View allAll Photos Tagged devoted
This work belongs to a cycle of paintings devoted to the life of St. Stephen, created for the upper hall of the Scuola di Santo Stefano in Venice between 1511 and 1520. Three other paintings from the cycle are conserved in Berlin, Milan, and Stuttgart; the fifth has disappeared.
Staging the scene
The scene takes place within the walls of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. St. Stephen preaches from an ancient pedestal, partially in ruins, which symbolizes victory over paganism. Pointing his finger skyward, the saint invites his audience to contemplate God. In the foreground, a group of eastern women sit cross-legged on the ground, captivated by the sermon. Around them eastern men in turbans, Greeks - recognizable by their high hats (far left) - and westerners offer proof to the universality of the saint's message. The temple behind, a symbol of Judaism, is depicted as a "tempio" of the Italian Renaissance. On the hill of Jerusalem one can make out the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The city - which some historians have identified as Damascus - is rendered as a conglomerate of ancient buildings and minarets of a mineral-like austerity.
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
He is a devoted Vaishnab. Vaishnavism is a tradition of Hinduism, distinguished from other schools by its worship of Vishnu or his associated avatars, principally as Rama and Krishna, as the original and supreme God. Vaishnava
theology includes the central beliefs of Hinduism such as pantheism, reincarnation, samsara, karma, and the various Yoga systems, but with a particular emphasis on devotion (bhakti) to Vishnu through the process of Bhakti yoga, often including singing Vishnu's name's (bhajan), meditating upon his form (dharana) and performing deity worship (puja).
In simpler words he is in love of "Krishna"! He is complete vegetarian. And his devotion and love to God has made him innocent like a child! You can feel a sense of peace & calm if you spend a few moments with him!
He is poor by choice, he has never gone to college. But he is lot wiser than you and me! In very few words he can
clear all of your confusions about life!
Let's spread love!
Photo: David Moore
In 1965, the journal 'Oil - Lifestream of Progress', published by the California Texas Oil Corporation (Caltex), devoted a cover photo and article to the Caltex 500 knockout Competition, held in Wagga Wagga the previous year.
A one-day elimination Rugby League tourney, the Caltex 500 was the culmination of a week of festivities, and saw the Wagga Kangaroos awarded first prize of £350 over Yenda, awarded second prize of £150.
The cover is described within: "In sports-minded Australia, where football is almost a way of life in the winter, children find their own way to join the festivities preceding 'tournament day'. These youngsters of Wagga-Wagga romp with colorful balloons in their beautiful Memorial Gardens to celebrate the 'Caltex 500 Knockout Competition', being held in their town."
Wagga Wagga City Library welcomes the use of images for study and research purposes, but asks that you please credit photographers where applicable and acknowledge source of images as being courtesy of ‘Wagga Wagga City Library’.
If you wish to reproduce this image for any other purpose, you can contact us via wcl@wagga.nsw.gov.au
If you have any further information on the image, please contact us or leave a comment in the box below.
Tellus Science Museum occupies more than 125,000 square feet and features galleries devoted to minerals, fossils, transportation technology, and hands-on science experiences.
The 120-seat digital Planetarium hosts a variety of astronomy programs, stargazing events, and family activities and 45-minute shows are shown throughout each day. The Weinman Mineral Gallery showcases one of the largest, most comprehensive collections in the Southeast, with more than 4,000 rocks, gems and minerals on display.
Tellus is a Latin word meaning "Earth" and may refer to Tellus Mater or Terra Mater, the ancient Roman earth mother goddess, and is also an alternative name for the planet Earth, often used in the science fiction genre (e.g. the books of E. E. Smith).
Tellus is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is open daily from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM closing only on major holidays.
The Fossil Gallery features Stan, a 40-foot Tyrannosaurus rex along with other dinosaurs and fossils, allowing visitors to trace the history of life on Earth.
Collins Family My Big Back Yard offers hands-on science exhibits introducing concepts from the physical and life sciences through backyard science experiences.
Science of Motion allows visitors to re-live major developments in science and technology related to automobiles, aircraft, and space travel. In addition, Tellus includes a 200-seat presentation theater, a large multi-purpose room for events, four well-equipped science labs, an observatory, a full service cafe, and a gift shop that is almost equal in size to the Weinman’s original exhibit space.
Tellus Science Museum opened January 12, 2009, and has welcomed more than one million visitors.
Tellus was founded as the Weinman Mineral Museum in 1983, which closed in 2007 and reopened as Tellus Science Museum in 2009. The museum retains the original mineral displays in the Weinman Mineral Gallery.
visitcartersvillega.org/tellus-science-museum/
.......
If you have been arrested for a crime, being charged with a crime, or are facing any other legal action related to your arrest, you might find it hard to get the legal help you need. A criminal defense attorney is someone who's experienced in defending individuals against charges of crimes. Criminal Defense Attorney David Davidson has years of experience and is devoted to helping those accused of wrongdoing through his ability to establish a rapport with clients and use his knowledge to guide them throughout the duration of their trial.
There are many benefits to choosing Davidson Law Office as your Criminal Defense Lawyer Tyler TX. Here are just a few:
Extensive Criminal Defense Experience: Our criminal defense lawyers have years of experience defending clients against criminal charges. This means we know how to work with the prosecutors and courts in order to get you the best possible outcome.
Proven Results: We have successfully represented many clients who have been charged with crimes such as DUI, drug possession, assault, and theft. We know how to mount a strong defense and get you the best possible outcome in court.
Comprehensive Legal Assistance: Our criminal defense attorney Tyler TX provide comprehensive legal assistance throughout the entire criminal justice process, from initial consultation through trial preparation and post-conviction relief. This includes everything from courtroom strategy to understanding court rules and procedures.
Personalized Attention: We take our time listening to our clients and tailoring our legal representation specifically to meet their needs and interests. This personalized attention is why so many people choose us as their criminal defense attorney.
At Davidson Law Office, our criminal defense attorneys have years of experience fighting for the rights of clients accused of crimes. Our office is dedicated to providing you with the best possible legal representation, and we will do everything in our power to protect your rights.
We have years of experience defending criminal cases, which means that we know how to navigate the judicial system and how to mount a strong defense against charges. This experience will help us achieve the best possible outcome for your case.
We use a variety of strategies to win your case, including witness intimidation, cross-examination, and illegal search and seizure defenses. At Davidson Law Office our federal criminal defense attorney Tyler TX will use all available resources to ensure that you receive a fair trial and are given the best possible chance at being acquitted.
One of our main priorities is protecting your rights and privacy. And, we understand that you may be afraid during this difficult time, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that you feel comfortable discussing your case with us.
There are a lot of great criminal defense attorneys in Davidson County, but we believe our team at Davidson Law Office is the best choice for you if you have been accused of a crime. We have years of experience defending people against felony and misdemeanor charges, and we will do everything we can to get you the best possible outcome.
Davidson Law Office, Thad Davidson
329 S Fannin Ave, Tyler, TX 75702
903-535-9600
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
Our devoted boy, happy to see Mark coming back up to the trail after shooting the spider and web in the previous photos. Angus is back on track and feeling better after a week of not doing too well. Note the black spot on his tongue...part of his Newf genes! = )
From spring to autumn 1891, Monet devoted himself to the treatment of a new subject, the only one he painted throughout this period: poplar trees. He produced a group of about 20 canvases depicting the trees planted on the edge of a marsh situated on the left bank of the Epte, two kilometres upstream from Giverny. The site had been put up for sale during the summer, and the plan was to cut down these trees. After the mayor had refused to grant a reprieve, Monet found himself forced to pay a sum of money to the timber merchant to stop the trees being felled before he had finished the series. Having set up in a boat, he made the most of the perspective effect offered by the line of poplars, which followed the winding course of the river upstream, forming a kind of large ‘S’. He was then able to form decorative compositions that were built around curved lines and counterbalanced by the verticals of the trunks. Monet painted several sub-series, reproducing the trees face-on and reflected in the river, but sometimes he reduced the motif to the simple vertical line of the trunks. With this new series, the painter repeated the approach he had undertaken the previous year with the Meules. The titles echo those he had chosen for that first series. The aim was identical in both cases: to depict the variations in light and seasons. The ‘instantaneity’ of these paintings is meant to convey the impression one feels when encountering the subject at a precise moment. The poplars series was the first to be exhibited without any other painting, as a complete entity in itself, when it was shown in the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1892.
See the full video on YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=62MK9YznRrY&t=4s
Sir Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester - New
Guy Carleton (b.1724 d.1808), 1st Baron Dorchester KB, known between 1776 and 1786 as Sir Guy Carleton, British Army officer, peer and colonial administrator. He twice served as Governor of the Province of Quebec, from 1768 to 1778, concurrently serving as Governor General of British North America at that time, and again from 1785 to 1795. The title Baron Dorchester was created on 21 August 1786.
Immediate Family
Born 3rd Sept 1724, Bowling Green, Strabane, Co.Tyrone, Ireland, (now Northern Ireland) the same anniversary date of Cromwell's two great victories and death. He came from a very old family of English country gentlemen which had migrated to Ireland in the seventeenth century and intermarried with other Anglo-Irish families equally devoted to the service of the British Crown.
Guy Carleton was the son of Christopher Carleton (b.1673 d.1738) of Newry, County Down and Catherine Ball, Skelton (b.1674 d.1757) daughter of Henry Ball (b.1638 d.?) Co. Donegal.
Christopher & Catherine had seven siblings:
1. Catherine Carleton (b.1716 d.1733) married John Irvine of Cooles & Killadeas.
2. Connolly Ball Carleton (b.1718 d.1790) married 1st in 1753 Alexander Crawford (b.c.1712 d.1767) of Millwood, Co. Fermanagh and 2nd married, Sir Patrick King (b.? d.1790), Commissary General of the Musters, Knted, while H,S. Co, Dublin, 30 Sept 1776.
3. Capt. William Ball Carleton (b.1720 d.1753) army captain, married Anne Woodcomb (b.1710 d.1753) of Devon. William and Anne and four of their children were drowned in 1753 whilst on passage to Ireland. A daughter, Sydney Carleton (b.1743 d.1786) and three sons survived, Lt. William (b.1745 d.1765), Bernard (b.1748 d.1790) & Lieut. Col. Christopher (b.1749 d.1787).
4. Lt. Lancelot Carleton (b.1722 d.1741) unmarried.
5. General Sir Guy Carleton (b.1724 d.1808).
6. Ann Carleton (b.1726 d.1739) married 1756 John Rotton (b.c.1721 d.c.1793) of Templebogue, Dublin.
7. Thomas Ball Carleton (b.c.1730 d.1817), 1st Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick married 2nd May 1783 Hannah Foy van Hoorn (b.1755 d.1780).
Early Education
Guy was the son of Christopher, a modest landowner, he was educated locally until his father's death when he was 14. Following his mother's remarriage a year later on 4 April 1740 his stepfather, Reverend Thomas Skelton (b.1691 d.c.1747), Church of Ireland rector from Newry, Co. Down oversaw his education.
On 21 May 1742, aged 17, Guy accepted a commission as an ensign in the 25th Regiment of Foot, then known as Lord Rothes' regiment (John Leslie (b.1698 d.1767) 10th Earl of Rothes was Major-General) and now known as the King's Own Scottish Borderers. Guy was promoted to lieutenant three years later, he worked to further his career by joining the 1st Foot Guards on 22nd July 1751 with the rank of captain.
During 1747, aged 23, he fought gallantly at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom a major Dutch fortress. Ironically, his son, Lieutenant colonel George Carleton (b.1781) died 1814 at a latter Siege of Bergen Op Zoom, Netherlands while carrying the sword his father, Guy had worn there 66 years earlier.
During this period, Guy befriended Major James Wolfe (b.1727 d.1759) a rising star in the British Army, Wolfe recommended Carleton to the young Lord Charles Lennox (b.1735 d.1806), 3rd Duke of Richmond as a military tutor in 1752 a position Wolfe himself was offered. Wolfe writing home from Paris in 1753 tells his mother that the duke 'wants some skilful man to travel with him through the Low Countries and into Lorraine (France). I have proposed my friend Carleton, whom Lord Albemarle approves of.' Lord Albemarle (William Anne Keppel (b.1702 d.1754), 2nd Earl of Albemarle) was the British ambassador to France.
