The leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924) established the world’s first Communist state, brutally destroyed his enemies, and inspired generations of revolutionaries with his writings on political theory. His scowling visage—a statue of Lenin once occupied the center of almost every town in Eastern Europe—is among the most famous in history, a symbol of the totalitarian ideology that would eventually control the lives of billions of people across the globe.
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov into a well-off family. Despite their relative wealth, opposition to the Russian monarchy ran in the family: Lenin’s older brother, Alexander (1866–1887), was hanged for his role in a failed plot to assassinate Czar Alexander III (1845–1894), a turning point in Lenin’s life.
Lenin—he adopted the name in 1902—was trained as a lawyer but spent virtually his entire life between his university graduation and 1917 in exile because of his political activities. He shuttled between Germany, Switzerland, England, and Finland, writing for Communist newspapers and refining his political theories.
When the czar was overthrown in 1917, Lenin rushed back to Russia from Switzerland to assume leadership of the Communists. He quickly organized a coup—the October Revolution—against the provisional government that had replaced the czar, which put the Soviets firmly in charge. For the next several years, Lenin implemented a radical agenda of economic and social change, abolishing private property, nationalizing industry, forcing workers into collectives, and executing thousands of political opponents. His economic policies proved disastrous, culminating in a famine that killed an estimated 5 million Russians in 1921.
After having a stroke in 1922, Lenin was in ill health for the rest of his life. Suffering from paralysis caused by the stroke and possibly from syphilis, he gradually lost his powers to Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), who won a power struggle to control the USSR after Lenin’s death on January 21, 1924, at age fifty-three.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- According to biographer Robert J. Service, Lenin was in such excruciating pain by the end of his life that he twice requested poison to commit suicide. Both times, he reconsidered.
- Lenin’s embalmed body is still on display at a mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square, despite protests from Russian religious leaders and anti-Communist political groups, who want his corpse buried.
- The Russian city of Saint Petersburg was renamed Leningrad after Lenin’s death in 1924. In 1991, amidst the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city’s residents voted to return to the old name.
