Lenin had a great impact on Russia and the Russian people with his range of policies and events that took place during his time in power. These had huge political and economic effects and had both short-term and long-term impacts. Even in exile, Lenin’s time in Germany did not stop him from organizing yet another Bolshevik uprising in Russia in October 1917. He put the Bolshevik Central Committee under massive pressure and their final decision to hold an uprising shows Lenin’s power and influence within the party. This was only a temporary victory for the Bolsheviks as they lost support of the majority of the Russian population.
Another long-term cause of the 1905 Revolution was the general disappointment with which many Russian people viewed the reforms of the previous decades. The emancipation had promised much but delivered little. The reign of Alexander II had produced a number of similar reforms. Changes to local government and the legal system were both limited and led to the call for more liberal reform. The reactionary reign of Alexander III led to a tightening of government control and the persecution of minority groups, such as Jews, within the Empire.
To what extent was collectivisation a success? Collectivisation was a process which meant that small farms joined together to create larger farms in order to improve efficiency, another reason for it was to destroy the Kulaks(former peasants in Russia who owned medium-sized farms as a result of the reforms introduced by Peter Stolypin in 1906). Stalin wanted to gain control over the countryside, this give him the ability to fulfil this, finally collectivisation was used to increase the production of grain to sell to foreign countries. It has been argued whether collectivisation was a success or a failure, I am going to investigate this argument further. Stalin achieved most of his aims; Grain production rose to nearly 100 million tonnes in 1937, although the numbers of animals never recovered.
When collectivisation was criticised by some local officials, Stalin published an article called ‘Dizzy with success’ in Pravda, defending the policy by arguing that the target for collectivisation had been met and therefore the programme would be suspended, in order to cover up the carnage that collectivisation had in actual fact caused. Even when local communists who were unhappy about the collectivisation plans and were unwilling to implement them, Stalin found a way around it by sending 25,000 industrial workers into the countryside, known as the ‘Twenty-five thousanders’, supposedly
This money was important because the economy in Russia was poor at the time; bearing in mind there was a huge number of peasants and very few working class people at the time may suggest a reason for this. Russia's biggest produce was grain. This was the most important factor in my opinion, as without this money, Witte wouldn't have been able to implement any of his ideas. The second area was state sponsored development of heavy industry. Witte believed that heavy industry was the way forward, because he thought that light industry and agriculture could both benefit from this boost.
Alexander was hopelessly out of touch with the emerging realities of a modern Russia. For example, agriculture was exploited as a source of export earnings; this helped cause a series of famines, especially in 1891. This made him hugely unpopular as he took grain from the people in an attempt to make money and improve the economy. Due to his slow intelligence and lack of experience, Alexander forgot the fundamental rule of keeping his people happy and instead chose to supress them. He did not realise that, following Alexander II’s emancipation of the serfs in 1861, he could not return to a state of rigid autocracy when the serfs had already had some freedom.
The late twenties and early thirties were perhaps the most transformative period in Soviet history. It was during this period Stalin consolidated his grip on power and was allowed to rule with impunity, instituting his “revolution from above” on the Soviet people. He actively transformed the culture of the time, giving birth to a new Russian nationalism, rejecting the earlier Bolshevik conviction that the family was a bourgeois institution, and even forcing artists and writers to embrace “socialist realism.” These cultural changes were, however, minor adjustments when compared to the vast changes his economic policies brought to the everyday lives of the Russian people. Through the brutal process of collectivization he destroyed the autonomy the Russian peasant had enjoyed since the revolution, and he led an industrialization drive that has had few historic parallels. The human costs of both these initiatives were monstrous.
Despite all that it is fair to say that Lenin was a successful leader without whom November revolution and hence the crucial change in Russia would not be possible. He played a significant role in the Russian history that Stalin wanted to inherit. To successfully revive the economy and stay in power he often used all possible means such as approval of the cold-blooded execution of the entire Imperial family, including women and children, usage of the "Cheka," to take innocent hostages at random–and shoot them, if necessary–to secure the grain supply, institutionalisation of terror as a method of state policy, establishment of both the system of deportation to concentration camps and the practice of political
The system of land distribution was unfair and most peasants received 4% less land than they had rented before, many received much less. In reality they had less land than when they were serfs. This was seen as unfair as they believed that, because they had worked the land for generations, it should now belong to them. The Mir still restricted peasants’ movements and as consolidation and enlargement of property was difficult, there was little incentive to improve the land and adopt modern methods, resulting in a decline in productivity The huge redemption taxes also meant that the peasants had to sell many of the crops they needed to eat and the Mir kept the peasants tied to their commune and still controlled by rules. Peasants felt disappointed and disillusioned and many rioted.
Roads and railway were inadequate to meet the demands. Transport and housing were also inadequate to cope with the number of town dwellers. Under the NEP there had been unemployment, a shortage of labour. Many of the new workers were in experienced peasants. Wages rose how ever there were too few goods on which to spend money.