Vladimir Lenin | The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Log in to favorite pages Share page Print page Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, was a Russian revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union (later the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) until 1924. Lenin seized power during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, following the ousting of Russia’s tsar. He soon began negotiating peace with Germany, which was achieved with the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The same year, Lenin led the Bolsheviks in becoming the Russian Communist Party. At the same time, deposed leaders of the imperialist government were forming forces to oppose revolutionary leadership. Lenin formed the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army to combat the threat, leading to three years of civil war. Though the Red Army quashed opposition forces, agricultural and industrial declines caused by war policies created unrest in the country. Lenin began looking toward silencing dissent and transforming Soviet communism. In 1922, however, he was incapacitated by a series of strokes.

Before his death, he dictated his “Testament” declaring regrets about the past, and fears for the future, of Soviet Communism. In particular, he condemned the dictatorial behavior of Joseph Stalin, the Communist Party’s general secretary who would succeed Lenin after his death in January 1924. Metadata Make Gilder Lehrman your Home for History Already have an account? Please click here to login and access this page. How to subscribe Click here to get a free subscription if you are a K-12 educator or student, and here for more information on the Affiliate School Program, which provides even more benefits. Otherwise, click here for information on a paid subscription for those who are not K-12 educators or students. Make Gilder Lehrman your Home for History Become an Affiliate School to have free access to the Gilder Lehrman site and all its features. Click here to start your Affiliate School application today! You will have free access while your application is being processed. Individual K-12 educators and students can also get a free subscription to the site by making a site account with a school-affiliated email address. Click here to do so now! Make Gilder Lehrman your Home for History Why Gilder Lehrman?

Your subscription grants you access to archives of rare historical documents, lectures by top historians, and a wealth of original historical material, while also helping to support history education in schools nationwide. Click here to see the kinds of historical resources to which you'll have access and here to read more about the Institute's educational programs. Individual subscription: $25 Click here to sign up for an individual subscription to the Gilder Lehrman site. Make Gilder Lehrman your Home for History Upgrade your Account We're sorry, but it looks as though you do not have access to the full Gilder Lehrman site. All K-12 educators receive free subscriptions to the Gilder Lehrman site, and our Affiliate School members gain even more benefits! How to Subscribe K-12 educator or student? Click here to edit your profile and indicate this, giving you free access, and here for more information on the Affiliate School Program . Not a educator or student? Click here for more information on purchasing a subscription to the Gilder Lehrman site. Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Lenin A painting of Lenin consoling his mother after the execution of his brother. Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik movement, the first ruler of Soviet Russia and the dominant figure of the Russian Revolution.

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the town of Simbirsk in 1870. The Ulyanovs were of mixed ethnic heritage, including Russian, German, Swedish and Jewish strains. Only a generation before the Ulyanovs had been lowly serfs – however Lenin’s father obtained a university education, began working as a teacher and rose to become a schools inspector. Ulyanov encouraged free thinking and political discussion in the family home. Their humble background provided the Ulyanovs with empathy with Russia’s peasant and working classes; they were also politically informed and liberal-minded. In her memoirs, Lenin’s sister later recalled the family home being filled with passionate discussion and debates about the situation in Russia. Tragedy struck the Ulyanovs twice in the 1880s. First, Lenin’s father died in 1886. The following year his older brother Alexander, a university student, was arrested and hanged for alleged involvement in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. This event resulted in the entire Ulyanov family being condemned and ostracised as revolutionaries.

Both his father’s death and his brother’s execution had a significant impact on the young Lenin: he lost faith in God and religion, while his political position began to shift from liberalism to radical socialism. He became interested in the same radical ideas as his late brother, particularly the works of Nikolai Chernyshevsky (Lenin later used the title of Chernyshevsky’s What is to Be Done? for one of his own books). In the autumn of 1887 Lenin entered Kazan University to stay law, thanks in part to a written reference from his former headmaster, the father of Alexander Kerensky. It was at university that Lenin became involved in radical Marxist groups. Both the university and the local Okhrana soon identified him as a ‘person of interest’, and within weeks of commencing his studies Lenin was expelled. He managed to complete his studies independently, qualifying as a lawyer in 1891 – but he would practice very little, instead devoting most of his time to political activism. A police mugshot of Lenin, taken when he was arrested in 1895. As he entered adulthood, Lenin became obsessive about socialism and revolution.

He read voraciously, consuming books about philosophy and socialist theory, political propaganda, reports from or about revolutionary groups around the world. When he wasn’t reading, Lenin was writing or speaking in workers’ circles or at underground meetings. In the early 1890s he formed an alliance with Julius Martov, the future leader of the Menshevik faction; he also met and married a female socialist named Nadezhda Krupskaya. These activities made Lenin a wanted man: for much of this period he lived and worked under assumed names, and sometimes in disguise. He was eventually captured in 1895 and sentenced to three years’ isolation in Siberia. In 1900 he began another period of exile, this time in several cities of western Europe. It was during this period that he adopted the codename ‘Lenin’, possibly a derivation of the Lena River in Siberia. “As difficult as it is to speculate on any one individual’s sense of self, there are few aspects of Lenin’s personality more apparent than his confidence in his own ideas and determination to communicate them to others with the full force of their power and clarity.

He, and only he, would forge the true path to socialism by means of his teachings, his directives, his constant supervision and his personal example… This was far from a modest projection, and in fact provided the cornerstone for the cult that followed his death.” Nina Tumarkin, historian In 1902 Lenin published What is to Be Done? which outlined his vision of a successful socialist movement. Lenin wanted a small party that was tightly run, carefully planned, hard working, disciplined and secretive. Membership would be restricted to keep out infiltrators, interlopers and the half-hearted. Ideological and tactical decisions would be made by an intellectual elite, and not subject to the whims and self-interest of the masses. Each party member would be a ‘professional revolutionary’, devoting all his time, energy and zeal to the socialist cause. This ideal was effectively formed in Lenin’s image. He lived an austere existence with few creature comforts; his only interests were socialism and revolution – broken by occasional ice-skating, chess or Beethoven. Lenin was not just dedicated to the theory of revolution: he also took an interest in the physical or logistic aspects.

