Essay Database

Lenin became chairman of Council of People's Commissars and virtually the dictator. The new governments first acts were to make an armistice with Germany and to abolish private ownership of land, and to divide it up between the peasants. Lenin fulfilled his promise of peace by accepting the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In 1919, Lenin established the Third International, or Comintern, to further world revolution. The policy of "war Communism" prevailed until 1921. It brought extensive nationalization, …

…as renewed capitalist threats. At the 20th All-Union Party Congress in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders attacked the cult of Stalin, confirming many accusations long current outside the USSR. They did not repudiate Stalin's economic policies, but accused him of tyranny and terror, falsification of history, and self-glorification. In 1961 the 22d Party Congress voted to remove Stalin's body from the Lenin mausoleum; he was then interred in the heroes' cemetery near the Kremlin wall.