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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин listen), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) (April 22 (April 10 (O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the main theorist of Leninism, which he described as an adaptation of Marxism to "the age of imperialism".

"Lenin" was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms. It has been suggested that he chose this name to show his opposition to Georgi Plekhanov who used the pseudonym Volgin, after the Volga River; i.e. Ulyanov picked the Lena which is longer and flows in the opposite direction. However, Plekhanov appears to have been a significant influence upon Lenin at that time in his life, so the veracity of this explanation is subject to question. There are other theories on where his name came from and he himself is not known to have ever stated exactly why he chose it. He is sometimes erroneously referred to in the West as "Nikolai Lenin", though he has never been known as such in Russia.

Early life

Born in Simbirsk, Russia, Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831 - 1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for increased democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Blank (1835 - 1916). Like many Russians, he was of mixed ethnic and religious ancestry. He had Kalmyk ancestry through his paternal grandparents, Volga German ancestry through his maternal grandmother, who was a Lutheran, and Jewish ancestry through his maternal grandfather (converted to Christianity). Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) himself was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church.

Vladimir distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. Two tragedies occurred in his early life: in 1886, his father died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The following year, in May of 1887 his eldest brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for participation in a plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. This radicalized Vladimir (his official Soviet biographies have this event as central to Lenin's revolutionary exploits) and later that year he was arrested, and expelled from Kazan University for participating in student protests. He continued to study independently and by 1891 had earned a license to practice law.

Revolutionary

Rather than settle into a legal career, he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and the study of Marxism, much of it in St. Petersburg. On December 7 1895, he was arrested and held by authorities for an entire year, then exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia.

In July 1898, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was a socialist activist. In April 1899, he published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia . In 1900, his exile ended. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe and published the paper Iskra as well as other tracts and books related to the revolutionary movement.

He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), and in 1903 he led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the Mensheviks that was partly inspired by his pamphlet What is to be Done? . In 1906 he was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP. In 1907 he moved to Finland for security reasons. He continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and activities, including the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile. Inessa Armand became Lenin's partner.

On April 16, 1917, he returned to Petrograd from Switzerland following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses . After a failed workers' uprising in July, Lenin fled to Finland for safety. He returned in October, inspiring an armed revolution with the slogan "All Power to the Soviets!", against the Provisional Government. His ideas of government were expressed in his essay "State and Revolution" , which called for a new form of government based on the worker's councils, or soviets.

It has been largely suggested that Lenin had reached Petrograd from Switzerland with the help of the German Empire. Eye witnesses are said to have confirmed that Lenin had been carried in a sealed train on the way, escorted by Germans. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself is thought to have expected Lenin to paralyze the Russian army through revolution and end the war on the Eastern front and he saw him only as a contemporary figure that would lose power soon afterwards.

Head of the Soviet state

On November 8, Lenin was elected as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars by the Russian Soviet Congress. Faced with the threat of German invasion, Lenin argued that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty. Other Bolshevik leaders, such as Bukharin, advocated continuing the war as a means of fomenting revolution in Germany. Leon Trotsky, who led the negotiations, advocated an intermediate position, calling for a peace treaty only on the conditions that no territorial gains on either side be consolidated. After the negotiations collapsed, Germany launched an invasion that resulted in the loss of much of Russia's western territory. As a result of this turn of events, Lenin's position consequently gained the support of the majority in the Bolshevik leadership, and Russia signed the eventual Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under disadvantageous terms (March 1918).

In accepting that the soviets were the only legitimate form of a worker's government, Lenin shut down the Russian Constituent Assembly. The Bolsheviks lost the vote there, with the Socialist Revolutionary Party winning the election and later breaking up into a pro-soviet Left SRs and anti-soviet Right SRs factions. The Bolsheviks had majority support in the Congress of Soviets and they formed a coalition government with the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries. However, their coalition collapsed after the Social Revolutionaries opposed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and they joined other parties in seeking to overthrow the government of the soviets. The situation degenerated, with non-Bolshevik parties (including some of the socialist groups) actively seeking the overthrow of the soviet government. Lenin responded by (unsuccessfully) trying to shut down their activities.

