1.) What are the primary differences discussed in this week’s videos between Marxism and Marxism-Leninism?
Marxism was the idea that capitalism is to be overthrown and replaced with socialism, communism being the ultimate placement of socialism but less natural to accomplish. Lenin puts the ideas of Marxism to life by calling for a “vanguard of the proletariat”; a class of professional revolutionaries. It was required that they were intellectuals, not workers. It was their duty to guide a violent uprising against capitalism which would then lead to the proletariat’s dictatorship. Lenin believed that the dictatorship would be the first step on their pathway to communism.
2.) What was the Russian government under Lenin like? What kinds of tasks did it attempt to achieve?
The Russian government under Lenin’s control was manipulative and you could even say pretty evil. Aside from making around 5.2 million people starve, Lenin attempted to remove the church. He even took the sacred items to be taken away and melted for cash of sorts. He ordered people to be exiled for no good explanation or reasoning. If, let’s say, the mom and dad were exiled for no reason, then the kids would be left behind. Unless they somehow escape and meet up again with their parents, which was a very risky and a difficult thing to do back then. These were some of the things that occurred during the reign of Lenin and the kinds of things he achieved.
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