success of the Russian revolution.

The First Four World Congresses of the Communist International

The first Chairman of the Comintern's Executive Committee was Grigory Zinoviev, from 1919 to 1926 (when he was dismissed after falling out of favor with Stalin, who already held considerable power by this time). Nikolai Bukharin led the Comintern for two years, until 1928, until he too fell out with Stalin. Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov headed the Comintern in 1934 and presided until its dissolution.

From the Fifth to the Seventh World Congress

Several international organizations sponsored by Comintern:
- Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern)
- Red Peasant International (Krestintern)
- International Red Aid (MOPR)
- Communist Youth International
- Red Sports International (Sportintern)

From the Last Congress to Dissolution

The last Congress of the Comintern was held in 1935 and officially endorsed the Popular Front against fascism. This policy argued that Communist Parties should seek to form a Popular Front with all parties that opposed fascism and not limit themselves to forming a United Front with those parties based in the working class. There was no significant opposition to this policy within any of the national sections of the Comintern; in France and Spain in particular, it would have momentous consequences. As the Seventh World Congress officially repudiated the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism as the purpose of the Comintern, Leon Trotsky was led to state that it was the death of the Comintern as a revolutionary International - and therefore a New International needed to be built. Trotsky also argued that the Stalinist parties were now to be considered reformist parties, similar to the social democratic parties (but also playing a role as border guards for the Russian state). As a result, in 1938 the Fourth International was founded in opposition to the Comintern. The communists of the Fourth International believed that the Third International had become thoroughly bureaucratized and Stalinized, and was no longer capable of regenerating itself into a proper revolutionary organization. In particular, they saw the calamitous defeat of the communist movement in Germany (at the hands of the National Socialists) as evidence that the Comintern was effectively irrelevant and fully under Stalin's control. At the start of World War II, the Comintern supported a policy of pacifism and non-intervention, arguing that this was an imperialist war between various national ruling classes, much like World War I had been. However, when the Soviet Union itself was invaded in on 22 June 1941, the Comintern switched its position to one of active support for the Allies. Nevertheless, a document dated 11 July 1941 making a strategic assessment for the United States War Department entitled Military Intelligence Estimes Prepared by G-2 (p. 1341) states "The Comintern through the Soviet Regime is striving for a world revolution in the interests of Communism." [http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha/pt_14/x14-033.html#2] The Comintern was officially dissolved on May 15 1943, by Stalin, who wished to reassure his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill) that the USSR was no longer pursuing a policy of trying to foment revolution.

Alleged Independence

Many critics note that the Comintern was never an independent body as Lenin claimed; it was always a part of the Soviet apparatus with a corresponding use of propaganda and disinformation. The following quote attributed to Lenin seems to support this thesis: :"The so-called cultural element of Western Europe and America are incapable of comprehending the present state of affairs and the actual balance of forces; these elements must be regarded as deaf-mutes and treated accordingly.... :"A revolution never develops along a direct line, by continuous expansion, but from a chain of outbursts and withdrawals, attacks and lulls, during which the revolutionary forces gain strength in preparation for their final victory.... :"We must: :"(a) In order to placate the deaf-mutes, proclaim the fictional separation of our government ... from the Comintern, declaring this agency to be an independent political group. The deaf-mutes will believe it. :"(b) Express a desire for the immediate resumption of diplomatic relations with capitalist countries on the basis of complete non-interference in their internal affairs. Again, the deaf- mutes will believe it. They will even be delighted and fling wide-open their doors through which the emissaries of the Comintern and Party Intelligence agencies will quickly infiltrate into these countries disguised as our diplomatic, cultural, and trade representatives. :"Capitalists the world over and their governments will, in their desire to win Soviet market, shut their eyes to the above-mentioned activities and thus be turned into blind deaf-mutes. They will furnish credits, which will serve as a means of supporting the Communist parties in their countries, and, by supplying us, will rebuild our war industry, which is essential for our future attacks on our suppliers. In other words, they will be laboring to prepare their own suicide." :(Stalin : The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives, 1997, Edvard Radzinsky)(The Lufkin News, King Featurers Syndicate, Inc., 31 July 1962, p. 4, as quoted by the Freeman Report, 30 Sept. 1973, p. 8). [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385479549/qid=1121801615/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-5884355-0924867?v=glance&s=books&n=507846].) :
- Please note that from antiquity (as noted in the Code of Hammurabi) until recent (and less enlightened) times [http://www.legallawterms.com/Law.asp-Term-D], the terms "deaf-mute" and "deaf and dumb" were analagous to "idiot."

