Vladimir Lenin was born April 10, 1870 in the city of Simbirsk located on the great Russian river, the Volga. He spent his childhood and youth in Simbirsk for 17 years. Lenin's father worked as an inspector, and later as the Director of the public schools in Simbirsk. His mother was a housewife. They were highly educated people with democratic views and principles. They imparted to their children hostility toward all violations of human rights and an active readiness to struggle for higher ideals, free society and equal rights. Subsequently all the Ulyanov children except for Olga (she died at age 19) set out on the path of revolutionary struggle. The signal event of his youth--the event that radicalized him--came in 1887, when his eldest brother Alexander, a student at the University of St. Petersburg, was hanged for conspiring to help assassinate Czar Alexander III.
Lenin graduated from the University of Kazan Law School at the University of St. Petersburg, where he scored first in his class. He studied Marxism and immersed himself in radical writings. Later Lenin was imprisoned with other Marxists and was sent to Siberia. After being released from prison, Lenin lived in exile in Western Europe and mingled with other revolutionaries. The Germans, wanting to disrupt the Russian war effort during WWI, sent Lenin back to Russia in a train car. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he led another unsuccessful uprising against the czarist government. He fled this time into Finland where he stayed until the Russian Revolution started.
In 1917, Lenin led the Bolsheviks in taking over the Russian government. Lenin organized the revolutionary factions into the Russian Communist Party. He had to make a humiliating treaty with Germany so the Bolsheviks could stay in power. Lenin moved Russia’s capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow to get farther away from dangerous Germany. For all his learning, Lenin began the Bolshevik tradition of waging war on intellectual dissidents--of exiling, imprisoning and executing thinkers and artists who dared oppose the regime. He became the author of mass terror and the first concentration camps ever built on the European Continent.
In some scholarly circles in the West, Stalin was seen as an "illusion," a tyrant who perverted Lenin's intentions at the end of Lenin's life. But as more and more evidence of Lenin's cruelty emerged from the archives, that notion of the "good Lenin" and the "bad Stalin" became an academic joke. Very few of Stalin's policies were without roots in Leninism: it was Lenin who built the first camps; Lenin who set off artificial famine as a political weapon; Lenin who disbanded the last vestige of democratic government, the Constituent Assembly, and devised the Communist Party as the apex of a totalitarian structure; Lenin who first waged war on the intellectuals and on religious believers, wiping out any traces of civil liberty and a free press.
Leonid Brezhnev, leader of one of the two most powerful nations in the world, was born to Russian parents in the Ukrainian mining town of Kamensk in 1906. Little is known about his youth, except that at age 15 he went to work in the steel mill that employed his father.
After the Russian Revolution, Brezhnev pursued a technical education and became a land surveyor. But his political ambitions soon became apparent: He joined the Communist Party in 1931, then held a series of local party posts. The young Brezhnev showed a remarkable ability to correctly survey the political landscape.
After Stalin's death, Brezhnev correctly tied his fortunes to Nikita Khrushchev. Soon, Brezhnev was named a full member of the Politburo. By the early 1960s, he was seen as Khrushchev's likely successor. Named chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1960, he resigned in 1964 to become Khrushchev's direct assistant as second secretary of the Central Committee. The assistance he offered, however, was not what Khrushchev had hoped: After only three months in the post, Brezhnev helped lead the conservative coalition that forced Khrushchev from power.
Brezhnev himself was one of the primary beneficiaries of Khrushchev's ouster. Named first secretary of the Communist Party, he became one of the two most important men in the Soviet Union. Eventually, however, Brezhnev emerged as the dominant force and was named General Secretary of the Communist Party. Brezhnev's colorless leadership style was a strong contrast to Khrushchev's dynamic but turbulent reign. This was reassuring to the vast Soviet bureaucracy, which had been threatened by Khrushchev's reforms. Indeed, under Brezhnev, the Soviet bureaucracy flourished, and government power centers like the KGB regained the authority -- if not quite the brutality -- they had enjoyed in Stalin's time.
The Soviet decision in 1968 to invade Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring was an early indicator of Brezhnev's worldview. In a speech justifying the move, he spelled out what came to be called the "Brezhnev Doctrine," asserting Moscow's right to intervene in the affairs of other socialist states. Brezhnev was, above all, a Cold Warrior, dedicated to the ongoing struggle with the United States. Though more cautious than Khrushchev, he nonetheless supported U.S. antagonists and left-leaning regimes throughout the world, most notably in Vietnam, the Middle East and the Third World. A new era of easing of tensions was heralded in 1972, when Brezhnev and U.S. President Richard Nixon signed the SALT treaty, freezing certain U.S. and Soviet weapons systems. But the new era was short-lived, corroded by lingering Cold War antagonisms. By 1979, it was only a memory, as Brezhnev and his comrades approved the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
By this time Brezhnev was an increasingly feeble old man. As Brezhnev's health deteriorated, so did the Soviet economy. Years of heavy spending on the defense and aerospace industries, at the expense of agriculture and other sectors of the economy, had taken a toll. Ordinary Soviet citizens had to wait in long lines to get basic necessities, and economic productivity and the Soviet standard of living fell into a slow but steady decline. When Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, at age 75, the Soviet Union itself had less than 10 years to live.
