Overthrow of the Czar

I learned from Professor Roepnack's lecture and our assigned readings that the use of Marx’s dialectical materialism holds the world, including human beings, is "matter in motion" and that progress occurs through struggle. It follows the Hegelian principle of the philosophy of history,  namely the development of the thesis into its antithesis, which is in turn superseded by a synthesis that conserves aspects of the thesis and the antithesis while at the same time abolishing them.

While Lenin used this theory as opportunity to seize power as he soon discovered that his support was far from absolute. His Peace Policy with the Germans was particularly unpopular as it seized large amounts of Russian territory.   The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was initiated by millions of people who would change the history of the world as we know it. When Czar Nicholas II dragged 11 million peasants into World War I, the Russian people became discouraged with their injuries and the loss of life they sustained.

The country of Russia was in ruins, ripe for revolution.
While retaining Hegel's dialectical method, however, Marx and Engels reacted against Hegel's idealism.  Though history is not the result of the progressive unfolding of the spirit , but of class struggle in society, in which economics is the determining factor. Moreover, while changes may have been gradual, qualitative change involved an abrupt, violent leap to a higher stage. In society, this means that only violent revolution can bring about the shift from private ownership to socialism and communism which Marx and Engels envisioned.

Soon after, Lenin joined the Bolshevik party as a means to overthrow the Provisional Government aka the Czarist regime and created a government for the proletariat. When this failed, Lenin once again empowered the Bolshevik party. Once the Provisional Government had officially fallen to the Bolshevik regime now Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, announced his attempt to construct the socialist order in Russia. 

After the October Revolution, the Russian Civil War broke out between the Reds' (Communists) and the 'Whites' (Nationalists, Conservatives, Imperialists and other anti-Bolshevik groups). After a bloody four year struggle.  Lenin and the Reds won, establishing the Soviet Union in 1922, at an estimated cost of 15 million lives and billions of roubles. In 1923 Lenin died and Stalin took over the Communist Party, which continued to rule Russia until 1991 when the USSR was dissolved.