Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( ; born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov , ; – 21 January 1924 ) 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 his death . Politically a Marxist , his theoretical contributions to Marxist thought are known as Leninism , which coupled with Marxian economic theory have collectively come to be known as Marxism – Leninism . Born to a wealthy middle - class family in Simbirsk , Lenin gained an interest in revolutionary leftist politics following the execution of his brother in 1887 . Briefly attending the Kazan State University , he was ejected for his involvement in anti - Tsarist protests , devoting the following years to gaining a law degree and to radical politics , becoming a Marxist . In 1893 he moved to St . Petersburg , becoming a senior figure within the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class . Arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years , he married Nadezhda Krupskaya , and fled to Western Europe , living in Germany , England and Switzerland . Following the February Revolution of 1917 , in which the Tsar was overthrown and a provisional government took power , he returned home . As the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , he took a senior role in orchestrating the October Revolution in 1917 , which led to the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government and the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , the world ' s first constitutionally socialist state . Immediately afterwards , the new government under Lenin ' s leadership proceeded to implement socialist reforms , including the transfer of estates and crown lands to workers ' soviets . Faced with the threat of German invasion , he argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty — which led to Russia ' s exit from the First World War . In 1921 Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy , a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialisation and recovery from the Russian Civil War . In 1922 , the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in becoming the Soviet Union , with Lenin elected as its leader . After his death , Marxism – Leninism developed into a variety of schools of thought , namely Stalinism , Trotskyism and Maoism . 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 responded to this criticism by citing what they claim to be limitations on his power and have promoted him as a champion of the working class . He had a significant influence on the international Communist movement and was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century . Early life . Childhood : 1870 – 1887 . Lenin ' s father , Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov , was the fourth child of impoverished tailor Nikolai Vassilievich Ulyanov ( born a serf ) ; and a far younger woman named Anna Alexeevna Smirnova , who lived in Astrakhan . Ilya escaped poverty by studying physics and mathematics at the Kazan State University , before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility from 1854 . Introduced to Maria Alexandrovna Blank , they married in the summer of 1863 . From a relatively prosperous background , Maria was the daughter of a Russian - Jewish physician , Alexander Dmitrievich Blank , and his German - Swedish wife , Anna Ivanovna Grosschopf . Dr . Blank had insisted on providing his children with a good education , ensuring that Maria learned Russian , German , English and French , and that she was well versed in Russian literature . Soon after their wedding , Ilya obtained a job in Nizhni Novgorod , rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the Simbirsk district six years later . Five years after that , he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province , overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government ' s plans for modernisation . Awarded the Order of St . Vladimir , he became a hereditary nobleman . The couple , now nobility , had two children , Anna ( born 1864 ) and Alexander ( born 1868 ) before the birth of their third child , Vladimir " Volodya " Ilyich ( ) , on 10 April 1870 , baptised in St . Nicholas Cathedral several days later . They would be followed by three more children , Olga ( born 1871 ) , Dmitry ( born 1874 ) and Maria ( born 1878 ) . Another brother , Nikolai , had died several days after birth in 1873 . Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it , although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity , a view that influenced her children . Both parents were monarchists and liberal conservatives , being committed to the Emancipation reform of 1861 introduced by the reformist Tsar Alexander II ; they avoided political radicals and there is no evidence that the Tsarist police ever put them under surveillance for subversive thought . Every summer they left their home in Moscow Street , Simbirsk and holidayed at a rural manor in Kokushkino , shared with Maria ' s Veretennikov cousins . Among his siblings , Vladimir was closest to his sister Olya , whom he bossed around , having an extremely competitive nature ; he could be destructive , but usually admitted misbehaviour . A keen sportsman , he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess , but his father insisted that he devote his life to study , leading him to excel at school , the Simbirsk Classical Gimnazia , a disciplinarian and conservative institution . By his teenage years , Vladimir was coaching his elder sister in Latin and gave private tuition to a Chuvash student . Ilya Ulyanov died of a brain haemorrhage on 12 January 1886 , when Vladimir was 16 years old . Vladimir ' s behaviour became erratic and confrontational , and shortly thereafter he renounced his belief in God . At the time , Vladimir ' s elder brother Aleksandr " Sacha " Ulyanov was studying biology at St . Petersburg University , in 1885 having been awarded a gold medal for his dissertation , after which he was elected onto the university ' s Scientific - Literary Society . Involved in political agitation against the absolute monarchy of reactionary Tsar Alexander III which governed the Russian Empire , he studied the writings of banned leftists like Dmitry Pisarev , Nikolay Dobrolyubov , Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Karl Marx . Organising protests against the government , he joined a socialist revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and was selected to construct a bomb . Before the attack commenced , the conspirators were arrested and tried . On 25 April 1887 , Sacha was sentenced to death by hanging , and executed on 8 May . Despite the emotional trauma brought on by his father and brother ' s deaths , Vladimir continued studying , leaving school with a gold medal for his exceptional performance , and decided to study law at Kazan University . University and political radicalism : 1887 – 1893 . Entering the Judicial Faculty of Kazan University in August 1887 , Vladimir and his mother moved into a flat , renting out their Simbirsk family home . Becoming interested in his late brother ' s radical ideas , he began meeting with a revolutionary cell run by the militant agrarian socialist Lazar Bogoraz , associating with leftists intent on reviving the People ' s Freedom Party ( " Narodnaya Volya " ) . Joining the university ' s illegal Samara - Simbirsk " zemlyachestvo " , he was elected as its representative for the university ' s " zemlyachestvo " council . On 4 December he took part in a demonstration demanding the abolition of the 1884 statute and the re - legalisation of student societies , but along with 100 other protesters was arrested by police . Accused of being a ringleader , the university expelled him and the Ministry of Internal Affairs placed him under police surveillance , exiling him to his Kokushkino estate . Here , he read voraciously , becoming enamoured with Chernyshevsky ' s novel " What is to be Done ? " ( 1863 ) . Disliking his radicalism , in September 1888 his mother persuading him to write to the Ministry of the Interior asking them to allow him to study at a foreign university ; they refused his request , but allowed his return to Kazan , where he settled on the Pervaya Gora with his mother and brother Dmitry . In Kazan , he contacted M . P . Chetvergova , joining her secret revolutionary circle , through which he discovered Karl Marx ' s " Capital " ( 1867 ) ; exerting a strong influence on him , he became increasingly interested in Marxism . Wary of his political views , his mother purchased an estate in the village of Alakaevka , Samara Oblast – made famous in the work of poet Gleb Uspensky , of whom Lenin was a great fan – in the hope that Vladimir would turn his attention to agriculture . Here , he studied peasant life and the poverty they faced , but remained unpopular as locals stole his farm equipment and livestock , causing his mother to sell the farm . In September 1889 , the Ulyanovs moved to Samara for the winter . Here , Vladimir contacted exiled dissidents and joined Alexei P . Sklyarenko ' s discussion circle . Both Vladimir and Sklyarenko adopted Marxism , with Vladimir translating Marx and Friedrich Engels ' political pamphlet , " The Communist Manifesto " ( 1848 ) , into Russian . He began to read the works of the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov , a founder of the Black Repartition movement , concurring with Plekhanov ' s argument that Russia was moving from feudalism to capitalism . Becoming increasingly sceptical of the effectiveness of militant attacks and assassinations , he argued against such tactics in a December 1889 debate with M . V . Sabunaev , an advocate of the People ' s Freedom Party . Despite disagreeing on tactics , he made friends among the Party , in particular with Apollon Shukht , who asked Vladimir to be his daughter ' s godfather in 1893 . In May 1890 , Mariya convinced the authorities to allow Vladimir to undertake his exams externally at a university of his choice . Choosing the University of Saint Petersburg and obtaining the equivalent of a first - class degree with honours , celebrations were marred when his sister Olga died of typhoid . Vladimir remained in Samara for several years , in January 1892 being employed as a legal assistant for a regional court , before gaining a job with a local lawyer . Embroiled primarily in disputes between peasants and artisans , he devoted much time to radical politics , remaining active in Skylarenko ' s group and formulating ideas about Marxism ' s applicability to Russia . Inspired by Plekhanov ' s work , Vladimir collected data on Russian society , using it to support a Marxist interpretation of societal development and increasingly rejecting the claims of the People ' s Freedom Party . In the spring of 1893 , Lenin wrote a paper , " New Economic Developments in Peasant Life " ; submitted to the liberal journal " Russian Thought " , it was rejected and only published in 1927 . In the autumn of 1893 , Lenin wrote another article , " On the So - Called Market Question " , a critique of Russian economist G . B . Krasin . Revolutionary activities . St . Petersburg and foreign visits : 1893 – 1895 . In autumn 1893 , Vladimir moved to St . Petersburg , taking up residence in a Sergievsky Street flat in the Liteiny district , before moving to 7 Kazachy Alley , near the Haymarket . Employed as a lawyer ' s assistant , he joined a revolutionary cell run by S . I . Radchenko , whose members were primarily students from the city ' s Technological Institute . Like Vladimir , they were Marxists , and called themselves the " Social Democrats " after the Marxist Social Democratic Party of Germany . Impressed by his extensive knowledge , they welcomed him and he soon became a senior member of the group . Championing Marxist thought among the revolutionary socialist movement , in January 1894 he publicly debated with theorist V . P . Vorontsov at a clandestine meeting , attracting the attention of police spies . Intent on building Marxism in Russia , Vladimir contacted Petr Bernardovich Struve , a wealthy sympathizer whom he hoped could aid in the publication of literature , encouraged the foundation of revolutionary cells in Russia ' s industrial centres , and befriended Russian Jewish Marxist Julius Martov . Vladimir entered into a relationship with fellow Marxist and schoolteacher Nadezhda " Nadya " Krupskaya , who introduced him to socialist proletariat . By autumn 1894 , Vladimir was leading a workers ' circle who met for two hours on a Sunday ; known by the pseudonym Nikolai Petrovich , they affectionately referred to him as " starik " ( old man ) . He was meticulous in covering his tracks , knowing that police spies were trying to infiltrate the revolutionary movement . He wrote his first political tract , " What the " Friends of the People " Are and How They Fight the Social - Democrats " ; based largely on his experiences in Samara , around 200 copies were illegally printed . Although Lenin was influenced by agrarian - socialist Pëtr Tkachëvi , he and the Social - Democrats clashed with the Socialist – Revolutionary Party ( SR ) , who were inspired by the defunct People ' s Freedom Party . Advocating a Narodnik agrarian - socialist platform , the SR emphasised the revolutionary role of the peasant , who in 1881 numbered 75 million , in contrast to the 1 million urban proletariat in Russia . In contrast , the Marxists believed that the peasant class ' primary motivation was to own their land , and that they were capitalists ; instead , they saw the proletariat as the revolutionary force to advance socialism . He hoped that connections could be cemented between his Social - Democrats and the Emancipation of Labour group ; an organisation founded in Geneva , Switzerland by Pleckhanov and other Russian Marxist emigres in 1883 . Vladimir and E . I . Sponti were selected to travel to Switzerland to meet with Pleckhanov , who was generally supportive but criticised the Social - Democrats for ignoring the bourgeoisie ' s role in the anti - Tsarist revolution . Traveling to Zurich , Vladimir befriended Pavel Axelrod , another member of Emancipation of Labour . Proceeding to Paris , France , Vladimir met Paul Lafargue and researched the Paris Commune of 1871 , which he saw as an early prototype for a proletarian government . Financed by his mother , he stayed in a Swiss health spa before traveling to Berlin , Germany , where he studied for six weeks at the Staatsbibliothek and met Wilhelm Liebknecht . Returning to Russia with a stash of illegal revolutionary literature , he traveled to various cities , aware that he was being monitored by the police , and distributed literature to striking workers in St . Petersburg . Involved in producing a news sheet , " The Workers ' Cause " , he was among 40 activists arrested on the night before the first issue ' s publication and charged with sedition . Siberian exile : 1895 – 1900 . Imprisoned at the House of Preliminary Detention in Shpalernaya Street , Vladimir was refused legal representation , so denied all charges . His family helped him , but he was refused bail , remaining imprisoned for a year before sentencing . Fellow revolutionaries smuggled messages to him , while he devised a code for playing chess with the neighbouring inmate . Spending much time writing , he focused on the revolutionary potential of the working - class ; believing that the rise of industrial capitalism had led large numbers of peasants to move to the cities , he argued that they became proletariat and gained class consciousness , which would lead them to violently overthrow the aristocracy and bourgeoisie . By July 1896 he had finished " Draft and Explanation of A Programme for the Social Democratic Party " and had commenced work on his book " The Development of Capitalism in Russia " . Vladimir was sentenced without trial to 3 years exile in eastern Siberia . Given a few days in St . Petersburg in February 1897 to put his affairs in order , he met with fellow revolutionaries ; the Social - Democrats had been renamed the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class , and with many of its leading intelligentsia imprisoned , workers had taken over many senior positions , a move that caused rifts but which gained Vladimir ' s cautious support . In 1896 – 97 , strikes hit St . Petersburg , aided by the Marxists ; believing his predictions to be coming true , Vladimir was unhappy at having to abandon the movement . The Tsarist government made use of a large network of prison camps and areas of exile on the verges of its empire to deal with dissidents and criminals ; by 1897 there were 300 , 000 Russian citizens in this system , and Vladimir was now one of them . Permitted to make his own way there , the journey took 11 weeks , for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters . Considered a minor threat , Vladimir was exiled to Shushenskoye in the Minusinsky District , a settlement that Vladimir described as " not a bad place " . Renting a room in a peasant ' s hut , he remained under police surveillance , but corresponded with other subversives , many of whom visited him , and also went on trips to hunt duck and snipe and to swim in the Yenisei River . In May 1898 , Nadya joined him in exile , having been arrested in August 1896 for organizing a strike . Although initially posted to Ufa , she convinced the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye , claiming that she and Vladimir were engaged ; they married in a church on 10 July 1898 . Settling into a family life with Nadya ' s mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna , the couple translated Sidney and Beatrice Webb ' s " The History of Trade Unionism " ( 1894 ) into Russian , a job obtained for them