At 30, Carleton was still some way down the list of lieutenants in the Grenadiers, while Wolfe, two years his junior in age, had been four years in command of a battalion with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
So, Carleton got the post and travelled under the happiest auspices, while learning the frontier on which the Belgian, French, and British allies were to fight the Germans in the Great World War of 1914. It was during this military tour of fortified places that Carleton acquired the engineering skill which a few years later proved of great service to the British cause in Canada.
Building a relationship with Richmond, Carleton began what would become a career-long ability to develop influential friends and contacts.
In 1754 George Washington, at that time a young Virginian officer of only 22, fired the first shot in what presently became the world-wide Seven Years' War (1754 to 1763). The immediate result was disastrous for the British arms and Washington had to give up the command of the Ohio Country for the next seven years by surrendering Fort Necessity to the French, on-of all dates, the 4th of July!
With the Seven Years' War raging, on 18 June 1757, Carleton was appointed as an aide-de-camp, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, to William Augustus (b.1721 d.1765) Duke of Cumberland.
Germany
In 1757, Guy Carleton was made a lieutenant colonel and served as part of the Army of Observation made up of German troops designed to protect Hanover from French invasion. The army was forced to retreat following the Battle of Hastenbeck, 26 July 1757 and eventually concluded the Convention of Klosterzeven, taking them out of the war. After the convention was signed, Carleton returned to Britain. In 1758 he was made the Lieutenant Colonel of the 72nd Regiment of Foot which had been newly-formed on 28 April 1758 and is now known as the Seaforth Highlanders.
For some time he was unable to gain an active position, until he was sent back to Germany
for the summer of 1758 to serve as an aide-de-camp to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick (b.1721 d.1792).
Canada
James Wolfe selected Carleton as his aide in the attack on Louisbourg, Nova Scotia,
of 27th July 1758. King George II declined to approve his appointment, possibly because of negative comments Carlton had made about the soldiers of Hanover during his service on the Continent. The first two King George’s were Hanoverian all through and for an English guardsman to disparage the Hanoverian army was considered next door to lese-majeste (an offence or defamation against the dignity of a ruling monark or head of state). However Charleton did fight at the siege of Louisbourg in 1758 under Sir Jeffrey Amherst (b.1717 d.1797). This allowed the British to advance up the St Lawrence River as far as Quebec.
In December 1758, Wolfe, now a major general, was given command of the upcoming campaign against the city of Quebec, during the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763) and selected Carleton as his quarter-master general. King George ll also refused to make this appointment until Lord Ligonier (b.1680 d.1770) the commander-in-chief, talked to the king about the matter, but the king again refused. Ligonier went back a second time but was unsucessful. William Pitt (b.1708 d.1778), 1st Earl of Chatham then sent Ligonier in for the third time, saying, in a tone meant for the king to overhear, ‘Tell His Majesty that in order to render the General [Wolfe] completely responsible for his conduct he should be made, as far as possible, inexcusable if he should fail; and that whatever an officer entrusted with such a service of confidence requests ought therefore to be granted,' afterwhich the king concented.
When Lieutenant-Colonel Carleton arrived in Halifax he assumed command of six hundred grenadiers. He was with the British forces when they arrived at Quebec in June 1759. Carleton was responsible for provisioning the army and also acting as an engineer supervising the placement of cannon.
During that campaign Carleton, who had received his appointment together with the rank of colonel of North America on 30 Dec 1758, was responsible for setting up an advance base on Île aux Coudres and a fortified supply depot on Ile d’Orléans. He also conducted an amphibious operation at Pointe-aux-Trembles (Neuville), returning with intelligence, some provisions, and more than 100 Canadian civilians who had been evacuated from Quebec.
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham, also known as the Battle of Quebec began on 13 September 1759, was fought by the British Army and Royal Navy against the French Army on a plateau just outside the walls of Quebec City on land that was originally owned by a farmer named Abraham Martin.
Carteton commanded the 2nd battalion of the Royal Americans (60th Foot), which was one of three battalions deployed under Brigadier-General George Townshend (b.1724 d.1807)
at the left of the British battle-line after Wolfe died of gunshot wounds just as the French began to retreat and Brigadier Robert Monckton (b.1726 d.1782) was wounded in the chest.
The batttle only lasted an hour, Carleton received a head wound during the fight, however the following morning, the commander of the French army, Louis-Joseph de Montcalm (b.1712 d.1759) died after receiving a musket ball wound just below his ribs while riding his horse back towards the city. After the battle, Carleton returned to England on October 1759.
France and Havana
On 29 March 1761, as the lieutenant colonel of the 72nd Regiment of Foot he took part in the attack on Port-Andro on Belle-Île-en-Mer, an island in the Bay of Biscay, 10 miles (16 km) off the northwestern coast of France. Carleton led an attack on the French, but was seriously wounded which prevented him from taking any further part in the fighting. After four weeks of fighting, the British gained complete control of the island.
While acting as quartermaster general in Cuba to the army under General George Keppel (b.1724 d.1772), 3rd Earl of Albemarle, Carleton suffered a bullet wound to his arm on 22 July 1762, during the siege of Havana.
Having been made a colonel on 19 Feb 1762, he transferred two years later from the 72nd Foot to the 93rd, and on 3 Oct 1766 became a brigadier in North America.
Govener of Quebec
On 7 April 1766, Carleton was named acting “Lieutenant Governor and Administrator” of Quebec, but since Governor James Murray (b.1721 d.1794), who had been recalled to London, remained officially in charge, Carleton was not commissioned “Captain General and Governor in Chief’ until 12 April 1768.
Carleton arrived in Quebec on 22 September 1766, however as he had no experience in public affairs and came from a politically insignificant family, his appointment is unusual and was possibly a surprise to him. This may have been due to the Charles Lennox, 3rd
Duke of Richmond, who in 1766 had been made Secretary of State for the North American colonies. Fourteen years earlier, Carleton had tutored the Duke. The Duke was the colonel of the 72nd Regiment of Foot, while Carleton was its lieutenant colonel. He appointed Carleton as commander-in-chief of all troops stationed in Quebec.
The government consisted of a governor, a council, and an assembly. The governor could veto any action of the council, but London had also given Carleton instructions that all of his actions required the approval of the council. Most officials of the province at this time did not receive a salary, their income was through fees they charged for their services. Carleton tried to replace this system with one in which the officials received a regular salary, but this position was never supported in London. When Carleton gave up his own fees, Murray was furious.
After Murray resigned his position, Carleton, on the 12 April 1768 was appointed Captain General and Governor-in-Chief. Carleton took the oath of office on 1st November 1768. On 9 August 1770 he sailed for England for what he thought was a few months' consultation on issues related to the integration of Quebec into the British system. During his absence, Hector Theophilus de Cramahé (b.1720 d.1788), the lieutenant governor, ran the provincial government, with the aid of the first chief justice, William Hey, (b.c.1733 d.1797) and the Attorney-General, Francis Maseres (b.1731 d.1824). The British merchants of Quebec, many of whom had become disaffected to the colonial administration under Murray, were, at least initially, of good will. The merchants would later be agents for the Quebec Act 1774 and finally the partition of the two Canadas in the Constitutional Act of 1791.
Marriage & Family
On 21st May 1772, at the age of 48, at the Bishop of London's Palace, Fulham, Guy married
Lady Maria, Mary Howard (b.1753 d.1836) who was twenty-nine years his junior. She was the 3rd daughter of Thomas Howard (b.1714 d.1763), 2nd Earl of Effingham and his wife Elizabeth Beckford, (b.1725 d.1791), the daughter of Peter Beckford (b.1673 d.1735), the Speaker of Jamaica's House of Assembly, and his wife, the former Bathsuba Hering (b.1683 d.1750).
Guy and Maria had eleven siblings, nine sons and two daughters.
Guy Carleton, born 1773, died lieutenant with the 3rd Dragoon Guards in 10 Nov 1793.
Thomas Carleton (b.1774 d.1794) 1st Royal Dragoons, killed at Cateau.
Lt. Col. Christopher Carleton, (b.1775 d.1806) married 9 Jun 1797, Priscilla Martha Belford (b.1779 d.1815), he died with the 25th Dragoons at Madras, amil Nādu, India.
Maria Carleton (b.1777 d.1863), married 8 May 1810 William Orde-Powlett (b.1782 d.1850), 2nd Baron Bolton.
William Carleton (b.1778 d.1780) 2 years old.
Lancelot Carleton (b.1779 d.1780) 1 year old.
Lt. Col. George Carleton (b.1781, wounded at Badajoz, died 1814 at the Siege of Bergen Op Zoom, Netherlands while carrying the sword his father had worn there 66 years earlier.
Charles Carleton, born 1786, Royal Navy, killed 22 May 1799, HMS Phoebe after a block fell on his head, which fractured his skull.
Dudley Carleton, born 1790, Captain 4th Dragoons, died Oct 1820.
Richard Carleton (b.1792 d.1869) Rector of Nately Scures, married. 20 July 1820 Frances Louisa Horton (b.1782 d.1819) daughter of Eusebius Horton (b.1747 d.1823).
Frances Carleton (b.1785 d.1812) married 24 Aug 1802 the Rev. John Orde (b.1770 d.1850).
Later Career
Carleton was promoted to major general on 25 May 1772. While he was in London, the Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774, based upon his recommendations. It determined how the province was to be administered and was part of a continuing effort to respect some French traditions while ensuring the rights of citizens as understood by the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Carleton and his wife Maria returned to Quebec on 18 September 1774, where he began implementing the provisions of the act.
Carleton played a vital role in bringing this important territory firmly into the British fold. Despite his Protestant background, he entertained no prejudice against the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population, and he took active measures to protect their religious practices. This was done over the protest of a small but vocal English community, who demanded preferential treatment as in England.
Carleton rather wisely catered to the ruling provincial elites of Quebec, carefully cultivating their friendship. Thus, when he departed for England in 1770, he had secured the loyalty and cooperation of the French-speaking upper classes and the Catholic Church—no small feat in an age of religious intolerance.
He became a vocal proponent of the Quebec Act of 1774, through which the English government granted full recognition to the Catholic faith, along with economic rights to the French-speaking population of Canada. Furthermore, this authority extended far beyond the boundaries of Quebec and as far away as the Mississippi Valley. The act served to further shore up Canadian loyalties, but it set off alarm bells in the largely Protestant American colonies farther south, whose inhabitants now believed the English government was hatching a “Popish” plot against them. It was the latest in a series of British official missteps that helped hasten the onset of the American Revolution.
While the clergy and the petty gentry were happy with provisions favorable to them, British merchants and migrants from the Thirteen Colonies objected to a number of the provisions, which they thought were pro-Catholic. They argued that only English-speaking Protestants should be able to vote or hold public office. Many of the inhabitants were unhappy with the provisions reinstating the tithe in support of the Catholic Church, as well as seigneurial obligations, such as the corvée (a form of unpaid forced labour that is intermittent in nature, lasting for limited periods of time, typically only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of public works). In late 1774, the First Continental Congress sent letters to Montreal denouncing the Quebec Act for promoting Catholicism by allowing Catholics to hold civil service positions and reinstating the tithe. John Brown (b.1800 d.1859), abolitionist and an agent for the Boston Committee of Correspondence, arrived in Montreal in early 1775 as part of an effort to persuade citizens to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress, scheduled to meet in May 1775. Carleton, while aware of this activity, did nothing to prevent it, beyond discouraging publication of the Congressional letter in the province's only newspaper.
Defence of Canada
Carleton received notice of the start of the rebellion in May 1775, soon followed on 10 May 1775 by the news that American forces had captured Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point, and a raid on Fort Saint-Jean. As he had previously sent two of his regiments to Boston, he had only about 800 regular soldiers left in Quebec. His attempts to raise a militia met with limited success at first, as neither the ethnic French nor the English residents were willing to join. Area Natives were willing to fight on the British side, and the Crown wanted them to do so, but Carleton turned their offer down because he feared the Natives attacking non-combatants. For the same reason, Carleton told Guy Johnson (b.c.1740 d.1788) and his Iroquois allies, who had come to Quebec from New York, that they had no authority over any Indians in Canada and that the Iroquois were not to fight outside the Province of Quebec.
