Order to Achieve and Retain Power

A single- party ruler, or any ruler for that matter, can't possibly satisfy the ideologies of each person in his country/ empire/state. Let alone an extremist ruler in a vast country like the USSR, this means that, in order to impose certain ideologies and political beliefs on the whole population of Russia, Lenin needed to force people into following his ruling. It is beyond doubt that forcing people to do so consists in terrorizing and most probably adopting a violent attitude towards the opposition. Studying History we find that a there are very few single-party rulers who have not relied on terror and violence in order to achieve their aims. Such approach, although necessary, is very contradicting: from a theoretical point of view, the aim of the rise of a single party ruler/ dictator is making a better country, to improve the situation in a state for the greater good, but what is the point of doing so if it implies killing and terrorizing the masses? Sometimes, in order to improve something, especially a whole country, certain extreme measures have to be taken. The above statement can be considered true to a certain extent, because in order for Lenin to achieve and retain power, he chose to use "ruthless" methods to suppress the opposition. The Communist dictator was also blind to human suffering as his economic policies forced millions of people to suffer a vast famine, and in most cases, die. However, Lenin was also, to an extent charismatic in his ruling.

During Lenin's rise to power, he used suppression to eliminate political opposition, knowing that this approach would be the only one that could decisively guarantee him a dictatorship without interference. The ones who did not get killed by Lenin's secret police fled the country in fear of the new dictator. In order to suppress such opposition, Lenin built the Red Army with the help of Trotsky, the purpose was to fighting the counter-Revolutionaries, mostly known as Whites. The Cheka also played a decisive role in Lenin's fight against opposition, this consisted in a secret police who's objective was primarily to

keep the population under strict control and hunt down enemies of the leader in order to then eliminate them.

The Red Terror is a major event to evaluate in the consideration of the above statement, in fact, it perfectly depicts the ruthlessness Lenin had towards the Russian population. The Red terror was his reaction to the Czech Legion's refusal of surrendering to the Bolsheviks. The secret police was created in 1917 with the purpose of managing the executions of those who were thought to be against Lenin's ideologies, the Cheka's action was ruthless and terribly violent and resulted in the death of numerous individuals who were labeled as "enemies of the Bolsheviks", among these were capitalists, university students, members of the ruling class, business owners and church officials. The Tsar and his family also saw their deaths during the red terror, marking the definitive end of the Tsarist era in Russia. However, Lenin did not only focus his hatred and terror on the civilian population, but also used the policy of "One Party Unity" to commit the killing of party members who questioned his authority. A famous quote by Lenin summarizes his beliefs against opposition as it states that "To overcome