“When the righteous triumph, there is great glory; but when the wicked rise, men conceal themselves.” —Proverbs 28:12

Warren Commission Established,
November 29, 1963

n November 22, 1963, someone assassinated President John F. Kennedy at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Those are the only facts that have not been contended since that day. The President was already thinking about the upcoming election in 1964 and planned several trips to lay the groundwork for campaigning and shoring up political support, especially in Texas, where intra-party feuding needed smoothing over. He plotted out a two-day, five-city tour of the Lone Star State, accompanied by his wife—her first public foray since the loss of their baby Patrick in August. He would be welcomed to San Antonio by his Texan Vice President Lyndon Johnson and joined by the conservative Democratic Governor, John Connolly.

View of the Presidential motorcade as it approaches Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas

On the second day of his tour, President Kennedy was warmly greeted in Fort Worth on the morning of the 22nd. He then took a thirteen-minute flight to Love Field in Dallas, where he embarked in a motorcade, with Governor and Mrs. Connolly joining him and his wife Jackie in a convertible, with the Vice President following in the motorcade. Large crowds lined the streets along the ten-mile route that wound its way through downtown Dallas, on its way to the Trade Mart, where the President was due for lunch and another speech to business and civic leaders. Their route took them at a slow roll, about eleven miles per hour, through Dealey Plaza and past the six-story Book Depository, where a sniper lay in wait.

Dealey Plaza with the Texas School Book Depository visible (top center)

Moments before the assassination, the presidential motorcade makes its way down Main Street in Dallas, with President Kennedy and the First Lady visible in the back seat. Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie are seated in the row in front of the Kennedys.

At about 12:30pm, shots were fired into the open top car, and both President Kennedy and Governor Connolly were struck. The Secret Service driver rushed to Parkland Hospital, where the forty-six-year-old President was declared dead about 1:00pm. Governor Connolly survived. About a half hour later, a Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippett, accosted a suspicious pedestrian three miles from the shooting and was himself shot to death by the suspect.

After shots are fired, Jackie Kennedy is seen crawling over the trunk of the limousine, while Secret Service agent Clint Hill climbs aboard

Arrested in a movie theatre, Lee Harvey Oswald was booked on suspicion of the murder of both the President and the police officer. Two days later, Jack Ruby (born Jacob Rubenstein), a nightclub owner with a sordid past and underworld connections, murdered Oswald while under police custody. Convicted of Oswald’s murder, Ruby died in prison two years later, while awaiting a new trial. One week after the assassination, the new President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, appointed a commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, led by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren. The Commission also included the most powerful Democratic Senator, Richard Russell of Georgia, a Republican Senator, John Cooper, House minority leader, Gerald Ford, Democratic heavyweight Congressman Hale Boggs, the Director of the CIA Allen Dulles, and the former President of the World Bank, John McCloy.

Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) during a previous arrest in New Orleans in August of 1963

Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald is in police custody

The Warren Commission met in the National Archives Building. Their final report of 888 pages and 26 volumes of supporting documents, included depositions of 522 witnesses and 3,100 exhibits. The sealed records—of indeterminate length and with redactions—have been parceled out over the past fifty-four years in response to new rules regarding transparency in the investigation, until only two percent of the Commission Archives are still not available for examination.

The Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone and was the sole shooter, firing three shots from the book depository window. They found no evidence that the Dallas Police were in collusion with Jack Ruby. They found no evidence that Oswald and Ruby were connected to any conspiracies, foreign or domestic, in the assassination of President Kennedy. The Commission could find no definitive motive for Oswald’s actions. Criticism, skepticism, alternative explanations, and conspiracy theories immediately abounded upon release of the Commission report. Books, movies, lectures and investigations have proliferated since that day in 1963, to the point that few people accept the conclusions of the Warren Report. Even members of the Commission and President Johnson himself, now all dead, expressed doubts about some of their conclusions. The main conspiracy theories suggest, or in some cases, absolutely assert, that one or a combination of the following characters were behind the assassination: Vice-President Johnson himself, Fidel Castro, the Russians, the Italian Mafia, the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, or other government agency.

