Vladimir Lenin Biography

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Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, original name Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (April 10 (April 22, New Style), 1870 - January 21, 1924), a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first leader of the Soviet Union and the founder of the ideology of Leninism.

"Lenin" was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms, most likely a reference to the river Lena. He is sometimes erroneously referred to in the West as Nikolai Lenin, though he has never been known as such in Russia.

Early life
Lenin was a son of a Russian civil service official. He had Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (who later converted to Christianity), although he was himself baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. He distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. In May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander was hanged for participation in a plot on the life of Tsar Alexander III. This radicalized Lenin and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. He continued to study independently and by 1892 had earned a license to practice law.
However, rather than settle into a legal career he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts, and the study of Marxism, much of it in St. Petersburg. On December 7, 1895 he was arrested and held by authorities for an entire year, then exiled to Siberia.

In July of 1898 he married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya. In April of 1899, he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In 1900, his exile ended. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe, and published the paper Iskra, as well as other tracts and books related to the revolutionary movement.

He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done?. In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. He continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities.

On April 16, 1917 he returned to Petrograd following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses. After a failed Bolshevik insurrection in July, Lenin fled to Finland for safety. He returned in October to successfully lead an armed coup against the Provisional Government led by Kerensky.

Soviet Union
On November 8, Lenin was elected as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress. Faced with the threat of German invasion, Lenin insisted that Russia sign the proposed harsh peace treaty, though the failure of the Russian delegation to do so resulted in the loss of much of the country's western territory in the eventual Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918). On August 30, 1918 he survived an assassination attempt by Fanya Kaplan (Fanny Kaplan).
Lenin's Bolshevik faction overcame the remaining factions and renamed itself into RCP(B), or Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which eventually became the CPSU.

After the failures of the policy of War communism introduced during the Russian Civil War, in March 1921, on Lenin's initiative, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was adopted, allowing limited private enterprise, in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture. But the same month saw the suppression of an uprising among sailors at Kronstadt ("the Kronstadt rebellion").

Lenin's preserved corpse is on permanent display in Moscow.In May 1922 Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed (on his right side) and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December the Politburo ordered that he be kept in isolation. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. In March 1923 he suffered the third stroke and was left bedridden and no longer able to speak. Lenin died of the fourth stroke in January of 1924. The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor: this remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg.

After his first stroke he published a number of papers indicating future directions for the government. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament which criticised Joseph Stalin, who had been the Communist Party's general secretary since April 1922, claiming that he had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and suggesting that "comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". Many of these papers were suppressed for decades as Stalin and his supporters gained control. When Lenin died in 1924, after a series of strokes exacerbated by an attempted assassination, Stalin gained full control of the Party and leadership of the Soviet Union following a victory over Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition.

His embalmed body is on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow.

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