After the Comintern

In 1947 the Cominform, or Communist Information Bureau, was created as a substitute of the Comintern. It was a network made up of the Communist parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. It was dissolved in 1956. While the pro-Moscow Communist parties of the world no longer had a formal international organisation, they still looked to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or CPSU, for leadership, and had periodic meetings in Moscow. The most notable of these was in 1962 when the Sino-Soviet split became public for the first time. There was especially close coordination between the CPSU and the Communist Parties of the Warsaw Pact.

See also


- Lenin's speech: The Third, Communist International (Warsaw Pact, )
- Tatlin's Tower
- Anti-Comintern Pact
- List of left-wing internationals
- List of Communist Parties
- List of members of the Comintern
- List of Comintern affiliate organizations
- World Communist Movement
- Spanish Civil War

External links


- [http://www.comintern-online.com/] Comintern Archives (in English)
- [http://www.komintern-online.ru/] Comintern Archives (in Russian) Category:Communism
- Category:Political internationals
- ko:코민테른 ja:コミンテルン

Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish, respectively. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the 20th century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations. NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in IPA.

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in form to the modern Bulgarian language than to Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.

Geographic distribution

Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse throughout the region has continued. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than third of the population is Russian-speaking, consisting mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine). Similarly, in Estonia, the Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants constitute about one quarter of the country's current population. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Mongolia due to Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It is important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union the overwhelming majority were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian was reported as language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it as #10 language in the United States. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment. But many are well-off Russian families acquiring property and getting education. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and also have access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:

Official status

Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine) and the unrecognized Moldovan Republic of Transnistria. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 11% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia.

Dialects

Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. Also cf. Moscow pronunciation of "-чн-", e.g. "булошная" (buloshnaya - bakery) instead of "булочная" (bulochnaya). The northern dialects typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка ), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages


- Fenia or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula.
- Runglish: Russian-English pidgin.

Writing system

Alphabet

Runglish publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced , (conventional transcription, not IPA). For information on an informal approach on transliterating Russian into English, see the article Transliteration of Russian into English.

Orthography

Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

Sounds

The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The 'hard' consonants are sometimes said to be velarized, but this is only the case for /l/.) The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels (except /u/) tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the stucture can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/, /ɡ/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones , only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive. It should be noted that palatalization is a phonological concept, and not all 'soft' consonants are phonetically palatalized. The velar and labial consonants are truly palatalized, which means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. The coronal stops, however, are phonetically laminal. In addition, in the case of /t/ and /d/, the tongue is raised enough to produce frication, thus making affricate-like. (There is no contrast between frication and no frication, though, as /ts/ is never palatalized.) are postalveolar with a flat tongue (laminal retroflex).

Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
  - a polished vernacular foundation;
  - a Church Slavonic inheritance;
  - a Western European style. The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Vocabulary

Western European See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows: Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words. (As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective русский, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be spelled руский with one s, in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s lengthened or doubled.)

The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language) Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань ) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат ).

Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.

History and examples

See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century) See also:
- Examples of literary language (12-20th century) Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic. Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct languages from this period at the latest. The official language remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotrytsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century. The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century. Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.

References

The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:

In English


- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954

In Russian


- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987. Many further references are listed in the books above.

See also

Language description


- Russian alphabet
- Russian grammar
- Russian orthography
- Russian phonetics
- History of Russian language

Related languages


- East Slavic languages
- Church Slavonic language
- Great Russian language
- Old Church Slavonic language
- Old Russian language

Other


- List of Russian language topics
- List of English words of Russian origin
- Russian literature
- Russian humour
- Russian proverbs
- Reforms of Russian orthography
- Transliteration of Russian into English
- Volapuk encoding
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- List of commonly confused homonyms in Russian
- Common phrases in different languages
- Runglish

External links


- [http://www.declan-software.com/russian Russian language learning software]
- [http://www.russianlessons.net/ Online Russian language lessons]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries]
- [http://overstuffed-closet.net/russian The Russian Language Fanlisting]
- [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language]
- [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)]
- [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links]
- [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.]
- [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language]
- [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian]
- [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)]
- [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary]
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text]
- [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian]
- [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses]
- [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category]
- [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA]
- [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish]
- [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/ Multilingual Russian slang dictionaries]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Finland Category:Languages of Russia Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Kazakhstan Category:Languages of Georgia Category:Languages of Armenia Category:Languages of Azerbaijan Category:Languages of Turkmenistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Moldova Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Kyrgyzstan Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of China Category:Languages of Mongolia Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Bulgaria Category:Russian language Category:East Slavic languages ko:러시아어 ms:Bahasa Russia ja:ロシア語 simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย

Lenin

:Lenin redirects here. For other uses, see Lenin (disambiguation) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин ), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) (April 22 (April 10 (O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the main theorist of Leninism, which he described as an adaptation of Marxism to "the age of imperialism". "Lenin" was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms. There are various theories on its origin and he himself is not known to have ever stated exactly why he chose it. It is likely to relate to the River Lena, in parallel to leading Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov who used the pseudonym Volgin, after the Volga River. It has been suggested that Lenin picked the Lena as it is longer and flows in the opposite direction, but Lenin was not opposed to Plekhanov at that time in his life. However, it does most certainly not relate to the Lena execution, because the pseudonym predates this event. He is sometimes referred to as "Nikolai Lenin" by Western anti-Communists and by the reporters of his time. This was his original pseudonym, as shown in this article by John Reed, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1918/soviets.htm] but he was not known as such in the USSR subsequently. Walter Duranty's obituary of Lenin in the New York Times also referred to "Nikolai Lenin."

