Poems

They took over St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) and later captured

Moscow, meeting little resistance along the way (Jantzen 613). Lenin

took over the government and signed a treaty with Germany to take

Russia out of the war. Immediately thereafter, civil war broke out

between the Communists, called Reds, and the anti-Communists, called

Whites, who had help from Western nations (Johnson 43). This help from

outside Russia actually helped Lenin, as it drove public sentiment

against the Whites. Russian troops, scattered and dispirited, had

just been through World War I. Somehow, though, Lenin and his good

friend Leon Trotsky organized these troops into the Red Army and won

the war (Liversidge 59). It was now Lenin's country.

Once he was fully in power, Lenin set up a true Communist

government. Russia became sixteen republics subdivided all the way

from districts down to soviets (committees) representing the workers,

soldiers, and peasants in that area. The country would be ruled from

the bottom up rather than the traditional top down (Johnson 30). Lenin

wanted a society where the working class was the ruling class; a

society where there is one social class, everyone has the same rights,

and, eventually, there is no private property. For a short time,

peasants were allowed to simply seize their former landlords' land and

workers to control factories (U.S.S.R. 54). Later, however, all

industry was nationalized. To jump-start the economy, Lenin instituted

his New Economic Policy, which began to rejuvenate the economy by

permitting small industries to operate under their own control and

letting farmers keep or sell more of their products while the

government retained control of heavy industries such as metal working

(55). Lenin had earlier gained support with the simple promise "Bread,

peace, land," (Lenin, V.I. 194) and he had begun to make good. Lenin's

goals were becoming reality.

Tragically, Lenin died in 1924, rendering him unable to see

through any of his plans. He had suffered his first stroke in 1922,

and it was that year that a young Bolshevik named Josef Stalin -- a

man whom