ON THIS DAY ·
Death of Lenin
21 Jan 1924 — Lenin dies at Gorki at the age of 53, having been silenced by strokes. His “Testament” warning against Stalin has gone unheeded, and the succession struggle he feared is already under way. Petrograd becomes Leningrad.
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The moment in context
The map was mostly red again by 1922, but the state that emerged was different from the empire that had fallen. Finland, Poland and the Baltic states remained outside it. Within the new state, republic borders, official languages and national institutions gave national identities a formal place denied them by tsarist autocracy. At Moscow on 30 December 1922, the USSR was founded as a union of republics.
From Legacy of the Russian Revolution, chapter 14 of The Russian Revolution, 1855–1924 (JAN 1924).
The place: Death of Lenin — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The civil war forged the state. The government that survived the civil war carried its methods into the USSR of 1924. Centralization, one-party rule, the security police, a…
- The turn — Lenin dies at Gorki, 21 January 1924. Lenin died at fifty-three on 21 January 1924. His final warnings had gone unheeded, and no successor had been settled upon. His absence revealed how…
- What it changed — Stalin’s rise. The office of General Secretary gave Stalin influence over appointments: who entered the Party, who advanced and where people served. These…
Then ask the room: Was the Soviet outcome — a one-party dictatorship — the inevitable result of 1917, or a contingent product of the civil war and its aftermath? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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