by Struve . Keen to keep abreast of the developments in German Marxism – where there had been an ideological split , with revisionists like Eduard Bernstein advocating a peaceful , electoral path to socialism – Vladimir remained devoted to violent revolution , attacking revisionist arguments in " A Protest by Russian Social - Democrats " . Vladimir also finished " The Development of Capitalism in Russia " ( 1899 ) , his longest book to date , which offered a well - researched and polemical attack on the Social - Revolutionaries and promoting a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development . Published under the pseudonym of " Vladimir Ilin " , it would be described by biographer Robert Service as " a " tour de force " " , but received predominantly poor reviews upon publication . Munich , London and Geneva : 1900 – 1905 . His exile over , Vladimir was banned from St . Petersburg , instead settling in Pskov , a small town two hours ' train ride from the capital , in February 1900 . His wife , who had not served the entirety of her sentence , remained in exile in Ufa , where she fell ill . Intent on founding a newspaper , Vladimir and Struve raised money for the publication of " Iskra " ( " The Spark " ) , a new organ of the Russian Marxist movement , now calling itself the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ( RSDLP ) . After visiting his wife , on 29 July 1900 , Vladimir left Russia for Western Europe . In Switzerland and Germany , he met with Axelrod , Plekhanov and Potresov , and lectured on the Russian situation . On 24 August 1900 , a conference of Russian Marxists was held in the Swiss town of Corsier to discuss " Iskra " , but both Vladimir and Potresov were shocked at Plekhanov ' s controlling nature and antisemitism . It was agreed that the paper would be produced in Munich , where Vladimir moved in September 1900 . The first issue was printed on Christmas Eve , and contained an article written by Vladimir decrying European intervention in the Boxer Rebellion . A second RSDLP publication , " Zarya " , appeared in March 1901 , and would run for four issues , but " Iskra " was far more successful , being smuggled into Russia illegally , becoming the most successful Russian underground publication for 50 years . It contained contributions from such figures as the Polish Rosa Luxemburg , the Czech - German Karl Kautsky , and a young Ukrainian Marxist , Leon Trotsky , who became a regular contributor from the autumn of 1902 . Vladimir adopted the " nom de guerre " of " Lenin " in December 1901 , possibly taking the River Lena as a basis , thereby imitating the manner in which Plekhanov had adopted the pseudonym of " Volgin " after the River Volga . In 1902 , he published a political pamphlet entitled " What Is to Be Done ? " – named after Chernychevsky ' s novel – under this pseudonym . His most influential publication to date , it dealt with Lenin ' s thoughts on the need for a vanguard party to lead the working - class to revolution . When his wife finished her sentence , she joined him in Munich ; she became his personal secretary , aiding the production of " Iskra " . Together , they continued their political agitation , with Lenin writing further articles for " Iskra " and drafting the program for the RSDLP , attacking ideological dissenters and external critics . Despite remaining an orthodox Marxist , he had begun to accept the Social Revolutionary Party ' s views on the revolutionary power of the Russian peasantry , penning a pamphlet in 1903 entitled " To the Village Poor " . In 1903 , Lenin attended the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party , which initially convened at Brussels before moving to London . Here a longstanding ideological split developed within the party between the Bolshevik fraction , led by Lenin , and the Menshevik fraction , led by Martov . These terms " Bolshevik " ( from the Russian " bol ' shinstvo " meaning " majority " ) and " Menshevik " ( from the Russian " menshinstvo " meaning " minority " ) derive from the narrow Bolshevik electoral defeat of the Mensheviks to the party ' s newspaper editorial board , and to central committee leadership . The break partly originated from Lenin ' s book " What Is to Be Done ? " ( 1902 ) , which proposed a smaller party organisation of " professional " revolutionaries , with " Iskra " in a primary ideologic role . Another issue that divided the two factions was Lenin ' s support of a worker - peasant alliance to overthrow the Tsarist regime as opposed to the Menshevik ' s support of an alliance between the working classes and the liberal bourgeoisie to achieve the same aim ( while a small third faction led by Trotsky espoused the view that the working class alone was the instrument of revolutionary change — needing no help from either the peasants or the middle classes ) . The 1905 Revolution : 1905 – 1907 . In November 1905 , Lenin returned to Russia to support the 1905 Russian Revolution . In 1906 , he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP ; and shuttled between Finland and Russia , but resumed his exile in December 1907 , after the Tsarist defeat of the revolution . Until the February and October revolutions of 1917 , he lived in Western Europe , where , despite relative poverty , he developed Leninism — urban Marxism adapted to agrarian Russia reversing Karl Marx ' s economics – politics prescription to allow for a dynamic revolution led by a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries . Return to exile : 1907 – 1917 . In 1909 , to disambiguate philosophic doubts about the proper practical course of a socialist revolution , Lenin published " Materialism and Empirio - criticism " ( 1909 ) , which became a philosophic foundation of Marxism - Leninism . Throughout exile , Lenin travelled Europe , participated in socialist activities , ( the 1912 Prague Party Conference ) . When Inessa Armand left Russia for Paris , she met Lenin and other exiled Bolsheviks . Rumour has it she was Lenin ' s lover ; yet historian Neil Harding notes that there is a " slender stock of evidence . . . we still have no evidence that they were sexually intimate " . In 1914 , when the First World War ( 1914 – 18 ) began , most of the mass Social Democratic parties of Europe supported their homelands ' war effort . At first , Lenin disbelieved such political fickleness , especially that the Germans had voted for war credits ; the Social Democrats ' war - authorising votes broke Lenin ' s mainstream connection with the Second International ( 1889 – 1916 ) . He opposed the Great War , because the peasants and workers would be fighting the bourgeoisie ' s " imperialist war " — one that ought be transformed to an international civil war , between the classes . Lenin ' s view of the war can be summed up in a letter he wrote to the Romanian poet Valeriu Marcu in 1917 : " One slaveowner , Germany is fighting another slaveowner , England , for a fairer distribution of the slaves " . At the beginning of the war , the Austrians briefly detained him in Poronin , his town of residence ; on 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland , residing first at Bern , then at Zürich . In 1915 , in Switzerland , at the anti - war Zimmerwald Conference , he led the Zimmerwald Left minority , who failed , against the majority pacifists , to achieve the conference ' s adopting Lenin ' s proposition of transforming the imperialist war into a class war . In the next conference ( 24 – 30 April 1916 ) , at Kienthal , Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left presented a like resolution ; but the conference concorded only a compromise manifesto . In the spring of 1916 , in Zürich , Lenin wrote " Imperialism , the Highest Stage of Capitalism " ( 1916 ) . In this work Lenin synthesised previous works on the subject by Karl Kautsky , John A . Hobson ( " Imperialism : A Study " , 1902 ) , and Rudolf Hilferding ( " Das Finanzkapital " , 1910 ) , and applied them to the new circumstances of the First World War ( 1914 – 18 ) fought between the German and the British empires — which exemplified the imperial capitalist competition , which was the thesis of his book . This thesis posited that the merging of banks and industrial cartel s gave rise to finance capital — the basis of imperialism , the zenith of capitalism . To wit , in pursuing greater profits than the home market can offer , business exports capital , which , in turn , leads to the division of the world , among international , monopolist firms , and to European states colonising large parts of the world , in support of their businesses . Imperialism , thus , is an advanced stage of capitalism based upon the establishment of monopolies , and upon the exportation of capital ( rather than goods ) , managed with a global financial system , of which colonialism is one feature . In accordance with this thesis , Lenin