Lenin's Terror: The Brutal Reality of the Bolshevik Rise

this video has been brought to you by the generous channel members and Lads over at patreon thank you all for supporting me and my content October 25th 1917 this day marked a decisive moment for Vladimir Lenin and esposri comrades as They seized an opportunity to bring about a profound transformation this day witnessed the overthrow of the provisional Russian government Paving the way for the commencement of their ambitious proletarian Revolution that would reverberate throughout the vast territories of the Russian Empire the actions taken on that historic day laid the groundwork for a new era in Russian history driven by the ideals of the working class over the course of five years the Bolsheviks persevered in the struggle to maintain their hold on power amidst a rapidly shifting political landscape in Russia it was a time of great turbulence and transformation however in the year 1922 a significant Turning Point arrived for the Bolsheviks they emerged Victorious over the Russian white Army thereby solidifying their position and allowing them to redirect their energies towards a profound internal transformation of Russian Society their ultimate goal was to bring about a communist Utopia a vision that drove their tireless efforts and shaped their policies aimed at reshaping the very fabric of the nation with the defeat of their adversaries and the clearer path forward the Bolsheviks embarked on a journey to Institute profound changes that would leave an indelible mark on the destiny of Russia for these reasons Vladimir Lenin is today seen as a hero and venerated by Communists according to them Lenin and the Bolsheviks managed to end Decades of Oppression and backwardness that was present in Russia under the tourist regime and brought about a new age of prosperity and equality where everyone was free from their shackles or at least that is what communist historiography tells us I always knew that early Soviet Russia under Lenin was definitely not on the top 10 list of most livable countries around that time but I never realized just how bad and horrific things were until I genuinely started reading about the events that unfolded under his Reign rather than freeing the people of Russia but then brought more terror and suffering unto them than any previous tourist regime in this video I will be showing the true extent of suffering and Terror that were happening under early Bolshevik Russia and also exposing how Lenin was not this caring and benevolent Father Figure so many Communists see him as and I will be showing the true extent of Lenin's Terror across Russia in 1918 as a means of trying to win the Russian Civil War and solidify their control over Russia the Bolshevik set up a temporary political and economic system called War communism to be fair to Lenin and the Bolsheviks were communism in Lenin's eyes was only temporary until the political and Military struggle was over and for the transition to real socialism would begin however it does not change the fact that millions of Russians suffered because of this policy and it was especially the Russian impoverished peasants who were hit the hardest with war communism The Peasants were all obligated to meet strict coils of their labor and hand it all over to the Bolsheviks without keeping any of their wheat fruits or vegetables even before War communism was made an official policy in 1917 the Bolshevik secret police the Checker reported more than 4 000 quote-unquote peasant disturbances and War communism did not make him a relationship between the Bolsheviks and The Peasants easier because soon after the checkout reported between October and November 1918 that there were 44 separate peasant uprisings the forced food requisitions were obviously detested universally by every Russian peasant the requisition levels were set by officials in Moscow across Russia and none of them knew or even cared about the size of any local food surpluses which led to a single family farm being demanded much more than they were able to produce the Bolshevik requisitioners had to arm themselves whenever they went to collect since they found resistance practically everywhere they went so they resolved the creating quote-unquote food armies that bludgeoned any peasant into submission and for the Russian peasants it was practically like a second serfdom and the situation would get even worse because depending on the resistance in entire Villages and towns were burned and destroyed the town of kalinovskaya completely raced to the ground and the whole population of 4220 either deported or expelled the town of ermelovskaya completely emptied of all 3218 inhabitants were also either deported or expelled in several regions The Peasant Revolt became so huge that several divisions of the Red Army had to be called to quash them and the situation became so bad that Commander Vladimir Antonov of senko was in charge of crushing the partisans openly admitted that quote after peasantry was starving in the regions around the Volga River the situation was especially terrible as the commander of the Volga military District reported quote crowds of thousands of starving peasants are besieging the barns where the food attachments have stored the grain the Army has been forced to open fire repeatedly on the enraged crowd initially the Bolsheviks were struggling to fend off The Peasants but with the influx of new arms and other weapons from abroad the rebellions were being swiftly dealt with the tumble of rebellion was the last major peasant