In Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) in the family of an inspector of public schools, who became a hereditary nobleman.

The elder brother, Alexander, participated in the populist movement; in May of the year he was executed for preparing an assassination attempt on the tsar.

In 1887, Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, was admitted to Kazan University, but three months after admission he was expelled for participating in student riots. In 1891, Ulyanov graduated from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University as an external student, after which he worked in Samara as an assistant to a sworn attorney. In August 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist circle of students at the Technological Institute. In April 1895, Vladimir Ulyanov went abroad and met the Liberation of Labor group. In the autumn of the same year, on the initiative and under the leadership of Lenin, the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” In December 1985, Lenin was arrested by the police. He spent more than a year in prison, then was exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Krasnoyarsk Territory, under open police supervision. In 1898, the Union participants held the first congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in Minsk.

While in exile, Vladimir Ulyanov continued his theoretical and organizational revolutionary activities. In 1897, he published the work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” where he tried to challenge the populists’ views on socio-economic relations in the country and thereby prove that a bourgeois revolution was brewing in Russia. He became acquainted with the works of the leading theorist of German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, from whom he borrowed the idea of ​​organizing the Russian Marxist movement in the form of a centralized party of a “new type”.

After the end of his exile in January 1900, he went abroad (for the next five years he lived in Munich, London and Geneva). Together with Georgy Plekhanov, his associates Vera Zasulich and Pavel Axelrod, as well as his friend Yuli Martov, Ulyanov began publishing the Social Democratic newspaper Iskra.

From 1901 he began to use the pseudonym "Lenin" and from then on was known in the party under this name.

From 1905 to 1907, Lenin lived illegally in St. Petersburg, leading the leftist forces. From 1907 to 1917, Lenin was in exile, where he defended his political views in the Second International. In 1912, Lenin and like-minded people separated from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), essentially founding their own, the Bolshevik. The new party published the newspaper Pravda.

At the beginning of the First World War, while on the territory of Austria-Hungary, Lenin was arrested due to suspicion of espionage for the Russian government, but thanks to the participation of the Austrian Social Democrats, he was released, after which he left for Switzerland.

In the spring of 1917, Lenin returned to Russia. On April 4, 1917, the day after arriving in Petrograd, he delivered the so-called “April Theses,” where he outlined a program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, and also began preparing for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

At the beginning of October 1917, Lenin illegally moved from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 23, at a meeting of the Central Committee (Central Committee) of the RSDLP(b), at his proposal, a resolution on an armed uprising was adopted. On November 6, in a letter to the Central Committee, Lenin demanded an immediate offensive, the arrest of the Provisional Government and the seizure of power. In the evening, he illegally arrived in Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. The next day, November 7 (Old Style - October 25), 1917, an uprising and seizure of state power by the Bolsheviks occurred in Petrograd. At the meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets that opened in the evening, the Soviet government was proclaimed - the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), whose chairman was Vladimir Lenin. The congress adopted the first decrees prepared by Lenin: on ending the war and on the transfer of private land for the use of workers.

On Lenin's initiative, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded with Germany in 1918.

After the capital was transferred from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. His personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building. Lenin was elected as a deputy of the Moscow Soviet.

In the spring of 1918, Lenin's government began the fight against the opposition by closing anarchist and socialist workers' organizations; in July 1918, Lenin led the suppression of the armed uprising of the left Socialist Revolutionaries.

The confrontation intensified during the civil war, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, in turn, struck at the leaders of the Bolshevik regime; On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin.

With the end of the Civil War and the cessation of military intervention in 1922, the process of restoring the country's national economy began. For this purpose, at the insistence of Lenin, “war communism”, food allocation was replaced by a food tax. Lenin introduced the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed private free trade. At the same time, he insisted on the development of state-owned enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation.

In May and December 1922, Lenin suffered two strokes, but continued to lead the state. A third stroke, which followed in March 1923, left him practically incapacitated.

Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924 in the village of Gorki near Moscow. On January 23, the coffin with his body was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. The official farewell took place over five days. On January 27, 1924, the coffin with Lenin’s embalmed body was placed in a specially built Mausoleum on Red Square designed by the architect Alexei Shchusev. The leader's body is in a transparent sarcophagus, which was made according to the plans and drawings of engineer Kurochkin, the creator of ruby ​​glass for the Kremlin stars.

During the years of Soviet power, memorial plaques were installed on various buildings associated with Lenin's activities, and monuments to the leader were erected in cities. The following were established: the Order of Lenin (1930), the Lenin Prize (1925), Lenin Prizes for achievements in the field of science, technology, literature, art, architecture (1957). In 1924-1991, the Central Lenin Museum operated in Moscow. A number of enterprises, institutions and educational institutions were named after Lenin.

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) created the Institute of V.I. Lenin, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of Marx and Engels, a single Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) (later it became known as the Institute Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). The Central Party Archive of this institute (now the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History) stores more than 30 thousand documents authored by Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin on Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he knew from the St. Petersburg revolutionary underground. They got married on July 22, 1898, during Vladimir Ulyanov’s exile to the village of Shushenskoye.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Lenin (real name - Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich - the largest Russian Soviet politician, statesman, publicist, Marxist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, one of the organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, founder of the Communist Party, creator of the first socialist state, the Communist International, one of the leaders of the international communist movement. Ulyanov was from Simbirsk, where he was born on April 22 (April 10, O.S.), 1870. His father was an official, an inspector of public schools. During the period 1879-1887. Vladimir Ulyanov successfully studied at the local gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. Until the age of 16, being a baptized Orthodox, he was a member of the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

The turning point in the biography of V. Lenin is considered to be the execution in 1887 of his elder brother, Alexander, who took part in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Alexander III. Although the brothers did not have a particularly close relationship, this event made a huge impression on the whole family. In 1887, Vladimir became a student at Kazan University (Faculty of Law), but participation in student unrest resulted in expulsion and exile to Kokushkino, his mother’s estate. He was allowed to return to Kazan in the fall of 1888, and exactly a year later the Ulyanovs moved to Samara. Living in this city, Vladimir, thanks to active reading of Marxist literature, begins to become acquainted with this teaching in the most detailed way.

Having graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg University as an external student in 1891, Lenin moved to this city in 1893 and worked as an assistant to a sworn attorney. However, he is not concerned about jurisprudence, but about issues of government. Already in 1894, he formulated a political credo, according to which the Russian proletariat, having led all democratic forces, must lead society to a communist revolution through open political struggle.

In 1895, with the active participation of Lenin, the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” was created. For this he was arrested in December and then more than a year later he was sent to Siberia, the village of Shushenskoye, for three years. While in exile, in July 1898 he married N.K. Krupskaya due to the threat of her being transferred to another place. For the rest of his life, this woman was his faithful companion, comrade-in-arms and assistant.

In 1900, V. Lenin went abroad and lived in Germany, England, and Switzerland. There, together with G.V. Plekhanov, who played an important role in his life, started the publication of Iskra, the first all-Russian illegal Marxist newspaper. At the Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats, held in 1903 and marked by a split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, he led the former, subsequently creating the Bolshevik Party. He found the revolution of 1905 in Switzerland, in November of the same year, under a false name, he illegally came to St. Petersburg, where he lived until December 1907, taking over the leadership of the Central and St. Petersburg Committees of the Bolsheviks.

