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October. He finally convinced his party to sup-
port an immediate insurrection to coincide with
the forthcoming Second Congress of Soviets.
Lenin's analysis proved correct, as the Provi-
sional Government fell without much resistance
on October 25 (November 7), 1917.
As chairman of the Council of People's Com-
missars, Lenin quickly nationalized land, demobi-
lized the army, and arranged for peace with the
Central Powers. From December 1917 to Novem-
ber 1920, the Bolshevik government fought a
bloody civil war that brought great hardship and
threatened to fragment Russia permanently. Sur-
rounded by White forces and their foreign allies,
isolated from other socialists who felt the revolu-
tion was premature, and mired in a deep eco-
nomic crisis of industrial production and severe
food shortages, the dictatorial underpinnings of
Lenin's Bolshevism rose to the surface: internal
opposition within the party was restricted, other
socialists like the Mensheviks and Socialist Revo-
lutionaries (SRs) were persecuted, and a new
ruthless secret police—the Cheka—was estab-
lished to root out enemies of the revolution. In
1919, the Bolshevik Party was renamed
COMMU
-
NIST PARTY
and the Third International was estab-
lished to coordinate and guide the efforts of other
loyal communist parties. Anti-Bolshevik peasant
revolts, riots, strikes, and demonstrations were
common during the civil war, culminating in the
March 1921 rebellion at the Kronstadt naval
base, an erstwhile hotbed of pro-Bolshevik radi-
calism. Under great pressure from Lenin, that
same month the Communist Party approved a
degree of free trade and small manufacture while
retaining control of the “commanding heights” of
the economy, a less radical program known as
the New Economic Policy, which remained in
place until the late 1920s.
Between May 1922 and March 1923, Lenin
suffered three strokes that partially paralyzed him
and took away his power of speech. His final writ-
ings reflect his disillusionment with the bureau-
cratization of the party (
Better Fewer, but Better
)
and the shortcomings of its main leaders (
Last Tes-
tament
), especially
STALIN
's rude personal style. He
died on January 21, 1924. His warnings to others
calling for Stalin's removal went unheeded. His
remains were embalmed and placed in
RED
SQUARE
in a specially designed
LENIN MAUSOLEUM
that became a place of state-sponsored pilgrim-
age during the remainder of the Soviet period
and still stands a decade after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union.
Leningrad, siege of
(1941-1944)
One of the examples of heroic Soviet resistance
to the German invaders during World War II, the
siege of Leningrad lasted from August 1941 to
January 1944. In August 1941 German forces
surrounded the city and cut the Leningrad-
Moscow railway. When an initial attempt to cap-
ture the city failed, the Germans released their
Panzer divisions to fight elsewhere, and settled
down for a siege of the city. Hitler wanted to
level the city and hand territory over to the
Finns, who, being recent victims of Soviet
aggression in the
WINTER WAR
of 1939-40, were
fighting on the side of the Germans. Finnish
troops advanced on Leningrad from the north
but halted at their pre-1939 border, altering the
initial German plans to use the Finns to sur-
round the city. German artillery and aircraft
pounded the city and Leningrad's 3 million peo-
ple faced a long winter of likely starvation. The
only supply route open to the city was across
Lake Ladoga. Soviet naval units brought in food
and fuel and took out refugees. When the lake
froze, the Soviets sent supplies in by truck.
About 500,000 people managed to leave the city,
but the starving in the city continued. Incredibly,
so did war production. The factories, despite
bombardment and a malnourished work force,
turned out tanks, ammunition, and other war
matériel. Soviet forces vainly tried to break the
siege, but not until January 1943 were they able
to make a breach wide enough and deep enough
to relieve the city. By then, amid reports of can-
nibalism and desperate thefts of food, hundreds
of thousands had died. The complete lifting of
the siege came in January 1944, when Soviet
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