According to Orlando Figes, the Bolshevik leader penned instruction guides for bomb use and bank robbery; he wore leather and did weights to convey the impression of strength and masculinity. Lenin’s radical political views and prolific revolutionary activity made him a wanted man in Russia. As a consequence he spent many years out of the country between 1900 and 1917, living in exile in cities like Munich, Prague, Paris and Manchester. In 1905 Lenin was in London, where he was caught off guard by events in Russia. He returned briefly but was back in exile by 1907. In April 1917 Lenin returned to Russia with the assistance of the German government, which gave him passage to undermine and destabilise the new Provisional Government. On arrival Lenin delivered a speech at Finland Station, which later became his famous April Theses. It called for an immediate socialist revolution, for a transfer of political power to the Soviets; and for a withdrawal of co-operation with the Provisional Government. Lenin was briefly forced into exile in mid-1917, following the spontaneous ‘July Days’ uprising, something he neither endorsed or was interested in exploiting.

As government troops combed Petrograd looking for the Bolshevik leader, he shaved off his trademark beard, donned the clothes of a fisherman and slipped across the water into Finland. 1. Vladimir Lenin, born Ulyanov, was the intellectual and political leader of the Bolsheviks and the early Soviet Union. 2. Born to a politically informed and liberal family, Lenin’s brother was executed for plotting against the tsar. 3. The young Lenin became involved in radical student groups and eventually joined the Marxist SDs. 4. He believed that socialist revolutionary parties should be small, run only by ‘professional revolutionaries’. 5. Lenin’s ideas led to the formation of the Bolshevik faction of the SDs, which became their own party and challenged the Provisional Government for control of Russia in 1917. © Alpha History 2014. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, John Rae and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J.

Llewellyn et al, “Vladimir Lenin” at Alpha History, 2014, accessed [date of last access]. Search this site Translate Russia in Revolution To mark its centenary, Alpha History authors live-tweet press reports about the Russian Revolution - as it unfolded 100 years ago. V.I. Lenin, leader of the Soviet revolution leader of the Soviet Revolution Boyhood Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), Russia, on April 22, 1870. His father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was a schoolteacher who had become director of schools in Simbirsk Province. His mother, Maria Aleksandrovna Blank, was the daughter of a doctor. He and his five siblings -- Olga, Maria, Alexander, Dmitri, and Anna -- enjoyed pleasant childhoods, and all except one sister who died at the age of 20 would grow up to become revolutionaries. As a child, Vladimir enjoyed swimming, hiking, fishing, hunting, and chess, but his sister Anna later noted that he had no close childhood friends.

Education As the child of a teacher it was not surprising that Vladimir had learned to read by the time he was five years old. Initially taught by a private tutor at home, he entered school at age nine and quickly became known as a brilliant student. In 1886, Lenin's father died. The next year, his brother Alexander was hanged for taking part in an unsuccessful plot to kill Czar Alexander III. The same year that his brother was executed, the 17-year-old Lenin won a gold medal for excellence in studies and finished school. He enrolled in the law school at Kazan' University in the fall of 1887, but was expelled three months later for taking part in a student meeting protesting the lack of freedom in the school. Repeatedly denied permission to re-enter Kaplan, he was finally admitted to St. Petersburg University in 1890, but was not allowed to attend classes; he was, however, allowed to study on his own and to take exams. He received his law degree in 1891 and joined a law firm in Samara (now Kuybyshev). Early Revolutionary Activity By the time Lenin graduated from St.

Petersburg he had become absorbed in the study of Marxism. In 1893, he joined a Marxist organization, moved to St. Petersburg, and became an active revolutionary. Czar Alexander III died in 1894, and was succeeded by his son, Nicholas II. Between April and September of 1895, Lenin traveled to France, Germany and Switzerland to contact other Marxists. In December of that year, he was arrested in St. Petersburg by the czar's police while preparing The Workers' Cause, a revolutionary newspaper. After being held and questioned for more than a year, he was exiled to Siberia (1897). Although he had been exiled, Lenin enjoyed general freedom of movement in Siberia and was even given a small allowance by the Russian government so he could rent quarters in Shushenskoye (near Abakan). On July 22, 1898, he married Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya, whom he had met at a Marxist pancake supper in 1894. The couple had no children.

While in exile, Lenin wrote one his most important works, The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899). In 1898, a number of secret Marxist groups in Russia joined together to form the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. After Lenin's exile ended in January of 1890, he got permission from the government to leave Russia. He subsequently went to Germany , where he helped found the party newspaper Iskra (Spark), which had to be smuggled into Russia. The editors of Iskra also published Zarya (Dawn), which dealt with Marxist theory, and it was in this paper that Vladimir Ulyanov began using the name Lenin. Many revolutionaries of the day changed their names to confuse authorities, and it is believed that Lenin took his new name from the Lena River of Siberia. Revolutionary Leader In 1902, Lenin wrote What Is to Be Done?, a pamphlet describing his ideas on party organization. In 1903, a dispute over leadership led the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to split into two groups.

Lenin became leader of the Bolshinstvo (majority), which later became known as the Bolsheviks; the other group became known as the Menshinstvo (minority), or Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks wanted party membership limited to a small number of full-time revolutionaries, believing that the revolution would only be successful if led by trained professionals and that the party should organize the Proletariat (workers). The Mensheviks wanted fewer restrictions on party membership and preferred democratic practices to secret plotting. Revolt By the early 1900's, Russian citizens were demanding more political freedom, land for peasants, social legislation, higher wages for workers, and greater representation in the government. They also wanted an end to the ongoing war between Russia and Japan. On Sunday, January 22, 1905, Father George Gapon, a Russian Orthodox priest, led about 200,000 persons in a peaceful march on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, hoping to present the peoples' requests to the czar. For reasons unknown, troops fired on the unarmed marchers, killing and wounding hundreds.

Bloody Sunday, as it became known, sparked more unrest, and by autumn strikes had paralyzed the country. On October 30, 1905, Czar Nicholas II granted freedom of speech, some voting rights, and a parliament. He also pardoned all exiles. Lenin returned to Russia in November and almost immediately called for a general revolt. A mass strike began in Moscow on December 20, and before long strikes were taking place across Russia and a full-fledged revolution had developed. The revolution had been crushed by the end of December, however. Second Exile From 1906 to 1908, Lenin spent most of his time writing revolutionary pamphlets and attending party conferences in England , Germany and Sweden . Although not officially exiled, he found it difficult to carry out his activities in Russia. After spending two years in Finland , he went to Switzerland and then to France. In April of 1912, in St. Petersburg, several Bolsheviks established Pravda (Truth), a revolutionary paper that was sold openly. Lenin subsequently moved to Krakow, then in Austria-Hungary but now in Poland , and became Pravda's chief contributor.

