Vladimir Lenin was one of the leading
political figures and revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century, who
masterminded the Bolshevik take-over of power in Russia in 1917, and was the
architect and first head of the USSR.
Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born
in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22 April 1870 into a well-educated family. He
excelled at school and went on to study law. At university, he was exposed to
radical thinking, and his views were also influenced by the execution of his
elder brother, a member of a revolutionary group. Expelled
from university for his radical policies, Lenin completed his law degree as an
external student in 1891. He moved to St Petersburg and became a professional
revolutionary. Like many of his contemporaries, he was arrested and exiled to
Siberia, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his Siberian exile, Lenin -
the pseudonym he adopted in 1901 - spent most of the subsequent decade and a
half in western Europe, where he emerged as a prominent figure in the
international revolutionary movement and became the leader of the 'Bolshevik'
faction of the Russian Social Democratic Worker's Party. In
1917, exhausted by World War One, Russia was ripe for change. Assisted by the
Germans, who hoped that he would undermine the Russian war effort, Lenin
returned home and started working against the provisional government that had
overthrown the tsarist regime. He eventually led what was soon to be known as
the October Revolution, but was effectively a coup d'etat. Almost three years
of civil war followed. The Bolsheviks were victorious and assumed total control
of the country. During this period of revolution, war and famine, Lenin
demonstrated a chilling disregard for the sufferings of his fellow countrymen
and mercilessly crushed any opposition.
Although Lenin was ruthless he was also
pragmatic. When his efforts to transform the Russian economy to a socialist
model stalled, he introduced the New Economic Policy, where a measure of
private enterprise was again permitted, a policy that continued for several
years after his death. In 1918, Lenin narrowly survived an assassination
attempt, but was severely wounded. His long term health was affected, and in
1922 he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered. In his declining
years, he worried about the bureaucratization of the regime and also expressed
concern over the increasing power of his eventual successor Joseph Stalin.
Lenin died on 24 January 1924. His corpse was embalmed and placed in a
mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.