Uprising in the span of two years from 1920 to 1922 the Red Army suffered a humiliating loss of 237 908 soldiers to opponents who lacking Firearms fought mostly with farm equipment now Lenin finally realizing how much suffering their Acquisitions were causing repealed them in favor of mild grain taxes with a slight tolerance for a sort of grain market but this came way too late for millions of peasants who by mid 1922 based starvation on an unprecedented scale but in the end the Bolsheviks never really won over the peasants rather they systematically bashed them into submission and starvation who in the end were too weakened by hunger to fight in a way I believe war communism was also a deliberate plot by Lenin to indirectly wage a war on the Russian peasants because Lenin in his own words once said that the peasants were quote far more dangerous than all the denikins udonicas and kolchucks put together since we are dealing with a country where the proletariat represents a minority Lenin saw the peasants as a bigger threat than the entire white Army and anti-communist resistance and with the peasants now being forced into submission and being so weak to even fight it would open the door for more radical changes in Russian society which I will bring up later on the situation was not much better in the large cities either by 1920 petrograd and Moscow once the crowned jewels of a mighty Empire had practically become ghost towns the population of petrograd before mid-1917 was around 2.5 million in the span of three years from the October Revolution until mid-1920 the population was reduced to just 750 000. both petrograd and Moscow had nearly run out of fuel with entire buildings being torn down just for wood citizens could barely stand in line for bread which sold on the black market for millions of rubles Colonel Edward Ryan an American Red Cross commissioner was investigating the humanitarian situation of Russia and this is what he wrote quote Moscow and petrograd are indescribably filthy and outward appearance I was told the streets had not been cleaned for more than three years the dirt and rubbish is in all places at least ankle deep and in most places it is up to one's knees and there are many places where it is as high as one's head and with the peasant revolts going on across the countryside the food situation was crashing hard on these two cities even the privileged laborers of heavy industry the proletariat could not even get by which would cost Lenin and the bolshevik's Heart by mid 1921 only two percent of factory workers belong to the Bolshevik party and then starving workers did what starving workers did the best they called a general strike to get their demands met and what did the world's first proletarian government do to solve this issue with a proletariat they responded with bullets firing into a group of workers and killing several of them the situation got so out of of hand that the cricket is innoviev the party bus in petrograd directly warned Lenin that if he did not get reinforcements quote we are going to be overrun the strikes eventually reached the Russian Port City of kronstadt a city that provided the Bolsheviks with support ever since the October Revolution and now they were openly rebelling on March 8 1921 the local newspaper in kronstadt would hit the Bolsheviks Redford them the most stating quote in carrying out the October Revolution the working class hoped to achieve its Liberation the outcome has been an even greater enslavement of human beings soon after Leon Trotsky would launch an attack on kronstadt ending the Rebellion with a massacre in the very beginning the Red Terror was said to have been aimed at quote-unquote class enemies but now that Terror had shifted over to starving peasants and even ironically the very same proletariat they claimed to be supporting instead of being freed from their chains as the Bolshevik saying went Russian Urban workers would instead face the daily dread of ending up in torture chambers of the chekha while their peasant counterparts were being drenched with the blood in the countryside facing as the kronstadt newspaper stated an even greater enslavement of human beings before we continue with the video I would like to take a moment to introduce you all to ground news we all know how overwhelming the news can be these days the constant bombardment of conflicting stories biased reporting and hidden agendas make it challenging to get a clear and unbiased picture of what's really happening in the world and this is where ground news comes in ground news is a revolutionary platform that analyzes news coverage from all across the political Spectrum giving you a complete picture of every story it doesn't matter whether you're a conservative liberal or anything in between ground news ensures you see all sides of the story allowing you to make informed judgments based on a wide range of perspectives but that's not all ground news also uncovers the media's blind spots it highlights stories that are over or underrepresented by certain news sources so you can spot bias and misinformation with ease so if you're tired of being fed a narrow view of the world it's time to level up your news game with ground news say goodbye to Echo Chambers and embrace a more balanced informed perspective and if you are thinking of getting a subscription make sure to apply through my own custom link down below as you would also be directly supporting me and the channel by the summer of 1921 requisitions among peasants had stopped and Lenin introduced a grain tax as I