believed that Russia was being used as a tool of French and British capitalist imperialism in World War I and that its participation in the conflict was at the behest of those interests . The February Revolution . In February 1917 popular demonstrations in Russia provoked by the hardship of war forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate . The monarchy was replaced by an uneasy political relationship between , on the one hand , a Provisional Government of parliamentary figures and , on the other , an array of " Soviets " ( most prominently the Petrograd Soviet ) : revolutionary councils directly elected by workers , soldiers and peasants . Lenin was still in exile in Zurich . Lenin was preparing to go to the Altstadt library after lunch on 15 March when a fellow exile , the Pole , burst in to exclaim : " Haven ' t you heard the news ? There ' s a revolution in Russia ! " The next day Lenin wrote to Alexandra Kollontai in Stockholm , insisting on " revolutionary propaganda , agitation and struggle with the aim of an " international " proletarian revolution and for the conquest of power by the Soviets of Workers ' Deputies " . The next day : " Spread out ! Rouse new sections ! Awaken fresh initiative , form new organisations in every stratum and prove to them that peace can come only with the armed Soviet of Workers ' Deputies in power . " Lenin was determined to return to Russia at once . But that was not an easy task in the middle of the First World War . Switzerland was surrounded by the warring countries of France , Germany , Austria - Hungary and Italy , and the seas were dominated by Russia ' s ally Britain . Lenin considered crossing Germany with a Swedish passport , but Krupskaya joked that he would give himself away by swearing at Mensheviks in Russian in his sleep . Negotiations with the Provisional Government to obtain passage through Germany for the Russian exiles in return for German and Austro - Hungarian prisoners of war dragged on . Eventually , bypassing the Provisional Government , on 31 March the Swiss Communist Fritz Platten obtained permission from the German Foreign Minister through his ambassador in Switzerland , Baron Gisbert von Romberg , for Lenin and other Russian exiles to travel through Germany to Russia in a sealed one - carriage train . At Lenin ' s request the carriage would be protected from interference by a special grant of extraterritorial status . There are many evidences for German financial commitment to the mission of Lenin . The aim was to disintegrate Russian resistance in the First World War by spreading the revolutionary unrest . Financial support was continued until July 1917 , when the Provisional Government , after revealing German funding for the Bolsheviks , outlawed the party and issued an arrest warrant for Lenin . On 9 April Lenin and Krupskaya met their fellow exiles in Bern , a group eventually numbering thirty boarded a train that took them to Zurich . From there they travelled to the specially arranged train that was waiting at Gottmadingen , just short of the official German crossing station at Singen . Accompanied by two German Army officers , who sat at the rear of the single carriage behind a chalked line , the exiles travelled through Frankfurt and Berlin to Sassnitz ( arriving 12 April ) , where a ferry took them to Trelleborg . Krupskaya noted how , looking out of the carriage window as they passed through wartime Germany , the exiles were " struck by the total absence of grown - up men . Only women , teenagers and children could be seen at the wayside stations , on the fields , and in the streets of the towns . " Once in Sweden the group travelled by train to Stockholm and thence back to Russia . Just before midnight on , Lenin ' s train arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd . He was greeted , to the sound of the Marseillaise , by a crowd of workers , sailors and soldiers bearing red flags : by now a ritual in revolutionary Russia for welcoming home political exiles . Lenin was formally welcomed by Chkheidze , the Menshevik Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet . But Lenin pointedly turned to the crowd instead to address it on the international importance of the Russian Revolution : The piratical imperialist war is the beginning of civil war throughout Europe . . . The world - wide Socialist revolution has already dawned . . . Germany is seething . . . Any day now the whole of European capitalism may crash . . . Sailors , comrades , we have to fight for a socialist revolution , to fight until the proletariat wins full victory ! Long live the worldwide socialist revolution ! The April Theses . On the train from Switzerland , Lenin had composed his famous " April Theses " : his programme for the Bolshevik Party . In the Theses , Lenin argued that the Bolsheviks should not rest content , like almost all other Russian socialists , with the " bourgeois " February Revolution . Instead the Bolsheviks should press ahead to a socialist revolution of the workers and poorest peasants : Lenin argued that this socialist revolution would be achieved by the Soviets taking power from the parliamentary Provisional Government : " No support for the Provisional Government . . . Not a parliamentary republic – to return to a parliamentary republic from the Soviets of Workers ' Deputies would be a retrograde step – but a republic of Soviets of Workers ' , Agricultural Labourers ' and Peasants ' Deputies throughout the country , from top to bottom . " To achieve this , Lenin argued , the Bolsheviks ' immediate task was to campaign diligently among the Russian people to persuade them of the need for Soviet power : The April Theses were more radical than virtually anything Lenin ' s fellow revolutionaries had heard . Previous Bolshevik policy had been like that of the Mensheviks in this respect : that Russia was ready only for bourgeois , not socialist , revolution . Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev , who had returned from exile in Siberia in mid - March and taken control of the Bolshevik newspaper " Pravda " , had been campaigning for support for the Provisional Government . When Lenin presented his Theses to a joint Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ( RSDLP ) meeting , he was booed by the Mensheviks . Boris Bogdanov called them " the ravings of a madman " . Of the Bolsheviks , only Kollontai at first supported the Theses . Lenin arrived at the revolutionary April Theses thanks to his work in exile on the theory of imperialism . Through his study of worldwide politics and economics , Lenin came to view Russian politics in international perspective . In the conditions of the First World War , Lenin believed that , although Russian capitalism was underdeveloped , a socialist revolution in Russia could spark revolution in the more advanced nations of Europe , which could then help Russia achieve economic and social development . A . J . P . Taylor argued : " Lenin made his revolution for the sake of Europe , not for the sake of Russia , and he expected Russia ' s preliminary revolution to be eclipsed when the international revolution took place . Lenin did not invent the iron curtain . On the contrary it was invented against him by the anti - revolutionary Powers of Europe . Then it was called the " cordon sanitaire . " " In this way , Lenin moved away from the previous Bolshevik policy of pursuing only bourgeois revolution in Russia , and towards the position of his fellow Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and his theory of permanent revolution , which may have influenced Lenin at this time . Controversial as it was in April 1917 , the programme of the April Theses made the Bolshevik party a political refuge for Russians disillusioned with the Provisional Government and the war . The October Revolution . In Petrograd dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in the spontaneous July Days riots , by industrial workers and soldiers . After being suppressed , these riots were blamed by the government on Lenin and the Bolsheviks . Aleksandr Kerensky , Grigory Aleksinsky , and other opponents , also accused the Bolsheviks , especially Lenin — of being Imperial German " agents provocateurs " ; on 17 July , Leon Trotsky defended them : In the event , the Provisional Government arrested the Bolsheviks and outlawed their Party , prompting Lenin to go into hiding and flee to Finland . In exile again , reflecting on the July Days and its aftermath , Lenin determined that , to prevent the triumph of counter - revolutionary forces , the Provisional Government must be overthrown by an armed uprising . Meanwhile , he published " State and Revolution " ( 1917 ) proposing government by the soviets ( worker - , soldier - and peasant - elected councils ) rather than by a parliamentary body . In late August 1917 , while Lenin was in hiding in Finland , the