Early life

John Reed Born in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831 - 1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for increased democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835 - 1916). Like many Russians, he was of mixed ethnic ancestry. In addition to Russian, he also had Kalmyk ancestry through his paternal grandparents, Volga German ancestry through his maternal grandmother, who was a Lutheran, and Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (converted to Christianity). Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) himself was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. Vladimir distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. Two tragedies occurred in his early life: in 1886, his father died of a cerebral haemorrhage. The following year, in May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for participation in a plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. This radicalized Vladimir (his official Soviet biographies have this event as central to Lenin's revolutionary exploits) and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. He continued to study independently and by 1891 had earned a license to practice law. law

Revolutionary

Upon graduation, Lenin took on a job as an assistant to the lawyer. He worked for a couple of years in Samara, Russia, then, in 1893, moved to St. Petersburg. Rather than settle into a legal career, he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and the study of Marxism. He memorably stated that "a lie, told often enough, becomes the truth". On December 7 1895, he was arrested and held by authorities for fourteen months, then exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia. In July 1898, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was a socialist activist. In April 1899, he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/index.htm]. In 1900, his exile ended. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe and published the paper Iskra as well as other tracts and books related to the revolutionary movement. At this period, he started using various aliases, finally settling upon Lenin. He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done? [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm]. In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. He continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Prague Party Conference of 1912 and Zimmerwald Conference of 1915. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile. Inessa Armand likely became Lenin's partner. When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist), including luminaries such as Karl Kautsky, supported their various countries' war efforts, Lenin was shocked, at first refusing to believe, for example, that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the Second International composed of these parties. On April 16, 1917, he returned to Petrograd from Switzerland following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/apr/04.htm]. The April theses called for uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. Initially by this lurch to the left Lenin isolated his party. However, this uncompromising stand meant that the Bolsheviks were the obvious home for the masses as they became disillusioned and with the luxury of opposition they were freed from the responsibility for any consequences from the implementation of their policies (Christopher Read: From Tsar to Soviets pp151-3). After a failed workers' rising in July, Lenin fled to Finland for safety. He returned in October, inspiring an armed revolution with the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!", against the Provisional Government. His ideas of government were expressed in his essay "State and Revolution" [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm], which called for a new form of government based on the worker's councils, or soviets. In this work he also claimed that no special knowledge or talents are required to run factories, and that any person who understands arithmetics could be put in charge and should be paid no more than a salary of an average worker. It has been largely suggested that Lenin had reached Petrograd from Switzerland with the help of the German Empire. Numerous eye witnesses have confirmed that Lenin had been carried in a sealed train on the way, escorted by Germans. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself is thought to have expected Lenin to paralyze the Russian army through revolution and end the war on the Eastern front and he saw him only as a transitory figure that would lose power soon afterwards.

