Vladimir Lenin'Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin', was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 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 over the course of the Russian Civil War. Ideologically a Marxist, his development of the ideology is known as Leninism.
Red TerrorThe Red Terror (krasnyj terror) in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions which was carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It officially started in early September 1918 and lasted until 1922. Arising after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin and Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky in retaliation for Bolshevik atrocities, the latter of which was successful, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.
ChekaThe All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (AREOC; Всероссийская чрезвычайная комиссия), abbreviated as VČK (ВЧК), and commonly known as Cheka (Чека; from the initialism ChK), was the first of a succession of Soviet secret-police organizations. Established on December 5 (Old Style) 1917 by the Sovnarkom, it came under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a Polish aristocrat-turned-Bolshevik. By late 1918, hundreds of Cheka committees had sprung up in the Russian SFSR at all levels.
CossacksThe Cossacks are a predominantly East Slavic Orthodox Christian people originating in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia. Historically, they were a semi-nomadic and semi-militarized people, who, while under the nominal suzerainty of various Eastern European states at the time, were allowed a great degree of self-governance in exchange for military service. Although numerous linguistic and religious groups came together to form the Cossacks, most of them coalesced and became East Slavic-speaking Orthodox Christians.