Peter I (Peter the Great) was the youngest son of czar Alexis of Russia. Peter, in a plot engineered by his mother, gained control of the government in 1689 at the age of ten. Peter became interested in military matters and spent time with foreign soldiers, who lived near Moscow. Later, Peter toured Western Europe with a group of Russian delegates to seek aid in fighting against the Ottoman Turks. He also recruited engineers and military experts for Russia. With the aid of his Western advisors, Peter created a navy and improved the Russian army. In 1700, Peter began the Great Northern War with Sweden, which would last for 21 years. At the victory of Poltava, Peter acquired the Baltic coastline for Russia. This land gave Russia access to Western Europe. This expanded Russia’s foreign trade and influence. It led to the expansion of industry and created many new jobs. He founded the academy of Sciences, Russia’s first newspaper, and the public library. Peter forced Russia’s people to adopt the customs of Western Europe. He founded the city of St. Petersburg along the Baltic Sea from land-captured Sweden. All of this had come with a high price. To finance his military campaigns and his domestic reforms, Peter imposed high taxes on the Russian people. He also dealt harshly with those who opposed his reforms. Many Russian people were forced to work against their will in his mines and factories. Peter exploited serfdom where the people were treated like slaves.
Ivan IV was born in 1530 in Moscow. He was the grandson of Ivan III, who was known as Ivan the Great. Ivan suffered from bad health as a child, but grew up and married Anastasia Romanov. The Romanov dynasty lasted until 1917. Ivan added territory to the Russian Empire by adding Kazan and by gaining control of the Volga River to the Caspian Sea. He extended the realm of the empire past the Ural Mountains into Siberia. When Anastasia died, Ivan blamed her death on his rivals, the Boyars. He had many executed and established his bodyguards, who terrorized the nobles and merchants. Most of the Boyars, the old noble families, were killed off or ruined financially. Ivan is remembered as the first Russian ruler to be crowned czar, but is remembered for his cruelty.
Boris Yeltsin will always be linked to the creation of democracy in Russia. By facing down the tanks outside the Russian Parliament in 1991 he showed that popular opinion could conquer authoritarianism.
The combination of personal courage and high principle earned him national acclaim and international attention. And it broke the stranglehold of communism, the ideology that nurtured him and first brought him to national power.
Yeltsin presented himself as a streetwise leader rather than a remote bureaucrat, preaching against perks for the party elite. But reforming zeal infuriated the old guard who saw it as an attack on their lifestyle.
Attacked, eventually, even by Gorbachev, he left the Politburo in 1988 and, within two years, the Communist Party. But Yeltsin, the party outcast, still commanded popular support. In August 1991, hard-line conservatives attempted a coup. Yeltsin rallied the liberals and restored Gorbachev to office. Nonetheless, he used the coup to discredit Gorbachev as well as the plotters and emerged as the first elected President of Russia.
Soviet Union falls apart
By the end of the year (1991) the Soviet Union had fallen apart. Yeltsin was now president of an independent Russia. Within two years the Russian Parliament was again under siege, but this time the tanks were ordered in by President Yeltsin. He tried to clear away his opponents and call new elections. They resisted, barricaded themselves inside parliament and attempted to take over state television. The parliament building was blasted by troops loyal to Yeltsin. The rebels surrendered and were led away as prisoners. But the new parliament was to prove nearly as fierce as its predecessor. The ultra-nationalists were a major new force in the parliament and they sniped at the president's government and political program.
Economic shock
The collapse of the old order had shocked the Russian system. Economic liberalization brought stock markets and rampant inflation: amazing wealth for a few, misery for many and a severe psychological shock for a country accustomed to state direction. On the world stage, Russians watched their leader with mixed emotions. He wanted Russia to be respected as a world power, but he also wanted Western investment. Above all, the United States decided he was the best hope to stabilize his country and provided steadfast support.
Slowly the economy was improving. New markets opened up popular products at affordable prices. But Yeltsin's once mighty popularity had been eroded. By 1994, Russia was mired in blood and confusion. Its security forces began a botched attempt to put down a rebellion in the wayward southern republic of Chechnya.
Indiscriminate fighting laid populated areas to waste and killed many civilians. Liberal Russians said it was inhumane; nationalists called it ineffective.