During the summer of 1775, Carleton directed the preparation of provincial defences, which were focused on Fort Saint-Jean. In September, the Continental Army began its invasion and besieged the fort. When it fell in November, Carleton was forced to flee from Montreal to Quebec City, escaping capture by disguising himself as a commoner.
Carleton repulsed an attack on Quebec by American forces on 31 December1775, in which the American commander, Major General Richard Montgomery (b.1738 d.1775), was killed. Despite their defeat, the Americans maintained the siege until it was lifted with the arrival of British reinforcements in May 1776 under the command John Burgoyne (b.1722 d.1792), who was appointed second-in-command. Guys younger brother Thomas was part of the relief effort.
Carleton was promoted to the rank of a general for America only on 26 March 1776 and launched a counteroffensive against the rebels, which included repelling an attempted attack on 8 June 1776 on Trois-Rivières. On 6 June 1776, he was appointed a Knight Companion of the Bath..
The next month Carleton commanded British naval forces on the Richelieu River, culminating in the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain in October 1776 against a rebel fleet led by General Benedict Arnold (b.1741 d.1801). The British, with a significantly superior fleet, won a decisive victory, destroying or capturing most of the rebel fleet, but the delay prevented Carleton from continuing on to capture Fort Ticonderoga that year. His younger brother Thomas and nephew Major Christopher Carleton (b.c.1743 d.1787) both served on his staff during the campaign. The morning following the battle, a small island in Lake Champlain was named Carleton's Prize, perhaps to Carleton's embarrassment at the time.
He was promoted to lieutenant general on 6 September 1777. In 1777, command of the major northern expedition to divide the rebel colonies was given to General Burgoyne. Upset that he had not been given its command, Carleton asked to be recalled. He was replaced as governor and military commander of Quebec in 1778 by Frederick Haldimand (b.1718 d.1791), and returned to England. In 1780 he was appointed by Prime Minister Lord North (b.1732 d.1792) to a commission investigating public finances. This post he held until 1782, when General Sir Henry Clinton (b.1730 d.1795) was recalled in the aftermath of the 1781 surrender at Yorktown. Carleton was appointed to replace Clinton as Commander-in-Chief, America, in May 1782. His headquarters in New York City were located at Number One Broadway.
American War of Indepenance
Carleton commanded British troops in the American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, (19 April 1775 to 3 September 1783), first leading the defence of Quebec during the 1775 rebel invasion, and the 1776 counteroffensive that drove the rebels (aka: Revolutionaries, Continentals, Yankees or Patriots who believed in American independence) from the province. In 1782 and 1783, he was the commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America and in this capacity he was notable for carrying out the Crown's promise of freedom to slaves who joined the British, and he oversaw the evacuation of British forces, Loyalists and more than 3,000 freedmen from New York City in 1783 to transport them to a British colony. Toward this end, Carleton assigned Commander Samuel Birch (b.1735 d.1811) to determine which Blacks had earned their freedom as Loyalist soldiers. These meetings became known as "The Birch Trials" and they happened at Fraunces Tavern, New York City every Wednesday from April to November of 1783. Its members judged each black on the testimony that he/she offered as evidence of loyal service. There were 3,500 freed slaves which created the Book of Negroes.
Evacuation of New York
In August 1783, Carleton was informed that Great Britain would grant the United States its independence. With his exit from New York imminent, Carleton asked to be relieved of his command. With this news, Loyalists began an exodus from the Thirteen Colonies and Carleton did his best to have them resettled outside the United States.
In May he had met with George Washington (b.1732 d.1799), among others, to arrange for the implementation of those parts of the Treaty of Paris relating to the evacuation of New York City, then commanded by Carleton and still occupied by the British Army, many Loyalists and former slaves. Carleton had refused to deliver over the human property to the Americans at the time of the British evacuation. Instead, he proposed a registry so that "the owners might eventually be paid for the slaves who were entitled to their freedom by British Proclamation and promises."
Sir Guy noted that nothing could be changed in any Articles that were inconsistent with prior policies or National Honour. He added that the only mode was to pay for the Negroes, in which case justice was done to all, the former slaves and the owners. Carleton said that it would be a breach of faith not to honour the British policy of liberty to the Negro and declared that if removing them proved to be an infraction of the treaty, then compensation would have to be paid by the British government. To provide for such a contingency, he had a register kept of all Negroes who left, called the Book of Negroes, entering their names, ages, occupations, and the names of their former masters. The Americans agreed to this, but as far as can be determined, the Crown never paid compensation. The British transported about 3,000 freedmen and other Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement. As the colony struggled, some of the freedmen later chose in the early 1790s to go to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where the British set up a new colony, which included the Black Poor from London.
Washington disagreed with Sir Guy's actions and wrote: "…the measure is totally different from the letter and spirit of the Treaty but waiving the specialty of the point, leaving this decision to our respective Sovereigns, I find it my duty to signify my readiness in conjunction with you to enter into agreements, or take any measures which may be deemed expedient to prevent the future carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American people."
On 28 November 1783 the evacuation was finished, and on 5 December Carleton departed from Staten Island to return to England. John Campbell of Strachur (b.1727 d.1806) succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief, North America, although the post was then much reduced in scope.
Upon his return to England, Carleton recommended the creation of a position of Governor General of all the provinces in British North America. Instead he was appointed "Governor-in-chief", with simultaneous appointments as governor of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and St. John's Island, present-day Prince Edward Island. He arrived in Quebec on 23 October 1786. His position as Governor-in-chief was mostly ignored. He found quickly that his authority in any of the provinces other than Quebec was effective only while he was present in person.
He was raised to the Peerage of Great Britain in August 1786 as The 1st Baron Dorchester, Baron of Dorchester in the County of Oxford for his services to the Crown.
Carleton returned to Canada on 18 August 1793 to resume his duties as both Governor of Quebec and Governor-in-Chief of all the remaining British provinces. His principal task was to find a constitutional way to satisfy the thousands of loyalist newcomers who resented the presence of French civil law and land tenure in Quebec, while still maintaining the loyalty of the French Canadian majority. Though Carleton was unable to find a suitable compromise, Parliament debated and passed the Constitutional Act of 1791 which split Quebec into English-speaking Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) under English common law with its own assembly, and the French majority Lower Canada (Quebec).
His replacement, Robert Prescott (b.c.1726 d.1815) arrived in May 1796 and on 9 July 1796 Carleton sailed from Canada on H.M.S. Active a Royal Navy 5th rate frigate but was shipwrecked at Île de Anticosti island near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. No one was killed or injured, Carleton eventually resumed his voyage and arrived in England on 19 September never to return.
In retirement Lord Dorchester, as he was now, lived mostly at Greywell Hill, adjoing Nately Scures, in Hampshire. After about 1805 he moved to Stubbings House at Burchett's Green, near Maidenhead, in Berkshire. On 10 November 1808, he died suddenly at Stubbings. He was buried in the parish church of St Swithun's, Nately Scures.
His widow, Lady Maria, who was born 30th and baptised on 31st Aug 1753, at Great Bookham, Surrey, died 14 Mar 1836, aged 82, at Hackwood Park, the seat of Lord Bolton, and was buried with her husband Guy.
Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, is memorialized across Canada in the names of dozens of towns and villages, as well as Carleton University in the nation’s capital, Ottawa.
Unfortunately, Lady Dorchester burnt all her husband's private papers after his death in 1808; so we have lost some of the most intimate records concerning him.
His elder brothers Connolly & Lancelot having predeceased him, and himself dying two years before his father, third son Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Carleton (b.1775 d.1806) was father of Arthur Henry Carleton (b.1805 d.1826), 2nd Baron Dorchester; Christopher's younger brother, the sixth son, Lieutenant-Colonel George Carleton (b.1781 d.1814) was father of Guy Carlton (b.1811 d.1875), the 3rd Baron. The title was extinct at the 3rd Baron's death, but it was revived when his daughter, Henrietta Anne (b.1846 d.1925) was created Baroness Dorchester; the title was extinct again at the death of her son, 2nd Baron, Dudley Massey Pigott Carleton (b.1876 d.1963).
The military and political career of Guys younger brother, Thomas Carleton (bc.1735 d.1817), was interwoven with his own, and Thomas served under him in the Canadas.
Baron Dorchester
Guy’s grandson, Arthur Henry Carleton, 2nd Baron Dorchester, born 20 Feb 1805. He was the only son of the Hon. George Carleton, fourth son of the first Baron. Was an Officer in the Horse Guards (the "Blues"). He died unmarried at an early age on 3 June 1826, buried at Nately Scures, Hampshire. Arthur was suceeded by his cousin, Guy.
Guy Carleton, 3rd Baron Dorchester, born 25 Oct 1811. Guy married 12 Jun 1837, Anne Wauchope (b.? d.1861), daughter of Thomas W J Wauchope they had issue, daughters, Hon Henrietta Anne Carleton, later suo jure 1st Baroness Dorchester and Hon Maria Georgiana Carleton, married 4 July 1865 to Timothy Fetherstonhaugh (b.1840 d.1908) of The College, Kirkoswald, Cumberland, and had issue, a son and two daughters. Guy was suceeded by his cousin, Dudley.
Dudley Wilmot Carleton, 4th Baron Dorchester, born 12 Nov 1822, was the eldest son of the late Rev. Hon. Richard Carleton. Dudley entered the Army 1840, he served with the Coldstream Guards in Canada and in the Crimean campaign from September 1854 to October 1855, being present at the battles of Balaclava and Inkerman, and the siege and fall of Sevastopol, for which services he received the medal with three clasps, the 5th Class of the Medjidie, and the Turkish medal. He commanded the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards from 1866 until he retired from the Army in 1868.
He married 27 July 1854 to Hon Charlotte Hobhouse (b.31 Mar 1831 d.11 Jun 1914), 1st surving daughter of John Cam Hobhouse, 1st Baron Broughton by his wife Lady Julia Thomasina Hay, 6th daughter of George Hay, 7th Marquess of Tweeddale. Dudley died from Pleurodynia (formerly called Bornholm disease) on 13 Nov 1897, was burried in Kensal Green Cemetary, London.
Dudley was childless so on his death the title became extinct. However, on 2 Aug 1899 his niece.
Hon Henrietta Anne Leir-Carleton, was created 'in her own right' 1st Baroness Dorchester. She was the wife, firstly of, Francis Paynton Pigott (b.c.1837 d.1883) and secondly, Major-General Richard Langford Leir (b.c.1842 d.1933). She was succeeded by her son from her first marriage, Dudley.
Dudley Massey Pigott Carleton, 2nd Baron Dorchester (b.1876 d.1963). He was a soldier and fought in the Second Boer War and the First World War. Married 21 Sept 1911 to Hon. Kathleen de Blaquiere (b.1891 d.1987) of Montréal, Québec. They had two daughters, Diana Claudia Patricia Carleton (b.1912 d.1990) and Lorraine Charmian Gabrielle Carleton (b.1919 d.2010) but no sons, and on Dudley’s death in 1963, the title became extinct for the second time.
* One evening is devoted to the chocolate lovers among us when these sculptures come out for display *
We were on a 9 day ea
We were on a 9 day eastern Caribbean cruise aboard NCL Jewel out of New York City. Cruising for us is all about life on board ship. The cabins, the service, the food, etc. I always find plenty to take pictures of.
The elaborate and exquisite ancient Santi Cosma e Damiano, a minor basilica devoted to Cosmas and Damian, two brothers who were reportedly doctors, martyrs and saints. The history of this church is one of the most fascinating in Rome. It is located in a very prominent location, opposite the Roman Forum in the historic rione Monte. It is actually comprised of two ancient Roman structures, one originating in the forum. For an extended period they formed a single church until the late 19th century when they were again separated. The primary structure is now accessed from an area of what once comprised the Temple of Peace, located on the southeast part of the Imperial Fora, now along the Via dei Fori Imperiali. It was where the famous marble plan, the Forma Urbis Romae, was once displayed. The entrance to the church at one point was located via the circular temple identified as the Temple of Romulus, whose actual identity and purpose is disputed. During the medieval era, however, the Roman forum became a neighborhood resembling the densely packed Subura of ancient Rome, which, along with flooding and possible landslides led to a gradual filling in of the area, resulting in the ground level rising so much that it required another entrance. The medieval neighborhood was cleared from the area in the 16th century but until that time the main door and entrance remained below ground level. Several other important churches also occupied former Roman structures in the Middle Ages, including Mamertine Prison, which became San Giuseppe dei Alegnami, and Sant'Adriano, the former Senate House. The most famous of these is probably the Colosseum itself: it was eventually christened Santa Maria della Pieta al Colosseo.