The Warren Report, as compiled in book format by the Associated Press

Members of the Warren Commission present their report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy to President Lyndon Johnson

Probably no event in American history has received more attention, nor a government report been more often accused of cover-ups, corruption, and conspiracy than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Warren Report that followed.

Image Credits: 1 Motorcade approaching Dealey Plaza (Wikipedia.org) 2 Limousine (Wikipedia.org) 3 Dealey Plaza (Wikipedia.org) 4 Zapruder film (Wikipedia.org) 5 Lee Harvey Oswald (Wikipedia.org) 6 Ruby killing Oswald (Wikipedia.org) 7 Warren Report book cover (Wikipedia.org) 8 Warren Commission Members (Wikipedia.org) 9 Earl Warren (Wikipedia.org) 10 Richard Russell (Wikipedia.org) 11 John Cooper (Wikipedia.org) 12 Hale Boggs (Wikipedia.org) 13 Gerald Ford (Wikipedia.org) 14 Allen Dulles (Wikipedia.org) 15 John McCloy (Wikipedia.org)

“Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! Sing to the LORD, all the earth.” —Psalm 96:1

The Death of Isaac Watts, November 25, 1748

he Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century changed the music used in the worship of God. No longer the sole provenance of choirs or professional singers, the congregation began singing in worship also, especially the Psalms. Martin Luther wrote thirty-six hymns and encouraged others to do so as well. In Calvin’s Geneva, Psalters were produced and in the next century, Protestant composers like Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friederich Handel produced some of the greatest hymnody in history. Among many of the Puritans in England and America, and the Presbyterians of Scotland, however, only the Psalms were considered the appropriate music for the worship of God. Most of the Protestant hymns before the late 18th Century came from German composers or were taken from older Latin hymns—until Isaac Watts.

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Isaac’s father, of the same name, committed early to the dissenting churches, to the point of arrest and imprisonment. He was in prison when young Isaac was born in 1674. His mother nursed him on the prison steps when visiting her husband. He was eventually released and fathered seven more children. Men outside the Anglican establishment had fled England earlier in the century and sailed for America, the Scrooby congregation of “Pilgrims” in 1620 and more than 10,000 Puritans in the decade of the 1630s. Those who remained in England, still faced persecution in the 18th Century under Queen Anne and her successors.

Queen Anne of England (1665-1714)

Like his father before him, young Isaac was not deterred in learning and scholarship by the restrictions designed to keep dissenters from promulgating their ideas. By the age of eleven, Watts had learned Latin, Greek, French, and Hebrew. He received formal education in a dissenting academy and he was also tutored. Following his early education, Watts was called to pastor a large “Congregationalist” Church in London. After suffering from a mental distemper and physical difficulties, he gave up his church and was hired as a tutor; he spent most of the rest of his life writing poetry, hymns, and other literary and educational works. The original challenge had come from his father.

Watts received an education at King Edward VI School, Southampton (opened 1554 by Royal Charter of King Edward VI), learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew

As a young man, Watts had complained about the dismal singing in the churches. His father told him that if he was dissatisfied, “write something better.” Watts believed that the Psalms should be more singable than people were accustomed to and that Jesus Christ should be more strongly reflected in the Psalter terminology. With a natural skill at rhyming, (for which he had been rebuked as a child) and a profound sense of the necessity of praise, prayer, thanksgiving, and theological expression, he produced a psalter, well-received by most churches.

In 1707 he published Hymns and Spiritual Songs, which included the all-time favorite, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. He rewrote the Psalter in Psalms of David Imitated in the language of the New Testament, with Psalm 78 becoming Joy to the World, Psalm 72, Jesus Shall Reign Where’er the Sun, and Psalm 90, Our God Our Help in Ages Past. Some saw Watts’s paraphrasing as playing fast and loose with Scripture, and not to be borne in godly worship.

