Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, political theorist, and statesman who led the Bolshevik Party to power in the October Revolution of 1917. [1] He served as the first head of government of Soviet Russia and, from 1922, of the Soviet Union, establishing the world's first avowedly Marxist state. [1] His interpretation of Marxism, known as Leninism, shaped communist movements across the twentieth century. [2]
Early life and radicalization
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on 22 April 1870 in Simbirsk, a provincial town on the Volga later renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour. [1] He came from an educated, middle-class family; his father was a school inspector who rose into the minor nobility. Lenin's political outlook was decisively shaped in 1887, when his elder brother Alexander was executed for participating in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. [2] Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for taking part in student protests, he continued his studies privately and eventually passed the law examinations of Saint Petersburg University, briefly practising as a lawyer before turning full-time to revolutionary activity. [1]
Exile and the Bolshevik party
Drawn to the writings of Karl Marx, Lenin became active in Marxist circles and was arrested in 1895, then exiled to Siberia. [2] After his release he spent much of the following years abroad, editing the revolutionary newspaper Iskra and developing his theory of a disciplined, centralized "vanguard" party of professional revolutionaries. [2] At the 1903 congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, his faction became known as the Bolsheviks ("majority"), splitting from the more moderate Mensheviks. [1] Through pamphlets such as What Is to Be Done? he argued that revolutionary consciousness had to be brought to the working class from outside. [3]
Revolution and power
The fall of the monarchy in the February Revolution of 1917 allowed Lenin to return to Russia from Switzerland. [1] In his "April Theses" he demanded an end to cooperation with the Provisional Government and called for power to pass to the workers' soviets. [2] On the night of 25 October 1917 (old style), the Bolsheviks seized key points in Petrograd and overthrew the government. [1] As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin withdrew Russia from the First World War through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, nationalized industry, and led the new regime through a brutal civil war against anti-Bolshevik forces. [1]
Later life and death
Facing economic collapse, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy in 1921, which permitted limited private trade to revive production. [1] A series of strokes from 1922 progressively removed him from active leadership, and he grew wary of Joseph Stalin's accumulation of power. [2] He died on 21 January 1924 at Gorki, near Moscow; his embalmed body was placed on public display in a mausoleum on Red Square. [1]
Legacy
Lenin remains one of the most consequential and contested figures of the twentieth century. [2] His model of a one-party revolutionary state and his writings on imperialism and party organization influenced communist movements worldwide, while critics point to the political repression and the machinery of state terror established under his rule. [3]
