page_title: Vladimir Lenin
section_title: Munich, London, and Geneva: 1900–1905
hierarchical_section_title: Vladimir Lenin / Revolutionary activity / Munich, London, and Geneva: 1900–1905
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Lenin taken in Switzerland in 1916, during his exile in the country. Español: Lenin en Suiza en 1916, durante su exilio.Polski: Włodzimierz Lenin w Szwajcarii w 1916 w czasie emigracji
context_page_description: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party Marxist–Leninist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism.
  Born to a moderately prosperous middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empire's Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent theorist in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
context_section_description: After his exile, Lenin settled in Pskov in early 1900. There, he began raising funds for a newspaper, Iskra ("Spark"), a new organ of the Russian Marxist party, now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In July 1900, Lenin left Russia for Western Europe; in Switzerland he met other Russian Marxists, and at a Corsier conference they agreed to launch the paper from Munich, where Lenin relocated in September. Containing contributions from prominent European Marxists, Iskra was smuggled into Russia, becoming the country's most successful underground publication for 50 years. He first adopted the pseudonym "Lenin" in December 1901, possibly based on the Siberian River Lena; he often used the fuller pseudonym of "N. Lenin", and while the N did not stand for anything, a popular misconception later arose that it represented "Nikolai". Under this pseudonym, he published the political pamphlet What Is To Be Done? in 1902; his most influential publication to date, it dealt with Lenin's thoughts on the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat to revolution.
  His wife Nadya joined Lenin in Munich, becoming his personal secretary. They continued their political agitation, as Lenin wrote for Iskra and drafted the RSDLP programme, attacking ideological dissenters and external critics, particularly the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR), a Narodnik agrarian-socialist group founded in 1901. Despite remaining a Marxist, he accepted the Narodnik view on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry, accordingly penning the 1903 pamphlet To the Village Poor. To evade Bavarian police, Lenin moved to London with Iskra in April 1902, there becoming friends with fellow Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky. In London, Lenin fell ill with erysipelas and was unable to take such a leading role on the Iskra editorial board; in his absence, the board moved its base of operations to Geneva.
  The second RSDLP Congress was held in London in July 1903. At the conference, a schism emerged between Lenin's supporters and those of Julius Martov. Martov argued that party members should be able to express themselves independently of the party leadership; Lenin disagreed, emphasising the need for a strong leadership with complete control over the party. Lenin's supporters were in the majority, and Lenin termed them the "majoritarians" (bol'sheviki in Russian; thus Bolsheviks); in response, Martov termed his followers the "minoritarians" (men'sheviki in Russian; thus Mensheviks). Arguments between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks continued after the conference; the Bolsheviks accused their rivals of being opportunists and reformists who lacked discipline, while the Mensheviks accused Lenin of being a despot and autocrat. Enraged at the Mensheviks, Lenin resigned from the Iskra editorial board and in May 1904 published the anti-Menshevik tract One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. The stress made Lenin ill, and to recuperate he went on a hiking holiday in rural Switzerland. The Bolshevik faction grew in strength; by the spring, the whole RSDLP Central Committee was Bolshevik, and in December they founded the newspaper Vpered (Forward).
caption: Lenin in 1916, while in Switzerland
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