After Germany declared war on Russia on August 1, 1914, the Austrian government arranged for Lenin to go to neutral Switzerland . The Russian revolutionary movement split into two groups, one favoring a Russian victory and the other, led by Lenin, a Russian defeat. Germany supplied money to some of the revolutionaries, including Lenin, hoping that the revolutionaries would weaken the Russian war effort. In 1915, Lenin promised the Germans that if he came to power he would sign a peace treaty. The February Revolution By 1917, Russia was losing the war and unrest was mounting across the country. Food shortages were constant and Russian money had virtually no value. Russian workers went on strike in early March (February on the old Russian calendar), and, by the 9th, about 200,000 strikers were demonstrating in the capital. Soldiers, many of whom had been serving unpaid, refused to keep order. On March 12, a group called the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was established in Petrograd. Czar Nicholas II gave up the throne on March 15, and a democratic government was established. George Lvov, a Russian political leader, became Prime Minister.

Return From Exile Lenin was in Switzerland during the February Revolution, but set out for Russia as soon as he learned of the czar's abdication. He arrived in Petrograd on April 16, 1917, and received a hero's welcome. He quickly regained leadership of the Bolsheviks, but was not able to seize the government. In July 1917, following an unsuccessful Bolshevik uprising, the government was reorganized under Alexander Kerensky. On July 19, the new government ordered Lenin's arrest as a German agent. Lenin fled to Finland. While in Finland, Lenin wrote The State and Revolution (1917), in which he explained how to organize a revolution and what kind of government should be established afterward. In September 1917, he wrote the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party and declared that it was time for action, saying "History will not forgive us if we do not assume power now." October Revolution In October 1917, Lenin once again returned to Petrograd. Kerensky's government and leadership had become weak, and Lenin urged the Central Committee to begin a revolt immediately.

After Leon Trotsky , the Bolshevik president of the Petrograd Soviet, gained control over some government troops and some naval troops had agreed to support the revolt, the Bolsheviks decided to act. With little violence, the Bolsheviks seized Petrograd on November 7 (October 25 on the old Russian calendar), and Kerensky fled. It took more violence to take Moscow, but the capital finally fell on November 15, and the Bolsheviks were in control of the government. Leader of Soviet Russia The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets opened on November 8, 1917. The Congress, controlled by the Bolsheviks, appoined a Council of People's Commissars. Lenin was then made head of the Council, effectively making him leader of Soviet Russia. At his first appearance before the Congress, Lenin requested permission to ask Germany for a three-month cease fire, and for the abolition of private land ownership; both requests were granted. On March 3, 1918, Russia and Germany signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, ending the war between them.

Under terms of that treaty, Russia gave Germany the entire Baltic region, Bessarabia, Finland, Russian Poland, and the Ukraine, and also promised to provide Germany with raw materials. In return, Germany agreed to help keep Lenin in power. Also in 1918, Lenin convinced the Bolsheviks to change the name of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to the Russian Communist Party. Within a month of gaining control of the government, Lenin had established a political police force to deal with people opposed to his rule. In July 1918, the Bolsheviks killed Czar Nicholas II and his family, an act seen as unnecessarily cruel by many Russians. On August 30, 1918, after speaking to workers at a Moscow factory, Lenin was shot by Dora Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary Party. Although hit by two bullets, Lenin recovered within a few weeks. Kaplan was executed, as were hundreds of other people suspected of harboring ill will toward the government. In January 1918, Lenin formed the Red Army, an elite military force charged with quashing resistance to the government.

The forces opposing the Red Army became known as the Whites, a group that included revolutionries, democrats, nationalists, and people who preferred the old government and opposed any change. With no unity of purpose, the Whites were never able to organize effectively and by 1922 all opposition to Lenin's rule had been effectively quashed. Although civil war had left Russia's economy in ruins and Lenin's nationalization policies had all but destroyed the country's industrial and agricultural bases, Lenin steadfastly believed that Communism should rule the world. In 1919, he organized the Comintern (Communist International), which ran Communist parties in all parts of the world and helped gain international support for the Bolsheviks during the civil war. In 1920, he tried to export the revolution by military means by way of Poland to Central Europe. After the civil war, Lenin focused his efforts on revitalizing Russia's shattered economy. In March 1921, he introduced the New Economic Policy, which replaced many of the socialist measures instituted at the start of his rule.

Under this policy, small businesses were permitted to resume limited operations, free retail trade was allowed to resume, foreign capitalists were allowed to invest in Russia, and peasants were allowed to sell food to private customers. Lenin also asked the United States, England, France, and Germany for credit, trade, and diplomatic recognition. None of those nations were willing to extend credit, but the United States Commission for Relief, headed by Herbert Hoover , did provide enough food to save hundreds of thousands of Russians from starvation. Most of Europe, as well as the United States, resumed diplomatic relations with Russia after Lenin's new economic policies went into effect. Death The strain of revolution and war took its toll on Lenin's health, and by November 1921 he was noticeably ill. Although he suffered a stroke in May 1922, Lenin continued to work because he did not like the direction the Bolshevik government was going. He suffered a second stroke in December 1922, but again continued working. A third stroke, suffered on March 8, 1923, left him unable to speak clearly and in need of constant care. He died in Gorki of a brain hemorrhage on January 21, 1924.

World Book Encyclopedia Chicago: World Book-Childcraft International, 1979 Lenin Biography -Biography Online Biography Online About Lenin Biography Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, and the leader of the Bolshevik party. He was the first leader of the USSR and the Communist government that took over Russia in 1917. Lenin is also known as the creator of Leninism a version of Communism that Lenin adapted for the Soviet Union. “We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.” Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol 6, p.366 Early Life – Lenin Lenin was born in the town of Simbirsk in the Russian Empire.

His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an education official. Lenin was an able student, learning Latin and Greek. In 1887, he was thrown out of Kazan State University because he protested against the Tsar who was the king of the Russian Empire. He continued to read books and study ideas by himself, and in 1891 he got a license to become a lawyer. In the same year that Lenin was expelled from University, his brother Alexander was hanged for his part in a bomb plot to kill Tsar Alexander III, and their sister Anna was sent to Tatarstan. This made Lenin furious, and he promised to get revenge for his brother’s death. Lenin before the Revolution Whilst studying law in St. Petersburg he learned about the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both radical Marxist philosophers from Germany. Lenin developed a lifelong philosophy of seeking to overthrow Capitalist society and replace it with a fairer Communist society. He saw existing Capitalist society as inherently unjust. “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.