On August 30 1918, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, approached Lenin after he'd spoken at a meeting and was on his way to his car. She called out to Lenin, and when he turned to answer, fired three shots, two of which struck him in the shoulder and lung. Lenin was taken to his private apartment in the Kremlin, and refused to venture to a hospital, believing other assassins would be waiting there. Doctors were summoned, but decided that it was too dangerous to remove the bullets. Lenin eventually recovered, though his health declined from this point, and it is believed that the incident contributed to his later strokes.

In March, 1919, Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders met with revolutionary socialists from around the world and formed the Communist International. Members of the Communist International, including Lenin and the Bolsheviks themselves, broke off from the broader socialist movement. From that point onwards, they would be known as communists. In Russia, the Bolshevik Party was renamed the "Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)", which eventually became the CPSU.

Meanwhile, a civil war raged across Russia. A wide variety of political movements and their supporters took up arms to support or overthrow the soviet government. Although many different factions were involved in the civil war, the two main forces were the Red Army (communists) and the White Army (monarchists). Foreign powers such as France, Britain, United States and Japan also intervened in this war (on behalf of the White Army). Eventually, the Red Army won the civil war, defeating the White Russian forces and their allies in 1920 (although smaller forces remained for several more years).

In the later months of 1919, successes against White Russian forces convinced Lenin that it was time to spread the revolution to the West, by force if necessary. When the newly independent Second Polish Republic began securing its eastern territories annexed by Russia in the partitions of Poland in late 18th century, it clashed with Bolshevik forces for dominance in these areas, which have led to the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War in 1919. With revolution in Germany and Spartacist League on the rise, Lenin viewed this a perfect time and place to "to probe Europe with the bayonets of the Red Army." Lenin saw Poland as the bridge that the Red Army would have to cross in order to link up the Russian Revolution with the communist supporters in the German Revolution, and to assist other communist movements in Western Europe. However the defeat of Soviet Russia in Polish-Soviet War invalidated these plans.

The long years of war had taken their toll on Russia, however, and much of the country lay in ruins. In March 1921, Lenin replaced the policy of War communism (which had been used during the civil war) with the New Economic Policy (NEP), in an attempt to rebuild industry and especially agriculture. But the same month saw the suppression of an uprising among sailors at Kronstadt ("the Kronstadt rebellion").

Human rights violations

Some communist supporters argue that Lenin was innocent of the large scale human right violations associated with Stalin. However, during Russian Civil War, Lenin started "requisitioning" supplies from the peasantry for little or nothing in exchange. This led peasants to drastically reduce their crop production. In retaliation, Lenin ordered the seizure of the food peasants had grown for their own subsistence and their seed grain. The Cheka and the army began by shooting hostages, and ended by waging a second full-scale civil war against the peasantry.

Official Soviet reports admitted that fully 30 million Soviet citizens were in danger of death by starvation. At the same time, the areas under White control had built up a food surplus. The famine of 1921 was much less severe in 1920, because after the reconquest of the White territories, the Reds seized the Whites' grain reserves, although they primarily sent them to cities with less hunger but more political clout. Some relief organizations suspended help when it was revealed that the Soviet Union preferred to sell food abroad in order to get hard currency rather than feed its starving people. Estimates on the deaths from this famine are 3-10 million. Lenin started the slave labor camp system and 100000-500000 summary executions of "class enemies" occured during his regime . Estimates of the number killed:

Premature Death

Lenin's health had already been severely damaged due to the intolerable strains of revolution and war. The assassination attempt earlier in his life also added to his health problems. The bullet was still lodged in his neck too close to his spine for medical techniques of the time to remove. In May 1922, Lenin had his first stroke. He was left partially paralyzed (on his right side) and his role in government declined. After the second stroke in December of the same year, he resigned from active politics. In March 1923 he suffered the third stroke and was left bedridden and no longer able to speak.

Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Rumors of Lenin's syphilis sprang up shortly after his death. The official cause given for Lenin's death was cerebral arteriosclerosis, or a stroke (his fourth), but out of the 27 physicians who treated him, only eight signed onto that conclusion in his autopsy report. Therefore, several other theories regarding his death have been put forward. For example, a posthumous diagnosis by two psychiatrists and a neurologist recently published in the European Journal of Neurology claimed to show that Lenin died from syphilis.