Head of the Soviet state

Eastern front On November 8, Lenin was elected as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress. Faced with the threat of German invasion, Lenin argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty. Other Bolshevik leaders, such as Bukharin, advocated continuing the war as a means of fomenting revolution in Germany. Trotsky, who led the negotiations, advocated an intermediate position, of "No War, No Peace", calling for a peace treaty only on the conditions that no territorial gains on either side be consolidated. After the negotiations collapsed, Germany launched an invasion that resulted in the loss of much of Russia's western territory. As a result of this turn of events, Lenin's position consequently gained the support of the majority in the Bolshevik leadership, and Russia signed the eventual Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under disadvantageous terms (March 1918). Treaty of Brest-Litovsk After the communist party lost the elections for the Russian Constituent Assembly, Lenin became very skeptical about it and used his military guards to close the first session of the Assembly on January 19th. A peaceful demonstration which was organized the next day to protest the dissolution of the Assembly was put down by the machine-gun fire. Later, the Bolsheviks organized a counter-Assembly, the third Congress of Soviets, giving themselves and their allies over 90% of the seats. [http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/his1d.htm]. They formed a coalition government with the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries. However, their coalition collapsed after the Social Revolutionaries opposed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and they joined other parties in seeking to overthrow the government of the soviets. The situation degenerated, with non-Bolshevik parties (including some of the socialist groups) actively seeking the overthrow of the soviet government. Lenin responded by shutting down their activities and jailing or shooting the members of the opposing parties. It is often argued that Lenin countermanded proletarian emancipation and democracy (worker's control through the soviets or workers' councils) and that this paved the road to Stalinism. However Trotsky argued that a "river of blood" separated Lenin from Stalin's actions. The Leninist vision of revolution demanded a professional elite that would both lead the masses in "their" conquest of power and centralize economic and administrative power in the hands of a workers' state. From the spring of 1918, Lenin campaigned for a single individual to be put in charge of each enterprise (contrary to most conceptions of workers' self-managment). As S.A. Smith wrote: "By the end of the civil war, not much was left of the democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees in 1917, but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had passed into the ownership of a worker's state." In reality, no democracy was ever allowed after the bolsheviks took power, and any disagreement with the communist policy by the workers was violently put down. On March 3 1918, Lenin removed Russia from World War I by agreeing to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Under this treaty, Russia lost significant territory in the Ukraine, Finland, Polish and Baltic territories. In August 1918 Lenin insisted on the decision to execute tsar and his whole family, motivating that the royal family would have been a banner for the White Movement. On August 30 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he had spoken at a meeting and was on his way to his car. She called out to Lenin, and when he turned to answer, fired three shots, two of which struck him in the shoulder and lung. Lenin was taken to his private apartment in the Kremlin, and refused to venture to a hospital, believing other assassins would be waiting there. Doctors were summoned, but decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. Lenin eventually recovered, though his health declined from this point, and it is believed that the incident contributed to his later strokes. strokes strokes in 1921]] Communist government responded to the assasination attempt with "Red Terror", when tens of thousands of perceived enemies of the socialist regime were exterminated, or put in the concentration camps. In March, 1919, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement. From that point onwards, they would be known as communists. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the "Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", which eventually became the CPSU. Meanwhile, a civil war raged across Russia. It's official start can be traced to the Lenin's violent dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the soviet government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (monarchists). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Eventually, the Red Army won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920 (although smaller forces remained for several more years). In the later months of 1919, successes against White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which have led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. With revolution in Germany and Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this a perfect time and place to "to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army." Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. However the defeat of Soviet Russia in Polish-Soviet War invalidated these plans. The long years of war and the policy of War communism had taken their toll on Russia, however, and much of the country lay in ruins. After an uprising of the long-time Lenin's allies, the sailors at Kronstadt in March of 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of the War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture.

Premature death

agriculture Lenin's health had already been severely damaged due to the intolerable strains of revolution and war. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. The bullet was still lodged in his neck too close to his spine for medical techniques of the time to remove. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed (on his right side) and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December of the same year, he resigned from active politics. In March 1923 he suffered the third stroke and was left bedridden and no longer able to speak. After his first stroke, Lenin published a number of papers regarding the government. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament, which among other things criticised top-ranking communists such as Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Of Stalin, who had been the Communist Party's general secretary since April 1922, Lenin said that he had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and suggested that "comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". Lenin's wife discovered the paper in Lenin's study, and read it to the central committee. However, because the will criticised all of the most prominent figures in the central committee, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukaharin and of course Trotsky and Stalin, the committee had a vested interest in not releasing the will to the wider public. The central committee justified this by claiming that Lenin had been mentally ill in his final years and, as such, his final judgements were not to be trusted. This proved to be a fatal error, as they disregarded the words of Lenin, who was apparently the only one to recognize the danger of allowing Stalin to take over party control. Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Rumors of Lenin's syphilis sprang up shortly after his death. The official cause given for Lenin's death was cerebral arteriosclerosis, or a stroke (his fourth), but out of the 27 physicians who treated him, only eight signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward. For example, a posthumous diagnosis by two psychiatrists and a neurologist recently published in the European Journal of Neurology claimed to show that Lenin died from syphilis. Documents released after the fall of the U.S.S.R, along with memoirs of Lenin's physicians, suggest that Lenin was treated for syphilis as early as 1895. Documents also suggest that Alexei Abrikosov, the pathologist in charge of the autopsy, was ordered to prove that Lenin did not die of syphilis. Abrikosov did not mention syphilis in the autopsy; however, the blood-vessel damage, the paralysis and other incapacities he cited are typical of syphilis. Upon a second release of the autopsy report, none of the organs, major arteries or brain areas usually affected by syphilis were cited. In 1923, Lenin's doctors treated him with Salvarsan, the only drug at the time specifically used to treat syphilis, and potassium iodide, which was also customary at the time in treating the disease. Although he might have had syphilis, so did a large percentage of Russians at this time. Also, he had no visible lesions on his body that accompany the last stages of the disease. Most historians still agree that the most likely cause of his death was a stroke induced by the bullet still lodged in his neck from the assassination attempt. potassium iodide The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor three days after Lenin's death; this remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg. At his funeral Lenin had his body wrapped in the remains of a red flag preserved from the Paris Commune, an event that he described as an example of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat". During the early 1920s the Russian movement of cosmism was quite popular and there was an intent to cryogenically preserve Lenin's body in order to revive him in the future. Necessary equipment was purchased abroad, but for a variety of reasons the plan was not realised. Instead his body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow on January 27, 1924.