During the First World War, V.I. Lenin, who was in Switzerland at that time, put forward the slogan about the need to defeat the government and turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Having learned from the newspapers the news about the February Revolution, he began to prepare to return to his homeland.

In April 1917, Lenin arrived in Petrograd, and the very next day after his arrival he proposed a program for the transition of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, proclaiming the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” Already in October he was one of the main organizers and leaders of the October armed uprising; at the end of October and beginning of November, detachments sent by his personal order contributed to the establishment of Soviet power in Moscow.

The October Revolution, the repressive first steps of the government headed by Lenin, turned into a bloody Civil War that lasted until 1922, which became a national tragedy, claiming the lives of millions of people. In the summer of 1918, the family of Nicholas II was shot in Yekaterinburg, and it was established that the leader of the world proletariat approved of the execution.

Since March 1918, Lenin's biography has been connected with Moscow, where the capital was moved from Petrograd. On August 30, he was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, the response to which was the so-called. red terror. On Lenin's initiative and in accordance with his ideology, the policy of war communism was pursued, which in March 1921 was replaced by the NEP. In December 1922, V. Lenin became the creator of the USSR - a new type of state that had no precedent in world history.

The same year was marked by a serious deterioration in health, which forced the head of the Soviet Union to curtail his active activities in the political arena. In May 1923, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow, where he died on January 21, 1924. The official cause of death was problems with blood circulation and premature wear of blood vessels, caused, in particular, by enormous loads.

IN AND. Lenin is one of the individuals whose assessment of their activities ranges from harsh criticism to the creation of a cult. However, no matter how his contemporaries and future generations treated him, it is quite obvious that, being a politician on a global scale, Lenin, with his ideology and activities at the beginning of the last century, had a colossal influence on world history, setting its further vector of development.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). Born on April 22, 1870 in Simbirsk - died on January 21, 1924 in the Gorki estate, Moscow province. Russian revolutionary, Soviet political and statesman, creator of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), one of the main organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR, creator of the first socialist state in world history.

Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the USSR, first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

The scope of the main political and journalistic works is materialist philosophy, the theory of Marxism, criticism of capitalism and its highest phase: imperialism, the theory and practice of the implementation of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism, the political economy of socialism.

Regardless of the positive or negative assessment of Lenin's activities, even many non-communist researchers consider him the most significant revolutionary statesman in world history. Time magazine included Lenin among the 100 outstanding people of the 20th century in the category “Leaders and Revolutionaries.” The works of V.I. Lenin occupy first place in the world among translated literature.

Vladimir Ulyanov was born in 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of the inspector of public schools of the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), - the son of a former serf in the village of Androsovo, Sergach district, Nizhny Novgorod province, Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the surname: Ulyanina), married to Anna Smirnova, the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer M. S. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Kalmyks).

Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on the mother's side and, according to various versions, Ukrainian, German or Jewish origin on the father's side.

According to one version, Vladimir’s maternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. According to another version, he came from a family of German colonists invited to Russia). The famous researcher of the Lenin family M. Shaginyan argued that Alexander Blank was Ukrainian.

I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of actual state councilor, which in the Table of Ranks corresponded to the military rank of major general and gave the right to hereditary nobility.

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, which was headed by F. M. Kerensky, the father of A. F. Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government (1917). In 1887 he graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. F. M. Kerensky was very disappointed with the choice of Volodya Ulyanov, as he advised him to enter the history and literature department of the university due to the younger Ulyanov’s great success in Latin and literature.

Until 1887, nothing is known about any revolutionary activities of Vladimir Ulyanov. He accepted Orthodox baptism and until the age of 16 belonged to the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh, leaving religion probably in 1886. His grades according to the law of God in the gymnasium were excellent, as in almost all other subjects. There is only one B in his matriculation certificate - logically. In 1885, the list of students at the gymnasium indicated that Vladimir was “a very gifted, diligent and careful student. He does very well in all subjects. He behaves exemplary." The first award was presented to him already in 1880, after graduating from the first grade - a book with gold embossing on the binding: “For good behavior and success” and a certificate of merit.

In 1887, on May 8 (20), his older brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. What happened became a deep tragedy for the Ulyanov family, who were unaware of Alexander’s revolutionary activities.

At the university, Vladimir was involved in the illegal student circle of Narodnaya Volya, led by Lazar Bogoraz. Three months after his admission, he was expelled for his participation in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the introduction of police surveillance of students and a campaign to combat “unreliable” students. According to a student inspector who suffered from student unrest, Ulyanov was in the forefront of the raging students.

The next night, Vladimir, along with forty other students, was arrested and sent to the police station. All those arrested, in accordance with the methods of combating “disobedience” characteristic of the reign, were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.” Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repression. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Ulyanov’s cousin, Vladimir Ardashev. After petitions from Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich’s aunt, Ulyanov was exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Laishevsky district, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs’ house until the winter of 1888-1889.

Since during the police investigation, young Ulyanov’s connections with the illegal circle of Bogoraz were revealed, and also because of the execution of his brother, he was included in the list of “unreliable” persons subject to police supervision. For the same reason, he was prohibited from reinstatement at the university, and his mother’s corresponding requests were rejected over and over again.

In the fall of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he subsequently joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. In 1924, N.K. Krupskaya wrote in Pravda: “Vladimir Ilyich loved Plekhanov passionately. Plekhanov played a major role in the development of Vladimir Ilyich, helped him find the correct revolutionary approach, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for a long time: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.”

In May 1889, M. A. Ulyanova acquired the Alakaevka estate of 83.5 dessiatines (91.2 hectares) in the Samara province and the family moved there to live. Yielding to his mother’s persistent requests, Vladimir tried to manage the estate, but had no success. The surrounding peasants, taking advantage of the inexperience of the new owners, stole a horse and two cows from them. As a result, Ulyanova first sold the land, and subsequently the house. During Soviet times, a house-museum of Lenin was created in this village.

In the fall of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also maintained contact with local revolutionaries.

In 1890, the authorities relented and allowed him to study as an external student for the law exams. In November 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams as an external student for a course at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial St. Petersburg University. After that, he studied a large amount of economic literature, especially zemstvo statistical reports on agriculture.

During the period 1892-1893, Lenin's views, under the strong influence of Plekhanov's works, slowly evolved from Narodnaya Volya to Social Democratic ones. At the same time, already in 1893 he developed a doctrine that was new at that time, declaring contemporary Russia, in which four-fifths of the population was peasantry, a “capitalist” country. The credo of Leninism was finally formulated in 1894: “the Russian worker, rising at the head of all democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the Russian proletariat (along with the proletariat of all countries) along the straight road of open political struggle to a victorious communist revolution.”

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara attorney (lawyer) A. N. Hardin, conducting most criminal cases and conducting “state defenses.”

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg, where he got a job as an assistant to the sworn attorney (lawyer) M. F. Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, and the history of the capitalist evolution of the post-reform Russian village and industry. Some of them were published legally. At this time he also developed the program of the Social Democratic Party. The activities of V.I. Lenin as a publicist and researcher of the development of capitalism in Russia, based on extensive statistical materials, make him famous among Social Democrats and opposition-minded liberal figures, as well as in many other circles of Russian society.