“ – Lenin For becoming involved and writing about Marxism, Lenin was arrested sent to prison in Siberia. In July 1898, when he was still in Siberia, Lenin married Nadezhda Krupskaya. In 1899 he wrote a book he called The Development of Capitalism in Russia”. In 1900, Lenin was set free from prison and allowed to go back home. He then travelled around Europe. He began to publish a Marxist newspaper called Iskra, the Russian word for “spark” or “lightning”. He also became an important member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP. In 1903, Lenin had a major argument with another leader of the party, Julius Martov, which divided the party in two. Lenin wanted a strict system where power would only be given to the government. Martov disagreed, and wanted the government to give power to ordinary people. People who agreed with Martov were called Mensheviks (meaning “the minority”). The people who agreed with Lenin were called Bolsheviks (“the majority”). In 1907 he travelled around Europe again, and visited many socialist meetings and events.

During World War I, he lived in big European cities like London, Paris and Geneva. At the beginning of the war, a big left-wing meeting called the Second International included the Bolsheviks. The meeting was shut down when a lot of the groups argued whether or not to support the war. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were one of only a few groups who were against the war because of their Marxist ideas. 1917 Revolution In 1917, people started rumours that Lenin had received money from the Germans. That made him look bad because a lot of Russians had died fighting Germany in the war. The rumours were so bad he was afraid he could get arrested or even killed. He left Russia and went to Finland, a country right next to Russia, where he could hide and carry on with his work on Communism. After Tsar Nicholas II gave up his throne during the February Revolution, Germany hoped that they could persuade Russia to leave the war. The German government helped Lenin to secretly return to Russia, in the hope that Lenin would help end Russia’s involvement in the war. Lenin was still considered to be a very important Bolshevik leader, and he saw the great discontent of the population giving a unique opportunity for revolution.

He wrote that he wanted a revolution by ordinary workers to overthrow the government that had replaced Nicholas. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, headed the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviets all over Russia in a revolution against Kerensky’s government, which was known as the October Revolution. They won, and announced that Russia was a Communist country. In November, Lenin was chosen as its leader. Because Lenin wanted an end to World War One in Russia, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in February 1918. While the treaty ended the war with Germany, Russia paid a high price in terms of lost land. But, to Lenin ending the war was critical. “The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war on the terms indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities without exception.” Report on Peace (8 November 1917), Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume 26 The treaty with Germany made the Allied powers, e.g.

Great Britain and France displeased. Also, the great powers feared that if a Communist revolution could happen in Russia, it could happen elsewhere in Europe. Allied governments sent support to ‘White’ Russians – people loyal to the Tsar or Kerensky’s government. There was an on-going civil war, with the Bolsheviks having to fight across the country. Lenin made rules that as much food as possible was to be given to Communist soldiers in Russia’s new Red Army. This was a factor in winning the civil war, but, during this period, many ordinary many died of hunger or disease. After the war, Lenin brought in the New Economic Policy to try and make things better for the country. Some private enterprise was allowed, but not much. Businessmen, known as nepmen, could only own small industries, not factories. After a woman named Fanny Kaplan shot Lenin in 1918, he started having strokes. By May 1922, he was badly paralysed. After another stroke in March 1923, he could not speak or move. Lenin’s fourth stroke killed him in January 1924.

Just before he died, Lenin had wanted to get rid of Stalin because he thought he was dangerous to the country and the government. The city of St. Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd by the Tsar in 1914, but was renamed Leningrad in memory of Lenin in 1924. Before Lenin died, he said he wished to be buried beside his mother. When he died, Stalin decided to let the people in Russia come and look at his body. Because so many people kept coming, they decided not to bury him, and preserved his body instead. A building was built in Red Square, Moscow over the body so that people could see it. It is called the Lenin Mausoleum. Many Russians and tourists still go there to see his body today. Citation : Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Lenin“, Oxford, 23rd August, 2009 Lenin: A Biography Vladimir I. Lenin Biography (Political Leader/Revolutionary) Best known as: Founder of Bolshevism and the force behind the Russian revolution Name at birth: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Vladimir I.

Lenin was a driving force behind the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became the first great dictator of the Soviet Union. After his brother was executed in 1887 (for plotting to kill the Czar), Lenin gave up studying law and became a full-time revolutionary. He studied Karl Marx and formed workers' groups, but was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1895. In 1900 he went to Europe, and in 1903 he led the Bolsheviks in the split of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' party. When revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, he led the Bolsheviks to control the government. Lenin had complete political control over the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) until his death, and is remembered as the man who put Marx's ideas to practical use.

Extra credit: For decades after his death, Lenin’s well-preserved body was on public display in a special mausoleum in Red Square… Lenin was born on 10 April under the old (Julian) calendar, on 22 April under the modern (Gregorian) calendar; Russia didn’t adopt the modern calendar until after the Revolution. Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. Advertisement Advertisement Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Biography - Poem Hunter Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Biography - Poem Hunter Biography Biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov; 22 April 1870 – 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 University of Kazan, 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, Lenin 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 as its leader. The Bolshevik faction later became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which acted as a vanguard party presiding over a single-party dictatorship of the proletariat. 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 countered this criticism citing the limitations on his power and have promoted him as a champion of the working class. He has had a significant influence on the international Communist movement and was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Lenin Владимир Ильич Ленин) (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( Russian : Владимир Ильич Ульянов), was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution , and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union ; in the course of his political career, he used the pseudonyms Lenin, V. I. Lenin, Nikolai Lenin, and N. Lenin. His contribution to political science , Leninism , is his development and interpretations of urban Marxist theory to fit the agrarian Russian Empire of that time, with Leninist theory turning Marx on his head by placing politics over economics.