After death

Lenin MausoleumLenin's preserved body is on permanent display in Moscow. Due to Lenin's unique role in creation of the first Communist state, and despite his expressed wish shortly before death that no memorials be created for him, his character was elevated over time to the point of near religious reverence. By the 1980's, every major city in Soviet Union had a statue of Lenin in its central square, either a Lenin street or a Lenin square near the center, and often 20 or more smaller statues and busts throughout its territory. Collective farms, medals, hybrids of wheat, and even asteroids (#852 - Wladilena) were named after him. Children were taught first stories about "granddaddy Lenin" while they were still in kindergarten. Since the fall of Soviet Union, the level of reverence for Lenin in post-Soviet republics has gone down considerably, but he's still considered an important figure by the people who grew up during Soviet period. Many statues of Lenin have been torn down. The city of Leningrad was returned to its original name, St. Petersburg. On the other hand, citizens of Ulyanovsk, Lenin's birthplace, have so far resisted all attempts to revert its name to Simbirsk. The subject of interring Lenin's body has been a recurring topic for the last 15 years in Russia. According to public opinions polls, 40% of Russian citizens prefer to keep Lenin's body in the Mausoleum, whereas 50% favor its interment.

Lenin's brain study

Lenin's brain was removed before his body was embalmed. The Soviet government commissioned the well-known German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt to study Lenin's brain and to locate the precise location of the brain cells that are responsible for genius. The study was performed in Vladimir Bekhterev's Institute of the Brain. Vogt published a paper on the brain in 1929 where he reported that some pyramidal neurons in the third layer of Lenin's cerebral cortex were very large. However the conclusion of its relevance to genius was contested. Vogt's work was considered unsatisfactory by the Soviets. Further research was continued by the Soviet team, but the work on Lenin's brain was no longer advertised. It has been suggested that one of the reasons for this was that evidence for neurosyphilis may have been discovered in the tissues of his brain, which may have contributed to his strokes and possibly even maddness during his life . Contemporary anatomists are no longer convinced that morphology alone can determine the functioning of the brain.

Trivia

Lenin was ranked #84 on Michael H. Hart's list of the most influential figures in history.

See Also


- List of places named after Lenin
- List of statues of Lenin
- Russian Revolution of 1917

Notes

See V. Lerner, Y. Finkelstein and E. Witztum. "The enigma of Lenin's (1870–1924) malady" in European Journal of Neurology, June 2004, available [http://poxblog.typepad.com/poxblog/2004/06/the_enigma_of_l.html online] for a review of the evidence.

Further reading


- Leon Trotsky, Lenin
- Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography
- Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917 by V. I. Lenin, Slavoj Zizek (Editor), Verso Books, ISBN 1859846610
- Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin, ISBN B00005W8VC (This is an Amazon.com number; many other options are available through ABE)
- Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism
- John Gooding, Socialism In Russia: Lenin and His Legacy, 1890-1991
- Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher
- Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography
- Robert Tucker, "The Lenin Anthology" Publications by Socialist Workers Party (UK) from a Leninist perspective:
- Birchall, Ian (2005). A Rebel's Guide to Lenin Bookmarks Publications. ISBN 1905192037.
- Cliff, Tony: Lenin; vol.1, Building the Party (1893-1914); vol.2, All Power to the Soviets (1914-1918); vol.3, Revolution Besieged (1917-1923); Pluto Press (1.edition), Bookmarks Publications(2.edition)

References on repressions during Lenin's regime


- Courtois,Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674076087.
- Kennan, George Frost: Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. Boston (1961) Particularly pp.141-150, 179-185.
- Pipes, Richard (1995) Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Vintage. ISBN 0679761845.
- Pipes, Richard (1991) The Russian Revolution. Vintage. ISBN 0679736603.
- Rummel, R.J. (1996). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers ISBN 1560008873.
- Yakovlev, Alexander (2004). A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300103220.
- Smith, S.A (2002). The Russian Revolution: A Very Short introduction Oxford University Press

External links


- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/index.htm Marxists.org Lenin Internet Archive] - Extensive compendium of writings, a biography, and many photographs
- [http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/index.htm Reminiscences of Lenin by N. K. Krupskaya]
- [http://geocities.com/deweytextsonline/isr.htm Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey]
- [http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=617&pt=Vladimir%20Lenin Information on Lenin's Grave]
- [http://www.tampere.fi/culture/lenin/lenina1.htm The Lenin Museum] in Tampere, Finland

