Darkness at Noon | Historical Context

Darkness at Noon Historical Context

Leninism and the Bolsheviks

Between the first unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905 to 1907 and the beginning of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik faction gradually cut their ties with the Menshevik faction of the Communist Party. While the Mensheviks tended to support gradual reform and democracy, the Bolsheviks under Lenin favored revolution in order to achieve the goals of Marxism. In 1921, after the Bolsheviks had won the revolution, Lenin emerged as dictator of the party.

Before his first stroke in 1922, Lenin tried to support the extension of the communist revolution to other countries, and stressed that Marxist goals were to be achieved after a transitional period. Russia was in the midst of a severe economic crisis, however, and Lenin altered his policy to allow some forms of capitalism to coexist with communism until, he wrote, the country could grow into a purely socialist state. Meanwhile,...
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