Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Улья́нов, IPA: vla'dʲimʲr ilj'itʂ ul'janʌf), better known as 
Lenin (info • help) (Ленин)) (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924) was a Russian revolutionary and the leader of the Bolsheviks party. He was the first leader of the Soviet Union. Soviet Union is the other name of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Lenin is also known as the maker of Leninism, which was later called Marxism-Leninism by Josif Stalin.
At school, Lenin was very good at the Latin and Greek languages. But in 1887 he was thrown out from Kazan State University because he was too radical and protested against the Tsar, who was the king of Russia at that time. In that year, Lenin's brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for his part in a bomb plot to kill Tsar Alexander III. Lenin continued to study by himself, and in 1891 he got a license to be a lawyer.
While he studied Law in the then Russian capital, St. Petersburg, he learned about the thoughts of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Because Marxism was not allowed in Russia, Lenin was arrested and put in prison for a year, then he was sent to exile in Siberia.
In July 1898, when he was still in Siberia, Lenin married a socialist woman, Nadezhda Krupskaya. In 1899, he wrote a book. It was called The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In 1900, Lenin was released from Siberia.
After he was allowed to leave, Lenin travelled around Europe. He began to publish a Marxist newspaper called Iskra, the Russian word for "spark". He became a leading member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP.
In 1903, Lenin had a dispute with an other leader of the RSDLP, Julius Martov. This dispute, which was about the organization of the Party, divided the party in two. Lenin wanted a strict, centralised, and disciplined model. Martov wanted a less strict, less centralised one. Martov's helpers became known as Mensheviks (meaning "those who are less"). Lenin's supporters were called Bolsheviks ("those who are more").
Lenin went to Finland in 1907, because it was safer for Marxists in Finland than in Russia. He travelled around Europe and visited many socialist meetings and events. During this time he lived in different places like London, Paris and, during World War I, in Geneva. At the beginning of the war, a big meeting, theSecond International that included the Bolsheviks, broke down, when various member Parties helped their countries in the war, going away from the Marxist idea of internationalism. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were one of only a handful of groups and people who stood against the war for Marxist reasons.
[change] 1917
After Tsar Nicholas II was removed from office during the The February Revolution, Lenin went back to Russia. He became an important Bolshevik leader, and made public the April Theses about what he said were mistakes of the new middle class government of Kerensky, and he called for a Workers' Revolution to overthrow the government. Lenin also talked about the mistakes of many members of the Bolshevik Central Committee (including Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin) who helped the government to continue to fight the war against Germany, against the wishes of the Leninists.
During July 1917, when people said that Lenin had got money from the Germans; he was afraid and had to flee to Finland.
In October 1917, the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky headed the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviets all over Russia in a taking of power from Kerensky's Government, known as the October Revolution ended up in the making of the first Marxist Communist State in world history.
On November 8, 1917, Lenin was chosen Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress. This means that he was the leader of Russia.
Because he was shocked by the German invasion, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Russia lost a lot of land, but the Germans stopped the invasion.
After he became leader, Lenin shut down the Constituent Assembly. He shut down all other political groups that weren't Communist, too. Fanya Kaplan, an anarchist, was very angry at this[needs proving], shot Lenin three times with a gun.
During the Russian Civil War, Lenin started war communism. But after the war, Lenin brought the New Economic Policy. Some private enterprise was allowed, but not much at all. Businessmen, known as nepmen, can own only light industry, not heavy.
After Kaplan shot Lenin, he started having many strokes. By May 1922, he was badly paralysed. After a stroke in March 1923, he could not speak or move. Lenin's fourth stroke killed him in January 1924.
The city of St. Petersburg had been renamed by the Tsar to Petrograd in 1914, but was renamed Leningrad in Lenin's honour in 1924. But after the end of soviet socialism, in 1991, it was called St. Petersburg again.
Before Lenin died, he said he wanted to be buried beside his mother. When he died, the communists let the people of Russia come to look at him. Because people kept coming, they decided not to bury him. A building was built, in Red Square, Moscow, over Lenin's body, so that people could see him. Lenin's body was mummied (became mummy). It is called the Lenin mausoleum (a mausoleum is a building for dead people). It is a landmark in Russia, and many people still go there to see him.
[change] See also