Commander - in - Chief of the Russian Army General Lavr Kornilov sent troops from the front to Petrograd in what appeared to be a military coup attempt against the Provisional Government . Kerensky panicked and turned to the Petrograd Soviet for help , allowing the revolutionaries to organise workers as Red Guards to defend Petrograd . The coup petered out before it reached Petrograd thanks to the industrial action of the Petrograd workers and the soldiers ' increasing unwillingness to obey their officers . However , faith in the Provisional Government had been severely shaken . Lenin ' s slogan since the April Theses – " All power to the soviets ! " – became more plausible the more the Provisional Government was discredited in public eyes . The Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd Soviet on 31 August and in the Moscow Soviet on 5 September . In October Lenin returned from Finland . From the Smolny Institute for girls , Lenin directed the Provisional Government ' s deposition ( 6 – 8 November 1917 ) , and the storming ( 7 – 8 November ) of the Winter Palace to realise the Kerensky capitulation that established Bolshevik government in Russia . Forming a government . Lenin had argued in a newspaper article in September 1917 : The peaceful development of any revolution is , generally speaking , extremely rare and difficult . . . but . . . a peaceful development of the revolution is possible and probable if all power is transferred to the Soviets . The struggle of parties for power within the Soviets may proceed peacefully , if the Soviets are made fully democraticThe October Revolution had been relatively peaceful . The revolutionary forces already had " de facto " control of the capital thanks to the defection of the city garrison . Few troops had stayed to defend the Provisional Government in the Winter Palace . Most citizens had simply continued about their daily business while the Provisional Government was actually overthrown . It thus appeared that all power had been transferred to the Soviets relatively peacefully . On the evening of the October Revolution , the Second All - Russian Congress of Soviets met , with a Bolshevik - Left SR majority , in the Smolny Institute in Petrograd . When the left - wing Menshevik Martov proposed an all - party Soviet government , the Bolshevik Lunacharsky stated that his party did not oppose the idea . The Bolshevik delegates voted unanimously in favour of the proposal . However , not all Russian socialists supported transferring all power to the Soviets . The Right SRs and Mensheviks walked out of this very first session of the Congress of Soviets in protest at the overthrow of the Provisional Government , of which their parties had been members . The next day , on the evening of 26 October O . S . , Lenin attended the Congress of Soviets : undisguised in public for the first time since the July Days , although not yet having regrown his trademark beard . The American journalist John Reed described the man who appeared at about 8 : 40 pm to " a thundering wave of cheers " : A short , stocky figure , with a big head set down in his shoulders , bald and bulging . Little eyes , a snubbish nose , wide , generous mouth , and heavy chin ; clean - shaven now , but already beginning to bristle with the well - known beard of his past and future . Dressed in shabby clothes , his trousers much too long for him . Unimpressive , to be the idol of a mob , loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been . A strange popular leader — a leader purely by virtue of intellect ; colourless , humourless , uncompromising and detached , without picturesque idiosyncrasies — but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms , of analysing a concrete situation . And combined with shrewdness , the greatest intellectual audacity . According to Reed , Lenin waited for the applause to subside before declaring simply : " We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order ! " Lenin proceeded to propose to the Congress a Decree on Peace , calling on " all the belligerent peoples and to their Governments to begin immediately negotiations for a just and democratic peace " , and a Decree on Land , transferring ownership of all " land - owners ' estates , and all lands belonging to the Crown , [ and ] to monasteries " to the Peasants ' Soviets . The Congress passed the Decree on Peace unanimously , and the Decree on Land faced only one vote in opposition . Having approved these key Bolshevik policies , the Congress of Soviets proceeded to elect the Bolsheviks into power as the Council of People ' s Commissars by " an enormous majority " . The Bolsheviks offered posts in the Council to the Left SRs : an offer that the Left SRs at first refused , but later accepted , joining the Bolsheviks in coalition on 12 December O . S . Lenin had suggested that Trotsky take the position of Chairman of the Council — the head of the Soviet government — but Trotsky refused on the grounds that his Jewishness would be controversial , and he took the post of Commissar for Foreign Affairs instead . Thus Lenin became the head of government in Russia . Trotsky announced the composition of the new Soviet Central Executive Committee : with a Bolshevik majority , but with places reserved for the representatives of the other parties , including the seceded Right SRs and Mensheviks . Trotsky concluded the Congress : " We welcome into the Government all parties and groups which will adopt our programme . " Lenin declared in 1920 that " Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country " in modernising Russia into a 20th - century country : Yet the Bolshevik Government had to first withdraw Russia from the First World War ( 1914 – 18 ) . Facing continuing Imperial German eastward advance , Lenin proposed immediate Russian withdrawal from the West European war ; yet , other , doctrinaire Bolshevik leaders ( e . g . Nikolai Bukharin ) advocated continuing in the war to foment revolution in Germany . Lead peace treaty negotiator Leon Trotsky proposed " No War , No Peace " , an intermediate - stance Russo – German treaty conditional upon neither belligerent annexing conquered lands ; the negotiations collapsed , and the Germans renewed their attack , conquering much of the ( agricultural ) territory of west Russia . Resultantly , Lenin ' s withdrawal proposal then gained majority support , and , on 3 March 1918 , Russia withdrew from the First World War via the Treaty of Brest - Litovsk , losing much of its European territory . Because of the German threat Lenin moved the Soviet Government from Petrograd to Moscow on 10 – 11 March 1918 . On 19 January 1918 , relying upon the soviets , the Bolsheviks , allied with anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries , dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly thereby consolidating the Bolshevik Government ' s political power . Yet , that left - wing coalition collapsed consequent to the Social Revolutionaries opposing the territorially expensive Brest - Litovsk treaty the Bolsheviks had concorded with Imperial Germany . The anarchists and the Socialist Revolutionaries then joined other political parties in attempting to depose the Bolshevik Government , who defended themselves with persecution and jail for the anti - Bolsheviks . To initiate the Russian economic recovery , on 21 February 1920 , he launched the GOELRO plan , the " State Commission for Electrification of Russia " ( Государственная комиссия по электрификации России ) , and also established free universal health care and free education systems , and promulgated the politico - civil rights of women . Moreover , since 1918 , in re - establishing the economy , for the productive business administration of each industrial enterprise in Russia , Lenin proposed a government - accountable leader for each enterprise . Workers could request measures resolving problems , but had to abide the leader ' s ultimate decision . Although contrary to workers ' self - management , such pragmatic industrial administration was essential for efficient production and employment of worker expertise . Yet Lenin ' s doctrinaire Bolshevik opponents argued that such industrial business management was meant to strengthen State control of labour , and that worker self - management failures were owed to lack of resources , not incompetence . Lenin resolved that problem by licencing ( for a month ) all workers of most factories ; thus historian S . A . Smith ' s observation : " By the end of the civil war , not much was left of the democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees in 1917 , but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had passed into the ownership of a workers ' state . " Internationally , Lenin ' s admiration of the Irish socialist revolutionary James Connolly , led to the USSR ' s being the first country to grant diplomatic