In May 1895, Ulyanov went abroad, where he met with Plekhanov in Switzerland, in Germany with V. Liebknecht, in France with P. Lafargue and other figures of the international labor movement, and upon returning to St. Petersburg in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries united scattered Marxist circles into the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

Under the influence of Plekhanov, Lenin partially retreated from his doctrine proclaiming Tsarist Russia a “capitalist” country, declaring it a “semi-feudal” country. His immediate goal is to overthrow the autocracy, now in alliance with the “liberal bourgeoisie.” The “Union of Struggle” carried out active propaganda activities among workers; they issued more than 70 leaflets.

In December 1895, like many other members of the “Union,” Ulyanov was arrested, kept in prison for more than a year, and in 1897 exiled for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province.

So that Lenin’s “common-law” wife, N.K. Krupskaya, could follow him into exile, he had to register his marriage with her in July 1898. Since in Russia at that time only church marriages were recognized, Lenin, who was already an atheist at that time, had to get married in a church, officially identifying himself as Orthodox. Initially, neither Vladimir Ilyich nor Nadezhda Konstantinovna intended to formalize their marriage through the church, but after a very short time the police chief’s order came: either get married, or Nadezhda Konstantinovna must leave Shushenskoye and go to Ufa, to the place of exile. “I had to do this whole comedy,” Krupskaya said later.

Ulyanov, in a letter to his mother dated May 10, 1898, describes the current situation as follows: “N. K., as you know, was given a tragicomic condition: if he does not immediately (sic!) get married, then return to Ufa. I am not at all inclined to allow this, and therefore we have already begun “troubles” (mainly requests for the issuance of documents, without which we cannot get married) in order to have time to get married before Lent (before the Petrovka): it is still possible to hope that the strict authorities will find this sufficient “immediate” marriage.” Finally, at the beginning of July, the documents were received and it was possible to go to church. But it so happened that there were no guarantors, no best men, no wedding rings, without which the wedding ceremony was unthinkable. The police officer categorically forbade the exiles Krzhizhanovsky and Starkov from coming to the wedding. Of course, the troubles could have started again, but Vladimir Ilyich decided not to wait. He invited familiar Shushensky peasants as guarantors and best men: clerk Stepan Nikolaevich Zhuravlev, shopkeeper Ioannikiy Ivanovich Zavertkin, Simon Afanasyevich Ermolaev and others. And one of the exiles, Oscar Aleksandrovich Engberg, made wedding rings for the bride and groom from a copper coin.

On July 10 (22), 1898, in a local church, priest John Orestov performed the sacrament of wedding. An entry in the church register of the village of Shushenskoye indicates that the administrative-exiled Orthodox Christians V.I. Ulyanov and N.K. Krupskaya had their first marriage.

In exile, he wrote a book, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” based on the collected material, directed against “legal Marxism” and populist theories. During his exile, over 30 works were written, contacts were established with Social Democrats in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. By the end of the 1890s, under the pseudonym “K. Tulin" V.I. Ulyanov gained fame in Marxist circles. While in exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

In 1898, in Minsk, in the absence of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held, consisting of 9 people, which established the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, adopting the Manifesto. All members of the Central Committee elected by the congress and most of the delegates were immediately arrested, and many organizations represented at the congress were destroyed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in exile in Siberia, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of the newspaper.

After the end of their exile in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A.N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities, establishing connections with local organizations. On February 26, 1900, Ulyanov arrived in Pskov, where he was allowed to reside after exile. In April 1900, an organizational meeting was held in Pskov to create an all-Russian workers' newspaper "Iskra", in which V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin, S. I. Radchenko, P. B. Struve, M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, L. Martov, A. N. Potresov, A. M. Stopani.

In April 1900, Lenin illegally made a one-day trip to Riga from Pskov. At the negotiations with the Latvian Social Democrats, issues of transporting the Iskra newspaper from abroad to Russia through the ports of Latvia were considered. At the beginning of May 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov received a foreign passport in Pskov. On May 19 he leaves for St. Petersburg, and on May 21 he is detained by the police there. The luggage sent by Ulyanov from Pskov to Podolsk was also carefully examined.

After inspecting the luggage, the head of the Moscow security department, S.V. Zubatov, sends a telegram to St. Petersburg to the head of the special department of the police department, L.A. Rataev: “The cargo turned out to be a library and tendentious manuscripts, opened in accordance with the Charter of the Russian Railways, as sent unsealed. After consideration by the gendarmerie police and examination of the department, it will be sent to its destination. Zubatov." The operation to arrest the Social Democrat ended in failure. As an experienced conspirator, V.I. Lenin did not give the Pskov police any reason to accuse him. In the reports of the spies and in the information of the Pskov Gendarmerie Directorate about V.I. Ulyanov, it is noted that “during his residence in Pskov before going abroad, he was not noticed in anything reprehensible.” Lenin’s work in the statistical bureau of the Pskov provincial zemstvo and his participation in drawing up a program for an assessment and statistical survey of the province also served as a good cover for Lenin. Apart from an illegal visit to the capital, Ulyanov had nothing to show for it. Ten days later he was released.

In June 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov, together with his mother M.A. Ulyanova and older sister Anna Ulyanova, came to Ufa, where his wife N.K. Krupskaya was in exile.

On July 29, 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland, where he negotiated with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper Iskra (later the magazine Zarya appeared) included three representatives of the emigrant group “Emancipation of Labor” - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the “Union of Struggle” - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The average circulation of the newspaper was 8,000 copies, with some issues up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network of underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire. The editorial board of Iskra settled in Munich, but Plekhanov remained in Geneva. Axelrod still lived in Zurich. Martov has not yet arrived from Russia. Zasulich didn’t come either. Having lived in Munich for a short time, Potresov left it for a long time. The main work in Munich to organize the release of Iskra is carried out by Ulyanov. The first issue of Iskra arrives from the printing house on December 24, 1900. On April 1, 1901, after serving her exile in Ufa, N.K. Krupskaya arrived in Munich and began working in the editorial office of Iskra.

In December 1901, the magazine “Zarya” published an article entitled “Years. “critics” on the agrarian issue. The first essay" is the first work that Vladimir Ulyanov signed with the pseudonym "N. Lenin."

In the period 1900-1902, Lenin, under the influence of the general crisis of the revolutionary movement that had arisen at that time, came to the conclusion that, left to its own devices, the revolutionary proletariat would soon abandon the fight against the autocracy, limiting itself to economic demands alone.

In 1902, in the work “What to do? Urgent issues of our movement” Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization (“a party of a new type”). In this article he writes: “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!” In this work, Lenin first formulated his doctrines of “democratic centralism” (a strict hierarchical organization of the revolutionary party) and “introducing consciousness.”

According to the then new doctrine of “bringing in consciousness,” it was assumed that the industrial proletariat itself was not revolutionary and was inclined only to economic demands (“trade unionism”), the necessary “consciousness” had to be “brought in” from the outside by a party of professional revolutionaries, which in this case would become the “avant-garde”.