Watts set his text for Our God Our Help in Ages Past to a tune written by William Croft (c. 1678-1727) shown here as a choirboy, c. 1690

“Watts was unapologetic, arguing that he deliberately omitted several psalms and large parts of others, keeping portions ‘as might easily and naturally be accommodated to the various occasions of Christian life, or at least might afford us some beautiful allusions to Christian affairs.’ Furthermore, where the psalmist fought with personal enemies, Watts turned the biblical invective against spiritual adversaries: sin, Satan, and temptation. Finally, he said, ‘Where the flights of his faith and love are sublime, I have often sunk the expressions within the reach of an ordinary Christian.’”*

Watts’s profound ideas were enhanced by his scholarly output encompassed many subjects. His textbook on Logic became a cornerstone work in classical education. Among his thirty published theological works are essays on psychology, philosophy, and astronomy. His Songs for Little Children and three volumes of sermons still bless the Church today. In America, Benjamin Franklin published his hymnal and Cotton Mather kept up a long correspondence with his fellow-dissenting Congregationalist.

Isaac Watts died at the age of seventy-four, his reputation as “the greatest English hymn-writer” secured in the minds of Christians for more than the next two centuries. Of his more than 750 hymns: Come Ye that Love the Lord, Our God, Our Help in Ages Past, Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed, How Sweet and Awful Is the Place, I Sing the Mighty Power of God, and When I Can Read My Title Clear, etc. etc.!!

Fourth edition title page from Isaac Watts’s “Guide to Prayer,” 1725

* Isaac Watts: Father of English Hymnody

Image Credits: 1 Isaac Watts (Wikipedia.org) 2 Queen Anne (Wikipedia.org) 3 King Edward VI School, Southampton (Wikipedia.org) 4 William Croft (Wikipedia.org) 5 Prayer Guide Title Page (Wikipedia.org)

The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

he events of July 1-3, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, forever changed the historical landscape of America. General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Major General George Meade’s Army of the Potomac—about 150,000 men total—stood toe to toe and slaughtered each other, producing more than 46,000 casualties, of whom, perhaps 10,000, a large percentage teenagers, were dead on the field, and many more perished in the following days—more American deaths from battle in three days than the entire number of battle deaths in the eight years of the War for American Independence. The Southern Army retreated back to Virginia. The Northerners, just as exhausted, stopped at the Potomac River. The entire nation stood in shock for months to follow.

Map of the Gettysburg Battlefield as it appeared at the time of the battle, July 1-3, 1863, showing detailed notes of terrain, local farms, etc.

Soldiers’ National Monument at the center of Gettysburg National Cemetery

The Confederate dead were buried in long anonymous trenches, many of them retrieved by their states after the war. The Union dead were interred in a new National Cemetery, which today holds over 6,000 soldiers from the 20th Century wars as well as a few Confederates found over time buried on the battlefield. In the days following the carnage, Pennsylvania organized and appropriated funds to lay out a formal cemetery for the Union dead, and set November 19 as the day of dedication. The committee invited famous orator Edward Everett of Massachusetts and President Abraham Lincoln to give addresses. Everett spoke for two hours, rehearsing the history of the war up to the Battle of Gettysburg—a patriotic speech, and in conformity to the expectations of people who attended speeches in the 19th Century.

Edward Everett (1794-1865)

The “Bliss” copy (named for Col. Alexander Bliss, stepson of George Bancroft, the famed historian and former Secretary of the Navy), on display in the Lincoln Room of the White House

There are five known copies of the President’s two-minute-long address, in his own handwriting, each named for its recipient. The “Bliss” copy is the most often quoted, and the only one signed and dated by him. The Address has been memorized and idealized by millions of school children and adults ever since. Entire books have been written just on what is now known as “The Gettysburg Address”, which is justly considered one of the most powerful and iconic speeches of American history.