This church was founded in 527 when Theodoric the Great, the king of the Ostrogoths (acting as agent of the Emperor Justinian I who was residing at that point in Constantinople) and his daughter Amalasuntha donated two buildings to the church during the reign of Pope Felix IV. It was reportedly the first Christian church in that particular area, as much of the elite of Rome was still hostile to Christianity. It was not a titular church, but it was intended to be part of the church's charitable activities because of the association with the identical twin brother doctors. The pope united the two buildings and donated the complex to the brothers Cosmas and Damian, but also possibly to serve as a contrast to the ancient cult of Castor and Pollux, worshipped on the other side of the forum. The association with the two doctors was also something of a juxtaposition (and incorporation) of the tradition of the Asclepeion, as it was believed in the Middle Ages that an infirm person who slept overnight in the church could experience a vision which would lead to a cure.
The artwork is simply stunning. The decoration spans many periods, but the apse of the new church featured a mosaic representing the parousia of Christ. The church was further embellished by Pope Sergius I in the late 7th century and Pope Adrian I in the 8th century. Some have observed that the apse appears somewhat odd and even disproportional, as it is quite large for the still-ample room, but there was actually a height reduction of the structure in the restorations of the 17th century. On the bright side: one should actually be standing more than 20 feet below it, so it now provides a much closer view of the exquisite mosaic than actually intended. It features Christ at the parousia, or Second Coming at the End Time, set against an orange sky at dawn adorned in golden robes. He is holding a rolled scroll of the Torah. The Saints making an appearance are Peter and Paul, who are shown introducing Cosmas and Damian, depicted with martyrs' crowns. Pope Felix, to the far left, holds a model of the church. This figure was restored in the 17th century, and was thus altered under Pope Gregory XIII, but it was later restored. The other figure featured is another martyr, St. Theodore. The figures all stand in front of the Jordan river flanked by date palms, the left one also depicting a phoenix, the symbol of resurrection. The sheep represent the Lamb of God, accompanied by twelve others representing the Apostles. The Lamb appears standing on a hill overlooking Jerusalem on the left and Bethlehem on the right, from which flow the Twelve Rivers of Paradise.
In terms of its other features, the choir stalls are set against the curved wall. The frescoes on the walls and ceiling date to the 17th century, and are mostly anonymous works. The ceiling is made of carved and gilded wood, and it is also adorned with the crest of the Barberini family (Pope Urban VIII) which features bees. The high altar is Baroque, created by Domenico Castelli in 1637. It features a 12th-century icon of Our Lady as the altarpiece. The ceiling fresco was executed by Marco Montagna, and there is a paschal candlestick consisting of a twisted marble column to the right of the altar. There are also seven side chapels. This church is one of the most magnificent in Rome, and as it is located to the most popular area in the heart of the city it is also highly accessible and well worth a visit.
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
Few congregations are more devoted to their churches than those who tend the ancient and tiny adobe churches that grace the northern New Mexico countryside. This is a story of these symbols of community, and the abiding faith of the people who have lovingly maintained them for generations.
WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=utCMK1A8UPQ
OWN: www.knme.org/ecommerce/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21/...
Devoted to the coronation of His Majesty, the main gallery displays the coronation and Silver Jubilee chariots, gold and silver ceremonial armoury and traditional jewel-encrusted coronation crowns.
devoted monks prepare the temple for praying..
some old shots from last year's trip to Singapore - Malaysia.. this year we're heading to Thailand! :)) can't wait!
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
Day 116: Second Infantry Division Memorial
This is the memorial devoted to the 2nd Infantry Division of the US Army. It was first constituted on 21 September 1917 in the Regular Army.[3] It was organized on 26 October 1917 at Bourmont, Haute Marne, France.
About The Artist: Larry's life has been devoted to one end: art. Unlike most, Larry has known his destiny from the very beginning. There were a few who knew it as well. People like Larry's fourth grade teacher who saw enough in him to leave him alone to pursue his art.
Larry is most noted for his rural America landscapes, but most recently has taken high acclaim for his Western and Southwestern works, both in oil and acrylic, depicting the present and the past... the people, cultures and the landscapes.
Larry graduated in 1959 from Famous Artists Schools. He has done a portrait for Lynden B. Johnson, and has won awards and national recognition from the Saturday Evening Post, the National Western Art Show and Auction in Ellensburg, the Gene Autry Art Show and Auction in Palm Springs, and others,
P1220521 copy
A devoted fanbase packed Record Bar on a cold night for a trio of Kansas City indie rockers. Check out my photos and video of Old Canes, The Caves & Cowboy Indian Bear.
Saint Jean-Baptiste Church, Bourbourg.
Set of sculptures created by Anthony Caro
<< The niche sculptures >>
The choir (around the baptismal font) is devoted to the theme of water and the creation of the world.
Anthony Caro worked for each niche using religious, literary or scientific texts.
The first niches remind us that the creation of the world did not take place in calm, but with shocks, folds, faults, breaks. The journey ends with “Fruits”, which evokes the appearance of plants and appeasement.
These sculptures, (made with a mixture of materials: metal, wood and terracotta), combine figuration (animals) and abstraction which for A. Caro allows one to focus on expression, which can hinder the representation of a subject.
Source: “Visitor’s Guide” brochure available on site.
----------------------
Eglise Saint Jean-Baptiste, Bourbourg.
Ensemble de sculptures réalisées par Anthony Caro
<< Les sculptures des niches >>
Le choeur (autour de la cuve baptismale) est consacré au thème de l'eau et de la création du monde.
Anthony Caro a travaillé pour chaque niche à partir de textes religieux, littéraires ou scientifiques.
Les premières niches rappellent que la création du monde ne s'est pas faite dasn le calme, mais avec des chocs, des plis, des failles, des cassures. Le parcours s'achève avec "Fruits", qui évoque l'apparition des végétaux et de l'apaisement.
Ces sculptures, (réalisées avec un mélange de matériaux: métal, bois et terre cuite), allient figuration (les animaux) et abstraction qui pour A. Caro permet de se centrer sur l'expression, ce qui peut gêner la représentation d'un sujet.
Source: Plaquette "Guide du visiteur" mise à disposition sur place.
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
Acts 2:42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Happy birthday to me! Day one of one of the greatest adventures. 20 years old today. One year closer to APU. All thanks to Grant Heinlein for inspiring me to finally accomplish this. I am devoting this year to making photography a complete act of worship. Here goes nothing.
Today's photo was just kind of something that came together pretty quick. I posted a mini blog on 500px. Feel free to check it out HERE.
____________________________________________________________________________________
27th February 2014. Hopelessly Devoted by kate Tempest with Paines Plough at The Garage . Photo Credit ©Richard Davenport
Handed down form generation to generation the religious art of Santeros is a vibrant and important as it was centuries ago. Before the first English colonists set sail for Jamestowne on 1607, Spanish settlers arrived in northern New Mexico bringing their heritage and culture to this new world -- traditions that still exist today. Devoted to the Saints looks closely at the history, role and inspirational value of the Santos, or little saints, carved from wood and revered through the ages.
WATCH: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zTHo2xEAv4
OWN: www.knme.org/ecommerce/catalog/product_info.php/cPath/21/...
strange custom of the devoted Sultans of Ping fans. As their leader croons to you about the Sultans being your favourite band, the audience gets down on the ground like this.
"Turnip Fish
Out in the ocean at the bottom of the sea
There's a charming little turnip fish having his tea
All the other fish think
he's really weird 'cause all of the time he is drinking beer
That's ok it's very nice That's ok it's suger and spice
Now the little turnip fish was trying to get some sleep
Along the game the big blue whale out of the deep
He said "I am the big blue whale how do you do."
I'd like to be a turnip fish fish just like you
I'm the type of whale who likes to do my own thing
I like to rock 'n' roll to the Sultans of Ping
If all the other fish don't understand
The Sultans of ping are my favorite band
That's O.K. It's very nice
That's O.K. It's sugar and spice
That's O.K. It's very good
That's O.K. It's understood
He said I am the turnipfish I do my own thing
I'd like to rock 'n' roll to the Sultans of ping
If all the other fish don't understand
The Sultans of ping are my favorite band
That's O.K. It's very nice
That's O.K. It's sugar and spice
That's O.K. It's very good
That's O.K. It's understood
Now this is the end of my funny little tale
About the little turnip fish and the big blue whale
If all the other fish don't understand
The Sultans of ping are my favorite band
That's O.K. It's very nice
That's O.K. It's sugar and spice
That's O.K. It's very good
That's O.K. It's understood"
I have now started a Flickr site devoted to the days of the horse drawn Mail-Coaches. "Mail-Coaching in the 18th Century"
Photo's on there include original coaches, post horns, and Coaching Inns. If you have any photo's you think people will be interested in, please post them on the site, and if you want to, become a member.
The first Mail-coach, similair to this one, went from Bath to London. The four horses used to pull the coach were changed every 10 to 15 miles. On a run to London, there were a number of horse changes.
Also the drivers would be changed along the route. The only exception was the guard, who stayed with the coach throughout the journey.
Travelling on one of these was not cheap, the ordinary man in the street , like me, for example, would not have travelled by coach.
Because of the huge investment needed in coaches, horses, and all of the other trades involved, there was a lot of opposition to the railways which came in after about thirty years, and eventually took over the Mail business.
The same people who were against the railways were also against the motor car, the result of that was for a time in Britain, a man with a red flag had to walk in front of the car.
I'm not sure how long the red flag man had to go in front of a car, but it does show the opposition against anything to do with horses. It is difficult to imagine that all of that happened only about a 120 years ago.
The first Mail-coach, similair to this one, went from Bath to London. The four horses used to pull the coach were changed every 10 to 15 miles. On a run to London, there were a number of horse changes. Also the drivers would change along the route. The only exception was the guard, who stayed with the coach throughout the journey. Travelling on one of these was not cheap, the ordinary man in the street , like me, for example, would not have travelled by coach. Because of the huge investment needed in coaches, horses, and all of the other trades involved, there was a lot of opposition to the railways which came in after about thirty years, and eventually took over the Mail business. The same people who were against the railways were also against the motor car, the result of that was for a time in Britain, a man with a red flag had to walk in front of the car. I'm not sure how long the red flag man had to go in front of a car, but it does show the opposition against anything to do with horses. It is difficult to imagine that all of that happened only about a 120 years ago.
The word Coach, come from the Hungarian town of Kocs which built a vehicle that was copied across Europe.
Virtually all Coaches of the period were built using a variety of materials.
Wood:
Ash, used for the framework of the body. It was tough, fibrous, and lacked elasticity, meaning it was unlikely to warp.
Oak, usually, the young growth was used for underframes and wheel spokes.
Elm, ideal for floor and roof planks, wheel hubs and naves. It was though, difficult to paint, due to it's strongly marked grain.
Mahogany, used for interior and exterior panels, favoured because of it's attractive wood grain and smooth surface.
Cedar, this would be used for panels that were to be covered with fabric or leather.
Metals: At first,most metal parts, hoops, stays, axles, tyres, and plates, were made of Iron.
Iron, had it's problem though, Iron tyres tended to crack and flake. As soon as it became available, Steel was used in place of Iron.
Steel, was much stronger, and was ideal for tyres.
Copper, was used for Beading, and Sheathing.
Brass, was used for Buckles, Rings, Plates, and Door handles.
Gun-Metal, was used for Wheels to Axle securing nuts.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov[b] (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.
Born to a schoolteacher's family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He relocated to Saint Petersburg in 1893 where he became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye in Siberia for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent theorist in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1903, he took a key role in the RSDLP ideological split, leading the Bolshevik faction against Julius Martov's Mensheviks. Following Russia's failed Revolution of 1905, he initially campaigned for the First World War to be transformed into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution, which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the overthrow of capitalism and the rise of socialism. After the 1917 February Revolution ousted the Tsar and established a Provisional Government, he returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the new government.