Foreign agents of the tsarist intelligence picked up the trail of the Iskra newspaper in Munich. Therefore, in April 1902, the newspaper's editorial office moved from Munich to London. Together with Lenin and Krupskaya, Martov and Zasulich move to London. From April 1902 to April 1903, V.I. Lenin, together with N.K. Krupskaya, lived in London, under the surname Richter, first in furnished rooms, and then rented two small rooms in a house not far from the British Museum, in whose library Vladimir Ilyich worked often. At the end of April 1903, Lenin and his wife moved from London to Geneva in connection with the transfer of the publication of the Iskra newspaper there. They lived in Geneva until 1905.

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held in London. Lenin took an active part in the preparations for the congress not only with his articles in Iskra and Zarya; Since the summer of 1901, together with Plekhanov, he worked on a draft party program and prepared a draft charter. The program consisted of two parts - a minimum program and a maximum program; the first involved the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of a democratic republic, the destruction of the remnants of serfdom in the countryside, in particular the return to the peasants of lands cut off from them by landowners during the abolition of serfdom (the so-called “cuts”), the introduction of an eight-hour working day, recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equal rights nations; the maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the construction of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Already at the end of 1904, against the backdrop of a growing strike movement, differences on political issues emerged between the “majority” and “minority” factions, in addition to organizational ones.

The revolution of 1905-1907 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland.

At the Third Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in April 1905, Lenin emphasized that the main task of the ongoing revolution was to put an end to autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia.

At the first opportunity, in early November 1905, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg illegally, under a false name, and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees elected by the congress; paid great attention to the management of the newspaper “New Life”. Under the leadership of Lenin, the party was preparing an armed uprising. At the same time, Lenin wrote the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” in which he points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In the struggle to win over the peasantry (which was actively waged with the Socialist Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Village Poor.” In December 1905, the First Conference of the RSDLP was held in Tammerfors, where V.I. Lenin and V. I. met for the first time.

In the spring of 1906, Lenin moved to Finland. He lived with Krupskaya and her mother in Kuokkala (Repino (St. Petersburg)) at the Vaasa villa of Emil Edward Engeström, occasionally visiting Helsingfors. At the end of April 1906, before going to the party congress in Stockholm, he, under the name Weber, stayed in Helsingfors for two weeks in a rented apartment on the first floor of a house at Vuorimihenkatu 35. Two months later, he spent several weeks in Seyviasta (Ozerki village, west of Kuokkala) near the Knipovichs. In December (no later than 14 (27)) 1907, Lenin arrived in Stockholm by ship.

According to Lenin, despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the Bolsheviks used all revolutionary opportunities, they were the first to take the path of uprising and the last to leave it when this path became impossible.

In early January 1908, Lenin returned to Geneva. The defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907 did not force him to fold his arms; he considered a repetition of the revolutionary upsurge inevitable. “Defeated armies learn well,” Lenin later wrote about this period.

At the end of 1908, Lenin and Krupskaya, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Lenin lived here until June 1912. This is where his first meeting with Inessa Armand takes place.

In 1909 he published his main philosophical work, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” The work was written after Lenin realized how widely popular Machism and empirio-criticism had become among Social Democrats.

In 1912, he decisively broke with the Mensheviks, who insisted on the legalization of the RSDLP.

On May 5, 1912, the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Pravda was published in St. Petersburg. Extremely dissatisfied with the editing of the newspaper (Stalin was the editor-in-chief), Lenin sent L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost every day, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected the editors’ mistakes. Over the course of 2 years, Pravda published about 270 Leninist articles and notes. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the IV State Duma, was a representative of the RSDLP in the II International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

When World War I began, Lenin lived on the territory of Austria-Hungary in the Galician town of Poronin, where he arrived at the end of 1912. Due to suspicions of spying for the Russian government, Lenin was arrested by Austrian gendarmes. For his release, the help of socialist deputy of the Austrian parliament V. Adler was required. On August 6, 1914, Lenin was released from prison.

17 days later in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist, unfair on both sides, and alien to the interests of the working people. According to the memoirs of S. Yu. Bagotsky, after receiving information about the unanimous vote of German Social Democrats for the military budget of the German government, Lenin declared that he had ceased to be a Social Democrat and turned into a communist.

At international conferences in Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916), Lenin, in accordance with the resolution of the Stuttgart Congress and the Basel Manifesto of the Second International, defended his thesis on the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war and spoke with the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism.” Military historian S.V. Volkov considered that Lenin’s position during the First World War in relation to his own country can most accurately be described as “high treason.”

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he completed his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively collaborated with the Swiss Social Democrats (among them the left radical Fritz Platten), and attended all their party meetings. Here he learned from newspapers about the February Revolution in Russia.

Lenin did not expect a revolution in 1917. Lenin’s public statement in January 1917 in Switzerland is known that he did not expect to live to see the coming revolution, but that young people would see it. Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded the revolution that soon took place as the result of a “conspiracy of Anglo-French imperialists.”

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to travel by train from Switzerland through Germany. General E. Ludendorff argued that transporting Lenin to Russia was expedient from a military point of view. Among Lenin's companions were Krupskaya N.K., Zinoviev G.E., Lilina Z.I., Armand I.F., Sokolnikov G.Ya., Radek K.B. and others.

April 3 (16), 1917 Lenin arrives in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, organized a ceremonial meeting for him. To meet Lenin and the procession that followed through the streets of Petrograd, according to the Bolsheviks, 7,000 soldiers were mobilized “alongside.”

Lenin was personally met by the chairman of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Menshevik N. S. Chkheidze, who on behalf of the Council expressed hope for “unifying the ranks of all democracy.” However, Lenin’s first speech at the Finland Station immediately after his arrival ended with a call for a “social revolution” and caused confusion even among Lenin’s supporters. The sailors of the 2nd Baltic Crew, who performed honor guard duties at the Finlyandsky Station, the next day expressed their indignation and regret that they were not told in time about the route Lenin took to return to Russia, and claimed that they would have greeted Lenin with exclamations of “Down with, back to the country through which you came to us.” Soldiers of the Volyn Regiment and sailors in Helsingfors raised the question of Lenin's arrest; the indignation of sailors in this Finnish Russian port was even expressed in throwing Bolshevik agitators into the sea. Based on the information received about Lenin’s path to Russia, the soldiers of the Moscow regiment decided to destroy the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.

The next day, April 4, Lenin made a report to the Bolsheviks, the theses of which were published in Pravda only on April 7, when Lenin and Zinoviev joined the editorial board of Pravda, since, according to V. M. Molotov, the new The leader’s ideas seemed too radical even to his close associates. They were famous "April Theses". In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of ​​​​expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that changed its character with the fall of the autocracy. Lenin announced the slogans: “No support for the Provisional Government” and “all power to the Soviets”; he proclaimed a course for the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the transfer of power to the Soviets and the proletariat with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature.

On April 8, one of the leaders of German intelligence in Stockholm telegraphed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin: “Lenin’s arrival in Russia is successful. It works exactly the way we would like it to.”

In March 1917, until Lenin’s arrival from exile, moderate sentiments prevailed in the RSDLP(b). Stalin I.V. even stated in March that “unification [with the Mensheviks] is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kinthal line.” On April 6, the Central Committee passed a negative resolution on the Theses, and the editorial board of Pravda initially refused to print them, allegedly due to mechanical failure. On April 7, the “Theses” nevertheless appeared with a comment from L. B. Kamenev, who said that “Lenin’s scheme” was “unacceptable.”

