more information on lenin's partial jewish ancestry the following quotes regarding lenin's partial jewish ancestry are from the jewish century by yuri slezkine princeton university press and could possibly be inserted in to this article in order to provide more references but of course the most sensitive nationality ethnicity of all was lenin's in lenin's sister anna discovered that their maternal grandfather aleksandr dmitrievich blank had been born srul israel the son of moshko itskovich blank in the shtetl starokonstantinov old konstantinov in volynia volhynia now ukraine when kamenev found out he said i've always thought so to which bukharin allegedly replied who cares what you think the question is what are we going to do what they or rather the party through the lenin institute did was proclaim this fact inappropriate for publication and decree that it be kept secret in and again in anna ilinichna lenin's sister begged stalin to reconsider claiming that her discovery was on the one hand an important scientific confirmation of the exceptional ability of the semitic tribe and the extraordinarily beneficial influence of its blood on the offspring of mixed marriages and on the other a potent weapon against anti semitism owing to the prestige and love that vladimir ilich lenin enjoys among the masses lenin's own jewishness she argued was the best proof of the accuracy of his view that the jewish nation possessed a peculiar 'tenacity' in struggle and a highly revolutionary disposition generally speaking she concluded i do not understand what reasons we as communists may have for concealing this fact logically this does not follow from the recognition of the full equality of all nationalities stalin's response was an order to keep absolutely quiet anna ilinichna did the enemies of the regime were deprived of additional anti semitic ammunition pgs all advanced jews supported assimilation according to lenin but it is also true that many of the great leaders of democracy and socialism came from the best representatives of the jewish world lenin himself did have jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather although he probably did not know it when his sister anna found out she wrote to stalin that she was not surprised and this fact was another proof of the exceptional ability of the semitic tribe and that lenin had always contrasted what he called its 'tenacity' in struggle with the more sluggish and lackadaisical russian character p and in all archival documents relating to lenin's jewish grandfather were ordered removed without leaving any copies pg