Lenin's Bolshevik government initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, elected soviets, and a multi-party Constituent Assembly, although by 1918 it had centralised power in the new Communist Party. Lenin's administration redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry. It withdrew from the First World War by signing a treaty conceding territory to the Central Powers, and promoted world revolution through the Communist International. Opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign administered by the state security services; tens of thousands were killed or interned in concentration camps. His administration defeated right and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922 and oversaw the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921. Responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin encouraged economic growth through the New Economic Policy. Several non-Russian nations had secured independence from Russia after 1917, but five were forcibly re-united into the new Soviet Union in 1922, while others repelled Soviet invasions. His health failing, Lenin died in Gorki, with Joseph Stalin succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government.
Widely considered one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. He became an ideological figurehead behind Marxism–Leninism and a prominent influence over the international communist movement. A controversial and highly divisive historical figure, Lenin is viewed by his supporters as a champion of socialism, communism, anti-imperialism and the working class, while his critics accuse him of establishing a totalitarian dictatorship that oversaw mass killings and political repression of dissidents.
University and political radicalisation: 1887–1893
Upon entering Kazan University in August 1887, Lenin moved into a nearby flat. There, he joined a zemlyachestvo, a form of university society that represented the men of a particular region. This group elected him as its representative to the university's zemlyachestvo council, and he took part in a December demonstration against government restrictions that banned student societies. The police arrested Lenin and accused him of being a ringleader in the demonstration; he was expelled from the university, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs exiled him to his family's Kokushkino estate. There, he read voraciously, becoming enamoured with Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 pro-revolutionary novel What Is to Be Done?
Lenin's mother was concerned by her son's radicalisation, and was instrumental in convincing the Interior Ministry to allow him to return to the city of Kazan, but not the university. On his return, he joined Nikolai Fedoseev's revolutionary circle, through which he discovered Karl Marx's 1867 book Capital. This sparked his interest in Marxism, a socio-political theory that argued that society developed in stages, that this development resulted from class struggle, and that capitalist society would ultimately give way to socialist society and then communist society. Wary of his political views, Lenin's mother bought a country estate in Alakaevka village, Samara Oblast, in the hope that her son would turn his attention to agriculture. He had little interest in farm management, and his mother soon sold the land, keeping the house as a summer home.
In September 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to the city of Samara, where Lenin joined Alexei Sklyarenko's socialist discussion circle. There, Lenin fully embraced Marxism and produced a Russian language translation of Marx and Friedrich Engels's 1848 political pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto. He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, agreeing with Plekhanov's argument that Russia was moving from feudalism to capitalism and so socialism would be implemented by the proletariat, or urban working class, rather than the peasantry. This Marxist perspective contrasted with the view of the agrarian-socialist Narodnik movement, which held that the peasantry could establish socialism in Russia by forming peasant communes, thereby bypassing capitalism. This Narodnik view developed in the 1860s with the People's Freedom Party and was then dominant within the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin rejected the premise of the agrarian-socialist argument but was influenced by agrarian-socialists like Pyotr Tkachev and Sergei Nechaev and befriended several Narodniks.
In May 1890, Maria, who retained societal influence as the widow of a nobleman, persuaded the authorities to allow Lenin to take his exams externally at the University of St Petersburg, where he obtained the equivalent of a first-class degree with honours. The graduation celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid. Lenin remained in Samara for several years, working first as a legal assistant for a regional court and then for a local lawyer. He devoted much time to radical politics, remaining active in Sklyarenko's group and formulating ideas about how Marxism applied to Russia. Inspired by Plekhanov's work, Lenin collected data on Russian society, using it to support a Marxist interpretation of societal development and counter the claims of the Narodniks. He wrote a paper on peasant economics; it was rejected by the liberal journal Russian Thought.
Revolutionary activity
Early activism and imprisonment: 1893–1900
In late 1893, Lenin moved to Saint Petersburg. There, he worked as a barrister's assistant and rose to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself the Social-Democrats after the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany. Championing Marxism within the socialist movement, he encouraged the founding of revolutionary cells in Russia's industrial centres. By late 1894, he was leading a Marxist workers' circle, and meticulously covered his tracks to evade police spies. He began a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya, a Marxist schoolteacher. He also authored a political tract criticising the Narodnik agrarian-socialists, What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats; around 200 copies were illegally printed in 1894.
Hoping to cement connections between his Social-Democrats and Emancipation of Labour, a group of Russian Marxists based in Switzerland, Lenin visited the country to meet group members Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod. He proceeded to Paris to meet Marx's son-in-law Paul Lafargue and to research the Paris Commune of 1871, which he considered an early prototype for a proletarian government. Financed by his mother, he stayed in a Swiss health spa before travelling to Berlin, where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met the Marxist Wilhelm Liebknecht. Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary publications, he travelled to various cities distributing literature to striking workers. While involved in producing a news sheet, Rabochee delo (Workers' Cause), he was among 40 activists arrested in St. Petersburg and charged with sedition.
Refused legal representation or bail, Lenin denied all charges against him but remained imprisoned for a year before sentencing. He spent this time theorising and writing. In this work he noted that the rise of industrial capitalism in Russia had caused large numbers of peasants to move to the cities, where they formed a proletariat. From his Marxist perspective, Lenin argued that this Russian proletariat would develop class consciousness, which would in turn lead them to violently overthrow tsarism, the aristocracy, and the bourgeoisie and to establish a proletariat state that would move toward socialism.
In February 1897, Lenin was sentenced without trial to three years' exile in eastern Siberia. He was granted a few days in Saint Petersburg to put his affairs in order and used this time to meet with the Social-Democrats, who had renamed themselves the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. His journey to eastern Siberia took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Deemed only a minor threat to the government, he was exiled to Shushenskoye, Minusinsky District, where he was kept under police surveillance; he was nevertheless able to correspond with other revolutionaries, many of whom visited him, and permitted to go on trips to swim in the Yenisei River and to hunt duck and snipe.
In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organising a strike. She was initially posted to Ufa, but persuaded the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, where she and Lenin married on 10 July 1898. Settling into a family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian. There, Lenin wrote A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats to criticise German Marxist revisionists like Eduard Bernstein who advocated a peaceful, electoral path to socialism. He also finished The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), his longest book to date, which criticised the agrarian-socialists and promoted a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development. Published under the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilin, upon publication it received predominantly poor reviews.
Munich, London, and Geneva: 1900–1905
After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began raising funds for a newspaper, Iskra (Spark), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia for Western Europe; in Switzerland he met other Russian Marxists, and at a Corsier conference they agreed to launch the paper from Munich, where Lenin relocated in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, Iskra was smuggled into Russia, becoming the country's most successful underground publication for 50 years. He first adopted the pseudonym Lenin in December 1901, possibly based on the Siberian River Lena; he often used the fuller pseudonym of N. Lenin, and while the N did not stand for anything, a popular misconception later arose that it represented Nikolai. Under this pseudonym, in 1902 he published his most influential publication to date, the pamphlet What Is to Be Done?, which outlined his thoughts on the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat to revolution.
Nadya joined Lenin in Munich and became his secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for Iskra and drafted the RSDLP programme, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics, particularly the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR),[ a Narodnik agrarian-socialist group founded in 1901. Despite remaining a Marxist, he accepted the Narodnik view on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, accordingly, penning the 1903 pamphlet To the Village Poor. To evade Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with Iskra in April 1902, where he befriended fellow Russian-Ukrainian Marxist Leon Trotsky. Lenin fell ill with erysipelas and was unable to take such a leading role on the Iskra editorial board; in his absence, the board moved its base of operations to Geneva.
The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a schism emerged between Lenin's supporters and those of Julius Martov. Martov argued that party members should be able to express themselves independently of the party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasising the need for a strong leadership with complete control over the party. Lenin's supporters were in the majority, and he termed them the "majoritarians" (bol'sheviki in Russian; Bolsheviks); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minoritarians" (men'sheviki in Russian; Mensheviks). Arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks continued after the conference; the Bolsheviks accused their rivals of being opportunists and reformists who lacked discipline, while the Mensheviks accused Lenin of being a despot and autocrat. Enraged at the Mensheviks, Lenin resigned from the Iskra editorial board and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik tract One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. The stress made Lenin ill, and to recuperate he holidayed in Switzerland. The Bolshevik faction grew in strength; by spring 1905, the whole RSDLP Central Committee was Bolshevik, and in December they founded the newspaper Vperyod (Forward).
Revolution of 1905 and its aftermath: 1905–1914
In January 1905, the Bloody Sunday massacre of protesters in St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest in the Russian Empire known as the Revolution of 1905. Lenin urged Bolsheviks to take a greater role in the events, encouraging violent insurrection. In doing so, he adopted SR slogans regarding "armed insurrection", "mass terror", and "the expropriation of gentry land", resulting in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism. In turn, he insisted that the Bolsheviks split completely with the Mensheviks; many Bolsheviks refused, and both groups attended the Third RSDLP Congress, held in London in April 1905. Lenin presented many of his ideas in the pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution, published in August 1905. Here, he predicted that Russia's liberal bourgeoisie would be sated by a transition to constitutional monarchy and thus betray the revolution; instead, he argued that the proletariat would have to build an alliance with the peasantry to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish the "provisional revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry."
The uprising has begun. Force against Force. Street fighting is raging, barricades are being thrown up, rifles are cracking, guns are booming. Rivers of blood are flowing, the civil war for freedom is blazing up. Moscow and the South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: Death or Freedom!
In response to the revolution of 1905, which had failed to overthrow the government, Tsar Nicholas II accepted a series of liberal reforms in his October Manifesto. In this climate, Lenin felt it safe to return to St. Petersburg. Joining the editorial board of Novaya Zhizn (New Life), a radical legal newspaper run by Maria Andreyeva, he used it to discuss issues facing the RSDLP. He encouraged the party to seek out a much wider membership, and advocated the continual escalation of violent confrontation, believing both to be necessary for a successful revolution. Recognising that membership fees and donations from a few wealthy sympathisers were insufficient to finance the Bolsheviks' activities, Lenin endorsed the idea of robbing post offices, railway stations, trains, and banks. Under the lead of Leonid Krasin, a group of Bolsheviks began carrying out such criminal actions, the best-known taking place in June 1907, when a group of Bolsheviks acting under the leadership of Joseph Stalin committed an armed robbery of the State Bank in Tiflis, Georgia.
Although he briefly supported the idea of reconciliation between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin's advocacy of violence and robbery was condemned by the Mensheviks at the Fourth RSDLP Congress, held in Stockholm in April 1906. Lenin was involved in setting up a Bolshevik Centre in Kuokkala, Grand Duchy of Finland, which was at the time an autonomous state within the Russian Empire, before the Bolsheviks regained dominance of the RSDLP at its Fifth Congress, held in London in May 1907. As the Tsarist government cracked down on opposition, both by disbanding Russia's legislative assembly, the Second Duma, and by ordering its secret police, the Okhrana, to arrest revolutionaries, Lenin fled Finland for Switzerland. There, he tried to exchange those banknotes stolen in Tiflis that had identifiable serial numbers on them.
Alexander Bogdanov and other prominent Bolsheviks decided to relocate the Bolshevik Centre to Paris; although Lenin disagreed, he moved to the city in December 1908. Lenin disliked Paris, lambasting it as "a foul hole", and while there he sued a motorist who knocked him off his bike. Lenin became very critical of Bogdanov's view that Russia's proletariat had to develop a socialist culture in order to become a successful revolutionary vehicle. Instead, Lenin favoured a vanguard of socialist intelligentsia who would lead the working-classes in revolution. Furthermore, Bogdanov, influenced by Ernest Mach, believed that all concepts of the world were relative, whereas Lenin stuck to the orthodox Marxist view that there was an objective reality independent of human observation. Bogdanov and Lenin holidayed together at Maxim Gorky's villa in Capri in April 1908 on returning to Paris, Lenin encouraged a split within the Bolshevik faction between his and Bogdanov's followers, accusing the latter of deviating from Marxism.
