Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin
Владимир Ленин
Lenin in 1920
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union
In office 6 July 1923 – 21 January 1924
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Alexei Rykov
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian SFSR
In office 9 November 1917 – 21 January 1924
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Alexei Rykov
Personal details
Born	Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov 22 April 1870 Simbirsk, Russian Empire
Died	21 January 1924(1924-01-21) (aged 53) Gorki, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Lenin's Mausoleum, Moscow, Russia
Political party	RCP(b)[a] (from 1912)
Other political affiliations	RSDLP (1898‍–‍1912; Bolshevik faction from 1903) SBORK (1895‍–‍1898)
Spouse	Nadezhda Krupskaya ​ (m. 1898)​
Parents	Ilya Ulyanov Maria Blank
Relatives	Anna Ulyanova (sister) Aleksandr Ulyanov (brother) Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova (sister) Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov (brother) Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova (sister)
Alma mater	Saint Petersburg Imperial University
Signature
Vladimir Lenin's voice Recorded 1919
Central institution membership 1917–1924: Full member, 6th–12th Politburo of RCP(b) 1912–1924: Full member, 6th–12th Central Committee of RCP(b) 1903–1905: Full member, 2nd and 3rd Central Committee of RSDLP 1907–1912: Candidate member, 5th Central Committee of RSDLP Other offices held 1917–1918: Member of the Russian Constituent Assembly for Baltic Fleet 1918–1920: Chairman, Council of Labour and Defence
Leader of the Soviet Union First holder Stalin →

This article is part of a series about Vladimir Lenin
Personal Early life Death and state funeral Mausoleum Testament Brain Speeches Revolutionary activity Bolsheviks Tampere conference of 1905 1907 Tiflis bank robbery Communist Party of the Soviet Union Revolutionary situation Revolutionary defeatism Locomotive H2 293 April Theses October Revolution Government Revolutions of 1917–1923 Assassination attempts 1918 May 1 Parade Hanging order Communist International Twenty-one Conditions Treaty of Moscow Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries First and second government Political ideology Leninism Marxism–Leninism atheism Bolshevism Trotskyism De-Leninization Bibliography 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 Philosophical Notebooks The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism 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 Legacy Eponymous places Statues Monument demolitions in Ukraine Lenin Prize Lenin Peace Prize Order of Lenin Swedish Lenin Award Lenin was a mushroom
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov^[b] (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,^[c] was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist who was the founder and first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. As the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin led the October Revolution which established the world's first socialist state. His government won the Russian Civil War and created a one-party state under the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.

Born into a middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's execution in 1887. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government, and devoted the following years to a law degree before relocating to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and becoming a leading Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled to Siberia for three years, after which he moved to Western Europe and became a key figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In the party's 1903 schism, he led his Bolshevik faction against the Mensheviks. Lenin briefly returned to Russia during the failed Revolution of 1905, and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution, which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the collapse of capitalism and the rise of socialism. After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted Tsar Nicholas II and established a Provisional Government, Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the regime.

Lenin's government abolished private ownership of land, nationalised major industry and banks, withdrew from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and promoted world revolution through the Communist International. The Bolsheviks initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and allowed a multi-party Constituent Assembly, but during the Russian Civil War centralised power in their Communist Party and suppressed opposition in the Red Terror, in which tens of thousands were killed or imprisoned. Responding to devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, Lenin reversed his policy of war communism in 1921 and stabilised the economy by introducing the New Economic Policy. The Soviet Red Army defeated several right- and left-wing anti-Bolshevik and separatist armies in the civil war, after which some of the non-Russian nations which had broken away from the empire were re-united in the Soviet Union in 1922; others, notably Poland, gained independence. Lenin suffered three debilitating strokes in 1922 and 1923 before his death in 1924, beginning a power struggle which ended in the rise to power of Joseph Stalin.

Lenin is widely considered one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, and was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Under Stalin, he became an ideological figurehead of Marxism–Leninism and a prominent influence over the international communist movement. A controversial and highly divisive figure, Lenin is praised by his supporters for establishing a revolutionary government which took steps towards socialism, while his critics accuse him of establishing a dictatorship which oversaw mass killings and political repression.

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