In his peroration, the Yankee President, in profound rhetorical intonations and without definition of terms, declared that the Republic’s founders believed that all men are created equal, and that the purpose of the war was to test that proposition. He further implied that the honored dead of the Union perished in an attempt to prevent the overthrow of the nation “conceived in liberty”. The President then placed on the hearers the duty to complete the salvation of the nation and give it a “new birth of freedom”. He concluded his remarks by defining the national government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”, now in danger of perishing.

The “Hay” copy (named for John Hay, one of Lincoln’s private secretaries and custodians of Lincoln’s papers after his death), showing Lincoln’s handwritten corrections

Photograph of the site of the address, taken November 19, 1863, showing the event and location of various landmarks for context

Reactions to the speech were divided along party lines. The Chicago Times described it as “silly, flat, and dishwatery”. The Springfield Republican (almost all newspapers were controlled by one party or the other), said “it was a perfect gem, deep in feeling, compact in thought and expression, tasteful and elegant in every word and comma”. In the 20th Century, journalist and professional curmudgeon, H.L. Mencken of Baltimore, weighed in against the most common understanding of what Lincoln had intoned, enraging the “Lincoln cult” even today:

“But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—“that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege.”

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) journalist and cultural critic who gained notoriety from his satirical reporting of the Scopes Trial, which he called the “Monkey Trial,”

Abraham Lincoln (indicated by the red arrow) amongst the crowd at Gettysburg Battlefield, taken several hours before he gave his famed address

Although he was perhaps the most unpopular President of the United States to that point in history, the immortal words of the Gettysburg Address have, regardless of one’s political or logical view of the matter, defined for generations the meaning of the Civil War and the sacrifices deemed necessary to preserve the Union.

For further study on “The Gettysburg Address”, including a comparison of the various extant copies, please consider reading this thorough overview.

Image Credits: 1 Oval Map (Wikipedia.org) 2 Gettysburg National Cemetery (Wikipedia.org) 3 Edward Everett (Wikipedia.org) 4 “Bliss” Copy (Wikipedia.org) 5 “Hay” Copy (Wikipedia.org) 6 Site of Address (Wikipedia.org) 7 HL Mencken (Wikipedia.org) 8 Lincoln at Gettysburg (Wikipedia.org)

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” —Titus 3:5-7

The Synod of Dort Begins,
November 13, 1618

nce the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century had swept across Europe, various countries were able to stabilize their borders and establish their new-found faith, although political and social contention persisted. Romanist heresies within Protestantism continued to challenge the Church, and the theologians’ and pastors’ need to systematize biblical doctrine continued well into the next century. Reformed confessions emerged to define what Protestant Christians believed. In the Netherlands, which had adopted a strong Calvinist theology in the “Belgic Confession of Faith” of 1561 (which had been primarily written by Dutch pastor Guido de Bres), challenges arose which caused disruption in the churches. James Arminius, a Dutch pastor and University professor presented the greatest theological challenge since the expulsion of the Roman Church.

James Arminius (1560–1609)

Arminius was a highly respected theologian and pastor in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. He was noted for his “activity, intelligence, wit, and obliging deportment”. He was sent to the University in Geneva, where he sat under Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor. Of independent mind and possessed of an insubordinate disposition, he developed theological views that differed from his professors, and he embarked behind the scenes to lead fellow students away from the Genevan orthodoxy. He was sent home. After travelling in Italy for ten months, he returned to Holland where he was greeted with great acclaim and a request to answer a tract by Dutch pastors who opposed the Reformed view of predestination. He ended up accepting the argument of the dissenters. In a series of sermons from his church pulpit, on the Book of Romans, he publicly abandoned the position of the Belgic churches.

Theodore Beza (1519–1605)

Although Arminius was rebuked by his Classis (presbytery), he continued to teach behind the scenes. His “learning, smooth address, and insinuating eloquence” won over a number of dissidents to take a stand against certain established Protestant doctrines. Some of his many friends were able to massage the volatile situation and Arminius was able to retain his preaching position. Every attempt to get Arminius into open theological debate was rebuffed through evasion, excuses, and subterfuge. As Samuel Miller of Princeton so succinctly observed, “the commencement of every heresy which has arisen in the Christian church” began with “a want of candor and integrity on the part of a man otherwise respectable . . . it is never frank and open”.

