Overview
The aim of this essay is to discuss how successful Lenin’s policies were in his attempt to create an alternative modernity in Russia by his death in 1924. By scrutinizing his actions and their individual impacts in relation to the desired modernity, historians can assess whether Lenin achieved the socialist dream he sought for. I will break down the essay into three components from which I can individually conclude their successfulness as an alternative modernity. These shall be established in the introduction.
Introduction
The introduction will firstly discuss the crisis of modernity in the inter-war period in order to put Lenin’s rise to power and subsequent desire for a new society in context. This includes the general political and social crisis surrounding the propagating theories of nineteenth century thought. I will introduce the notion of a ‘socialist utopia’ and state the aims such a society seeks to establish. I will indicate that my concluding thoughts are to be that Lenin undoubtedly created an alternative modernity in Russia; however it is clear that by the time of his death he regarded Russia as communist work in progress and realized that much had to be done in order to reach the preferred modernity envisioned by Marx and Engels. Russia achieved a society which was, in practice, a form of success but ideologically was less successful at achieving the state it required.
Section 1
The first section will convey the new means and ways of the Russian government and compare this to what Lenin wanted for his party at the time and what Lenin had hoped would happen to the government eventually according to Marxist beliefs. I will consider the success of the revolution in 1917 and the way in which the government consolidated its power in the years thereafter. In order to do this I will need to examine the ways in which Lenin secured emancipation of the