Today in History: Jan 21, 1924, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin dies
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He served as the leader of the Russian SFSR from 1917, and then concurrently as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1922, until 1924.
Influenced early on by Karl Marx’s seminal text Das Kapital, Lenin was radicalized further by the execution of his older brother, Alexander, for conspiring to kill Czar Alexander III in 1887. The brooding, fiercely intellectual Lenin married the principles of Marxist thought to his own theory of organization and the reality of Russian demographics, envisioning a group of elite professional revolutionaries, or a “vanguard of the proletariat,” who would first lead the agrarian masses of Russia to victory over the tyrannical czarist regime and eventually incite a worldwide revolution.
After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Lenin urged his Bolshevik supporters in Russia to turn the “imperialist” conflict into a civil war that would liberate the working classes from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and monarchy. With the success of the February Revolution and the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in March 1917, Lenin managed, with German help, to travel back to Russia, where he worked with his deputy, Leon Trotsky, to orchestrate the Bolshevik seizure of power from the unsteady provisional government that November.
In his six years in power, Lenin struggled with the difficulty of implementing his utopian vision within the borders of the Soviet state. Together, with the help of his advisers, the Communist Party worked to ruthlessly and systematically destroy all opposition to Communist policies within the new USSR. Instruments in this repression included a newly created secret police, the Cheka, and the first of the gulags, or concentration camps, that Stalin would later put to even more deadly use. Lenin remains a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Detractors have labelled him a dictator whose administration oversaw multiple human rights abuses, but supporters have countered this criticism citing the limitations on his power and have promoted him as a champion of the working class.
Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922; a second one, more debilitating, came in March of the following year, leaving him mute and effectively ending his political career. By January 1924 Lenin suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died.
Jacques de Molay, tu es vengé!
January 21, 1793: Louis XVI is executed.
Louis XVI’s trial, which began in December of 1792, came to an end when (despite the king’s best efforts) the National Convention unanimously affirmed his guilt and convicted him of treason. In some ways he was lucky to have been tried in the first place; most Jacobins in the Convention opposed granting the king a trial, including Maximilien Robespierre, who claimed that to put Louis on trial would mean undermining the entire Revolution itself:
Louis cannot be judged, he has already been judged. He has been condemned, or else the republic is not blameless. To suggest putting Louis XVI on trial, in whatever way, is a step back towards royal and constitutional despotism; it is a counter-revolutionary idea; because it puts the Revolution itself in the dock. After all, if Louis can still be put on trial, Louis can be acquitted; he might be innocent. Or rather, he is presumed to be until found guilty. But if Louis is acquitted, if Louis can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the Revolution?
But the trial took place anyway, even if it ended the same way. It seemed as though regicide, even during a revolution, was not an undertaking many were willing to plunge straight into - at least not without a trial first. Of the 721 voters who were to determine the king’s fate, 334 voted for imprisonment versus 387 for death, and this relatively narrow margin decided that the pitiable former king (stripped of his titles and now called “citizen Louis Capet”) would become the first and last King of France to be executed by his own people. His overthrow and death meant the end, at least temporarily, of the Capetian Dynasty, which had ruled France continuously since the 10th century.
On the morning of January 21, 1793, “Louis Capet” was taken to Revolution Square, which had once been named after his own grandfather, Louis XV. According to eyewitness accounts, the king declared his innocence up until his beheading by guillotine, whereupon one of his executioners lifted the king’s freshly severed head by the hair and displayed it to the crowd, who burst into cheers at the sight. The crowd’s cheers and the artillery salute that rang out in celebration were supposedly loud enough to reach the ears of the surviving members of Louis’ family, imprisoned in Paris’ Temple fortress. The same year, Louis’ widow, Marie Antoinette, was executed by guillotine as well.
Today in History: January 1, 1959, Batista is forced out by the Castro led revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement and its allies against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953, and finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing his regime with Castro’s revolutionary government. Castro’s government later reformed along communist lines, becoming the present Communist Party of Cuba in October 1965.
Cuban support for Castro’s revolution grew in the late 1950s, partially due to his charisma and nationalistic rhetoric, but also because of increasingly rampant corruption, greed, brutality and inefficiency within the Batista government. This reality forced the U.S., who had previously supported Batista, to slowly withdraw its support from the Batista government and begin a search in Cuba for an alternative to both the dictator and Castro; these efforts failed.
On January 1, 1959, Batista and a number of his supporters fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic. Tens of thousands of Cubans celebrated the end of the dictator’s regime. Castro’s supporters moved quickly to establish their power. Judge Manuel Urrutia was named as provisional president. Castro and his band of guerrilla fighters triumphantly entered Havana on January 7.
January 1, 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect.
…And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
Today in History: December 8, 1980, John Lennon is killed
John Lennon was shot and killed by an obsessed fan in New York City. The 40-year-old artist was entering his luxury Manhattan apartment building when Mark David Chapman shot him four times at close range with a .38-caliber revolver. Lennon, bleeding profusely, was rushed to the hospital but died en route.
Hours beforehand John Lennon had actually autographed Chapman’s copy of Double Fantasy, as pictured above.
A very sad bit of history!
This book by Manuel Plana is a short (125 pages) introduction to Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution. I would recommend it for the non-historian with a casual interest in the History of Mexico. This book includes many good photos which are well placed in the narrative scheme. It is well written and easy to read. If you enjoy this book and wish to learn more, I would recommend The Mexican Revolution 1910-1920 by Manuel Gonzales or the over 800 pages of The Life and Times of Pancho Villa by the great Mexican history authority Friedrich Katz.