Nevertheless, within literally three weeks, Lenin managed to get his party to accept the “Theses.” Stalin I.V. was one of the first to declare their support (April 11). According to the expression, “the party was taken by surprise by Lenin no less than by the February coup... there was no debate, everyone was stunned, no one wanted to expose themselves to the blows of this frantic leader.” The April party conference of 1917 (April 22-29) put an end to the Bolsheviks’ hesitations, which finally adopted the “Theses”. At this conference, Lenin also proposed for the first time that the party be renamed "communist", but this proposal was rejected.

From April to July 1917, Lenin wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and the Party Central Committee, and appeals.

Despite the fact that the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta, when writing about the arrival of the Bolshevik leader in Russia, assessed this visit as the emergence of “danger from the left flank”, the newspaper Rech - the official publication of the Minister of Foreign Affairs P. N. Milyukov - according to historian of the Russian revolution S.P. Melgunov, spoke positively about the arrival of Lenin, and that now not only Plekhanov will fight for the ideas of socialist parties.

In Petrograd, from June 3 (16) to June 24 (July 7), 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held, at which Lenin spoke. In his speech on June 4 (17), he stated that at that moment, in his opinion, the Soviets could gain all power in the country peacefully and use it to solve the main issues of the revolution: give the working people peace, bread, land and overcome economic devastation. Lenin also argued that the Bolsheviks were ready to immediately take power in the country.

A month later, the Petrograd Bolsheviks found themselves involved in anti-government protests on July 3 (16) - 4 (17), 1917 under the slogans of transferring power to the Soviets and negotiations with Germany on peace. The armed demonstration led by the Bolsheviks escalated into skirmishes, including with troops loyal to the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks were accused of organizing an “armed uprising against state power” (subsequently the Bolshevik leadership denied its involvement in the preparation of these events). In addition, the case materials provided by counterintelligence about the connections of the Bolsheviks with Germany were made public (see Question about the financing of the Bolsheviks by Germany).

On July 20 (7), the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin went underground again. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 safe houses, after which, until August 21 (8), 1917, he and Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive H2-293, he disappeared into the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg. Soon the investigation into Lenin's case was discontinued due to lack of evidence.

Lenin, who was in Finland, was unable to attend the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b), which was held semi-legally in August 1917 in Petrograd. The Congress approved the decision on Lenin's failure to appear in the court of the Provisional Government, and elected him in absentia as one of its honorary chairmen.

During this period, Lenin wrote one of his fundamental works - the book "State and Revolution".

On August 10, accompanied by the deputy of the Finnish Sejm K. Wikka, Lenin moved from Malm station to Helsingfors. Here he lives in the apartment of the Finnish social democrat Gustav Rovno (Hagnes Square, 1, apt. 22), and then in the apartment of the Finnish workers A. Usenius (Fradrikinkatu St., 64) and B. Vlumkvist (Telenkatu St., 46) . Communication goes through G. Rivne, railway. postman K. Akhmalu, driver of steam locomotive No. 293 G. Yalava, N.K. Krupskaya, M.I. Ulyanov, Shotman A.V. N.K. Krupskaya comes to Lenin twice with the ID of Sestroretsk worker Agafya Atamanova.

In the second half of September, Lenin moved to Vyborg (the apartment of the editor-in-chief of the Finnish workers' newspaper "Tue" (labor) Evert Huttunen (Vilkienkatu St. 17 - in the 2000s, Turgenev St., 8), then settled with Latukka near Vyborg Talikkala, alexanderinkatu (now the village of Lenina, Rubezhnaya St. 15.) On October 7, accompanied by Rakhya, Lenin left Vyborg to move to St. Petersburg. They traveled to Raivola on a commuter train, and then Lenin moved to the booth of steam locomotive No. 293 to driver Hugo Yalava. Udelnaya station on foot to Serdobolskaya 1/92 quarter 20 to M.V. Fofanova from where Lenin left for Smolny on the night of October 25.

On October 20, 1917, Lenin arrived illegally from Vyborg to Petrograd. On November 6, 1917 (24.10) after 6 pm Lenin left the safe house of Margarita Fofanova, at Serdobolskaya Street, building No. 1, apartment No. 41, leaving a note: “...I went to where you didn’t want me to go. Goodbye. Ilyich." For the purpose of secrecy, Lenin changes his appearance: he puts on an old coat and cap, and ties a scarf around his cheek. Lenin, accompanied by E. Rakhya, heads to Sampsonievsky Prospekt, takes a tram to Botkinskaya Street, crosses the Liteiny Bridge, turns onto Shpalernaya, is twice delayed by cadets along the way, and finally comes to Smolny (Leontyevskaya Street, 1).

Arriving in Smolny, he begins to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet L. D. Trotsky. Lenin proposed to act tough, organized, and quickly. We can't wait any longer. It is necessary to arrest the government without leaving power in the hands of Kerensky until October 25, disarm the cadets, mobilize the districts and regiments, and send representatives from them to the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Bolshevik Central Committee. On the night of October 25-26, the Provisional Government was arrested.

It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. On November 7 (October 25) Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin's decrees on peace and land were adopted and a government was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. On January 5 (18), 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 80% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, presented the Constituent Assembly with a choice: ratify the power of the Soviets and the decrees of the Bolshevik government or disperse. The Constituent Assembly, which did not agree with this formulation of the issue, lost its quorum and was forcibly dissolved.

During the 124 days of the “Smolny period,” Lenin wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, and participated in the editing of more than 40 state and party documents. The working day of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars lasted 15-18 hours. During this period, Lenin chaired 77 meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, led 26 meetings and meetings of the Central Committee, participated in 17 meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and its Presidium, and in the preparation and conduct of 6 different All-Russian Congresses of Working People. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, from March 11, 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. Lenin's personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building.

On January 15 (28), 1918, Lenin signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Red Army. In accordance with the Peace Decree, it was necessary to withdraw from the world war. Despite the opposition of the left communists and L.D. Trotsky, Lenin achieved the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany. On March 3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, withdrew from the Soviet government. On March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops, at the suggestion of Lenin, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) moved to Moscow, which became the new capital of Soviet Russia.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin, according to the official version, by a Socialist Revolutionary Party, which led to severe injury. After the assassination attempt, Lenin was successfully operated on by doctor Vladimir Mints.

The denunciation of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November 1918 significantly strengthened Lenin’s authority in the party. Doctor of Philosophy in history, Harvard University professor Richard Pipes describes this situation as follows: “By shrewdly accepting a humiliating peace that gave him the necessary time and then collapsed under its own gravity, Lenin earned the widespread trust of the Bolsheviks. When they tore up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on November 13, 1918, followed by Germany's capitulation to the Western Allies, Lenin's authority in the Bolshevik movement was elevated to unprecedented heights. Nothing better served his reputation as a man who made no political mistakes; never again did he have to threaten to resign to get his way.”

As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin chaired 375 meetings of the Soviet government out of 406. From December 1918 to February 1920, out of 101 meetings of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, only two he did not preside over. In 1919, V.I. Lenin led the work of 14 plenums of the Central Committee and 40 meetings of the Politburo, at which military issues were discussed. From November 1917 to November 1920, V.I. Lenin wrote over 600 letters and telegrams on various issues of defense of the Soviet state, and spoke at rallies over 200 times.