recognition to the Irish Republic that fought the Irish War of Independence from Britain . In the event , Lenin developed a friendship with Connolly ' s revolutionary son , Roddy Connolly . Establishing the Cheka . On 20 December 1917 , " The Whole - Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter - Revolution and Sabotage " , the Cheka ( " Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya " – Extraordinary Commission ) was created by a decree issued by Lenin to defend the Russian Revolution . The establishment of the Cheka , secret service , headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky , formally consolidated the censorship established earlier , when on " 17 November , the Central Executive Committee passed a decree giving the Bolsheviks control over all newsprint and wide powers of closing down newspapers critical of the régime . . . . " ; non - Bolshevik soviets were disbanded ; anti - soviet newspapers were closed until " Pravda " ( " Truth " ) and " Izvestia " ( " The News " ) established their communications monopoly . According to Leonard Schapiro the Bolshevik " refusal to come to terms with the [ Revolutionary ] socialists , and the dispersal of the Constituent assembly , led to the logical result that revolutionary terror would now be directed , not only against traditional enemies , such as the bourgeoisie or right - wing opponents , but against anyone , be he socialist , worker , or peasant , who opposed Bolshevik rule " . On 19 December 1918 , a year after its creation , a resolution was adopted at Lenin ' s behest that forbade the Bolshevik ' s own press from publishing " defamatory articles " about the Cheka . As Lenin put it : " A Good Communist is also a good Chekist . " Failed assassinations . Lenin survived two serious assassination attempts . The first occasion was on 14 January 1918 in Petrograd , when assassins ambushed Lenin in his automobile after a speech . He and Fritz Platten were in the back seat when assassins began shooting , and " Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down . . . Platten ' s hand was covered in blood , having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin " . The second event was on 30 August 1918 , when the Socialist Revolutionary Fanya Kaplan approached Lenin at his automobile after a speech ; he was resting a foot on the running board as he spoke with a woman . Kaplan called to Lenin , and when he turned to face her she shot at him three times . The first bullet struck his arm , the second bullet his jaw and neck , and the third missed him , wounding the woman with whom he was speaking ; the wounds felled him and he became unconscious . Kaplan said during her interrogation that she considered Lenin to be " a traitor to the Revolution " for dissolving the Constituent Assembly and for outlawing other leftist parties . Fearing in - hospital assassins , Lenin was brought to his Kremlin apartment ; physicians decided against removing the bullets lest the surgery endanger his recovery , which proved to be slow . " Pravda " publicly ridiculed Fanya Kaplan as a failed assassin , a latter - day Charlotte Corday ( the murderess of Jean - Paul Marat ) who could not derail the Russian Revolution , reassuring readers that , immediately after surviving the assassination : " Lenin , shot through twice , with pierced lungs spilling blood , refuses help and goes on his own . The next morning , still threatened with death , he reads papers , listens , learns , and observes to see that the engine of the locomotive that carries us towards global revolution has not stopped working . . . " ; despite unharmed lungs , the neck wound did spill blood into a lung . Historian Richard Pipes reports that " the impression one gains . . . is that the Bolsheviks deliberately underplayed the event to convince the public that , whatever happened to Lenin , they were firmly in control " . Moreover , in a letter to his wife ( 7 September 1918 ) , Leonid Borisovich Krasin , a Tsarist and Soviet régime diplomat , describes the public atmosphere and social response to the failed assassination attempt on 30 August and to Lenin ' s survival : Red Terror . In response to Fanya Kaplan ' s failed assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918 , and the successful assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief Moisei Uritsky , Stalin proposed to Lenin " open and systematic mass terror . . . [ against ] . . . those responsible " ; the Bolsheviks instructed Felix Dzerzhinsky to commence a Red Terror , announced in the 1 September 1918 issue of the " Krasnaya Gazeta " ( " Red Gazette " ) . To that effect , among other acts , at Moscow , execution lists signed by Lenin authorised the shooting of 25 Tsarist ministers , civil servants , and 765 White Guards in September 1918 . In his " Diaries in Exile , 1935 " , Leon Trotsky recollected that Lenin authorised the execution of the Russian Royal Family . However , according to Greg King and Penny Wilson ' s investigation into the fate of the Romanovs , Trotsky ' s recollections on this matter , seventeen years after the events described , are unsubstantiated , inaccurate , and contradicted by what Trotsky himself said on other occasions . Most historians say there is enough evidence to prove Lenin ordered the killings . According to the late Soviet historian Dmitri Volkogonov : Indirect evidence shows that the order to execute the royal family was given verbally by Lenin and Sverdlov . The object of ' exterminating the entire Romanov kin ' is confirmed by the almost simultaneous murders of Grand Duchess Yelizaveta Feodorovna , Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich , Prince Ivan Konstantinovich , Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich , Prince Igor Konstantinovich and Count Vladimir Paley ( son of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich ) , all of them in Alapaevsk , a hundred miles from Yekaterinburg . Earlier , in October , Lev Kamenev and cohort , had warned the Party that terrorist rule was inevitable , given Lenin ' s assumption of sole command . In late 1918 , when he and Nikolai Bukharin tried curbing Chekist excesses , Lenin overruled them ; in 1921 , via the Politburo , he expanded the Cheka ' s discretionary death - penalty powers . The foreign - aided White Russian counter - revolution failed for want of popular Russian support , because the Bolshevik proletarian state , protected with " mass terror against enemies of the revolution " , was socially organised against the previous capitalist establishment , thus class warfare terrorism in post – Tsarist Russia originated in working class ( peasant and worker ) anger against the privileged aristocrat classes of the deposed absolute monarchy . During the Russian Civil War , anti - Bolsheviks faced torture and summary execution , and by May 1919 , there were some 16 , 000 enemies of the people imprisoned in the Tsarist katorga labour camps ; by September 1921 the prisoner populace exceeded 70 , 000 . In pursuing their revolution and counter - revolution the White and the Red Russians committed atrocities , against each other and their supporting populaces , yet contemporary historians disagree about equating the terrorisms — because the Red Terror was Bolshevik Government policy ( e . g . Decossackization ) against given social classes , while the class - based White Terror was racial and political , against Jews , anti - monarchists , and Communists , ( cf . White Movement ) . Such numbers are recorded in cities occupied by the Bolsheviks : In Kharkov there were between 2 , 000 and 3 , 000 executions in February – June 1919 , and another 1 , 000 – 2 , 000 when the town was taken again in December of that year ; in Rostov - on - Don , approximately 1 , 000 in January 1920 ; in Odessa , 2 , 200 in May – August 1919 , then 1 , 500 – 3 , 000 between February 1920 and February 1921 ; in Kiev , at least 3 , 000 in February – August 1919 ; in Ekaterinodar , at least 3 , 000 between August 1920 and February 1921 ; In Armavir , a small town in Kuban , between 2 , 000 and 3 , 000 in August – October 1920 . The list could go on and on . Professor Christopher Read states that though terror was employed at the height of the Civil War fighting , " from 1920 onwards the resort to terror was much reduced and disappeared from Lenin ' s mainstream discourses and practices " . However , after a clerical insurrection in the town of Shuia , in a 19 March 1922 letter to Vyacheslav Molotov and the Politburo , Lenin delineated action against defiers of the decreed Bolshevik removal of Orthodox Church valuables : " We must . . . put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades . . . The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing . . . the better . " As a result of this letter , historian Orlando Figes estimates that perhaps 8 , 000 priests and laymen were