Early life and background Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, on 22 April 1870, to Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a schoolmistress, and Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov a physics instructor, at Simbirsk, in the Russian Empire (1721–1917) of the late nineteenth century; per family custom, he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church . Later, the USSR renamed Lenin’s Volga River home city, Simbirsk, as Ulyanovsk. In 1869, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov became the Inspector of Public Schools, and later the Director of Elementary Schools, for the Simbirsk Gubernia Oblast (province), a successful career in the Imperial Russian public education system. Tsarist cultural mores defined the Ulyanov family stock as “ethnically mixed” — “Mordovian, Kalmyk, Jewish (cf.

Blank family), Volgan German, and Swedish, and possibly others”; being of the intelligentsia , the Ulyanovs educated their children against the ills of their time (violations of human rights, servile psychology), and instilled readiness to struggle for higher ideals, a free society, and equal rights. Subsequently, excepting Olga (dead at age 19), every Ulyanov child became a revolutionary ; as such, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in 1902, adopted the nom de guerre Lenin, derived from the Siberian River Lena , the usage in this biographic article. In January 1886, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage ; in May 1887 (when Lenin was 17 years old), his eldest brother Aleksandr Ulyanov was hanged for participating in a terrorist assassination attempt against the Tsar , Alexander III (1881–94).

His sister, Anna Ulyanova, who was with Aleksandr when arrested, was banished to an Ulyanov family estate at Kokushkino, a village some 40 km (25 mi.) from Kazan — those events transformed Lenin into a political radical, which official Soviet biographies present as central to his assuming the revolutionary track as political life. Complementing these personal, emotional, and political upheavals was his matriculation, in August 1887, to the Kazan University, where he studied law and read the works of Karl Marx. That Marxism -derived political development involved Lenin in a student riot and consequent arrest in December 1887; Kazan University expelled him, the authorities barred him from other universities, and thence was under continuous police surveillance — as the brother of a known terrorist. Nevertheless, he studied independently to earn his law degree; in that time, he first read Das Kapital (1867–94). Three years later, in 1890, he was permitted studies at the University of Saint Petersburg.

In January 1892, he was awarded a first class diploma in law; moreover, he was an intellectually-distinguished student in the Classical languages of Latin and Greek, and the modern languages of German , French, and English , but had only limited command of the latter two; later, in the 1917 revolutionary period, he relied on Inessa Armand to translate an article to French and English, later writing to S. N. Ravich in Geneva, "I am unable to lecture in French". Revolutionary For a few years, Lenin practiced law in the Volga River port of Samara, mostly land ownership cases from which he derived much political insight to the condition of the Russian peasant, before moving to St Petersburg in 1893, where he pursued politics via revolutionary propaganda. In 1895, he founded the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, the consolidation of the city’s Marxist groups; as an embryonic revolutionary party, they were active among the labour organisations of Russia. On 7 December 1895, Lenin was arrested and imprisoned for 14 months in solitary confinement, in Cell 193 of the St Petersburg Remand Prison.

In February 1897, he was exiled to the village Shushenskoye, in the Minusinsk district, of the Yenisei Gubernia (Province) in Eastern Siberia. There, he met the notable Marxist Georgy Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia. In exile, he wrote more than 30 theoretical works; in July 1898, Lenin married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya, and in April 1899, under the pseudonym Vladimir Ilyin, published the book [ The Development of Capitalism in Russia] (1899). At exile’s end in 1900, Lenin travelled Russia and Europe — Munich , Prague , Vienna , Manchester and London (where Percy Circus WC1, at King’s Cross, London, bears a memorial wall plaque); but resided in Zurich , where he studied and worked as a lecturer at the Geneva University. In that time he and with Julius Martov (later a leading opponent) co-founded the newspaper Iskra (“Spark”), and published articles and books about revolutionary politics, whilst striving to recruit future Social Democrats.

To effect such political work, he began assuming aliases , and, in 1902, settling upon “Lenin” — “N. Lenin” (Eng. “I. Lenin”), in full; Nota bene: The Western press misidentified him as “Nikolai Lenin”, mis-translating the Cyrillic letter “И” (English letter “I”) for the English “N”; thus Ilyich Lenin (Russian) metamorphosed to the (English) “Nikolai Lenin”. In 1903, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party RSDLP (Russ. РСДРП) ideologically diverged; Lenin headed the Bolshevik faction, consequent to breaking with the Menshevik faction. The RSDLP party faction names Bolshevik (“majority”) and Menshevik (“minority”) derive from the narrow electoral defeat of the Mensheviks to the party’s newspaper editorial board and to the central committee. The break partly originated from Lenin’s book What Is to Be Done? (1901–02) — about concrete revolutionary strategy — and because of different opinions about the role of the Marxist Iskra faction within the RSDLP; reportedly, What Is to Be Done?

was a most influential book in pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia; Lenin claimed that three of five workers had either read it or had it read to them. 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 after the Tsarist defeat of the November Revolution, resumed his exile, in December 1907. 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. In 1909, to disambiguate philosophic doubts about the proper practical course of a socialist revolution, Lenin published Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909); in the event, it became a philosophic foundation of Marxism-Leninism . Throughout exile, Lenin travelled Europe, participated in socialist activities, (e.g. the Prague Party Conference of 1912). When Inessa Armand left Russia for Paris, she met Lenin and other exiled Bolsheviks.

Rumour has it she was Lenin’s lover; yet 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, the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (then self-described Marxists) and intellectual luminaries such as Karl Kautsky, each nationalistically supported their homelands’ war effort. At first, Lenin disbelieved their political fickleness, and that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits; the event decided his definitive break with the Second International (1889–1916). Lenin opposed the Great War, because the peasants and workers would be fighting the bourgeoisie’s “imperialist war” — that ought be transformed into a civil war between the classes. At war’s start, the Austrians briefly detained him in Poronin, already his town of residence. On 5 September 1914, Lenin moved to neutral Switzerland , residing first at Berne and then at Zurich. In 1915, he attended the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, at the eponymous Swiss town.

In the conference, Lenin led and headed the minority Zimmerwald Left, who unsuccessfully urged, against the majority pacifists, that the conference should adopt Lenin’s stance about transforming imperialist war to class war. Later, Lenin and the Zimmerwald Left presented a like resolution in the next conference, at Kienthal (24–30 April 1916), in Switzerland, that settled for a compromise manifesto. In Zurich, in spring of 1916, he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), which popularized (Lenin opponent) Karl Kautsky’s politico-economic perspective in the 1900s — wherein the merging of banks and industrial cartels gives rise to finance capital — the final, highest stage of capitalism; pursuing greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. That leads to the division of the world, among international monopolist firms, and to European states colonizing large parts of the world, in support of their businesses. Imperialism , thus, is an advanced stage of capitalism relying upon the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), a global financial system of which colonialism is one feature.