Selected Works


- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/devel/index.htm The Development of Capitalism in Russia]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/index.htm What Is To Be Done?]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1904/onestep/index.htm One Step Forward, Two Steps Back]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/tactics/index.htm Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm Materialism and Empirio-Criticism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/oct/16.htm The Right of Nations to Self-Determination]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/index.htm The State and Revolution]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/oct/10.htm The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/index.htm Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/index.htm Lenin's Testament]
- [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/05.htm Lenin's last letter to Stalin] Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir Lenin, Vladimir ko:블라디미르 레닌 ja:ウラジーミル・レーニン simple:Vladimir Lenin th:วลาดิมีร์ เลนิน

Communist Party of the Soviet Union

:"CPSU" redirects here. For other uses, please see CPSU (disambiguation). The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Russian: Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за = КПСС) was the name used by the successors of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from 1952 to 1991, but the wording Communist Party was present in the party's name since 1918 when the Bolsheviks became the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In 1925 the party became the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Всесоюзная коммунистическая партия (большевиков), ВКП(б)); both VKP(b) and AUCP(b) abbreviations are in use. Finally in 1952 it became simply the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or CPSU. This article follows the course of the party from 1918 until its dissolution in 1991. For information on the pre-1918 party see Bolshevik. Once the Third International or Comintern was formed in 1919, the democratic centralist Marxist-Leninist structure of the CPSU was copied by the other Comintern members resulting in Communist parties being formed around the world. For most of the history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, the Communist Party was virtually indistinguishable from the government, as it was the only political party tolerated by the government and its security forces. Consequently, the history of the USSR and the CPSU are deeply intertwined and overlapping. Therefore, it is useful for those interested in the history of the CPSU to also consult the History of Russia series of articles.

Structure

VKP(b)

In 1919 a Politburo was created initially with five members, to run the party on a day to day basis. Previously, the highest body of the party had been the Central Committee. The first full members of the Politburo were Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Stalin and Krestinsky with Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kalinin as candidate members (ie alternates). Through the 1920s Party Congresses were held almost every year.

CPSU

The governing body of the CPSU was the Party Congress which initially met annually but whose meetings became less frequent, particularly under Stalin. Party Congresses would elect a Central Committee which, in turn, would elect a Politburo. Under Stalin the most powerful position in the party became the General Secretary who was elected by the Politburo. In 1952 the title of General Secretary became First Secretary and the Politburo became the Presidium before reverting to their former names under Brezhnev in 1966. In theory, supreme power in the party was invested in the Party Congress, however, in practice the power structure became reversed and, particularly after the death of Lenin, supreme power became the domain of the General Secretary. At lower levels, the organizational hierarchy was managed by Party Committees, or partkoms (партком). A partkom was headed by the elected partkom secretary (секретарь парткома). At enterprises, institutions, kolkhozes, etc., they were called as such, i.e., "partkoms". At higher levels the Committees were abbreviated accordingly: raikoms (райком) at raion level, obkoms (обком) at oblast levels (known earlier as gubkoms (губком) for guberniyas), gorkom (горком) it city level, etc. The bottom level of the Party was the primary party organization (первичная партийная организация) or party cell (партийная ячейка). It was created within any organizational entity of any kind where there were at least three communists. The management of a cell was called party bureau (партийное бюро, партбюро). A partbureau was headed by the elected bureau secretary (секретарь партбюро). At smaller party cells, secretaries were regular employees of the corresponding plant/hospital/school/etc. Sufficiently large party organizations were usually headed by an exempt secretary (освобожденный секретарь), who drew his salary from the Party money.

Membership

Membership in the party ultimately became a privilege with Communist Party members becoming an elite, or nomenklatura, in Soviet society. Members of the nomenklatura would enjoy special privileges such as shopping at well-stocked stores, have preference in obtaining housing and access to dachas and holiday resorts, being allowed to travel abroad, send their children to the best universities and obtain prestigious jobs for them. It became virtually impossible to join the Soviet ruling and managing elite without being a member of the Communist Party. Membership had its risks, however, especially in the 1930s when the party was subjected to purges under Stalin. Membership in the party was not open. To become a party member one had to be approved by various committees and one's past was closely scrutinised. As generations grew up never having known anything but the USSR, party membership became something one generally achieved after passing a series of stages. Children would join the Young Pioneers and then, at the age of 14, graduate to the Komsomol (Young Communist League) and ultimately, as an adult, if one had shown the proper adherence to party discipline or had the right connections one would become a member of the Communist Party itself. When the Bolsheviks became the All-Russian Communist Party it had a membership of approximately 200,000. In the late 1920s under Stalin, the party engaged in a heavy recruitment campaign (the "Lenin Levy") of new members from both the working class and rural areas. This was both an attempt to "proletarianize" the party and an attempt by Stalin to strengthen his base by outnumbering the Old Bolsheviks and reducing their influence in the party. By 1933, the party had approximately 3.5 million members and candidate members but as a result of the Great Purge party membership fell to 1.9 million by 1939. In 1986, the CPSU had over 19 million members or approximately 10% of the USSR's adult population. Over 44% of party members were classified as industrial workers, 12% were collective farmers. The CPSU had party organizations in fourteen of the USSR's 15 republics. In the Russian federation itself there was no separate Communist Party as affairs were run directly by the CPSU.