In March 1919, after the failure of the Entente countries’ initiative to end the Civil War in Russia, V. Bullitt, who secretly arrived in Moscow on behalf of US President William Wilson and British Prime Minister D. Lloyd George, proposed that Soviet Russia make peace with all other governments, formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, while paying off its debts together with them. Lenin agreed to this proposal, motivating this decision as follows: “The price of the blood of our workers and soldiers is too dear to us; We, as merchants, will pay for peace at the price of a heavy tribute... just to save the lives of workers and peasants.” However, the initially successful offensive of A.V. Kolchak’s army on the Eastern Front against Soviet troops, which began in March 1919, instilling confidence in the Entente countries in the imminent fall of Soviet power, led to the fact that negotiations were not continued by the United States and Great Britain.

In 1919, on the initiative of Lenin, the Communist International was created.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot along with his family and servants by order of the Ural Regional Council in Yekaterinburg, headed by the Bolsheviks.

In February 1920, the Irkutsk Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee secretly executed without trial Admiral A.V. Kolchak, who was under arrest in the Irkutsk prison after his allies had extradited him to the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Political Center. According to a number of modern Russian historians, this was done in accordance with Lenin's order.

Illness and death of Vladimir Lenin

At the end of May 1922, due to cerebral vascular sclerosis, Lenin suffered his first serious attack of the disease - speech was lost, the movement of his right limbs was weakened, and there was almost complete memory loss - Lenin, for example, did not know how to use a toothbrush. Only on July 13, 1922, when Lenin’s condition improved, was he able to write his first note. From the end of July 1922, Lenin's condition deteriorated again. Improvement came only at the beginning of September 1922.

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On Cooperation”, “How Can We Reorganize the Workers’ Krin”, “Better Less is Better”, in which he offers his vision of the economic policy of the Soviet state and measures to improve the work of the state apparatus and parties. On January 4, 1923, V.I. Lenin dictates the so-called “Addition to the letter of December 24, 1922,” in which, in particular, the characteristics of individual Bolsheviks claiming to be the leader of the party (Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Pyatakov) were given. .

Presumably, Vladimir Ilyich’s illness was caused by severe overwork and the consequences of the assassination attempt on August 30, 1918. At least these reasons are referred to by the authoritative researcher of this issue, surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin.

Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and on May 15, 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. Since March 12, 1923, daily bulletins on Lenin's health were published. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923. During this period, he, however, dictated several notes: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization””, “Pages from the diary”, “On cooperation”, “About our revolution (regarding N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Less is better”.

Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) is often viewed as Lenin's testament.

In January 1924, Lenin's health suddenly deteriorated; On January 21, 1924 at 18:50 he died.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read: “...The basis of the disease of the deceased is widespread atherosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear (Abnutzungssclerose). Due to the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries of the brain and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorders). The immediate cause of death was: 1) increased circulatory disorders in the brain; 2) hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.” In June 2004, an article was published in the European Journal of Neurology, the authors of which suggest that Lenin died of neurosyphilis. Lenin himself did not exclude the possibility of syphilis and therefore took salvarsan, and in 1923 he also tried to be treated with drugs based on mercury and bismuth; Max Nonne, a specialist in this field, was invited to see him. However, his guess was refuted by him. “There was absolutely nothing to indicate syphilis,” Nonna later wrote.

Vladimir Lenin's height: 164 centimeters.

Personal life of Vladimir Lenin:

Apollinaria Yakubova and her husband were close associates of Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who lived in London periodically from 1902 to 1911, although Yakubova and Lenin were known to have had a tumultuous and tense relationship due to politics within the RSDLP.

Robert Henderson, a specialist in Russian history from the University of London, discovered a photograph of Yakubova in the depths of the State Archive of Russian Federation in Moscow in April 2015.

Apollinaria Yakubova

Major works of Vladimir Lenin:

"On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
What inheritance are we giving up? (1897);
Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
What to do? (1902);
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904);
Party organization and party literature (1905);
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905);
Marxism and Revisionism (1908);
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909);
Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914);
On the breakdown of unity covered by cries for unity (1914);
Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism) (1914);
Socialism and War (1915);
Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay) (1916);
State and Revolution (1917);
Tasks of the proletariat in our revolution (1917)
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Deal with It (1917)
On dual power (1917);
How to Organize a Competition (1918);
The Great Initiative (1919);
The childhood disease of “leftism” in communism (1920);
Tasks of youth unions (1920);
About the food tax (1921);
Pages from the diary, About cooperation (1923);
About the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924);
What is Soviet power? (1919, publ.: 1928);
On leftist childishness and petty-bourgeoisism (1918);
About our revolution (1923);
Letter to the Congress (1922, read out: 1924, published: 1956)

Lenin is a world-famous political figure, leader of the Bolshevik Party (revolutionary), founder of the USSR state. Almost everyone knows who Lenin is. He is a follower of the great philosophers F. Engels and K. Marx.

Who is Lenin? Brief summary of his biography

Ulyanov Vladimir was born in Simbirsk in 1870. And in Ulyanovsk he spent his childhood and youth.

From 1879 to 1887 he studied at the gymnasium. After graduating with a gold medal, in 1887 Vladimir and his family, already without Ilya Nikolaevich (he died in January 1886), moved to live in Kazan. There he entered Kazan University.

There, in 1887, for his active participation in a gathering of students, he was expelled from the educational institution and exiled to the village of Kokushkino.

The patriotic spirit of protest against the then existing tsarist system and the oppression of the people awakened early in the young man.

The study of advanced Russian literature, the works of great writers (Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Herzen, Pisarev) and especially Chernyshevsky led to the formation of his advanced revolutionary views. The older brother introduced Vladimir to Marxist literature.

From that moment on, young Ulyanov devoted his entire future life to the struggle against the capitalist system, to the cause of liberating the people from oppression and slavery.

Ulyanov family

Knowing who Lenin is, one cannot help but want to find out in more detail what kind of family such a brilliant person, enlightened in all respects, came from.

In their views, Vladimir’s parents belonged to the Russian intelligentsia.

Grandfather - N.V. Ulyanov - from the serfs of the Nizhny Novgorod province, an ordinary tailor-craftsman. He died in poverty.

Father - I. N. Ulyanov - after graduating from Kazan University, he was a teacher at secondary educational institutions in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod. Subsequently he worked as an inspector and director of schools in the province (Simbirsk). He really loved his job.

Vladimir’s mother, M.A. Ulyanova (Blank), is a doctor by training. She was gifted and had great abilities: she knew several foreign languages ​​and played the piano well. She received her own education at home and, having passed the external exam, became a teacher. She devoted herself to children.

Vladimir's elder brother A.I. Ulyanov was executed for participation in the attempt on the life of Alexander III in 1887.

Vladimir's sisters - A. I. Ulyanova (by her husband - Elizarova), M. I. Ulyanova, and brother D. I. Ulyanov at one time became prominent figures in the Communist Party.

Their parents instilled in them honesty, hard work, attention and sensitivity to people, responsibility for their deeds, actions and words, and most importantly, a sense of duty.