Russian return After the 1917 February Revolution , provoking the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II (1894–17), Lenin decided to return to Russia, difficult, for he was isolated in neutral Switzerland, surrounded by countries fighting the Great War, nevertheless, the Swiss communist Fritz Platten obtained Imperial German government permission allowing Lenin (and cohort) to traverse Germany by rail , in a “[ sealed train]”. Geopolitically , the Germans expected his return to politically disrupt Russia — in aid of ending the Eastern front war, so that Germany could concentrate upon defeating the Western allies. Having traversed Germany, Lenin continued through Sweden, aided by Swedish communists Otto Grimlund and Ture Nerman. On 16 April 1917, Lenin arrived at the Finland Station, Petrograd , Russia — welcomed by many admirers, and assumed command of the Bolsheviks, and published the April Theses (1917), calling for uncompromising opposition to the Provisional Government.

Initially, he isolated the Bolshevik party with such a leftist position, yet it rendered the Bolshevik party a refuge for people disillusioned with the Provisional Government — because their “luxury of opposition” exempted them from responsibility for that government’s policies. Meanwhile, Aleksandr Kerensky, Grigory Aleksinsky, and other opponents, accused the Bolsheviks — especially Lenin — of being Imperial German agents provocateur; and, on 17 July, in their defence, Leon Trotsky (a new Bolshevik leader), said: In the event, after the tumultuous July Days in Petrograd — when the Kerensky Provisional Government violently suppressed spontaneous anti-government demonstrations by industrial workers and soldiers, it also took opportunity to suppress the Bolsheviks who had attempted to assume command of the demonstrations; Bolshevik party leaders were arrested, and Lenin fled to Finland. Although they did not arrange the July Days confrontations, Lenin said that, despite workers’ support in the city, the Bolsheviks needed the peasants’ support to realise the revolution. Meanwhile, Lenin finished State and Revolution (1917), which proposed a government based upon soviets (worker-elected councils revocable at all moments, by the workers).

After General Kornilov’s abortive coup attempt against the Kerensky Provisional Government in late August, the people turned to the Bolsheviks and their “Peace, Land, Bread” programme. Imprisoned Bolshevik leaders were freed, and in October, Lenin returned to Petrograd from Finland — inspiring the October Revolution with the slogan “All Power to the Soviets!”. Lenin directed the deposition (6–8 November 1917) of the Provisional Government from the Smolny Institute, and the storming (7–8 November) of the Winter Palace to realise the capitulation that marked the beginning of Soviet rule in Russia.

Head of state On 8 November 1917, the Russian Congress of Soviets elected Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, as such, he declared that “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country” in modernising Russia into a twentieth-century country: He initiated and supervised the realisation of the GOELRO plan (1920), the first Soviet national economic recovery and development project, establishing a free universal health care system, guaranteeing the rights of women , and educating the illiterate Russian people — yet the Bolshevik government first had to withdraw Russia from the First World War (1914–18). Facing continuing Imperial German eastward advance, Lenin proposed that Russia immediately sign a peace treaty withdrawing it from the Great War. Yet, other Bolshevik leaders (e.g. Nikolai Bukharin) advocated continuing in the war to foment revolution in Imperial Germany. Leon Trotsky, who led the peace negotiations, proposed the “No War, No Peace” intermediate position requiring a Russo–German peace treaty on condition that neither belligerents’ territorial gains be consolidated. When negotiations collapsed, the Germans renewed their advance into Russia, resulting in the loss of much west Russian territory.

Resultantly, Lenin’s proposal — withdrawing from the war — gained the majority support of the Bolshevik leaders, and, on 3 March 1918, Russia withdrew from the First World War via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, costing much European Russian territory. On 19 January, the Bolsheviks dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly, in alliance with the left-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, relying upon support from the soviets. Moreover, the coalition collapsed consequent to the Social Revolutionaries opposing the Brest-Litovsk treaty — and then joined other political parties in deposing the Bolshevik government; Lenin responded with political persecution of, and jail for, the anti-Bolsheviks. From early 1918, Lenin proposed a single leader (accountable to the Bolshevik government), in charge of each enterprise. Workers could request state measures resolving problems, but had to abide the leader’s decisions. Although contrary to workers' self-management, that administrative measure was essential for efficiency and expertise; proponents argued that said management was meant to strengthen state control of labour, and that self-management failures were owed to lack of resources — a problem resolved by licensing (for a month) all workers of most factories; thus 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.” Analogously, Lenin admired the Irish socialist revolutionary James Connolly, thus the USSR was the first country to diplomatically recognise the Irish Free State that fought Irish War of Independence from Britain. In the event, Lenin developed a friendship with Connolly’s revolutionary's son, Roddy Connolly. National security: the Cheka In December 1917, to protect the revolution and their soviet government, the Bolsheviks established the Cheka (Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, the “Extraordinary Commission”) to defend it against counter-revolution and other political opposition; thus, it quickly imposed censorship, by confiscating dissident literature: “[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. . .

.” Independent soviets, re-organized by non-Bolshevik workers, were disbanded; anti-soviet, independent newspapers were closed, until the Bolshevik Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“The News”) newspapers established a news-media monopoly, because of their “refusal to come to terms with the 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”. Moreover, the Bolsheviks had planned to try the Tsar, Nicholas II , but, by July 1918, the counter-revolutionary White Army had advanced to Yekaterinburg, where the Bolsheviks had Romanov royal family under house arrest. Hence, Yakov Sverdlov agreed to the local soviet’s request to kill them forthwith, rather than risk their rescue by the Whites. Contemporarily the execution of the deposed Romanovs — if ordered by the Moscow central government or by the local, Yekaterinburg, soviet remains debated.

Attempted assassinations On 14 January 1918, in Petrograd, after a speech, assassins ambushed Lenin in his automobile; he and Fritz Platten were in the back seat when assassins began shooting into the automobile — “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”. On 30 August 1918, Fanya Kaplan, of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin, again after a speech, as he walked to his automobile. Whilst Lenin rested a foot upon the running board, Kaplan called to him, and he turned to answer her, immediately, she shot him three times — the first bullet struck an arm, the second bullet struck his jaw and neck, and the third bullet missed him, wounding the woman with whom he had been speaking; the wounded Lenin fell to earth, unconscious. Fearing other assassins at hospital, he was taken to his Kremlin apartment. The attending physicians decided against removing the bullets, lest it endanger Lenin’s survival.