History

Main article: History of the CPSU With some exceptions, the course of the CPSU (and the history of the whole Soviet Union) was largely determined by its leader. The history of the CPSU since the death of Lenin can thus be divided into the eras of Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.

End of Communist rule

The growing likelihood of the dissolution of the USSR itself led conservative elements in the CPSU to launch the August Coup in 1991 which temporarily removed Gorbachev from power. On August 19, 1991, a day before a Union Treaty was to be signed devolving power to the republics, a group calling itself the "State Emergency Committee" seized power in Moscow declaring that Gorbachev was ill and therefore relieved of his position as president. Soviet vice-president Gennadiy Yanayev was named acting president. The committee's eight members included KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov, and Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov. The coup dissolved due to large public demonstrations and the efforts of Boris Yeltsin who became the real power in Russia as a result. Gorbachev returned to Moscow as president but resigned as General Secretary and vowed to purge the party of conservatives. Yeltsin had the CPSU formally banned within Russia. The KGB was disbanded as were other CPSU-related agencies and organisations. Yeltsin's action was later declared unconstitutional but by this time the USSR had ceased to exist. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian adherents to the CPSU tradition, particularly as it existed before Gorbachev, reorganised themselves as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Today there is widespread flora of parties in Russia, claiming to be the successors of CPSU. Several of them used the name CPSU. However, CPRF is generally seen (due to its massive size) as the inheritor of the CPSU in Russia. In other republics, communists established the Armenian Communist Party, Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Party of Communists of Kyrgyzstan, Communist Party of Ukraine, Communist Party of Belarus, Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova, Communist Party of Kazakhstan and the Communist Party of Tajikistan. In Turkmenistan, the local party apparatus led by Saparmurat Niyazov was converted into the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan. In Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov converted the CPSU branch into the Democratic People's Party. In Georgia, the Socialist Labour Party was founded in 1992. This party would later evolve into the Communist Party of Georgia (SKP). Another communist faction in Georgia, which is larger than SKP, is the United Communist Party of Georgia (SEKP). In Estonia, the CPSU branch was in the hands of reformers, who converted it into the Estonian Democratic Labour Party (EDTP). A minority regrouped into the Communist Party of Estonia. In Lithuania, the CPSU branch converted into the Democratic Labour Party of Lithuania. In Latvia, communist organizations were officially banned. A major part of the party there had broken away in 1990 and formed the Latvian Social Democratic Party. The remnants of CPSU became the Union of Communists of Latvia, which went underground. Later communists regrouped into the Socialist Party of Latvia.

Branches

See also

Organization of the Communist Party of the USSR, Communist Party, List of socialists

External links


- [http://www.archontology.org/nations/ussr/cpsu Executive Bodies of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1917-1991)]
- [http://www.xs4all.nl/~eurodos/docu/cpsu-texts/cpsu86-0.htm Program of the CPSU, 27th Party Congress (1986)] Category:Communist Party of the Soviet Union ja:ソビエト連邦共産党

World War I

, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machine guns, and poison gas.]] World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the War of the Nations and the War to End All Wars, was a world conflict lasting from 1914 to 1919, with the fighting lasting until 1918. The label World War I or First World War did not come into general use until after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and until then it was known as the Great War or the World War. The war was fought by the Allied Powers on one side, and the Central Powers on the other. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers or involved so many in the field of battle. By its end, the war had become the second bloodiest conflict in recorded history (behind the Taiping Rebellion), though it was surpassed within a generation by World War II. World War I became infamous for trench warfare; this was especially true of the Western Front. The trenches went from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland in Europe. More than 9 million died on the war's battlefields, and nearly that many more on the home fronts because of food shortages, genocide, and ground combat. Among other notable events, the first large-scale bombing from the air was undertaken and some of the century's first large-scale civilian massacres took place, as one of the aspects of modern efficient, non-chivalrous warfare. In the First World War 5% of casualties were civilian. In the Second World War that was 50%. World War I proved to be the decisive break with the old world order, marking the final demise of absolutist monarchy in Europe. Four empires were shattered: the German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, and the Russian. Their four dynasties, the Hohenzollerns, the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, and the Romanovs, who had roots of power back to the days of the Crusades, all fell during or after the war. The post-war failure to deal effectively with many of the causes and results of the War would lead to the rise of Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and the outbreak of World War II within a generation. The War was the catalyst for the Bolshevik Russian Revolution, which would inspire later Communist revolutions in countries as diverse as China and Cuba, and would lay the basis for the Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. In the east, the demise of the Ottoman Empire paved the way for a modern democratic successor state, Turkey. In Central Europe, new states such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were born and Poland was re-created. __TOC__