In May 1908, Lenin lived briefly in London, where he used the British Museum Reading Room to write Materialism and Empirio-criticism, an attack on what he described as the "bourgeois-reactionary falsehood" of Bogdanov's relativism. Lenin's factionalism began to alienate increasing numbers of Bolsheviks, including his former close supporters Alexei Rykov and Lev Kamenev. The Okhrana exploited his factionalist attitude by sending a spy, Roman Malinovsky, to act as a vocal Lenin supporter within the party. Various Bolsheviks expressed their suspicions about Malinovsky to Lenin, although it is unclear if the latter was aware of the spy's duplicity; it is possible that he used Malinovsky to feed false information to the Okhrana.
In August 1910, Lenin attended the Eighth Congress of the Second International, an international meeting of socialists, in Copenhagen as the RSDLP's representative, following this with a holiday in Stockholm with his mother. With his wife and sisters, he then moved to France, settling first in Bombon and then Paris. Here, he became a close friend to the French Bolshevik Inessa Armand; some biographers suggest that they had an extra-marital affair from 1910 to 1912. Meanwhile, at a Paris meeting in June 1911, the RSDLP Central Committee decided to move their focus of operations back to Russia, ordering the closure of the Bolshevik Centre and its newspaper, Proletari. Seeking to rebuild his influence in the party, Lenin arranged for a party conference to be held in Prague in January 1912, and although 16 of the 18 attendants were Bolsheviks, he was heavily criticised for his factionalist tendencies and failed to boost his status within the party.
Moving to Kraków in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, a culturally Polish part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he used Jagiellonian University's library to conduct research. He stayed in close contact with the RSDLP, which was operating in the Russian Empire, convincing the Duma's Bolshevik members to split from their parliamentary alliance with the Mensheviks. In January 1913, Stalin, whom Lenin referred to as the "wonderful Georgian", visited him, and they discussed the future of non-Russian ethnic groups in the Empire. Due to the ailing health of both Lenin and his wife, they moved to the rural town of Biały Dunajec, before heading to Bern for Nadya to have surgery on her goitre.
First World War: 1914–1917
The [First World] war is being waged for the division of colonies and the robbery of foreign territory; thieves have fallen out–and to refer to the defeats at a given moment of one of the thieves in order to identify the interests of all thieves with the interests of the nation or the fatherland is an unconscionable bourgeois lie.
Lenin was in Galicia when the First World War broke out. The war pitted the Russian Empire against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and due to his Russian citizenship, Lenin was arrested and briefly imprisoned until his anti-Tsarist credentials were explained. Lenin and his wife returned to Bern, before relocating to Zürich in February 1916. Lenin was angry that the German Social-Democratic Party was supporting the German war effort, which was a direct contravention of the Second International's Stuttgart resolution that socialist parties would oppose the conflict and saw the Second International as defunct. He attended the Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915 and the Kienthal Conference in April 1916, urging socialists across the continent to convert the "imperialist war" into a continent-wide "civil war" with the proletariat pitted against the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. In July 1916, Lenin's mother died, but he was unable to attend her funeral. Her death deeply affected him, and he became depressed, fearing that he too would die before seeing the proletarian revolution.
In September 1917, Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which argued that imperialism was a product of monopoly capitalism, as capitalists sought to increase their profits by extending into new territories where wages were lower and raw materials cheaper. He believed that competition and conflict would increase and that war between the imperialist powers would continue until they were overthrown by proletariat revolution and socialism established. He spent much of this time reading the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Aristotle, all of whom had been key influences on Marx. This changed Lenin's interpretation of Marxism; whereas he once believed that policies could be developed based on predetermined scientific principles, he concluded that the only test of whether a policy was correct was its practice. He still perceived himself as an orthodox Marxist, but he began to diverge from some of Marx's predictions about societal development; whereas Marx had believed that a "bourgeoisie-democratic revolution" of the middle-classes had to take place before a "socialist revolution" of the proletariat, Lenin believed that in Russia the proletariat could overthrow the Tsarist regime without an intermediate revolution.
February Revolution and the July Days: 1917
In February 1917, the February Revolution broke out in St. Petersburg, renamed Petrograd at the beginning of the First World War, as industrial workers went on strike over food shortages and deteriorating factory conditions. The unrest spread to other parts of Russia, and fearing that he would be violently overthrown, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated. The State Duma took over control of the country, establishing the Russian Provisional Government and converting the Empire into a new Russian Republic. When Lenin learned of this from his base in Switzerland, he celebrated with other dissidents. He decided to return to Russia to take charge of the Bolsheviks but found that most passages into the country were blocked due to the ongoing conflict. He organised a plan with other dissidents to negotiate a passage for them through Germany, with which Russia was then at war. Recognising that these dissidents could cause problems for their Russian enemies, the German government agreed to permit 32 Russian citizens to travel by train through their territory, among them Lenin and his wife. For political reasons, Lenin and the Germans agreed to a cover story that Lenin had travelled by sealed train carriage through German territory, but in fact the train was not truly sealed, and the passengers were allowed to disembark to, for example, spend the night in Frankfurt. The group travelled by train from Zürich to Sassnitz, proceeding by ferry to Trelleborg, Sweden, and from there to the Haparanda–Tornio border crossing and then to Helsinki before taking the final train to Petrograd in disguise.
Arriving at Petrograd's Finland Station in April, Lenin gave a speech to Bolshevik supporters condemning the Provisional Government and again calling for a continent-wide European proletarian revolution. Over the following days, he spoke at Bolshevik meetings, lambasting those who wanted reconciliation with the Mensheviks and revealing his "April Theses", an outline of his plans for the Bolsheviks, which he had written on the journey from Switzerland. He publicly condemned both the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries, who dominated the influential Petrograd Soviet, for supporting the Provisional Government, denouncing them as traitors to socialism. Considering the government to be just as imperialist as the Tsarist regime, he advocated immediate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, rule by soviets, the nationalisation of industry and banks, and the state expropriation of land, all with the intention of establishing a proletariat government and pushing toward a socialist society. By contrast, the Mensheviks believed that Russia was insufficiently developed to transition to socialism and accused Lenin of trying to plunge the new Republic into civil war. Over the coming months Lenin campaigned for his policies, attending the meetings of the Bolshevik Central Committee, prolifically writing for the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, and giving public speeches in Petrograd aimed at converting workers, soldiers, sailors, and peasants to his cause.
Sensing growing frustration among Bolshevik supporters, Lenin suggested an armed political demonstration in Petrograd to test the government's response. Amid deteriorating health, he left the city to recuperate in the Finnish village of Neivola. The Bolsheviks' armed demonstration, the July Days, took place while Lenin was away, but upon learning that demonstrators had violently clashed with government forces, he returned to Petrograd and called for calm. Responding to the violence, the government ordered the arrest of Lenin and other prominent Bolsheviks, raiding their offices, and publicly alleging that he was a German agent provocateur. Evading arrest, Lenin hid in a series of Petrograd safe houses. Fearing that he would be killed, Lenin and fellow senior Bolshevik Grigory Zinoviev escaped Petrograd in disguise, relocating to Razliv. There, Lenin began work on the book that became The State and Revolution, an exposition on how he believed the socialist state would develop after the proletariat revolution, and how from then on the state would gradually wither away, leaving a pure communist society. He began arguing for a Bolshevik-led armed insurrection to topple the government, but at a clandestine meeting of the party's central committee this idea was rejected. Lenin then headed by train and by foot to Finland, arriving at Helsinki on 10 August, where he hid away in safe houses belonging to Bolshevik sympathisers.
October Revolution: 1917
In August 1917, while Lenin was in Finland, General Lavr Kornilov, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, sent troops to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government. Premier Alexander Kerensky turned to the Petrograd Soviet, including its Bolshevik members, for help, allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as Red Guards to defend the city. The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd, but the events had allowed the Bolsheviks to return to the open political arena. Fearing a counter-revolution from right-wing forces hostile to socialism, the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries who dominated the Petrograd Soviet had been instrumental in pressuring the government to normalise relations with the Bolsheviks. Both the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had lost much popular support because of their affiliation with the Provisional Government and its unpopular continuation of the war. The Bolsheviks capitalised on this, and soon the pro-Bolshevik Marxist Trotsky was elected leader of the Petrograd Soviet. In September, the Bolsheviks gained a majority in the workers' sections of both the Moscow and Petrograd Soviets.
Recognising that the situation was safer for him, Lenin returned to Petrograd. There he attended a meeting of the Bolshevik Central Committee on 10 October, where he again argued that the party should lead an armed insurrection to topple the Provisional Government. This time the argument won with ten votes against two. Critics of the plan, Zinoviev and Kamenev, argued that Russian workers would not support a violent coup against the regime and that there was no clear evidence for Lenin's assertion that all of Europe was on the verge of proletarian revolution. The party began plans to organise the offensive, holding a final meeting at the Smolny Institute on 24 October. This was the base of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), an armed militia largely loyal to the Bolsheviks that had been established by the Petrograd Soviet during Kornilov's alleged coup.
In October, the MRC was ordered to take control of Petrograd's key transport, communication, printing and utilities hubs, and did so without bloodshed. Bolsheviks besieged the government in the Winter Palace and overcame it and arrested its ministers after the cruiser Aurora, controlled by Bolshevik seamen, fired a blank shot to signal the start of the revolution. During the insurrection, Lenin gave a speech to the Petrograd Soviet announcing that the Provisional Government had been overthrown. The Bolsheviks declared the formation of a new government, the Council of People's Commissars, or Sovnarkom. Lenin initially turned down the leading position of Chairman, suggesting Trotsky for the job, but other Bolsheviks insisted and ultimately Lenin relented. Lenin and other Bolsheviks then attended the Second Congress of Soviets on 26 and 27 October and announced the creation of the new government. Menshevik attendees condemned the illegitimate seizure of power and the risk of civil war. In these early days of the new regime, Lenin avoided talking in Marxist and socialist terms so as not to alienate Russia's population, and instead spoke about having a country controlled by the workers. Lenin and many other Bolsheviks expected proletariat revolution to sweep across Europe in days or months.
Lenin's government
Organising the Soviet government: 1917–1918
The Provisional Government had planned for a Constituent Assembly to be elected in November 1917; against Lenin's objections, Sovnarkom agreed for the vote to take place as scheduled. In the constitutional election, the Bolsheviks gained approximately a quarter of the vote, being defeated by the agrarian-focused Socialist-Revolutionaries. Lenin argued that the election was not a fair reflection of the people's will, that the electorate had not had time to learn the Bolsheviks' political programme, and that the candidacy lists had been drawn up before the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries split from the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Nevertheless, the newly elected Russian Constituent Assembly convened in Petrograd in January 1918. Sovnarkom argued that it was counter-revolutionary because it sought to remove power from the soviets, but the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks denied this. The Bolsheviks presented the Assembly with a motion that would strip it of most of its legal powers; when the Assembly rejected the motion, Sovnarkom declared this as evidence of its counter-revolutionary nature and forcibly disbanded it.
Lenin rejected repeated calls, including from some Bolsheviks, to establish a coalition government with other socialist parties. Although refusing a coalition with the Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, Sovnarkom partially relented; they allowed the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries five posts in the cabinet in December 1917. This coalition only lasted four months until March 1918, when the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries pulled out of the government over a disagreement about the Bolsheviks' approach to ending the First World War. At their 7th Congress in March 1918, the Bolsheviks changed their official name from the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party to the Russian Communist Party, as Lenin wanted to both distance his group from the increasingly reformist German Social Democratic Party and to emphasise its ultimate goal, that of a communist society.
Although ultimate power officially rested with the country's government in the form of Sovnarkom and the Executive Committee (VTSIK) elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets (ARCS), the Communist Party was de facto in control in Russia, as acknowledged by its members at the time. By 1918, Sovnarkom began acting unilaterally, claiming a need for expediency, with the ARCS and VTSIK becoming increasingly marginalised, so the soviets no longer had a role in governing Russia. During 1918 and 1919, the government expelled Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries from the soviets. Russia had become a one-party state.