An allegorical depiction of the theological debate between “Remonstrants”—as followers of the teachings of Arminius called themselves— and their Dutch Reformed opponents. The Dutch Reformed side of the scale is heavier, but only on account of the extra weight added by a sword, representing the external influence of the state.

Because the Reformed Church was a state church, the politicians took a hand in the controversy and the Estates General called for Arminius and his companions, in 1609, to appear before them and explain his unorthodox theology. Before they could meet, Arminius died. His followers took the doctrines he had expounded, and continued preaching and teaching them in the universities and the churches, creating an uproar in the churches, and even dividing the national legislature. The Arminians drew up their doctrinal aberrations in a document known as the Remonstrance. The Church and State finally called a great Synod at the City of Dort beginning on November 13, 1618, to state for all the church what the Bible teaches concerning the doctrines under attack by the Arminians.

Johannes Wtenbogaert (1557-1644) became leader of the “Remonstrants” after the death of James Arminius in 1609 and drew up the document known as the Five Articles of Remonstrance in 1610. The point-by-point rebuttal to this document was issued in the Canons of Dort of 1618-19, the substance of which has come to be referred to as the Five Points of Calvinism.

The Synod of Dort, with Arminians seated at a table in the center

Holland invited scholars from all the Reformed countries to participate also. The “divines” sat in solemn ecclesiastical deliberations, and prayer and preaching, meeting one hundred eighty times. They concluded the assembly on May 29, 1619, having examined every aspect of the Remonstrance, and interviewed the Arminian pastors. The Synod produced the Canons of Dort, addressing each point of the Arminians’ beliefs regarding the doctrine of salvation. [See article here to compare the Arminian and the Calvinist positions on these theological points.]

Title page of the Canons of Dort

The international Synod unanimously condemned the Arminians’ arguments, and the Canons of Dort helped inform future Calvinist Confessions on the continent and in the United Kingdom. Nonetheless, the Arminian beliefs continued to spread wherever the Reformation succeeded, and eventually permeated Protestant thinking in England and America, especially among denominations who rejected the Reformed Confessions. Men seem to have a compulsion to declare their independence from God in all things, including their own salvation. That does not change the fact that changing the hearts of the elect, and giving them the gift of Faith through His Grace, is solely an activity of the Sovereign God, who is not confined by the whims of His created image-bearers.

The Kloveniersdoelen, location of the Synod of Dort assembly, before its demolition in 1857

For a nice summary of the Synod of Dort, see A Place Like Heaven: An Introduction to the Synod of Dort, by Samuel Miller.

Image Credits: 1 James Arminius (Wikipedia.org) 2 Theodore Beza (Wikipedia.org) 3 Remonstrants (Wikipedia.org) 4 Johannes Wtenbogaert (Wikipedia.org) 5 Synod of Dort Assembly (Wikipedia.org) 6 Kloveniersdoelen (Wikipedia.org) 7 Canons of Dort Title Page (Wikipedia.org)

Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.” —Genesis 9:6

The Bolshevik Revolution Begins,
November 6, 1917

ussia was rocked by revolution several times during the First World War. Multiple parties vied for power, but agreed on only one policy decision—that the Tsar had to be toppled. Revolution since 1789, by definition, seeks to destroy the old order (what Chairman Mao called “the four olds” in China), which typically includes the religion, political structure, social conventions and mores, and always at the cost of many lives, millions in the case of Marxist revolutions in Russia, China, and Cambodia. As in the case of France, who provided the template, and Russia, who applied Marxian socialism, democratic dreamers were the first to attempt a new order. They lost out quickly to those more radical and willing to kill off the opposition.

