Will You Now Love? - Part 2

By Cara Lewis, 9th Grade

Vladimir’s first rumple in his smooth background transpired at the age of fourteen. His father suddenly died after he was forced to “retire” prematurely without rationalization. Bitter after this death, Vladimir disconnected all his ties to his religious upbringing; he seemed incapable of understanding how God could allow his father to die. He then chose atheism over ostensible Christianity, which for him had only ever been little more than ritualistic requirements. Soon his mind, like an exposed pasture, was ready to be cultivated and sowed with humanistic philosophies that would bear a harvest of obliteration.

            Vladimir’s elder brother, Alexander, studied at St. Petersburg University. While there, he began to read drastic works such as Karl Marx’s Das Capital, and he also began accepting those philosophies for himself as the truth. While a part of a militant faction known as People’s Will, he became drawn into an assassination plot against the king of Russia, Czar Alexander III. Once the plot was exposed, Alexander was captured and sentenced to death by hanging, yet he never showed any repentance for his unlawful actions.

            While attending Kazan University, Vladimir was expelled for his participation in a student demonstration where he was most likely just a spectator. This discrimination along with others fermented within Vladimir, encouraging a hatred to develop that would ultimately burst into action. He did, however, attend and graduate from St. Petersburg University as an attorney in the year 1891.

            Eventually, Vladimir’s interest in being an attorney became obscured by his study of the writings of atheistic activists. In the year 1864, a gentleman named Nikolai Chernyshevsky penned a novel What Is to Be Done? This man was a revolutionary who was in exile for two decades for supporting radical ideas. His writings were cruel and primordial in method and divergent to Biblical truth. Nonetheless, Russian people became impassioned to revolt against their governmental authorities. This book reached the hands and also gripped the heart and intellect of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. “Chernyshevsky’s novel… fascinated and captivated my brother. It also captivated me. It ploughed me over again completely…. After the execution of my brother, knowing that Chernyshevsky’s novel was one of his most favorite works, I … pored over the book, not several days, but several weeks,” noted Vladimir.

            As many years went by, the Russian commoners arose, following a communist leader, Karl Marx, attempting to overthrow the government. In 1895, Vladimir moved to St. Petersburg; and during that very year, was arrested for his actions against the regime. Eventually, the king, Czar Nicholas II, abdicated, allowing the communist party to now control the country of Russia. Vladimir, at this time recognized as Nikolai Lenin, became a leader of a revolutionary Bolshevik group. Under the Bolshevik government, the Russian people were not at all free as they had been promised. When rebellion arose among the people, Lenin turned to suppressive measures to oppress them. But after five years into his despotism, Lenin had a number of strokes and died.

            About seventy years after his death, Lenin’s private documents were revealed. These archives opened to the world the true Lenin who had been unobtrusively hidden from the eye of Russia. They gave evidence to the heartless and odious brutality he believed essential for his godless principles to flourish. Lenin displayed anger towards God and man because of his previous unfortunate happenings when he was young. The history of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and his brutal influence over the country of Russia is an excellent example of how anger violates the principle of love. Will you now love?