In the event, Lenin slowly recovered from his bullet wounds; Pravda ridiculed Fanya Kaplan as a latter-day Charlotte Corday (a murderess of Jean-Paul Marat), reassuring readers that immediately after surviving an 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. . . .” Although his lungs were unharmed, the neck wound had spilled blood into a lung. Other than like press exhortations, the Russian folk were not informed about either the attempted assassination, or the assassiness Fanya Kaplan, or of Lenin’s post-shooting health. 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”.

Contemporary popular response to the attempted assassination is described by Leonid Krasin in a 7 September 1918 letter to his wife: This second assassination attempt, Fanya Kaplan’s shooting of him, began the Lenin personality cult, which he discouraged; nevertheless, Lenin’s health declined, eventually leading to three strokes that eventually culminated in his death. Combating anti-Semitism Modern technologies intrigued Lenin as vehicles for mass communication; as Bolshevik leader, he recorded eight speeches to gramophone records in 1919; later, during the Khrushchev era, seven were put on sale. Significantly, the suppressed eighth speech delineated the Bolshevik leader’s opposition to Christian anti-Semitism: Social reforms Alexandra Kollontai and fellow feminist revolutionary Inessa Armand in 1919 together established the Zhenotdel (Женотдел), the first government department for women in the world. Lenin's administration was also one of the first governments to decriminalize homosexuality in 1917. The Russian Communist Party effectively legalized no-fault divorce, abortion , and homosexuality, when they abolished said Tsarist laws.

The initial Soviet criminal code retained these liberal sexual policies; but, a decade later, Stalin reversed that legal tolerance, and homosexuality remained illegal, under Article 121, until the Yeltsin era. Red Terror Once the Bolshevik Revolution was a fait accompli, the ideologically varied anti-Communist factions loosely associated as the counter-revolutionary White Movement to depose the Bolsheviks. In 1918, the Allies of World War I, sponsored the militarily-defeated Whites in launching the Russian Civil War (1917–23). Earlier in October, Kamenev and his supporters warned the Bolshevik party that rule by terror was inevitable with Lenin's seizure of power and rejection of democracy, despite his having predicted the White counter-revolution. Following the August 30 assassination attempt against Lenin, and the successful assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief Moisei Uritsky, Stalin, in a telegram to Lenin, proposed a policy of “open and systematic mass terror” against “those responsible”.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks agreed, and instructed Cheka chief Felix Dzerzhinsky to commence a “Red Terror”, which was officially announced to the public on 1 September 1918, by the Bolshevik newspaper, Krasnaya Gazeta (“Krasnaya Gazette”); Lenin's Hanging Order requiring the public hangings of one hundred kulaks on 11 August 1918, before the second (30 August) assassination attempt against him, documents his authorization of the Red Terror. During the Russian Civil War, the enemies of the Bolsheviks faced torture and summary execution, and by May 1919 there were some 16,000 enemies of the people imprisoned in labor camps based upon the Tsarist katorga labor camps; by September 1921 there were more than 70,000 prisoners. Although Lenin protected Bolshevik Russia with “mass terror against enemies of the revolution”, because the proletarian state was so organised against the capitalist establishment — intra-societal terrorism in post–Tsarist Russia was rooted in the popular anger of the working classes (peasant and worker) against the privileged classes of the deposed absolute monarchy.

In September 1918, 25 former Tsarist ministers, high civil servants, and 765 so-called White Guards were shot in Moscow, per Lenin-signed execution lists. In late 1918, when Kamenev and Bukharin tried to curb the excesses of the Cheka, it was Lenin who defended it. In 1921, via the Politburo , he expanded the Cheka’s discretionary application of the death penalty. After a clerical insurrection in the town of Shuia, in a 19 March 1918 letter to Vyacheslav Molotov and the Politburo, Lenin outlined a plan of action against the clergy and their followers, who were defying the Bolshevik government decree to remove 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.” Nonetheless, during the Russian Civil War (1917–23), the Reds and the Whites committed atrocities in pursuing their revolution and counter-revolution; historians disagree about equating the Red and White terrors, because the Red Terror was official government policy directed against entire social classes (e.g. Decossackization), whilst the White Terror was racial and political, against Jews, anti-monarchists, and Communists, (cf. White Movement). Civil War In Moscow, during March 1919, Lenin and the Bolsheviks met in conference with the revolutionary socialists of the world, and established the Communist International (1919–43) (Comintern, aka the Third International). At the meetings, Lenin and the Bolsheviks became the “Communist Party” and broke from the broader socialist movement — acting to ideologically distinguish their revolutionary party from the broad-movement socialist parties. In the event, in post–Revolutionary Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed as the “Russian Communist Party”, which later metamorphosed into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the civil war raged across Russia .

A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the Soviet Government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (traditionalists). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, the United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Eventually, the more organisationally proficient Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920. Smaller battles continued for several more years, however. In late 1919, successes against the White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919.

With the revolution in Germany and the Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this as the perfect time and place to “probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army.” Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe . However the defeat of Soviet Russia in the Battle of Warsaw invalidated these plans. Lenin was a harsh critic of imperialism . In 1917, he declared the unconditional right of separation for national minorities and oppressed nations. However, when the Russian Civil War was won, he used military force to assimilate the newly independent states of Armenia , Georgia, and Azerbaijan . He argued that the inclusion of those countries in the newly emerging Soviet government would shelter them from capitalist imperial ambitions. During the civil war, as an attempt to maintain food supply to the cities and the army in the conditions of economic collapse, the Bolsheviks adopted the policy of war communism. That involved “requisitioning” supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led the peasants to drastically reduce their crop production.

Additionally, according to the official Bolshevik view which is still shared by some Marxists, rich peasants (kulaks) withheld grain in order to increase their profits– statistics indicate that most of the grain and the other food supplies passed through the black market. Then, the Bolshevik requisitions came to affect the food that peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain. The resulting conflicts began with the Cheka and the army shooting hostages, and, according to The Black Book of Communism, ended with a second full-scale civil war against the peasantry, including the use of poison gas , death camps, and deportations. The same source emphasizes that in 1920, Lenin ordered increased emphasis on the food requisitioning from the peasantry, at the same time as the Cheka gave detailed reports about the large scale famine. The long war and a drought in 1921 also contributed to the famine. Estimates on the deaths from this famine are between 3 and 10 million. The long years of war, the Bolshevik policy of War Communism, famine and the encirclement of hostile governments took their toll on Russia, and much of the country lay in ruins.