executed . And the crushing of the revolts in Kronstadt and Tambov in 1921 resulted in tens of thousands of executions . Estimates for the total number of people killed in the Red Terror range from 50 , 000 to over a million Civil War . In 1917 , as an anti - imperialist , Lenin said that oppressed peoples had the unconditional right to secede from the Russian Empire ; however , at end of the Civil War , the USSR annexed Armenia , Georgia , and Azerbaijan , because the White Movement used them as attack bases . Lenin defended the annexations as geopolitical protection against capitalist imperial depredations . To maintain the war - isolated cities , keep the armies fed , and to avoid economic collapse , the Bolshevik government established war communism , via " prodrazvyorstka " , food requisitioning from the peasantry , for little payment , which peasants resisted with reduced harvests . The Bolsheviks blamed the " kulak " s ' withholding grain to increase profits ; but statistics indicate most such business occurred in the black market economy . Nonetheless , the " prodrazvyorstka " resulted in armed confrontations , which the Cheka and Red Army suppressed with shooting hostages , poison gas , and labour - camp deportation ; yet Lenin increased the requisitioning . The six - year long White – Red civil war , the war communism , the famine of 1921 , which killed an estimated five million , and red terror reduced much of Russia to ruin , and provoked rebellion against the Bolsheviks , the greatest being the Tambov rebellion ( 1919 – 21 ) . 1920 - 22 . After the March 1921 left - wing Kronstadt Rebellion mutiny , Lenin abolished war communism with its food requisitioning , and tight control over industry with a much more liberal New Economic Policy ( NEP ) , which allowed private enterprise . The NEP successfully stabilized the economy and stimulated industry and agriculture by means of a market economy where the government did " not " set prices and wages . The NEP was his pragmatic recognition of the political and economic realities , despite being a tactical , ideological retreat from the socialist ideal . In international terms Lenin spoke of world revolution . The stalemate in the war with Poland led and the failures of Communist uprisings in Central Europe brought the realization that the revolution would come slowly . To get it on track Lenin in 1919 set up the Third International , or Comintern . In terms of Russian government , the party controlled all political affairs . Everything was run through the system of local , regional , and central soviets , which were all controlled by the Communist Party . He chaired the top government body , the Council of People ' s Commissars ( " Sovnarkom " ) , after Trotsky turned the job down . Even more importantly Lenin directed the ruling Politburo of the Communist party . Lenin suffered a series of strokes that effectively removed him from power in the winter of 1922 - 3 . Retirement and death . The mental strains of leading a revolution , governing , and fighting a civil war aggravated the physical debilitation consequent to the wounds from the attempted assassinations ; Lenin retained a bullet in his neck , until a German surgeon removed it on 24 April 1922 . Among his comrades , Lenin was notable for working almost ceaselessly , fourteen to sixteen hours daily , occupied with minor , major , and routine matters . About the man at his life ' s end , Volkogonov said : When already sick , Lenin remembered that , since 1917 , he had only rested twice : once , while hiding from the Kerensky Provisional Government ( when he wrote " The State and Revolution " ) , and while recovering from Fanya Kaplan ' s failed assassination . In March 1922 , when physicians examined him , they found evidence of neither nervous nor organic pathology , but , given his fatigue and the headaches he suffered , they prescribed rest . Upon returning to St . Petersburg in May 1922 , Lenin suffered the first of three strokes , which left him unable to speak for weeks , and severely hampered motion in his right side ; by June , he had substantially recovered . By August he resumed limited duties , delivering three long speeches in November . In December 1922 , he suffered the second stroke that partly paralyzed his right side , he then withdrew from active politics . In March 1923 , he suffered the third stroke that rendered him mute and bed - ridden until his death . Persistent stories mark syphilis as the cause of Lenin ' s death . A " retrospective diagnosis " published in " The European Journal of Neurology " in 2004 strengthens these suspicions . After the first stroke , Lenin dictated government papers to Nadezhda ; among them was " Lenin ' s Testament " ( changing the structure of the soviets ) , a document partly inspired by the 1922 Georgian Affair , which was a conflict about the way in which social and political transformation within a constituent republic was to be achieved . It criticized high - rank Communists , including Joseph Stalin , Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , Nikolai Bukharin , and Leon Trotsky . About the Communist Party ' s General Secretary ( since 1922 ) , Joseph Stalin , Lenin reported that the " unlimited authority " concentrated in him was unacceptable , and suggested that " comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post . " His phrasing , " " Сталин слишком груб " " , implies " personal rudeness , unnecessary roughness , lack of finesse " , flaws " intolerable in a Secretary - General " . At Lenin ' s death , Nadezhda mailed his testament to the central committee , to be read aloud to the 13th Party Congress in May 1924 . However , to remain in power , the ruling " troika " — Stalin , Kamenev , Zinoviev — suppressed " Lenin ' s Testament " ; it was not published until 1925 , in the United States , by the American intellectual Max Eastman . In that year , Trotsky published an article minimising the importance of " Lenin ' s Testament " , saying that Lenin ' s notes should not be perceived as a will , that it had been neither concealed , nor violated ; yet he did invoke it in later anti - Stalin polemics . Lenin died at 18 . 50 hrs , Moscow time , on 21 January 1924 , aged 53 , at his estate at Gorki settlement ( later renamed Gorki Leninskiye ) . In the four days that the Bolshevik Leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lay in state , more than 900 , 000 mourners viewed his body in the Hall of Columns ; among the statesmen who expressed condolences to the Soviet Union was Chinese premier Sun Yat - sen , who said : Winston Churchill , who encouraged British intervention against the Russian Revolution , in league with the White Movement , to destroy the Bolsheviks and Bolshevism , said : Funeral . The Soviet government publicly announced Lenin ' s death the following day , with head of State Mikhail Kalinin tearfully reading an official statement to delegates of the All - Russian Congress of Soviets at 11am , the same time that a team of physicians began a postmortem of the body . On 23 January , mourners from the Communist Party Central Committee , the Moscow party organisation , the trade unions and the soviets began to assemble at his house , with the body being removed from his home at about 10am the following day , being carried aloft in a red coffin by Kamenev , Zinoviev , Stalin , Bukharin , Bubhov and Krasin . Transported by train to Moscow , mourners gathered at every station along the way , and upon arriving in the city , a funerary procession carried the coffin for five miles to the House of Trade Unions , where the body lay in state . Over the next three days , around a million mourners from across the Soviet Union came to see the body , many queuing for hours in the freezing conditions , with the events being filmed by the government . On Saturday 26 January , the eleventh All - Union Congress of Soviets met to pay respects to the deceased leader , with speeches being made by Kalinin , Zinoviev and Stalin , but notably not Trotsky , who had been convalescing in the Caucasus . Lenin ' s funeral took place the following day , when his body was carried to Red Square , accompanied by martial music , where assembled crowds listened to a series of speeches before the corpse was carried into a vault , followed by the singing of the revolutionary hymn , " You fell in sacrifice . " Three days after his death , Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honour , so remaining until 1991 , when the USSR dissolved , yet the administrative area remains " Leningrad Oblast " . In the early 1920s , the Russian cosmism movement proved so popular that Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov proposed to cryonically preserve Lenin for future resurrection , yet , despite buying the requisite equipment , that was not done . Instead , the body of V . I . Lenin was embalmed and permanently