Within the party was established a Political Bureau (Politburo) and Organisation Bureau (Orgburo) to accompany the existing Central Committee; the decisions of these party bodies had to be adopted by Sovnarkom and the Council of Labour and Defence. Lenin was the most significant figure in this governance structure as well as being the Chairman of Sovnarkom and sitting on the Council of Labour and Defence, and on the Central Committee and Politburo of the Communist Party. The only individual to have anywhere near this influence was Lenin's right-hand man, Yakov Sverdlov, who died in March 1919 during a flu pandemic. In November 1917, Lenin and his wife took a two-room flat within the Smolny Institute; the following month they left for a brief holiday in Halila, Finland. In January 1918, he survived an assassination attempt in Petrograd; Fritz Platten, who was with Lenin at the time, shielded him and was injured by a bullet.
Concerned that the German Army posed a threat to Petrograd, in March 1918 Sovnarkom relocated to Moscow, initially as a temporary measure. There, Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders moved into the Kremlin, where Lenin lived with his wife and sister Maria in a first-floor apartment adjacent to the room in which the Sovnarkom meetings were held. Lenin disliked Moscow, but rarely left the city centre during the rest of his life. He survived a second assassination attempt, in Moscow in August 1918; he was shot following a public speech and injured badly. A Socialist-Revolutionary, Fanny Kaplan, was arrested and executed. The attack was widely covered in the Russian press, generating much sympathy for Lenin and boosting his popularity. As a respite, he was driven in September 1918 to the luxurious Gorki estate, just outside Moscow, recently nationalized for him by the government.
Social, legal, and economic reform: 1917–1918
To All Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. The Soviet authority will at once propose a democratic peace to all nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will safeguard the transfer without compensation of all land—landlord, imperial, and monastery—to the peasants' committees; it will defend the soldiers' rights, introducing a complete democratisation of the army; it will establish workers' control over industry; it will ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the date set; it will supply the cities with bread and the villages with articles of first necessity; and it will secure to all nationalities inhabiting Russia the right of self-determination ... Long live the revolution!
Upon taking power, Lenin's regime issued a series of decrees. The first was a Decree on Land, which declared that the landed estates of the aristocracy and the Orthodox Church should be nationalised and redistributed to peasants by local governments. This contrasted with Lenin's desire for agricultural collectivisation but provided governmental recognition of the widespread peasant land seizures that had already occurred. In November 1917, the government issued the Decree on the Press that closed many opposition media outlets deemed counter revolutionary. They claimed the measure would be temporary; the decree was widely criticised, including by many Bolsheviks, for compromising freedom of the press.
In November 1917, Lenin issued the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, which stated that non-Russian ethnic groups living inside the Republic had the right to secede from Russian authority and establish their own independent nation-states. Many nations declared independence (Finland and Lithuania in December 1917, Latvia and Ukraine in January 1918, Estonia in February 1918, Transcaucasia in April 1918, and Poland in November 1918). Soon, the Bolsheviks actively promoted communist parties in these independent nation-states, while at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of the Soviets in July 1918 a constitution was approved that reformed the Russian Republic into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Seeking to modernise the country, the government officially converted Russia from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar used in Europe.
In November 1917, Sovnarkom issued a decree abolishing Russia's legal system, calling on the use of "revolutionary conscience" to replace the abolished laws. The courts were replaced by a two-tier system, namely the Revolutionary Tribunals to deal with counter-revolutionary crimes, and the People's Courts to deal with civil and other criminal offences. They were instructed to ignore pre-existing laws and base their rulings on the Sovnarkom decrees and a "socialist sense of justice." November also saw an overhaul of the armed forces; Sovnarkom implemented egalitarian measures, abolished previous ranks, titles, and medals, and called on soldiers to establish committees to elect their commanders.
Earth of Filth".
In October 1917, Lenin issued a decree limiting work for everyone in Russia to eight hours per day. He also issued the Decree on Popular Education that stipulated that the government would guarantee free, secular education for all children in Russia, and a decree establishing a system of state orphanages. To combat mass illiteracy, a literacy campaign was initiated; an estimated 5 million people enrolled in crash courses of basic literacy from 1920 to 1926. Embracing the equality of the sexes, laws were introduced that helped to emancipate women, by giving them economic autonomy from their husbands and removing restrictions on divorce. Zhenotdel, a Bolshevik women's organisation, was established to further these aims. Under Lenin, Russia became the first country to legalize abortion on demand in the first trimester. Militantly atheist, Lenin and the Communist Party wanted to demolish organised religion. In January 1918, the government decreed the separation of church and state, and prohibited religious instruction in schools.
In November 1917, Lenin issued the Decree on Workers' Control, which called on the workers of each enterprise to establish an elected committee to monitor their enterprise's management. That month they also issued an order requisitioning the country's gold, and nationalised the banks, which Lenin saw as a major step toward socialism. In December, Sovnarkom established a Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh), which had authority over industry, banking, agriculture, and trade. The factory committees were subordinate to the trade unions, which were subordinate to VSNKh; the state's centralised economic plan was prioritised over the workers' local economic interests. In early 1918, Sovnarkom cancelled all foreign debts and refused to pay interest owed on them. In April 1918, it nationalised foreign trade, establishing a state monopoly on imports and exports. In June 1918, it decreed nationalisation of public utilities, railways, engineering, textiles, metallurgy, and mining, although often these were state-owned in name only. Full-scale nationalisation did not take place until November 1920, when small-scale industrial enterprises were brought under state control.
A faction of the Bolsheviks known as the "Left Communists" criticised Sovnarkom's economic policy as too moderate; they wanted nationalisation of all industry, agriculture, trade, finance, transport, and communication. Lenin believed that this was impractical at that stage and that the government should only nationalise Russia's large-scale capitalist enterprises, such as the banks, railways, larger landed estates, and larger factories and mines, allowing smaller businesses to operate privately until they grew large enough to be successfully nationalised. Lenin also disagreed with the Left Communists about the economic organisation; in June 1918, he argued that centralised economic control of industry was needed, whereas Left Communists wanted each factory to be controlled by its workers, a syndicalist approach that Lenin considered detrimental to the cause of socialism.
Adopting a left-libertarian perspective, both the Left Communists and other factions in the Communist Party critiqued the decline of democratic institutions in Russia. Internationally, many socialists decried Lenin's regime and denied that he was establishing socialism; in particular, they highlighted the lack of widespread political participation, popular consultation, and industrial democracy. In late 1918, the Czech-Austrian Marxist Karl Kautsky authored an anti-Leninist pamphlet condemning the anti-democratic nature of Soviet Russia, to which Lenin published a vociferous reply, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg echoed Kautsky's views, while Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin described the Bolshevik seizure of power as "the burial of the Russian Revolution."
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: 1917–1918
[By prolonging the war] we unusually strengthen German imperialism, and the peace will have to be concluded anyway, but then the peace will be worse because it will be concluded by someone other than ourselves. No doubt the peace which we are now being forced to conclude is an indecent peace, but if war commences our government will be swept away and the peace will be concluded by another government.
Upon taking power, Lenin believed that a key policy of his government must be to withdraw from the First World War by establishing an armistice with the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. He believed that ongoing war would create resentment among war-weary Russian troops, to whom he had promised peace, and that these troops and the advancing German Army threatened both his own government and the cause of international socialism. By contrast, other Bolsheviks, in particular Nikolai Bukharin and the Left Communists, believed that peace with the Central Powers would be a betrayal of international socialism and that Russia should instead wage "a war of revolutionary defence" that would provoke an uprising of the German proletariat against their own government.
Lenin proposed a three-month armistice in his Decree on Peace of November 1917, which was approved by the Second Congress of Soviets and presented to the German and Austro-Hungarian governments. The Germans responded positively, viewing this as an opportunity to focus on the Western Front and stave off looming defeat. In November, armistice talks began at Brest-Litovsk, the headquarters of the German high command on the Eastern Front, with the Russian delegation being led by Trotsky and Adolph Joffe. Meanwhile, a ceasefire until January was agreed. During negotiations, the Germans insisted on keeping their wartime conquests, which included Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, whereas the Russians countered that this was a violation of these nations' rights to self-determination. Some Bolsheviks had expressed hopes of dragging out negotiations until proletarian revolution broke out throughout Europe. On 7 January 1918, Trotsky returned from Brest-Litovsk to St. Petersburg with an ultimatum from the Central Powers: either Russia accept Germany's territorial demands or the war would resume.
In January and again in February, Lenin urged the Bolsheviks to accept Germany's proposals. He argued that the territorial losses were acceptable if it ensured the survival of the Bolshevik-led government. The majority of Bolsheviks rejected his position, hoping to prolong the armistice and call Germany's bluff. On 18 February, the German Army launched Operation Faustschlag, advancing further into Russian-controlled territory and conquering Dvinsk within a day. At this point, Lenin finally convinced a small majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee to accept the Central Powers' demands. On 23 February, the Central Powers issued a new ultimatum: Russia had to recognise German control not only of Poland and the Baltic states but also of Ukraine or face a full-scale invasion.
On 3 March, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed. It resulted in massive territorial losses for Russia, with 26% of the former Empire's population, 37% of its agricultural harvest area, 28% of its industry, 26% of its railway tracks, and three-quarters of its coal and iron deposits being transferred to German control. Accordingly, the Treaty was deeply unpopular across Russia's political spectrum, and several Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries resigned from Sovnarkom in protest. After the Treaty, Sovnarkom focused on trying to foment proletarian revolution in Germany, issuing an array of anti-war and anti-government publications in the country; the German government retaliated by expelling Russia's diplomats. The Treaty nevertheless failed to stop the Central Powers' defeat; in November 1918, the German Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated and the country's new administration signed the Armistice with the Allies. As a result, Sovnarkom proclaimed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk void.
Anti-Kulak campaigns, Cheka, and Red Terror: 1918–1922
[The bourgeoisie] practised terror against the workers, soldiers and peasants in the interests of a small group of landowners and bankers, whereas the Soviet regime applies decisive measures against landowners, plunderers and their accomplices in the interests of the workers, soldiers and peasants.
By early 1918, many cities in western Russia faced famine as a result of chronic food shortages. Lenin blamed this on the kulaks, or wealthier peasants, who allegedly hoarded the grain that they had produced to increase its financial value. In May 1918, he issued a requisitioning order that established armed detachments to confiscate grain from kulaks for distribution in the cities, and in June called for the formation of Committees of Poor Peasants to aid in requisitioning. This policy resulted in vast social disorder and violence, as armed detachments often clashed with peasant groups, helping to set the stage for the civil war. A prominent example of Lenin's views was his August 1918 telegram to the Bolsheviks of Penza, which called upon them to suppress a peasant insurrection by publicly hanging at least 100 "known kulaks, rich men, [and] bloodsuckers."
The requisitions disincentivised peasants from producing more grain than they could personally consume, and thus production slumped. A booming black market supplemented the official state-sanctioned economy, and Lenin called on speculators, black marketeers and looters to be shot. Both the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries condemned the armed appropriations of grain at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets in July 1918. Realising that the Committees of the Poor Peasants were also persecuting peasants who were not kulaks and thus contributing to anti-government feeling among the peasantry, in December 1918 Lenin abolished them.
Lenin repeatedly emphasised the need for terror and violence in overthrowing the old order and ensuring the success of the revolution. Speaking to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the Soviets in November 1917, he declared that "the state is an institution built up for the sake of exercising violence. Previously, this violence was exercised by a handful of moneybags over the entire people; now we want [...] to organise violence in the interests of the people." He strongly opposed suggestions to abolish capital punishment. Fearing anti-Bolshevik forces would overthrow his administration, in December 1917 Lenin ordered the establishment of the Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, or Cheka, a political police force led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.
In September 1918, Sovnarkom passed a decree that inaugurated the Red Terror, a system of repression orchestrated by the Cheka secret police.[261] Although sometimes described as an attempt to eliminate the entire bourgeoisie, Lenin did not want to exterminate all members of this class, merely those who sought to reinstate their rule. The majority of the Terror's victims were well-to-do citizens or former members of the Tsarist administration; others were non-bourgeois anti-Bolsheviks and perceived social undesirables such as prostitutes. The Cheka claimed the right to both sentence and execute anyone whom it deemed to be an enemy of the government, without recourse to the Revolutionary Tribunals. Accordingly, throughout Soviet Russia the Cheka carried out killings, often in large numbers. For example, the Petrograd Cheka executed 512 people in a few days. There are no surviving records to provide an accurate figure of how many perished in the Red Terror; later estimates of historians have ranged between 10,000 and 15,000, and 50,000 to 140,000.