Causes

Poland of Franz Ferdinand. The murder was the igniting torch of World War I.]] :See also: Causes of World War I and Participants in World War I On June 28, 1914, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria and heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student. He was part of a group of fifteen assassins, acting with support from the Black Hand, a secret society founded by pan-Serbian nationalists, with links to the Serbian military. The assassination sparked little initial concern in Europe. The Archduke himself was not popular, least of all in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While there were riots in Sarajevo following the Archduke's death, these were largely aimed at the Serbian minority. Though this assassination has been linked as the direct trigger for World War I, the war's real origins lie further back, in the complex web of alliances and counterbalances that developed between the various European powers after the defeat of France and formation of the German state under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck in 1871.

Reasons & Responsibilities


- See also: Causes of World War I There are many different hypotheses that try to explain who, or what, is to blame for the outbreak of the First World War. Early explanations, prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, stressed the official version of responsibility as described in the Treaty of Versailles and Treaty of Trianon, that Germany and its allies were solely responsible for the war. However, as time progressed, scholars began looking toward the rigidity of both German and Russian military planning, each of which stressed the importance of striking first and executing plans quickly. The fact that for many decades the British had been accustomed to colonial wars which were won relatively easily against much weaker adversaries certainly helped build enthusiasm for the Great war. In addition, the fact that no major political force opposed the war meant that those who did not agree with it had little organisational power to build opposition, though small protests continued throughout the war. Another cause of the war was the building of alliances and arms races. An example of the latter is the launch of HMS Dreadnought, a revolutionary battleship that rendered all previous ships obsolete as "pre-dreadnoughts", in 1906. This weakened Britain's power as a seafaring nation and sparked a major naval arms race in shipbuilding, particularly between Britain and Germany due to new imperialism. Overall, nations in the Triple Entente became fearful of the Triple Alliance and vice versa. The civilian leaders of the European powers also found themselves facing a wave of nationalist zeal that had been building across Europe for years. This left governments with ever fewer options and little room to manoeuvre as the last weeks of July 1914 slipped away. Frantic diplomatic efforts to mediate the Austrian-Serbian quarrel simply became irrelevant, as the automatic military escalations between Germany and Russia reinforced one another. Furthermore, the problem of communications in 1914 should not be underestimated; all nations still used telegraphy and ambassadors as the main form of communication, resulting in delays from hours to even days. There is probably no single concise or conclusive assessment of the exact cause of the First World War.

Outbreak of war

ambassadors are depicted in green, the Central Powers in red, and neutral countries in yellow.]] Austria–Hungary was created in the "Ausgleich of 1867" after Austria was defeated by Prussia. As agreed in 1867, the Habsburgs were the Emperors of the Austrian Empire. With the formation of the Dual Monarchy, Franz Josef became leader of a nation with sixteen ethnic groups and five major religions speaking no fewer than nine languages. In large measure because of the vast disparities that existed within the Empire, Austrians and Hungarians always viewed growing Slavic nationalism with deep suspicion and concern. Thus the Austro-Hungarian government grew worried with the near-doubling in size of neighbouring Serbia's territory as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Serbia, for its part, made no qualms about the fact that it viewed all of Southern Austria–Hungary as part of a future Great South Slavic Union. This view had also garnered considerable support in Russia. Many in the Austrian leadership, not least Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph, and Conrad von Hötzendorf, worried that Serbian nationalist agitation in the southern provinces of the Empire would lead to further unrest among the Austro-Hungarian Empire's other disparate ethnic groups. The Austro-Hungarian government worried that a nationalist Russia would back Serbia to annex Slavic areas of Austria–Hungary. The feeling was that it was better to destroy Serbia before they were given the opportunity to launch a campaign. After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip and nearly a month of debate the government of Austria–Hungary sent a 10-point ultimatum to Serbia (July 23, 1914) — the so called July Ultimatum — to be unconditionally accepted within 48 hours. The ultimatum was the first of a series of diplomatic events known as the July Crisis which set off a chain reaction and a general war in Europe. The Serbian government agreed to all but one of the demands in the ultimatum, noting that participation in its judicial proceedings by a