Copyright 1998 ABC-CLIO, Inc.  
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COUNTRY: Russia

PERSON: Vladimir Lenin

HEADLINE: Biographies

 


Vladimir Il'ich Lenin led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which toppled the czarist Russian monarchy and brought to power a government that was the leader of the communist world for the next 75 years. As the first leader of the Soviet Union, he modified Marxist theory by devising the concept of Marxism-Leninism.  


Lenin was born Vladimir Il'ich Ulianov on Apr 22, 1870 to a devout Orthodox Christian family in Simbirsk. He entered law school at Kazan University and later received a degree at St. Petersburg University, all the while working in leftist organizations. He had a brief career as a lawyer, but was imprisoned for his political activities in 1895 and later was exiled to Siberia. After his release from Siberia in 1900, he elected to live in exile in Switzerland. There he continued the work on Marxist theory that he had begun in prison and became the leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. He returned to Russia during the 1905 revolution, which was put down by the czar, and he went back into exile in 1907. Over the next few years, his influence among European leftists increased and he worked on a plan to overthrow the Russian "bourgeois" state.  


In February 1917 a democratic revolution led to the establishment of a constitutional government in Russia. Lenin returned to his homeland to push for the creation of a socialist state, but was forced into exile in Finland in July. He returned to engineer a Bolshevik seizure of power from the provisional government in October and he further developed his Marxist-Leninist theory to justify his new dictatorship. Lenin then negotiated a peace that ended his nation's participation in World War I and concentrated on taking control of the country in the civil war against his opponents.  


After the war, Lenin made compromises in his collectivist agricultural and industrial policies to help bring the Soviet Union out of economic ruin. At the same time, he and the Politburo established more oppressive political control over the nation. His health declined during the early 1920s because of hereditary cerebral arteriosclerosis. He died on Jan 21, 1924.  


[Sources: A Biographical Dictionary of the Former Soviet Union; The Soviet Union: A Biographical Dictionary]

LOAD-DATE: February 18, 1998
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