What happens in Russia once the Romanov leaders are overthrown? We focused today on what happens in Russia after 1917. Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) was a Russian political philosopher, revolutionary, and politician. Followers of his brand of Communism, inspired by the Karl Marx' and Friedrich Engels' anti-capitalist ideas, were called Bolsheviks. In February 1917 during WWI, a revolution overthrew the monarchy when Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the thrown. Bolsheviks led by Lenin took power in a military coup in November 1917. The Bolsheviks/Communists renamed the country the Soviet Union (or USSR). Even after the end of an autocratic and often brutal monarchy, Russia/the USSR remains a repressive, totalitarian one-party state. Instead of a royal authoritarian leader, after 1917 the leader of Russia becomes a communist authoritarian leader. Lenin's interpretation of Marxism, modified by Joseph Stalin and known as Marxism-Leninism, became Soviet Union's official ideology.