Social vacuum
Crime and corruption became endemic, with contract killings almost an everyday occurrence. Even prominent politicians were cut down by the Russian Mafia if they got in the way. Into this social vacuum stepped the newly revived Communist Party promising a seductive cocktail of old certainties and new vigor. But as presidential elections approached in 1996, Yeltsin began an astonishing political resurrection. He invited the Chechen rebels into the Kremlin to end the war. He mounted an energetic campaign. Above all, he appeared healthy and commanding. The result of the election was a triumph for Yeltsin. His changes had created winners as well as losers, and a majority of voters rejected a return to the communist past.
In November 1996 he underwent a successful quintuple heart-bypass operation in the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. Two months later, he was hospitalized again with a serious bout of pneumonia. He was never to be fully fit again - ailing health forced him to disappear from view for weeks at a time. As a disabled imperial figure, his court became a swirl of intrigue and conspiracy as factions fought for the succession. President Yeltsin has always been an impulsive and unpredictable politician, but a rapid series of government changes caused many to ask whether his legendary political instincts had deserted him.
He fired two Prime Ministers in 1998 - one after a disastrous financial collapse - and another two in 1999. Vladimir Putin, a former spy chief who took over the premiership in August 1999, soon unleashed the Russian army on Chechnya once more. Thousands were killed and made homeless as the army sought to avenge what it saw as the humiliating defeat of 1996, and to restore Moscow's rule over the breakaway republic. Once again, the outside world was shocked by the ferocity of the offensive but this time the campaign proved popular with ordinary Russians.
Chechnya aside, one of the most remarkable features of Yeltsin's rule is how generally peaceful it has been. He carried his country through a turbulent transformation with far less bloodshed than many had feared.
Boris Yeltsin was born in 1931 in Russia. He was a popular and outspoken Soviet politician. He became president of the Russian Republic in 1990. Yeltsin criticized Mikhail Gorbachev for moving too slowly in restructuring the Soviet economy and played a major role in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As president of Russia, Yeltsin has supported major economic reforms toward moving to free enterprise (capitalism). While in power, there were not only changes in the economy, but Yeltsin had a constitution written and a new parliament elected. After a few years, there was much criticism of the economy and many people wanted a return to a Communist form of government.
Prosecutors in Switzerland and Russia began exploring allegations of corruption against members of the Yeltsin's family, but no charges were filed. The Kremlin had been under political attack during Yeltsin's last year of office, with widespread allegations of corruption and other irregularities. Members of the Yeltsin's family, particularly his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, were linked to the allegations.
On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin ended his eight-and-a-half years in office with an emotional speech explaining that the dawn of the new millennium meant Russia needed new leadership. "Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people. And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go."
Catherine the Great was born a German princess and at the age of 16 was married to Emperor Peter III of Russia. Catherine, in a plot along with some army officers, murdered her unpopular husband. Catherine then came to the throne as Catherine II in 1762. Catherine was devoted to the arts and was well read. She had schools and hospitals built, promoted the education of women, and tolerated other religions. Catherine vastly expanded the boundaries of Russia through wars with Turkey. Russia acquired Crimea and the Ukraine around the Black Sea. This fertile land became the breadbasket of Russia and gave Russia a warm water port on the Black Sea for trade. The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 caused Catherine to impose repressive measures to prevent any possible uprising in Russia. She tightened landowners’ control over the serfs and forcefully put down a peasant revolt. During Catherine’s reign, many teachers, scientists, writers, and artists moved into Russia.
Josef Stalin was born in the Republic of Georgia in 1879. His parents were poor and at the age of 14, he entered a Theological Seminary to become a priest. He rebelled against the authority and left getting involved with the Bolsheviks, a radical political group. Because of his intense loyalty to Lenin, the leader of this group, he rose quickly through the ranks. He became the editor of Pravda, the Communist Party’s newspaper. After the Bolsheviks took control of Russia in the Russian Revolution, Stalin was promoted to the General Secretary of the Communist Party to crush his enemies. By 1929, Stalin was in control in the Soviet Union. Stalin began to collectivize farms. He ended private farming. All farm equipment, livestock, and land belonged to the government. The farmers resisted by destroying livestock and grain. He crushed the uprising by killing millions and sending more than a million farmers into exile in Siberia. He started his five-year plan, which increased industrial production. His secret police system sent many people to their deaths or to labor camps. He also executed thousands of Communist Party members. During World War II, her personally led the Soviet Army against Germany. He saved the Soviet Union from the invading Germans. After the war, many Russian soldiers, who had been captured by the Germans, were put in concentration camps. After the defeat of Germany, Stalin cut off all contact with Western Europe, this was referred to as the Cold War. I t was said that it was if an "Iron Curtain" had fallen over Eastern Europe. Stalin used the Soviet’s presence in Eastern Europe to set up Communist governments there.