Death of Anwar Sadat
Today in 1981, “Islamic extremists assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Led by Khaled el Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army with connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira, the terrorists, all wearing army uniforms, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials. Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later. Ten other people also died in the attack.
Despite Sadat’s incredible public service record for Egypt (he was instrumental in winning the nation its independence and democratizing it), his controversial peace negotiation with Israel in 1977-78, for which he and Menachem Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize, made him a target of Islamic extremists across the Middle East. Sadat had also angered many by allowing the ailing Shah of Iran to die in Egypt rather than be returned to Iran to stand trial for his crimes against the country.” Quoted from the History Channel’s, This Day in History web site.
A Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, Politics, and the Constitution in the Early American Republic
I read this book during my U.S. Formative Period history course while researching slavery in the early republic. The following is a Google description:
“After its early introduction into the English colonies in North America, slavery in the United States lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. But increasingly during the contested politics of the early republic, abolitionists cried out that the Constitution itself was a slaveowners’ document, produced to protect and further their rights. A Slaveholders’ Union furthers this unsettling claim by demonstrating once and for all that slavery was indeed an essential part of the foundation of the nascent republic. In this powerful book, George William Van Cleve demonstrates that the Constitution was pro-slavery in its politics, its economics, and its law. He convincingly shows that the Constitutional provisions protecting slavery were much more than mere “political” compromises—they were integral to the principles of the new nation. By the late 1780s, a majority of Americans wanted to create a strong federal republic that would be capable of expanding into a continental empire. In order for America to become an empire on such a scale, Van Cleve argues, the Southern states had to be willing partners in the endeavor, and the cost of their allegiance was the deliberate long-term protection of slavery by America’s leaders through the nation’s early expansion. Reconsidering the role played by the gradual abolition of slavery in the North, Van Cleve also shows that abolition there was much less progressive in its origins—and had much less influence on slavery’s expansion—than previously thought. Deftly interweaving historical and political analyses, A Slaveholders’ Union will likely become the definitive explanation of slavery’s persistence and growth—and of its influence on American constitutional development—from the Revolutionary War through the Missouri Compromise of 1821.”
September 29, 1571: Caravaggio is born.
There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same.
“Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio; (29 September 1571 – 18 July 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting.”
I read this book when writing a paper over the Great Awakening. It was a great read which delved into a controversial view of the Awakening’s origins with 19th century religious writers. Particularly dig the pics of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield on the cover. Here is a link to a very good Amazon book description:
http://www.amazon.com/Inventing-Great-Awakening-Frank-Lambert/dp/0691086915
El 27 de septiembre de 1821 el Ejército Trigarante entra a la ciudad de México, se consuma la independencia de México.
“At the end of the Mexican War of Independence, the Army of the Three Guarantees (Ejército Trigarante or Ejército de las Tres Garantías) was the name given to the army after the unification of the Spanish troops led by Agustín de Iturbide and the Mexican insurgent troops of Vicente Guerrero, consolidating Mexico’s independence from Spain. The decree creating this army appeared in the Plan de Iguala, which stated the three guarantees which it was meant to defend: religion, independence, and unity. Mexico was to be a Catholic country, independent from Spain, and united against its enemies.
The Army of the Three Guarantees was created on February 24, 1821, and continued battling Spanish royalist forces which refused to accept Mexican independence. These battles continued until August 1821, when Iturbide and Spanish Viceroy Juan de O’Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, virtually ratifying Mexico’s independence. On September 27, 1821, the Army of the Three Guarantees triumphantly entered Mexico City, led by Iturbide. The following day Mexico was declared independent.” Quoted from Wikipedia.
El 25 de septiembre de 1873 las Leyes de Reforma son incorporadas a la Constitución de 1857 durante el gobierno de Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada .
On September 25, 1873, the Reform Laws are incorporated into the Mexican Constitution of 1857 under President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada.
September 23, 1806: Lewis and Clark Return from Expedition
On this day in 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned from their two-and-a-half-year expedition, which covered the expanse from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast and back.
The two men brought back a wealth of information about the largely unexplored region within the Louisiana Purchase territory. During their expedition, Lewis and Clark studied the plants, animal life, geography and elements of economic opportunity throughout the vast area.
Check out this Lewis and Clark: Into the Unknown interactive story in which you lead the expedition.
Photo: Florentine Films
September 22, 1862: Abraham Lincoln Issues Emancipation Proclamation
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This declaration set a date for the freedom of more than three million black slaves in the United States.
The Emancipation Proclamation ordered the emancipation of all slaves residing in Confederate states that had not returned to Union control by January 1, 1963. It emphasized the mission of the Civil War as a fight against slavery.
The Emancipation Proclamation was signed and issued on January 1, 1863.
To read Lincoln’s legendary decree, visit Ken Burns’s The Civil War site.
Photo: Chromolithograph by The Strobridge Lith. Co., c1888 (Library of Congress)
Batalla de Monterrey ( 21-24 de septiembre de 1846 )
Intervención de EUA a México
In the Battle of Monterrey (September 21–24, 1846) during the Mexican-American War, General Pedro de Ampudia and the Mexican Army of the North was defeated by U.S. forces under the command of Zachary Taylor and William J. Worth.
