Adopted name of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870-1924)
Russian revolutionary, first leader of the USSR, and communist theoretician. Active in the 1905 Revolution, Lenin had to leave Russia when it failed, settling in Switzerland in 1914. He returned to Russia after the February revolution of 1917 (see Russian Revolution). He led the Bolshevik revolution in Nov 1917 and became leader of a Soviet government, concluded peace with Germany, and organized a successful resistance to White Russian (pro-tsarist) uprisings and foreign intervention 1918–20. His modification of traditional Marxist doctrine to fit conditions prevailing in Russia became known as Marxism-Leninism, the basis of communist ideology.
Lenin was born on 22 April, 1870 in Simbirsk (now renamed Ulyanovsk), on the river Volga, and became a lawyer in St Petersburg. His brother was executed in 1887 for attempting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. A Marxist from 1889, Lenin was sent to Siberia for spreading revolutionary propaganda 1895–1900. He then edited the political paper Iskra (“The Spark”) from abroad, and visited London several times. In What Is to be Done? 1902, he advocated that a professional core of Social Democratic Party activists should spearhead the revolution in Russia, a suggestion accepted by the majority (bolsheviki) at the London party congress 1903. From Switzerland he attacked socialist support for World War I as aiding an “imperialist” struggle, and wrote Imperialism 1917.
After the renewed outbreak of revolution in Feb/March 1917, he was smuggled back into Russia in April by the Germans so that he could take up his revolutionary activities and remove Russia from the war, allowing Germany to concentrate the war effort on to the Western Front. On arriving in Russia Lenin established himself at the head of the Bolsheviks, against the provisional government of Kerensky; a complicated power struggle ensued, but eventually Lenin triumphed 8 Nov 1917; a Bolshevik government was formed, and peace negotiations with Germany were begun leading to the signing of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk 3 March 1918.
From the overthrow of the provisional government in Nov 1917 until his death, Lenin effectively controlled the Soviet Union, although an assassination attempt in 1918 injured his health. He founded the Third (Communist) International in 1919. With communism proving inadequate to put the country on its feet, he introduced the private-enterprise New Economic Policy 1921.
Lenin's embalmed body is in a mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow.
In 1898 he married Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya (1869–1939), who shared his work and wrote Memories of Lenin.