Ulyanov Library. The acquisition of knowledge

During his studies (with numerous awards) at the Simbirsk gymnasium, Vladimir received excellent knowledge.

In the Ulyanovs' home family library there was a huge number of works by great Russian writers - Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Gogol, Dobrolyubov, Tolstoy, Herzen, as well as foreign ones. There were editions of Shakespeare, Huxley, Darwin and many others. etc.

This advanced literature of those times had a great and important influence on the formation of the views of the young Ulyanovs on everything that was happening.

Formation of personal political views, publication of the first political newspapers

In 1893, in St. Petersburg, Vladimir Ulyanov studied social democratic issues, was engaged in journalism and was interested in political economy.

Since 1895, the first attempts to travel abroad have been made. In the same year, Lenin traveled outside the country to establish good connections with the Liberation of Labor group and other leaders of European social democratic parties. In Switzerland he met with G.V. Plekhanov. As a result, political figures from other countries learned about who Lenin was.

After his trips, Vladimir Ilyich already in his homeland organized the party “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” (St. Petersburg, 1895).

After which he is arrested and sent to the Yenisei province. Three years later, it was there that Vladimir Ilyich married N. Krupskaya and wrote many of his works.

Moreover, at that time he had several pseudonyms (except for the main one - Lenin): Karpov, Ilyin, Petrov, Frey.

Further development of revolutionary political activity

Lenin is the organizer of the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP. Subsequently, he drew up the charter and plan of the party. Vladimir Ilyich, with the help of the revolution, tried to create a completely new society. During the 1907 revolution, Lenin was in Switzerland. Then the leadership passed to him after the arrest of most party members.

After the next congress of the RSDLP (3rd), he was preparing an uprising and demonstrations. Although the uprising was suppressed, Ulyanov did not stop working. He publishes Pravda and writes new works. At that time, many already knew who Vladimir Lenin was from his numerous publications.

The strengthening of new revolutionary organizations continues.

After the February Revolution of 1917, he returned to Russia and led an uprising against the government. Goes underground to avoid arrest.

After the revolution (October 1917), Lenin began to live and work in Moscow in connection with the move there from Petrograd of the Central Committee of the Party and the government.

Results of the 1917 revolution

After the revolution, Lenin founds the proletarian Red Army, the 3rd Communist International and concludes a peace treaty with Germany. From now on, the country has a new economic policy, the direction of which is the growth of the national economy. Thus, a socialist state - the USSR - is formed.

The overthrown exploiting classes launched struggle and terror against the new Soviet government. In August 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin's life, he was wounded by F.E. Kaplan (a Socialist-Revolutionary).

Who is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin for the people? After his death, the cult of his personality increased. Monuments to Lenin were laid everywhere, many urban and rural objects were renamed in his honor. Many cultural and educational institutions (libraries, cultural centers) named after Lenin were opened. The mausoleum of the great Lenin in Moscow still preserves the body of the greatest political figure.

Last years

Lenin was a militant atheist and fought hard against the influence of the church. In 1922, taking advantage of the dire situation of famine in the Volga region, he called for the confiscation of church valuables.

Quite intense work and injury spoiled the leader’s health, and in the spring of 1922 he became seriously ill. Periodically he returned to work. His last year was tragic. A serious illness prevented him from completing all his affairs. Here a struggle arose between close comrades for the great “Leninist legacy.”

He was able, overcoming illness, at the end of 1922 and at the beginning of February 1923, to dictate several articles and letters that constituted his “Political Testament” for the Party Congress (12th).

In this letter, he proposed to move I.V. Stalin from the post of General Secretary to another place. He was convinced that he would not be able to use his immense power carefully, as it should.

Shortly before his death, he moved to Gorki. The proletarian leader died in 1924, on January 21.

Relations with Stalin

Who is Stalin? Both Lenin and Joseph Vissarionovich worked together along the party line.

They met in person in 1905 at the RSDLP conference in Tammerfors. Until 1912, Lenin did not single him out among many party workers. Until 1922, there were more or less good relations between them, although disagreements often arose. Relations deteriorated greatly by the end of 1922, believed to be due to Stalin’s conflict with the Georgian leadership (“Georgian Affair”) and a minor incident with Krupskaya.

After the death of the leader, the myth about the relationship between Stalin and Lenin changed several times: first Stalin was one of Lenin’s comrades-in-arms, then he became his student, then a faithful successor of the great cause. And it turned out that the revolution began to have two leaders. Then Lenin was not so needed, and Stalin became the only leader.

Bottom line. Who is Lenin? Briefly about the stages of its activities

Under Lenin's leadership, a new state administrative apparatus was formed. The lands of the landowners were confiscated and nationalized along with transport, banks, industry, etc. The Soviet Red Army was created. Slavery and national oppression were abolished. Decrees on food issues appeared. Lenin and his government fought for world peace. The leader introduced the principle of collective leadership. He became the leader of the international labor movement.

Who is Lenin? Everyone should know about this unique historical figure. After the death of the great leader, people were brought up on the ideals of Vladimir Ilyich. And the results were quite good.

Vladimir Lenin is the great leader of the working people of the whole world, who is considered the most outstanding politician in world history, who created the first socialist state.

The Russian communist philosopher-theorist, who continued the work and whose activities were widely developed at the beginning of the 20th century, is still of interest to the public today, since his historical role is of significant significance not only for Russia, but for the whole world. Lenin's activities have both positive and negative assessments, which does not prevent the founder of the USSR from remaining a leading revolutionary in world history.

Childhood and youth

Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich was born on April 22, 1870 in the Simbirsk province of the Russian Empire in the family of a school inspector Ilya Nikolaevich and a school teacher Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanov. He became the third child of parents who invested their whole souls in their children - his mother completely abandoned work and devoted herself to raising Alexander, Anna and Volodya, after whom she gave birth to Maria and Dmitry.

Vladimir Lenin and his sister Maria

As a child, Vladimir Ulyanov was a mischievous and very smart boy - at the age of 5 he had already learned to read and by the time he entered the Simbirsk gymnasium he had become a “walking encyclopedia”. During his school years, he also proved himself to be a diligent, diligent, gifted and careful student, for which he was repeatedly awarded certificates of commendation. Lenin's classmates said that the future world leader of the working people enjoyed enormous respect and authority in the class, since every student felt his mental superiority.

In 1887, Vladimir Ilyich graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. In the same year, a terrible tragedy happened in the Ulyanov family - Lenin’s older brother Alexander was executed for participating in organizing an assassination attempt on the Tsar.

This grief aroused in the future founder of the USSR a spirit of protest against national oppression and the tsarist system, so already in his first year of university he created a student revolutionary movement, for which he was expelled from the university and sent into exile to the small village of Kukushkino, located in the Kazan province.

From that moment on, the biography of Vladimir Lenin was continuously connected with the struggle against capitalism and autocracy, the main goal of which was the liberation of workers from exploitation and oppression. After exile, in 1888, Ulyanov returned to Kazan, where he immediately joined one of the Marxist circles.

During the same period, Lenin's mother acquired an almost 100-hectare estate in the Simbirsk province and convinced Vladimir Ilyich to manage it. This did not prevent him from continuing to maintain connections with local “professional” revolutionaries, who helped him find Narodnaya Volya members and create an organized movement of Protestants of the imperial power.

