Lenin Statue Razed In Tripura: A Look At Communist Icon's Ideology

#StandByTripuraLeft #Lenin pic.twitter.com/W7a2P5ZqQL

- CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) March 6, 2018

But who was this revolutionary Vladimir Lenin and what was his political ideology? Here's an explanation:

Born in 1870 in Russian Empire, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who came to be known as Lenin, is considered one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the 20th century. He founded the Russian Communist Party, led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and became the first head of the Soviet Union. The Russian revolutionary believed in Marxism - the political and economic theories of German socialists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. According to this view, humanity would eventually reach pure communism and become a stateless, classless, egalitarian society of workers who were free from exploitation and alienation and controlled their own destiny. It believes in the principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

With changing circumstances of the Russian revolutionary movement, Lenin adapted his ideas. He believed that the bourgeois society would not transform into communism unless it enters a period of socialism. Here, a bourgeois society refers to a society with a social class of people who owned the means of production and were concerned about preservation of capital to continue their economic supremacy. To achieve socialism, in which the means of production are socially owned, he worked towards bringing the Russian economy under the state and said that "all citizens" become "hired employees of the state". This way, he worked towards establishing a "workers' state".

Under Lenin's administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. His political theories came to be known as "Leninism". While supporters hail his views and call him a champion of socialism and working class, his critics describe his regime as authoritarian.

Lenin died in 1924 at the age of 54.