Lenin never witnessed this violence or participated in it first-hand, and publicly distanced himself from it. His published articles and speeches rarely called for executions, but he regularly did so in his coded telegrams and confidential notes. Many Bolsheviks expressed disapproval of the Cheka's mass executions and feared the organisation's apparent unaccountability. The Communist Party tried to restrain its activities in February 1919, stripping it of its powers of tribunal and execution in those areas not under official martial law, but the Cheka continued as before in swathes of the country. By 1920, the Cheka had become the most powerful institution in Soviet Russia, exerting influence over all other state apparatus.
A decree in April 1919 resulted in the establishment of concentration camps, which were entrusted to the Cheka, later administered by a new government agency, Gulag. By the end of 1920, 84 camps had been established across Soviet Russia, holding about 50,000 prisoners; by October 1923, this had grown to 315 camps and about 70,000 inmates. Those interned in the camps were used as slave labour. From July 1922, intellectuals deemed to be opposing the Bolshevik government were exiled to inhospitable regions or deported from Russia altogether; Lenin personally scrutinised the lists of those to be dealt with in this manner. In May 1922, Lenin issued a decree calling for the execution of anti-Bolshevik priests, causing between 14,000 and 20,000 deaths. The Russian Orthodox Church was worst affected; the government's anti-religious policies also harmed Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, and Islamic mosques.
Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War: 1918–1920
The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either the one or the other will triumph. And until that end will have arrived, a series of the most terrible conflicts between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois governments is unavoidable. This means that the ruling class, the proletariat, if it only wishes to rule and is to rule, must demonstrate this also with its military organization.
Lenin expected Russia's aristocracy and bourgeoisie to oppose his government, but he believed that the numerical superiority of the lower classes, coupled with the Bolsheviks' ability to effectively organise them, guaranteed a swift victory in any conflict. In this, he failed to anticipate the intensity of the violent opposition to Bolshevik rule in Russia. A long and bloody Civil War ensued between the Bolshevik Reds and the anti-Bolshevik Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds' victory. It also encompassed ethnic conflicts on Russia's borders, and anti-Bolshevik peasant and left-wing uprisings throughout the former Empire. Accordingly, various historians have seen the civil war as representing two distinct conflicts: one between the revolutionaries and the counterrevolutionaries, and the other between different revolutionary factions.
The White armies were established by former Tsarist military officers, and included Anton Denikin's Volunteer Army in South Russia, Alexander Kolchak's forces in Siberia, and Nikolai Yudenich's troops in the newly independent Baltic states. The Whites were bolstered when 35,000 members of the Czech Legion, who were prisoners of war from the conflict with the Central Powers, turned against Sovnarkom and allied with the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), an anti-Bolshevik government established in Samara. The Whites were also backed by Western governments who perceived the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a betrayal of the Allied war effort and feared the Bolsheviks' calls for world revolution. In 1918, Great Britain, France, United States, Canada, Italy, and Serbia landed 10,000 troops in Murmansk, seizing Kandalaksha, while later that year British, American, and Japanese forces landed in Vladivostok. Western troops soon pulled out of the civil war, instead only supporting the Whites with officers, technicians and armaments, but Japan remained because they saw the conflict as an opportunity for territorial expansion.
Lenin tasked Trotsky with establishing a Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, and with his support, Trotsky organised a Revolutionary Military Council in September 1918, remaining its chairman until 1925. Recognising their valuable military experience, Lenin agreed that officers from the old Tsarist army could serve in the Red Army, although Trotsky established military councils to monitor their activities. The Reds held control of Russia's two largest cities, Moscow and Petrograd, as well as most of Great Russia, while the Whites were located largely on the former Empire's peripheries. The latter were therefore hindered by being both fragmented and geographically scattered, and because their ethnic Russian supremacism alienated the region's national minorities. Anti-Bolshevik armies carried out the White Terror, a campaign of violence against perceived Bolshevik supporters which was typically more spontaneous than the state-sanctioned Red Terror. Both White and Red Armies were responsible for attacks against Jewish communities, prompting Lenin to issue a condemnation of antisemitism, blaming prejudice against Jews on capitalist propaganda.
In July 1918, Sverdlov informed Sovnarkom that the Ural Regional Soviet had overseen the murder of the former Tsar and his immediate family in Yekaterinburg to prevent them from being rescued by advancing White troops. Although lacking proof, biographers and historians like Richard Pipes and Dmitri Volkogonov have expressed the view that the killing was probably sanctioned by Lenin; conversely, historian James Ryan cautioned that there was "no reason" to believe this. Whether Lenin sanctioned it or not, he still regarded it as necessary, highlighting the precedent set by the execution of Louis XVI in the French Revolution.
After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries had abandoned the coalition and increasingly viewed the Bolsheviks as traitors to the revolution. In July 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Yakov Blumkin assassinated the German ambassador to Russia, Wilhelm von Mirbach, hoping that the ensuing diplomatic incident would lead to a relaunched revolutionary war against Germany. The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries then launched a coup in Moscow, shelling the Kremlin and seizing the city's central post office before being stopped by Trotsky's forces. The party's leaders and many members were arrested and imprisoned but were treated more leniently than other opponents of the Bolsheviks.
By 1919, the White armies were in retreat and by the start of 1920 were defeated on all three fronts. Although Sovnarkom were victorious, the territorial extent of the Russian state had been reduced, for many non-Russian ethnic groups had used the disarray to push for national independence. In March 1921, during a related war against Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia sought to re-conquer all newly independent nations of the former Empire, although their success was limited. Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania all repelled Soviet invasions, while Ukraine, Belarus (as a result of the Polish–Soviet War), Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia were occupied by the Red Army. By 1921, Soviet Russia had defeated the Ukrainian national movements and occupied the Caucasus, although anti-Bolshevik uprisings in Central Asia lasted until the late 1920s.
After the German Ober Ost garrisons were withdrawn from the Eastern Front following the Armistice, both Soviet Russian armies and Polish ones moved in to fill the vacuum. The newly independent Polish state and the Soviet government each sought territorial expansion in the region. Polish and Russian troops first clashed in February 1919, with the conflict developing into the Polish–Soviet War. Unlike the Soviets' previous conflicts, this had greater implications for the export of revolution and the future of Europe. Polish forces pushed into Ukraine and by May 1920 had taken Kiev from the Soviets. After forcing the Polish Army back, Lenin urged the Red Army to invade Poland itself, believing that the Polish proletariat would rise up to support the Russian troops and thus spark European revolution. Trotsky and other Bolsheviks were sceptical, but agreed to the invasion. The Polish proletariat did not rise, and the Red Army was defeated at the Battle of Warsaw. The Polish armies pushed the Red Army back into Russia, forcing Sovnarkom to sue for peace; the war culminated in the Peace of Riga, in which Russia ceded territory to Poland.
Death and funeral: 1923–1924
Lenin's funeral, as painted by Isaac Brodsky, 1925
In March 1923, Lenin had a third stroke and lost his ability to speak; that month, he experienced partial paralysis on his right side and began exhibiting sensory aphasia. By May, he appeared to be making a slow recovery, regaining some of his mobility, speech, and writing skills. In October, he made a final visit to the Kremlin. In his final weeks, Lenin was visited by Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Bukharin; the latter visited him at his Gorki mansion on the day of his death. On 21 January 1924, Lenin fell into a coma and died later that day at age 53. His official cause of death was recorded as an incurable disease of the blood vessels. "Good dog", are said to have been Lenin's last words, upon his dog having brought him a dead bird.
The Soviet government publicly announced Lenin's death the following day. On 23 January, mourners from the Communist Party, trade unions, and Soviets visited his Gorki home to inspect the body, which was carried aloft in a red coffin by leading Bolsheviks. Transported by train to Moscow, the coffin was taken to the House of Trade Unions, where the body lay in state. Over the next three days, around a million mourners came to see the body, many queuing for hours in the freezing conditions. On 26 January, the eleventh All-Union Congress of Soviets met to pay respects, with speeches by Kalinin, Zinoviev, and Stalin. Notably, Trotsky was absent; he had been convalescing in the Caucasus, and he later claimed that Stalin sent him a telegram with the incorrect date of the planned funeral, making it impossible for him to arrive in time. Lenin's funeral took place the following day, when his body was carried to Red Square, accompanied by martial music, where assembled crowds listened to a series of speeches before the corpse was placed into the vault of a specially erected mausoleum. Despite the freezing temperatures, tens of thousands attended.
Against Krupskaya's protestations, Lenin's body was embalmed to preserve it for long-term public display in the Red Square mausoleum. During this process, Lenin's brain was removed; in 1925 an institute was established to dissect it, revealing that Lenin had had severe sclerosis. In July 1929, the Politburo agreed to replace the temporary mausoleum with a permanent one in granite, which was finished in 1933. His sarcophagus was replaced in 1940 and again in 1970. For safety amid the Second World War, from 1941 to 1945 the body was temporarily moved to Tyumen. As of 2023, his body remains on public display in Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square.
Hopeless devoted to you
Guess mine is not the first heart broken,
my eyes are not the first to cry I'm not the first to know,
there's just no gettin' over you
Hello, I'm just a fool who's willing to sit around
and wait for you
But baby can't you see, there's nothin' else
for me to do I'm hopelessly devoted to you
But now there's nowhere to hide,
since you pushed my love aside I'm not in my head,
hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you,
hopelessly devoted to you
My head is saying "fool, forget him",
my heart is saying "don't let go"
Hold on to the end, that's what I intend to do
I'm hopelessly devoted to you
But now there's nowhere to hide,
since you pushed my love aside I'm not in my head,
hopelessly devoted to you
Hopelessly devoted to you,
hopelessly devoted to you
He is devoted!
08/06/2016 Pass
Mileage 178,873 miles
13/05/2016 Fail
Mileage 178,656 miles
Refusal Notices
Parking brake: efficiency below requirements (3.7.b.7)
Rear brakes imbalanced across an axle axle 2 (3.7.b.5b)
Nearside rear seat belt retracting mechanism defective (5.2.5b)
Offside rear seat belt retracting mechanism defective (5.2.5b)
Horn not working (1.6.2a)
Windscreen washer provides insufficient washer liquid (8.2.3)
Nearside windscreen wiper does not clear the windscreen effectively (8.2.2)
Offside windscreen wiper does not clear the windscreen effectively (8.2.2)
Windscreen has damage to the swept area in excess of a 40mm circle outside zone 'a' (8.3.1d)
Nearside front constant velocity joint is excessively worn (2.5.c.1b)
Offside front constant velocity joint is excessively worn (2.5.c.1b)
Nearside front body or chassis has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings outer sill (6.1.b.2)
Nearside rear body or chassis has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings where sub frame mounts (6.1.b.2)
Nearside track rod end ball joint has excessive play (2.2.b.1f)
Battery insecure (1.9.1)
Front exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases flexie (7.1.2)
Front exhaust has a major leak of exhaust gases manifold (7.1.2)
Offside rear brake binding (3.7.b.1)
Mechanical brake component has restricted free movement hand brake cable (3.5.1k)
Nearside rear inner body or chassis has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings wheel arch (6.1.b.2)
Offside rear inner body or chassis has excessive corrosion, seriously affecting its strength within 30cm of the body mountings wheel arch (6.1.b.2)
Advisory Notices
Os front tyre wearing on edge
A few devoted pataphysicians spent their Sunday afternoon preparing the Pataphysical Slot Machine exhibit for our open studio and soirée at the Figurine Ranch:
• We spread out a beautiful persian rug on loan from Dr. Skidz;
• We added black muslin behind the slot machine to make the art pop;
• Dr. Heatshrink performed last minute electronic sugery to bring a few boxes back to life;
• Dr. Canard hot glued a few parts that had fallen out of place;
• Drs. Figurine and Fabio set up the lights and sounds, then called it a day.
Vive la ‘Pataphysique!
View more 'Pataphysical photos: www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/albums/72157623637793277
Learn more about Pataphysical Studios: pataphysics.us/