Vladimir Lenin
Born April 22, 1870 — Died January 21, 1924
Vladimir Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, political theorist, and the first head of government of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. His adaptation of Marxist theory to Russian conditions, his organizational genius, and his iron will made him the central figure of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution — one of the defining events of the 20th century.
Early Life and Radicalization
Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) on the Volga River, Lenin came from an educated, upwardly mobile family. His father was a school inspector who earned a hereditary title; his mother was the daughter of a physician. The family's comfortable life was shattered twice: first by his father's death in 1886, then in 1887 when his older brother Alexander was hanged for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. The execution radicalized the sixteen-year-old Lenin and set him on a path of revolutionary political activity.
Lenin studied law at Kazan University but was expelled almost immediately for participating in a student protest. He continued his studies independently, passed his bar exams in 1891, and briefly practiced law before abandoning it for revolutionary politics. He became deeply immersed in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and moved to St. Petersburg in 1893, where he organized underground workers' circles. Arrested in 1895, he was exiled to Siberia for three years. During his Siberian exile he wrote prolifically and married fellow revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya.
The Road to Revolution
Released from exile in 1900, Lenin moved abroad and launched the newspaper Iskra (The Spark) to unify Russian social democrats. In 1902 he published What Is to Be Done?, arguing that the working class needed a disciplined vanguard party of professional revolutionaries to lead them to socialism — a concept that became the foundation of Leninism. At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, he led the Bolshevik faction (meaning "majority") in a split with the more moderate Mensheviks.
After the failed 1905 Revolution and years of exile in Europe, Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917 aboard a sealed train arranged by Germany (which hoped his presence would destabilize Russia and take it out of World War I). He immediately announced the "April Theses," rejecting cooperation with the provisional government and calling for immediate socialist revolution. On October 25, 1917 (November 7 in the modern calendar), the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in the October Revolution. Lenin became head of the new Soviet government.
Did You Know?
Lenin's body has lain in state in a refrigerated mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square since his death in 1924, despite repeated calls — including from Lenin's own family — to give him a proper burial. His embalmed remains are still visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Soviet Rule and Death
Lenin's government ended Russia's participation in World War I via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918), at the cost of enormous territorial concessions. A brutal civil war followed, lasting until 1922, with Lenin's Red Army defeating the anti-Bolshevik White forces. His policies of War Communism caused devastating famine; he pivoted in 1921 to the more pragmatic New Economic Policy, allowing limited private trade. In May 1922 he suffered the first of several strokes that progressively incapacitated him. He died on January 21, 1924, at age 53 — and the question of who would succeed him ignited a power struggle that would eventually bring Joseph Stalin to absolute power. Robert Service's biography Lenin: A Biography provides the most comprehensive modern account of his life.