Documents released after the fall of the U.S.S.R, along with memoirs of Lenin's physicians, suggest that Lenin was treated for syphilis as early as 1895. Documents also suggest that Alexi Abrikosov, the pathologist in charge of the autopsy, was ordered to prove that Lenin did not die of syphilis. Abrikosov did not mention syphilis in the autopsy; however, the blood-vessel damage, the paralysis and other incapacities he cited are typical of syphilis. Upon a second release of the autopsy report, none of the organs, major arteries or brain areas usually affected by syphilis were cited.

In 1923, Lenin's doctors treated him with Salvarsan, the only drug at the time specifically used to treat syphilis, and potassium iodine, which was also customary at the time in treating the disease.

Although he might have had syphilis, so did a large percentage of Russia at this time. Also he had no visible lesions on his body that accompany the last stages of the disease. Most historians still agree that the most likely cause of his death was a stroke induced by the bullet still lodged in his neck from the assassination attempt.

The city of Petrograd was renamed Leningrad in his honor; this remained the name of the city until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, when it reverted to its original name, St Petersburg.

Lenin's preserved body is on permanent display in Moscow. After his first stroke, Lenin published a number of papers indicating future directions for the government. Most famous of these is Lenin's Testament, which among other things criticized top-ranking communists such as Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin. Of Stalin, who had been the Communist Party's general secretary since April 1922, Lenin said that he had "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands" and suggested that "comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post". Lenin's wife discovered the paper in Lenin's study, and read it to the central committee, who while believing parts of it, did not take it to heart, and as such, these sharp criticisms of the internal party were not more widely released.

During the early 1920s the Russian movement of cosmism was quite popular and there was an intent to cryogenically preserve Lenin's body in order to revive him in the future. Necessary equipment was purchased abroad, but for a variety of reasons the plan was not realised. Instead his body was embalmed and placed on permanent exhibition in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow.

The Lenin Mausoleum at Red Square in Moscow

Despite Lenin's expressed wish shortly before death that no memorials be created for him, various politicians sought to better their own position vicariously by association with Lenin after his death, and his character was elevated to almost mythical status, with statue after monument after memorial springing up in his honor.

Lenin's brain study

Lenin's brain was removed before his body was embalmed. The Soviet government commissioned the well-known German neuroscientist Oskar Vogt to study Lenin's brain and to locate the precise location of the brain cells that are responsible for genius. The Institute of Brain was created in Moscow for this purpose. Vogt published a paper on the brain in 1929 where he reported that some pyramidal neurons in the third layer of Lenin's cerebral cortex were very large. However the conclusion of its relevance to genius was contested. Vogt's work was considered unsatisfactory by the Soviets. Further research was continued by the Soviet team, but the work on Lenin's brain was no longer advertised.

Contemporary anatomists no longer believe that morphology alone can determine the functioning of the brain.

See also

• Russian Revolution
• Communism
• Communist state
• Criticisms of communism
• List of places named after Lenin
• List of statues of Lenin

Selected works

• The Development of Capitalism in Russia
• What Is To Be Done?
• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
• Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution
• Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
• The Right of Nations to Self-Determination
• Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism
• The State and Revolution
• The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
• Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
• Lenin's Testament
• Lenin's last letter to Stalin

Further reading

• Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917 by V. I. Lenin, Slavoj Zizek (Editor), Verso Books, ISBN 1859846610
• Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin, ISBN B00005W8VC (This is an Amazon.com number; many other options are available through ABE)
• Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism
• Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography
• John Gooding, Socialism In Russia: Lenin and His Legacy, 1890-1991
• Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher
• Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography

External links

• Marxists.org Lenin Internet Archive - extensive site with lots of writings, biography, and many photographs
• Reminiscences of Lenin by N. K. Krupskaya
• Impressions of Soviet Russia, by John Dewey
• Information on Lenin's Grave
• The Lenin Museum in Tampere, Finland

• 1870 births
• 1924 deaths
• Leaders of the Soviet Union
• Marxist theorists
• Old Bolsheviks
• Revolutionaries
• Socialists
• Heads of Government of the Soviet Union