exhibited in Lenin ' s Mausoleum , in Moscow , on 27 January 1924 . Despite the official diagnosis of death from stroke consequences , the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov reported that Lenin died of neurosyphilis , according to a publication by V . Lerner and colleagues in the " European Journal of Neurology " in 2004 . The authors also note that " It is possible that future DNA technology applied to Lenin ' s preserved brain material could ultimately establish or disprove neurosyphilis as the primary cause of Lenin ' s death . " In a poll conducted in 2012 by a Russian website , 48 per cent of the people that responded voted that the body of the former leader should be buried . Lenin ' s funeral train consisting of the locomotive and funeral van still containing the original wreaths is preserved at the Museum of the Moscow Railway , Paveletsky Rail Terminal in Moscow . Politics and world revolution . Lenin was a Marxist and principally a revolutionary . His revolutionary theory — the belief in the necessity of a violent overthrow of capitalism through communist revolution , to be followed by a dictatorship of the proletariat as the first stage of moving towards communism , and the need for a vanguard party to lead the proletariat in this effort — developed into Marxism – Leninism , a highly influential ideology . Lenin biographer Robert Service noted that Lenin considered " moral questions " to be " an irrelevance " , rejecting the concept of moral absolutism ; instead he judged whether an action was justifiable based upon its chances of success for the revolutionary cause . As stated in his " Imperialism , the Highest Stage of Capitalism " , Lenin ' s revolutionary project embraced not just Russia but the world . To implement world revolution the Third or Communist International was convened in Russia in 1919 , to replace the discredited Second International . Lenin dominated the first , second ( 1920 ) and third ( 1921 ) Congresses of the International and hoped to use the organisation as an agency of international socialist revolution . After the failure of revolutionary ambitions in Poland , in the Polish – Soviet War of 1919 – 21 , and after various revolutions in Germany and Eastern Europe in 1919 had been crushed , Lenin , increasingly , saw that anti - colonial struggles in the Third World would be the foci of the revolutionary struggle . He believed that revolution in the Third World would come about through an alliance of the proletarians with the rural peasantry . In 1923 Lenin said : Lenin praised Chinese socialist revolutionary leader Sun Yatsen and his Kuomintang party for their ideology and principles . Lenin praised Sun , his attempts on social reformation and congratulated him for fighting foreign Imperialism . Sun also returned the praise , calling him a " great man " , and sent his congratulations on the revolution in Russia . Organised on Leninism , the Kuomintang was a nationalist revolutionary party , which had been supported by the Soviet Union . Stance on antisemitism . Lenin was enthusiastic about new mass communication technology like the radio and the gramophone and its capacity for educating Russia ' s mostly illiterate peasant population . In 1919 Lenin recorded eight speeches on to gramophone records . During the Nikita Khrushchev era ( 1953 – 64 ) , seven were published . The eighth speech , which was not published , outlined Lenin ' s thoughts on antisemitism : The tsarist police , in alliance with the landowners and the capitalists , organised pogroms against the Jews . The landowners and capitalists tried to divert the hatred of the workers and peasants who were tortured by want against the Jews . . . . It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people . The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries . Among the Jews there are working people , and they form the majority . They are our brothers , who , like us , are oppressed by capital ; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism . . . . The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths , different nations and different races . . . . Rich Jews , like rich Russians , and the rich in all countries , are in alliance to oppress , crush , rob , and disunite the workers . . . . Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews , who foment hatred towards other nations . Writings . Lenin was a prolific political theoretician and philosopher who wrote about the practical aspects of carrying out a proletarian revolution ; he wrote pamphlets , articles , and books , without a stenographer or secretary , until prevented by illness . He simultaneously corresponded with comrades , allies , and friends , in Russia and world - wide . His " Collected Works " comprise 54 volumes , each of about 650 pages , translated into English in 45 volumes by Progress Publishers , Moscow 1960 – 70 . The most influential include : After Lenin ' s death , the USSR selectively censored his writings , to establish the dogma of the infallibility of Lenin , Stalin ( his successor ) , and the Central Committee ; thus , the Soviet fifth edition ( 55 vols . , 1958 – 65 ) of Lenin ' s " œuvre " deleted the Lenin – Stalin contradictions , and all that was unfavourable to the founder of the USSR . The historian Richard Pipes published a documentary collection of letters and telegrams excluded from the Soviet fifth edition , proposing that edition as incomplete . Personal life and characteristics . One of Lenin ' s biographers , the historian Robert Service , asserted that the Russian had been " a young man of intense emotions " , who also exhibited a " visceral hatred " of the " slightest sign of illegality or corruption " , which he saw exhibited throughout Tsarist Russia . He furthermore argued that Lenin was a man who could be " moody and volatile " . Service noted that Lenin developed an " emotional attachment " to his ideological heroes , such as Marx , Engels and Chernyshevsky , owning portraits of them . According to Bertrand Russell , who had an hours conversation with him : According to most reports , in his personal life Lenin was a modest and unassuming man . He liked children and cats and his enthusiasms included bicycling , amateur photography , chess , skating , swimming , hunting , music and hiking . Lenin despised untidiness , always keeping his work desk tidy and his pencils sharpened . When in exile in Switzerland , Lenin , accompanied by his wife Nadya , developed a considerable passion for mountain walking in the Swiss peaks . Legacy . When Lenin died on 21 January 1924 , near Moscow , he was acclaimed as " the greatest genius of mankind " and " the leader and teacher of the peoples of the whole world " . Historian J . Arch Getty has remarked that " Lenin deserves a lot of credit for the notion that the meek can inherit the earth , that there can be a political movement based on social justice and equality " . " Time Magazine " also named Lenin one of the , and one of their top 25 political icons of all time ; remarking that " for decades , Marxist – Leninist rebellions shook the world while Lenin ' s embalmed corpse lay in repose in the Red Square " . Following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 , reverence for Lenin declined among the post - Soviet generations , yet he remains an important historical figure for the Soviet - era generations . According to the article in Encyclopædia Britannica written by Professor of Northern Illinois University Albert Resis : Statues and city names . During the Soviet period , many statues of Lenin were erected across Eastern Europe . Although many of the statues have subsequently been removed , some remain standing , and a few new ones have been erected . However , Russian lawmakers from the ruling United Russia party and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party of Russia ( LDPR ) have indicated a proposal to remove all statues of Lenin from Russian cities , with LDPR deputy Aleksandr Kurdyumov citing high maintenance costs and vandalism concerns as some of the main reasons . The proposal is being strongly opposed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation . Many places and entities were named in honor of Lenin . The city of Saint Petersburg , the site where both February and October revolutions started , was renamed " Leningrad " in 1924 , four days after Lenin ' s death . In 1991 , after a contested vote between Communists and liberals , the Leningrad government reverted the city ' s name to Saint Petersburg while the surrounding Leningrad Oblast remained so named ; like - wise the city of Ulyanovsk ( so - named after Lenin ' s birth name ) and the Ulyanovsk Oblast remain so named . Gyumri in Armenia was named " Leninakan " from 1924 to 1990 , Khujand in Tajikistan " Leninabad " from 1936 to 1991 . In space , the 852 Wladilena asteroid was named in his honor .