Revolutionary activities

In 1891, Vladimir Lenin managed to pass exams as an external student at the Imperial St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law. After that, he worked as an assistant to a sworn lawyer from Samara, engaged in the “official defense” of criminals.

In 1893, the revolutionary moved to St. Petersburg and, in addition to legal practice, began writing historical works on Marxist political economy, the creation of the Russian liberation movement, and the capitalist evolution of post-reform villages and industry. Then he began to create a program for the Social Democratic Party.

In 1895, Lenin made his first trip abroad and made the so-called tour of Switzerland, Germany and France, where he met his idol Georgy Plekhanov, as well as Wilhelm Liebknecht and Paul Lafargue, who were leaders of the international labor movement.

Upon returning to St. Petersburg, Vladimir Ilyich managed to unite all the scattered Marxist circles into the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class,” at the head of which he began to prepare a plan to overthrow the autocracy. For active propaganda of his idea, Lenin and his allies were taken into custody, and after a year in prison he was exiled to the Shushenskoye village of the Elysee province.

During his exile, he established contacts with the Social Democrats of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, and in 1900, after the end of his exile, he traveled to all Russian cities and personally established contact with numerous organizations. In 1900, the leader created the newspaper Iskra, under the articles of which he first signed the pseudonym “Lenin”.

During the same period, he initiated the congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which subsequently split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. The revolutionary led the Bolshevik ideological and political party and launched an active struggle against Menshevism.

In the period from 1905 to 1907, Lenin lived in exile in Switzerland, where he was preparing an armed uprising. There he was caught by the First Russian Revolution, in the victory of which he was interested, since it opened the way to the socialist revolution.

Then Vladimir Ilyich returned illegally to St. Petersburg and began to act actively. He tried at any cost to win the peasants over to his side, forcing them into an armed uprising against the autocracy. The revolutionary called on people to arm themselves with whatever was at hand and carry out attacks on government officials.

October Revolution

After the defeat in the First Russian Revolution, all Bolshevik forces came together, and Lenin, having analyzed the mistakes, began to revive the revolutionary upsurge. Then he created his own legal Bolshevik party, which published the newspaper Pravda, of which he was the editor-in-chief. At that time, Vladimir Ilyich lived in Austria-Hungary, where the World War found him.

Having been imprisoned on suspicion of spying for Russia, Lenin spent two years preparing his theses on the war, and after his release he went to Switzerland, where he came up with the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war.

In 1917, Lenin and his comrades were allowed to leave Switzerland through Germany to Russia, where a ceremonial meeting was organized for him. Vladimir Ilyich’s first speech to the people began with a call for a “social revolution,” which caused discontent even among Bolshevik circles. At that moment, Lenin’s theses were supported by Joseph Stalin, who also believed that power in the country should belong to the Bolsheviks.

On October 20, 1917, Lenin arrived in Smolny and began to lead the uprising, which was organized by the head of the Petrograd Soviet. Vladimir Ilyich proposed to act quickly, firmly and clearly - from October 25 to 26, the Provisional Government was arrested, and on November 7, at the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin’s decrees on peace and land were adopted, and the Council of People’s Commissars was organized, the head of which was Vladimir Ilyich.

This was followed by the 124-day “Smolny period,” during which Lenin carried out active work in the Kremlin. He signed a decree on the creation of the Red Army, concluded the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany, and also began developing a program for the formation of a socialist society. At that moment, the Russian capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow, and the Congress of Soviets of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers became the supreme body of power in Russia.

After carrying out the main reforms, which consisted of withdrawing from the World War and transferring the lands of the landowners to the peasants, the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) was formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, the rulers of which were communists led by Vladimir Lenin.

Head of the RSFSR

Upon coming to power, Lenin, according to many historians, ordered the execution of the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II along with his entire family, and in July 1918 he approved the Constitution of the RSFSR. Two years later, Lenin eliminated the supreme ruler of Russia, Admiral, who was his strong opponent.

Then the head of the RSFSR implemented the “Red Terror” policy, created to strengthen the new government in the context of thriving anti-Bolshevik activity. At the same time, the decree on the death penalty was reinstated, which could apply to anyone who did not agree with Lenin’s policies.

After this, Vladimir Lenin began to destroy the Orthodox Church. From that period, believers became the main enemies of the Soviet regime. During that period, Christians who tried to protect the holy relics were persecuted and executed. Special concentration camps were also created for the “re-education” of the Russian people, where people were charged in particularly harsh ways that they were obliged to work for free in the name of communism. This led to a massive famine that killed millions of people and a terrible crisis.

This result forced the leader to retreat from his intended plan and create a new economic policy, during which people, under the “supervision” of the commissars, restored industry, revived construction projects and industrialized the country. In 1921, Lenin abolished “war communism”, replaced food appropriation with a food tax, allowed private trade, which allowed the broad mass of the population to independently seek means of survival.

In 1922, according to Lenin’s recommendations, the USSR was created, after which the revolutionary had to step down from power due to his rapidly deteriorating health. After an intense political struggle in the country in pursuit of power, Joseph Stalin became the sole leader of the Soviet Union.

Personal life

The personal life of Vladimir Lenin, like that of most professional revolutionaries, was shrouded in secrecy for conspiracy purposes. He met his future wife in 1894 during the organization of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.

She blindly followed her lover and participated in all of Lenin’s actions, which was the reason for their separate first exile. In order not to be separated, Lenin and Krupskaya got married in a church - they invited Shushensky peasants as best men, and their ally made their wedding rings from copper nickels.

The sacrament of the wedding of Lenin and Krupskaya took place on July 22, 1898 in the village of Shushenskoye, after which Nadezhda became the faithful life partner of the great leader, whom she bowed to, despite his harshness and humiliating treatment of herself. Having become a real communist, Krupskaya suppressed her feelings of ownership and jealousy, which allowed her to remain the only wife of Lenin, in whose life there were many women.

The question “did Lenin have children?” still attracts interest all over the world. There are several historical theories regarding the paternity of the communist leader - some claim that Lenin was infertile, while others call him the father of many illegitimate children. At the same time, many sources claim that Vladimir Ilyich had a son, Alexander Steffen, from his lover, with whom the revolutionary’s affair lasted about 5 years.

Death

The death of Vladimir Lenin occurred on January 21, 1924 in the Gorki estate in the Moscow province. According to official data, the leader of the Bolsheviks died from atherosclerosis caused by severe overload at work. Two days after his death, Lenin’s body was transported to Moscow and placed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, where farewell to the founder of the USSR was held for 5 days.

On January 27, 1924, Lenin’s body was embalmed and placed in a Mausoleum specially built for this purpose, located on the capital’s Red Square. The ideologist of the creation of Lenin’s relics was his successor Joseph Stalin, who wanted to make Vladimir Ilyich a “god” in the eyes of the people.

After the collapse of the USSR, the issue of Lenin’s reburial was repeatedly raised in the State Duma. True, it remained at the discussion stage back in 2000, when the one who came to power during his first presidential term put an end to this issue. He said that he does not see the desire of the overwhelming majority of the population to rebury the body of the world leader, and until it appears, this topic will no longer be discussed in modern Russia.