previously mentioned but even with the forceful requisition stopping the peasants saw almost no improvement in their quality of life the entire Volga basis was still suffering from poverty which would last till 1922 which is known as the povolcia famine Bolshevik sources indicate that 25 million people were on the brink of starvation including 7 million children to be completely fair to the Bolsheviks they were not the only cause of the famine in May and June a terrible drought descended on all of Russia and wheat quite literally burned as it came up from the ground and grain reserves completely disappeared within days however the Bolsheviks were doing absolutely nothing to help combat the famine the regime did spend some money on food wood Imports but those were primarily for the cities worst of all they did not even contain any grain or seed but luxury food Swedish herrings 40 000 tons spinach salted fish 250 tons German bacon 7 000 tons French pig fat and even chocolate as one of Lenin's own purchasing agents later recalled quote communist Elites in Moscow and petrograd were consuming truffles pineapples Mandarin oranges bananas dried fruits sardines and the Lord knows what else while everywhere else in Russia the people were dying of hunger it really sounds like the Bolsheviks were intentionally trying to let the peasants starve into submission since as Lenin stated they were a huge threat to the Soviet state and it's not just me who came to that conclusion one Checker agent later wrote how he genuinely believed that quote the so Soviet regime is trying to starve all the peasants who dare resist it Maxim Gorky after realizing the scale of the famine and how the state was doing nothing to help issued an appeal to all honorable people requesting International Aid to help combat the famine and it worked Herbert Hoover the head of the American relief Administration responded positively and established a first-class operation in Russia now Lenin obviously could not just bar them from entering since even he knew that this would not look good on the international stage so he instead put them under surveillance as counter-revolutionaries over the course of the operation the ARA shipped over 2 million tons of grain and foodstuffs enough to adequately feed 11 million people and then I do not kid you the famine had virtually ceased entirely by early 1922 only thanks to Hoover and the ARA that the famines stop entirely and the success of the capitalistic America in feeding millions of Russians was politically embarrassing for the Bolsheviks now Lenin did try to fight the famine in his own way only after Gorky raised awareness of it however he was not exactly successful he did establish a proletarian Aid Front in Berlin which by October 1921 collected over 125 thousand dollars however more than half of that money 73 000 to be exact was spent on printing new Bolshevik propaganda not alleviating the famine just like with other private property in 1918 Church property was also nationalized by the Bolsheviks however the Bolsheviks were not making any drastic moves against religion since the politi bureau received strict orders from Lenin in 1921 that quote they must give absolutely no offense to religion Lenin obviously did not give out this order because he was genuinely trying to protect the church and being compassionate but because as I have stated before he feared the Russian peasants if the new regime started going against the church it could provoke the rural communities greatly but by 1922 when the vast majority of peasant rules had been dealt with and The Peasants pretty much being unable to fight due to starvation there was absolutely no reason for Lenin to hold back against the Russian Orthodox Church any longer and that is what he did with this I would like to tell you all the story about patriarch the Khan of Moscow the Khan had established his own famine Relief Committee trying to appeal to Russian Christians to quote take the suffering into your arms with all haste with hearts full of love and a desire to save your starving Brothers since the establishment of the committee the Khan managed to collect over 9 million Rubles the patriarch would then write to Lenin asking permission for the church to be allowed to buy food supplies directly and organize relief kitchens in famine areas now let's play a little game called how did Lenin respond the TA thank Father to the Khan and give him his full support for the famine Relief Committee or B ordered the committee dissolved its leaders arrested and exiled and placed father to Khan on their house arrest do I even have to tell you how he responded at this point H Rock the Khan was placed under house arrest in Moscow although he still continued receiving donations He was ordered to hand over all his earnings to the government who surprised surprise did not spend any of it on famine relief around this time the Soviet regime was completely running out of money and they had to squeeze out every last cent Leon Trotsky however would get a brilliant idea on how they could make more money for the state the plan was simple Trotsky would get to take over a set of a new commission overseeing famine relief it would accuse the Orthodox Church of hoarding money and not caring for the starving peasants convince and lie to people that they should storm churches and Cathedrals taking all the valuables tell them that the money would go towards famine relief in reality all the acquired wealth be given to the state it was the Perfect Crime keep keep in mind Hoover and the ARA were