Our research process was spread over about a week and a half. We used various sources such as the school library, the UCLA department of special collections, and various online encyclopedia resources. The majority of our resources are books or written sources. We accessed the digital library at the school library and obtained information. We also used the digital archives at the UCLA library to get newspaper articles from the time era.

We got the idea for our topic not until after a few days of debate because our original topics did not have enough readily available resources for our use. Our initial topic was the Opium war, but after that we decided on the Australian aborigines. Following that we decided on the crusades, but then decided against it in favor of our current topic.

After reading Animal Farm by George Orwell in our English class, we saw how the animals took a stand and how this book was satire of the Russian Revolution. We then decided that we wanted to hear the real story behind these events, and started research on the leader of the revolutionaries, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

After reading the various sources that we collected, we came up with our thesis statement. We found out that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was leading the Russian Revolutionaries using Marxist theories and that he took a stand against the Czars. He was pushing forth communist ideas to try and make Russia into what he thought was a utopia. Eventually, the Czars were put out of power, and Russia became a communist state. However, it degenerated into a totalitarian state under the rule of Joseph Stalin.

In conclusion, it has been a very fulfilling experience researching Russia’s communist movement under Lenin’s leadership. We feel that it is a very interesting topic that had repercussions on society for many years to come. It also opened the path for other countries to follow in the footsteps of Lenin and Marx’s vision.