There were many peasant uprisings, the largest being the Tambov rebellion. After an uprising by the sailors at Kronstadt in March 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of War Communism with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in a successful attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture . The new policy was based on recognition of political and economic realities, though it was intended merely as a tactical retreat from the socialist ideal. The whole policy was later reversed by Stalin. Later life and death The physical strains of leading a revolution, running a government, and fighting a civil war aggravated the debilitation caused by his wounds from the attempted assassinations; Lenin still had a bullet in the neck, until a German surgeon removed it on 24 April 1922. In May 1922, Lenin suffered the first of three strokes, which diminished his governing. In December 1922, he suffered a second stroke that partly paralyzed his right side; he withdrew from active politics. In March 1923, he suffered a third stroke that left him dumb and bed-ridden until he died.

After the first stroke, Lenin dictated government papers to Nadezhda; among them was Lenin's Testament (changing the structure of the soviets), partly inspired by the 1922 Georgian Affair (Russian cultural assimilation of constituent USSR republics), and it criticized high-rank Communists, including Josef Stalin , Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Leon Trotsky. About the Communist Party’s General Secretary (since 1922), Josef Stalin, Lenin reported that the “unlimited authority” concentrated in him was unacceptable, suggesting that “comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post”, because his personal rudeness would be “intolerable in a Secretary-General”. Upon Lenin’s death, Nadezhda mailed his testament to the central committee, to be read aloud to the 13th Party Congress in May 1924, however, the ruling troika — Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev — suppressed Lenin’s Testament to remain in power; it was not published until 1925, in the United States, by the American intellectual Max Eastman.

In that year, Trotsky published an article minimizing 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 did invoke it in later polemics against Stalin. The Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died at 18:50 hrs, Moscow time, on 21 January 1924, aged 53, at his estate in Gorki Leninskiye. In the four days that he lay in state, more than 900,000 mourners viewed his body in the Hall of Columns; among the statesmen who expressed condolences to Russia (the USSR) 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: 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 the Lenin Mausoleum, in Moscow, on 27 January 1924. Post-mortem Since the dissolution of the USSR in late 1991, reverence for Lenin declined among the post-Soviet generations, yet remains an important historical figure for the Soviet-era generations. In Eastern Europe, most statues of Lenin were removed, yet some remain in Russia; however, given his importance as an historical figure, one such statue, from Poprad, Slovakia , was installed in Seattle, Washington, USA, as a kitsch reminder of the Cold War (1945–91). Another statue was placed in 1991 on the rooftop of "Red Square" apartment building, standing on the corner of Essex and Houston Street in Lower East Side, New York.

In 1991, subsequent to a contested vote, between Communists and liberals, the Leningrad government reverted the city’s eponymous name to St. Petersburg, whilst the surrounding Leningrad Oblast remained so named; like-wise the city of Ulyanovsk (V. I. Lenin's birthplace) remains so named. Gyumri in Armenia was named Leninakan from 1924 to 1990, Khujand in Azerbaijan Leninabad from 1936 to 1991. Soviet censorship of Lenin After his death, the USSR selectively censored Lenin’s 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 oeuvre deleted the ideological contradictions (between Lenin and Stalin) and all that is unfavourable to the founder of the USSR. The historians Pipes and Brandenberger published a documentary collection (mostly letters and telegrams), excluded from the Soviet fifth edition, which are not notably different from the Collected Works, which does not suggest censorship.

Those documents have been proposed as proof that the Soviet fifth edition is incomplete, but that much depends upon the notion of “Lenin’s works”, because the Khrushchev-era edition contains documents not considered works for publication; there is no evidence that any work published by V. I. Lenin has been excluded from this collection. Writings Lenin’s significant writings are: What is to be Done? (1903) (arguing that a revolution requires a professional vanguard party); Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) (explaining why capitalism had not earlier collapsed, as Marx had posited and arguing that the First World War broke out among capitalist countries competing for land, resources, and cheap labor).

The State and the Revolution (1917) (providing interpretation of Marx and Engels' ideas, the theoretical base of the Russian October Revolution, and giving a strong opposition to social-democratic tendency); April Theses (1917) (proposing a need for a socialist revolution); (Wikipedia) BBC - History - Historic Figures: Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924) Historic Figures z Vladimir Lenin, 1922 © Lenin was one of the leading political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century, who masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in 1917, and was the architect and first head of the USSR. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22 April 1870 into a well-educated family. He excelled at school and went on to study law. At university, he was exposed to radical thinking, and his views were also influenced by the execution of his elder brother, a member of a revolutionary group. Expelled from university for his radical policies, Lenin completed his law degree as an external student in 1891.

He moved to St Petersburg and became a professional revolutionary. Like many of his contemporaries, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his Siberian exile, Lenin - the pseudonym he adopted in 1901 - spent most of the subsequent decade and a half in western Europe, where he emerged as a prominent figure in the international revolutionary movement and became the leader of the 'Bolshevik' faction of the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party. In 1917, exhausted by World War One, Russia was ripe for change. Assisted by the Germans, who hoped that he would undermine the Russian war effort, Lenin returned home and started working against the provisional government that had overthrown the tsarist regime. He eventually led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution, but was effectively a coup d'etat. Almost three years of civil war followed. The Bolsheviks were victorious and assumed total control of the country. During this period of revolution, war and famine, Lenin demonstrated a chilling disregard for the sufferings of his fellow countrymen and mercilessly crushed any opposition. Although Lenin was ruthless he was also pragmatic.

When his efforts to transform the Russian economy to a socialist model stalled, he introduced the New Economic Policy, where a measure of private enterprise was again permitted, a policy that continued for several years after his death. In 1918, Lenin narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded. His long term health was affected, and in 1922 he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. In his declining years, he worried about the bureaucratisation of the regime and also expressed concern over the increasing power of his eventual successor Joseph Stalin. Lenin died on 24 January 1924. His corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.

Question: Which revolutionary leader was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov?
Answer: Lenin