Lenin
Lenin was an influential political leader of the 20th century, who led Bolshevik to victory in 1917, and was the intial leader of the soviet union.Lenin was born in Simbirsk on 22 April 1870 (BBC, n.d). He studied law at university and was expelled from the school for radical thinking and theories.In his early life, he became a professional revolutionary. Like most of the revolutionaries of the time, Lenin was arrested for his practices and was exiled to Siberia for 3 years in 1896 (Simkin, 2013). Eventually, in the next decade and a half he managed to work his way up and became one of the significant individuals in the global revolutionary movements. In 1901, Lenin published a few brochure during his time as a leader of the Social Democratic Labour Party like the "What Is To Be Done?" to put forth the argument that professional revolutionaries should come together as a group and overthrow the Tsar in for the well-being of Russia's future. However, his belief of forming a larger party of activists over a smaller party has forced him to sever his relations with Martov(a friend of Lenin, also a leader of SDLP), which was also the rise of Bolshevik. The 2 parties - Bolshevik(Lenin) and Menshivik(Martov) remained a rival relationship between one another.(Simkin, 2013)
After the outbreak of the WWI, Lenin labelled the war as dissension between the rulers, which meant suffer for the working class. He stated that any social activists advocating this campaign is betraying the works and disloyal to the country. He managed to exploit this opportunity and turned this warfare into "imperialist war into a civil war", despite the socialists contradicted his idea (Bolsheviks, n.d.). The Provisional Government was established after the Nicholas II -- the Tsar stepped down, and anyone who supported the Provisional Government were accused by the Bolsheviks because it meant betraying the concept of socialism. (Bolsheviks, n.d.) During the October Revolution, Lenin made a deliverance to the Russian people that all his activities are for "Bread, Land and Peace". Although he did not manage peace after the revolution, the peasants were fed and they owned some land. At the Constituent Assembly, he also managed to keep his promise. "Communism is socialism plus electricity" meaning that he would enable the peasants to live with equality, women's rights, health care and education (Russian Revolution, n.d.). The Petrograd and Moscow Soviets supported the Bolshevik. With Bolshevik as the Central Committee, Lenin completed his final plans and assembled all the forces for the seizure of power, because he was confident about their overwhelming support from the peasants and other soviets. (BBC. n.d.) Lenin was aware of the growing power of Stalin after appointing him as the General Secretary because of his injuries after an assassination attempt. Knowing that he was close to death, Lenin wrote a testament to the senior members of the party about removing Stalin from his position his use of power was becoming tyrannous. Three days later, Lenin was unable to speak or write and his power came to a halt in the Soviet Union. |
Animal farm and old majorOld Major represents Lenin in Animal Farm, highlighting the concept that the animals continue to support and protect the farm(party) even though the pig leader(s)(mainly Stalin) betrayed and deceived them.
Lenin can be pictured as Old Major for various reasons. Firstly, Old Major was a boar that lived longer than any of the animals on the farm which passed on his thoughts of revolution to the animals, symbolising Lenin as an experienced person, who earned respect and support through his life as an activist. Old Major was the boar who began the visualisation of an animal revolution and equality between animals. Although he was unable to carry on what he had promoted, the pigs were able to, even though the concept of equality was distorted later on. Likewise with Lenin, he was the leader who persisted for the revolution to succeed after many failures, but was not able to maintain his leading spirit because of illness and death. Throughout the novella, Old Major's idea was upheld by all the animals because they believed the revolution would bring peace and equality to the farm. Despite the reality of communism and seeing it written on paper was different, the pigs were able to manipulate the animals through their usage of rhetoric language. |