Tsar Nicholas (1868-1918) of Russia in 1912

Tsar Nicholas II had plenty of problems facing his regime prior to the First World War. Russia contained millions of poor and hungry people, and the aristocrats lived like kings among them. Discontent festered in the decades prior to the War, including an attempted revolution in 1905. Historically, wars are, by far, the most expensive enterprise entered into by nations, but they also tend to be unifying. For a country already suffering with social and economic problems, the Russians could ill-afford the war that they themselves helped trigger by their backing of Slavic peoples of the Balkans in Southern Europe. Allied with Britain and France, in the “Triple Entente,” the Russians mobilized about five million men, but could not arm many of them.

“Bloody Sunday”, January 22, 1905—Imperial soldiers fired upon unarmed demonstrators as they marched towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II

Revolutionaries set up barricades in Moscow, 1905

After almost three years of war, millions of casualties and a ruined economy, Russians turned a sympathetic ear to a myriad of discontented parties calling for an end to the war and access to food, fuel, and the supplies of life. In March, 1917, thousands of workers and out-of-work urban poor took to the streets of the capital city of Petrograd (modern St. Petersburg) protesting the latest food rationing. Labor strikes were called across the city. The Tsar’s police, most of them still loyal to the regime, fired on the crowds, who returned fire, initiating a Revolution.

Protesters swarm the streets of Petrograd, March 1917

In the week following, thousands of women took to the streets screaming for bread, and recruiting multiple thousands more of factory workers to join them. They called for the abdication of the Tsar and the end of the War; as it turned out, they eventually got both. A new provisional government was established, which included former members of the Duma, and middle classes. During the same period, workers and soldiers organized soviets and elected representatives of those groups, still dissatisfied with the provisional government, which was doing little to solve the problems for which the people took to the streets.

Red Guard unit in Petrograd, 1917

Alexander Kerensky (1881-1970) in May 1917

A leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Alexander Kerensky assumed control of the army, and led the provisional government until overthrown by Lenin’s Bolshevik Party on November 6. Kerensky had declared Russia a Republic and tried to continue the war against Germany and Austria, both actions inimical to the Communists. The armed workers of the Petrograd Soviet had gone over to the Bolsheviks and followed the orders of Vladimir Lenin who had returned from exile in Switzerland to lead his party, which was neither the most numerous or popular, initially. Two Communist groups vied for rule of Russia—the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, along with elements of the Tsarists and the Social Revolutionaries. The first mentioned believed that political and social revolution could be done peacefully through the ballot box and working with the liberals and Socialist Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks believed that only violence and the elimination of all enemies could secure the utopian future that Marxist orthodoxy believed was inevitable. The Bolsheviks won out. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries who did not join Lenin’s Party were shot, along with the Tsar and his family.

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) in 1916 during his exile in Switzerland

Members of the Bolshevik Party (including Vladimir Lenin, far right) meet in 1920

Leaders of the Menshevik Party in Stockholm, Sweden, May 1917

As for the lawyer Kerensky, (revolutions are led by lawyers, since the French Revolution), he escaped to the west, ending up in the United States where he married an American woman and settled in New York City, spending much of his time at the Hoover Institute in California, writing and teaching about Russian history and against Communism. He lived to the age of 89, dying in 1970, outliving every major participant in the Russian Revolution.

Lenin’s ideas were not particularly popular, and several million Russians had to die in a civil war and retribution, before he got total dictatorial control. Lenin died in 1924, being replaced by the paragon of murder and terrorism, Josef Stalin, the “man of steel.” Revolutions tend to consume their own activists and their children, and always lead to dictatorship.

Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) with Joseph Stalin 1878-1953) in 1922

Image Credits: 1 Tsar Nicholas II (Wikipedia.org) 2 Bloody Sunday March (Wikipedia.org) 3 Moscow Barricades (Wikipedia.org) 4 Protesters, March 1917 (Wikipedia.org) 5 Red Guard (Wikipedia.org) 6 Alexander Kerensky (Wikipedia.org) 7 Vladimir Lenin in Switzerland (Wikipedia.org) 8 Bolshevik Party Meeting (Wikipedia.org) 9 Mensheviks (Wikipedia.org) 10 Lenin and Stalin (Wikipedia.org)