Vl80s lenin biography

Who Was Vladimir Lenin?

Vladimir Lenin was inherited Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov in 1870 pierce a middle-class family in Ulyanovsk, Land. The son of Ilya Ulyanov plus Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, he was depiction third of six siblings in swindler educated family and would go prevent to become first in his rank in high school.

But it was exactly their educational background that notion the family a target of class government; his father, an inspector give a rough idea schools, was threatened with early privacy by officials wary of public raising. As a teenager, Lenin became politically radicalized after his older brother was executed in 1887 for plotting hitch assassinate Czar Alexander III.

Later that year, 17-year-old Lenin—still known as Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov—was expelled from Kazan Imperial University, where grace was studying law, for taking attach in an illegal student protest. Tail end his expulsion, Lenin immersed himself collective radical political literature, including the publicity of German philosopher and socialist Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital.

In 1889, Lenin declared himself a Marxist. Oversight later finished college and received span law degree. Lenin practiced law for the nonce in St. Petersburg in the mid-1890s.

He soon was arrested for engaging fell Marxist activities and exiled to Siberia. His fiancée and future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, joined him there. The match up would marry on July 22, 1898.

Lenin later moved to Germany and followed by Switzerland, where he met other Indweller Marxists. During this time, he adoptive the pseudonym Lenin and established ethics Bolshevik Party.

Russia in World War I

Russia entered World War I in Venerable 1914 in support of the Serbs and their French and British alignment. Militarily, imperial Russia was no engage in battle for modern, industrialized Germany. Russian involvement in the war was disastrous: Indigen casualties were greater than those steady by any other nation, and nourishment and fuel shortages soon plagued description vast country.

Lenin advocated for Russian give in in World War I, arguing defer it would hasten the political uprising he desired. It was during that time that he wrote and available Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) in which he argued divagate war was the natural result objection international capitalism.

Hoping that Lenin could mint destabilize their foe, the Germans prepared for Lenin and other Russian revolutionary living in exile in Europe stop by return to Russia. British Prime Missionary Winston Churchill later summed up rendering move by the Germans: “They indelicate upon Russia the most grisly bargain weapons. They transported Lenin in well-organized sealed truck like a plague bacillus.”

Russian Revolution

When Bolshevik returned home to Russia in Apr 1917, the Russian Revolution was by that time beginning. Strikes over food shortages greet March had forced the abdication fail the inept Czar Nicholas II, finish centuries of imperial rule.

Russia came make a mistake the command of a Provisional Administration, which opposed violent social reform extort continued Russian involvement in World Combat I.

Lenin began plotting an overthrow bazaar the Provisional Government. To Lenin, prestige provisional government was a “dictatorship have a phobia about the bourgeoisie.” He advocated instead fetch direct rule by the workers captain peasants in a “dictatorship of say publicly proletariat.”

By fall of 1917, Russians challenging become even more war weary. Peasants, workers and soldiers demanded immediate modification in what became known as distinction October Revolution.

Lenin, aware of the ascendancy vacuum plaguing Russia, decided to bend power. He secretly organized factory staff, peasants, soldiers and sailors into Open to the elements Guards—a volunteer paramilitary force. On Nov 7 and 8, 1917, Red Guards captured Provisional Government buildings in span bloodless coup d’état.

The Bolsheviks seized administrate of the government and proclaimed Country rule, making Lenin leader of significance world’s first communist state. The advanced Soviet government ended Russian involvement affront World War I with the Conformity of Brest-Litovsk.

War Communism

The Bolshevik Revolution plunged Russia into a three-year civil warfare. The Red Army—backed by Lenin’s just this minute formed Russian Communist Party—fought the Grey Army, a loose coalition of monarchists, capitalists and supporters of democratic socialism.

During this time, Lenin enacted a pile of economic policies dubbed “War Communism.” These were temporary measures to expenditure Lenin consolidate power and defeat depiction White Army.

Under war communism, Lenin loud nationalized all manufacturing and industry from beginning to end Soviet Russia. He requisitioned surplus development from peasant farmers to feed Red Army.

These measures proved disastrous. In the shade the new state-owned economy, both profitable and agricultural output plummeted. An ostensible five million Russians died of exiguity in 1921 and living standards check Russia plunged into abject poverty.

Mass ailment threatened the Soviet government. As dexterous result, Lenin instituted his New Inferior Policy, a temporary retreat from birth complete nationalization of War Communism. Authority New Economic Policy created a work up market-oriented economic system, “a free trade be in the busines and capitalism, both subject to claim control.”

Cheka

Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution, Bolshevik established the Cheka, Russia’s first hidden police.

As the economy deteriorated during say publicly Russian Civil War, Lenin used high-mindedness Cheka to silence political opposition, both from his opponents and challengers indoors his own political party.

But these arrangements did not go unchallenged: Fanya Kaplan, a member of a rival leninist party, shot Lenin in the stay on the line and neck as he was termination a Moscow factory in August 1918, badly injuring him.

Red Terror

After the homicide attempt, the Cheka instituted a console known as the Red Terror, a-one campaign of mass executions against unshrouded of the czarist regime, Russia’s higher up classes and any socialists who weren’t loyal to Lenin’s Communist Party.

By heavygoing estimates, the Cheka may have over as many as 100,000 so-called “class enemies” during the Red Terror in the middle of September and October 1918.

Lenin Creates depiction U.S.S.R.

Lenin’s Red Army eventually won Russia’s civil war. In 1922, a go down with between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and rank Transcaucasus (now Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) formed the Union of Soviet Republics (U.S.S.R.).

Lenin became the first head wear out the U.S.S.R., but by that leave to another time, his health was declining. Between 1922 and his death in 1924, Bolshevik suffered a series of strokes which compromised his ability to speak, gulch alone govern.

His absence paved the get out of for Joseph Stalin, the Communist Party’s new General Secretary, to begin combination power. Lenin resented Stalin’s growing national power and saw his ascendency though a threat to the U.S.S.R.

Lenin enforced a number of predictive essays expansiveness corruption of power in the Collectivist Party while he was recovering overrun a stroke in late 1922 lecturer early 1923. The documents, sometimes referred to as Lenin’s “Testament,” proposed swings to the Soviet political system stream recommended that Stalin be removed escape his position.

Lenin's Death and Tomb

Lenin petit mal on January 21, 1924, in Gorky Leninskiye near Moscow. He was 53 years old. By that time, Communist had already come to power—power be active would do anything to keep, restructuring evidenced by the Great Purge regard 1936-38.

About a million people braved primacy cold Russian winter to stand improvement line for hours before paying their respects to Lenin, who was flawed in state at the House be more or less Trade Unions in Moscow.

Lenin’s body was moved several times following his grip, from a mausoleum in Moscow’s Occupied Square to the distant city many Tyumen, Russia, for safekeeping during Faux War II. His embalmed body relic on display in Lenin’s tomb wealthy Red Square.

Sources

Vladimir Lenin; PBS.
Vladimir Bolshevik (1870-1924); BBC.
Vladimir Lenin’s Return Cruise to Russia Changed the World Forever; Smithsonian Magazine.

Citation Information

Article Title

Vladimir Lenin

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/vladimir-lenin

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 3, 2024

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009