LENIN (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich
(also used other pseudonyms such as V. Ilyin, K. Tulin, Karpov
and others). Born: 10th (22nd) April 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk).
Organizer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and founder
of the Soviet state, he continued the revolutionary teaching of
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Born in the family of a public-school
inspector. His elder brother Alexander, a member of the "People's
Freedom" movement, was sentenced to death in 1887 for participation
in preparations for an assassination attempt on the Tsar. In 1887
Lenin finished gymnasium and entered the law faculty of Kazan
University. He was arrested in December 1887 for participation
in a student revolutionary movement, was expelled from the university
and exiled to the village of Kokushkino in Kazan Province. In
October 1888 he returned to Kazan, where he became a member of
a Marxist society. In 1989 he moved to the city of Samara. In
1891 he took and passed extramural exams at the law faculty of
St Petersburg University and got work as assistant to a justice
of the law in Samara. In August 1893 he moved to St Petersburg.
In Autumn 1895 he set up the St Petersburg "Union for the
liberation of the working class". At the beginning of December
1895 he was arrested and in February 1897 exiled to Siberia for
three years. In 1890 he went abroad, where together with G.V.
Plekhanov he began to publish the newspaper "Iskra"
("Spark"). At the 2nd conference of the Russian Social
Democratic Working Party (1903) Lenin was instrumental in setting
up a new type of Bolshevik Marxist Party. During the revolution
of 1905 -1907 Lenin developed the idea of the hegemony of the
proletariat in the bourgeois democratic revolution, and worked
out the theory of the expansion of the bourgeois democratic revolution
into socialist revolution. At the beginning of November 1905 Lenin
came to St Petersburg to take control of the revolutionary struggle.
In December 1905 he directed the 1st conference of the Bolsheviks
at Tammerfors. From December 1907 onwards, as an emigrant, he
continued the fight for the survival and consolidation of the
illegal party. In June 1912 he moved from Paris to Krakow, where
he supervised publication of the Bolshevik newspaper "PRAVDA".
During this time he developed a Marxist programme on the nationalities
question. At the end of July 1914 he was arrested by the Austrian
police, but was soon released and left for Switzerland. During
the 1st World War he promoted the slogan of converting imperialist
into civil war. Following the bourgeois-democratic revolution
of April 1917, he moved to Petrograd and pointed the socialist
revolution towards victory, whilst hiding from the persecution
of the bourgeois provisional government. During this time he developed
a plan for the proletariat to seize power by means of an armed
uprising. On 10th (23rd) October at a session of the Central Committee
of the Bolshevik Party a resolution put forward by Lenin regarding
armed uprising was passed. On 24th October (6th November) Lenin
arrived at Smolny and took charge of the October Uprising. He
was elected head of the Soviet Government. On 11th March 1918,
together with the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government,
Lenin moved to Moscow, which then became the capital of the Soviet
state. During this time Lenin worked out a plan for the construction
of socialism and put forward principles for a new economic policy.
In 1922 he fell seriously ill. In December 1922 - March 1923 he
dictated a series of articles which formed his legacy to the Party
and the Soviet people in their struggle for socialism and communism.
V.I. Lenin died on 21st January 1924.