handling the famine extremely well all on their own so the Bolsheviks pretended to be helping just so they could accumulate more money for the government Trotsky would proceed to instruct the press to write articles such as these quote why were the clergymen not using their gold and silver valuables to buy Grain which could save several million of the hungry from starvation oh the irony also falling in line with trotsky's plan Herbert Hoover would inform U.S president Warren Harding how by February 1922 the Bolsheviks were actually ordering him to slow down the food shipments restarting the famine in some areas just so that it could neatly fit in with the plan with the plan now in action hundreds of thousands of peasants and Red Army soldiers would storm Turkish and monasteries across Russia looting and plundering all the valuables they could find but the plundering wasn't just motivated by money but also by the state atheism of the country Bolsheviks would open and expose the tombs of numerous Saints and Lenin would also personally order the famous Trotsky sergeyevskaya Monastery to be turned into a museum of atheism one of the most notorious events that took place was in the town of shuya where crowds of worshipers gathered to defend their local church and managed to repel threats a few days later they returned to Bringing troops with machine guns who would then proceed to mow down everyone standing in their path Trotsky would proceed to convene a politic Bureau meeting to discuss the shuya incident and what makes this meeting more notable Vladimir Lenin himself issued a top secret dictation from his home and thanks to the opening of Soviet archives in 1991 Lenin's true thoughts on these situations were finally exposed quote I believe that the enemy here commits a major strategic blunder the present moment offers us a 99 chance of overwhelming success in shattering the enemy and assuring our position for decades it is now and only now when in the famine regions there is cannibalism and the roads are littered with hundreds if not thousands of corpses that we can and therefore must carry through the confiscation of church valuables with the most rabid and merciless energy without such Capital no government work is possible no economic reconstruction and especially no defense of our position at the upcoming inter-allied debt settlement conference in Genoa we absolutely must take into our hands this capital of several hundred million Rubles no other moment except that of desperate hunger will give us such a mood among the broad peasant masses such as will assure us their neutrality you heard it here from the man himself Lenin did not express any sorrow for the starving peasant masses rather he used their suffering as a stepping stool to raid and plunder religious buildings so that the Soviet regime could make more money the armed robbery of Russia's churches were met with considerable popular resistance which is exactly what Trotsky and Lenin hoped for over the months thousands of priests were arrested with over 1 500 clergymen being sentenced to death not only that but Lenin specifically asked to be informed on a daily basis how many priests had been shot over the course of their war on the church the Bolsheviks intentionally manipulated the people and convinced them that this money would go to famine relief intentionally halted food shipments from the U.S just to make it seem more believable and in the end used all of this money for government expenses leaving behind a pool of blood of innocent clergyman and desecrating thousands of years of Russian history I have seen so many Communists attempting to justify almost everything I have mentioned here they claim that the actions of War communism are completely justified in the state of a war or there is absolutely nothing controversial or out of the ordinary in this case but keep in mind this system of War communism is exclusive to the Bolsheviks and communism no other state during the first world war had to resort to these radical measures just to win a war and the very same thing goes for tourist Russia and the provisional government they never had to resort to taking away all the grain of peasants and initiating a ruthless Terror across the entirety of the country they managed to at least handle the situation well but then when the Bolshevik suddenly came to power they caused the deaths of millions of Russians because of their radical shift in policies however one thing you absolutely cannot excuse is there a blatant effort to lie to the Russian people and using the famine and all the starving men women and children to root out resistance Among The Peasants and squeezing out as much money from them as possible practically everything Lenin and the Bolsheviks accused the old regime of doing They carried out these actions themselves and made them worse than any regime before that this video should also serve as a reminder that the Bolsheviks never came to power due to a massive popular support as many Communists love claiming they didn't solidify their rules for the popular masses but the violent suppression Slaughter and starving of all the people who dared oppose them especially the very same proletariat they claim to be representing

Channel: Lavader

Views: 49,682

Keywords: russian revolution, soviet union, october revolution, vladimir lenin, leon trotsky, bolsheviks, the bolsheviks, Communism, communist famine, Soviet famine, Russian orthodox church, Working class, russian civil war

Id: yCk8UlvsEEM

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023