Vladimir Ilich Lenin (help·info), was a Communist revolutionary of Russia, 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" (as a single word) was one of his revolutionary pseudonyms. He later changed his name from Vladimir Ulyanov to Vladimir Lenin. He was sometimes referred to as "Nikolai Lenin" by Western anti-Communists and in the foreign press [1] [2], but he was never known by this name in the USSR.

There are various theories on his pseudonym's origin and he is not known to have ever stated exactly why he chose it. It is likely to relate to the River Lena, in parallel to leading Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, who used the pseudonym Volgin after the Volga River. It has been suggested that Lenin picked the Lena as it is longer and flows in the opposite direction, but Lenin was not opposed to Plekhanov at that time in his life. However, it certainly does not relate to the Lena execution, because the pseudonym predates this event.

Early life

Born in Simbirsk, Russia (now Ulyanovsk), Lenin was the son of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831–1886), a Russian civil service official who worked for progressive democracy and free universal education in Russia, and his liberal wife Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (1835–1916). Lenin was of mixed ethnic ancestry. In addition to being Russian, he also 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 (who converted to Christianity). Lenin was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church.

Lenin distinguished himself in the study of Latin and Greek. Two tragedies occurred early in his life. The first occurred when his father died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1886. In May 1887 his eldest brother Alexander Ulyanov was hanged for participation in a plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander III. This radicalized Lenin. His official Soviet biographies have this event as central to his revolutionary exploits. A famous painting by Belousov, We will follow a different path, reprinted in millions of Soviet textbooks, depicted young Lenin and his mother grieving the loss of his elder brother. The phrase "We will follow a different path" meant that Lenin chose the right way to succeed in the revolution, which was based on a Marxist approach. Indeed, at that time Lenin became interested in Marxism, he got involved in student protests and later that year was arrested. He was then expelled from Kazan University. He continued to study independently and by 1891 had earned a license to practice law^[1].

Revolutionary

Upon graduation, Lenin took on a job as an assistant to a lawyer. He worked for several years in Samara, Russia, then in 1893 moved to St Petersburg. Rather than settling into a legal career, he became more involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and the study of Marxism. On December 7, 1895, he was arrested and held by authorities for 14 months, 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 [3]. In 1900, his exile ended. He travelled in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. He lived in Zurich, Geneva, Munich, Prague, Vienna and London and during his exile founded the newspaper Iskra. He also wrote a number of articles and books related to the revolutionary movement. At this period, he started using various aliases, finally settling upon Lenin.

He was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; РСДРП in Russian), 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? [4]. 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 Prague Party Conference of 1912 and the Zimmerwald Conference of 1915. When Inessa Armand left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in exile, and is believed to have become Lenin's partner during this time. Lenin later moved to Switzerland.

Richard Pipes argues that Lenin had analyzed the Paris Commune and had concluded that it failed due to "excessive generosity-it should have exterminated its enemies." (The Russian Revolution 1899-1919, pp789-795) The full quote, however, as enunciated by Lenin in a speech delivered at an international meeting in Geneva on March 18 1908, the occasion of the anniversary of the Commune, was as follows: "Although the socialist proletariat was split up into numerous sects, the Commune was a splendid example of the unanimity with which the proletariat was able to accomplish the democratic tasks which the bourgeoisie could only proclaim. Without any particularly complex legislation, in a simple, straightforward manner, the proletariat, which had seized power, carried out the democratization of the social system, abolished the bureaucracy, and made all official posts elective. Two mistakes destroyed the fruits of a splendid victory. The proletariat stopped half-way: instead of proceeding to 'expropriate the expropriators,' it allowed itself to be diverted by dreams of instituting supreme justice in a country united by a national purpose; institutions, like the banks, were not seized. ... The second error was an excess of magnanimity on the part of the proletariat: it should have exterminated its enemies, but instead it endeavored to exert moral influence on them; it ignored the importance of pure military action in a civil war, and instead of proceeding to advance vigorously on Versailles and thus to crown the victory gained in Paris, it temporized and thus permitted the Versailles government to rally its sinister forces and make preparations for the bloody events of the May week." [5]

When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist), including luminaries such as Karl Kautsky, supported their various countries' war efforts, Lenin was shocked, at first refusing to believe that the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the Second International, which was composed of these parties. Lenin adopted an 'unpatriotic' position, stating the goal as the defeat of the Tsarist government in the war.

After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin knew he needed to travel back to Russia as soon as possible. But he was isolated in neutral Switzerland as the First World War was raging and it would not have been easy to travel through Europe. But the Swiss Communist Fritz Platten managed to negotiate with the German government for Lenin and his company to travel through Germany in a sealed train. Kaiser Wilhelm II himself is thought to have expected Lenin to cause political unrest back in Russia and end the war on the Eastern front. While on German territory, Lenin was not allowed outside the train. Once past Germany, Lenin continued by ferry to Sweden and the rest of the trip through Scandinavia was arranged by the Swedish Communists Otto Grimlund and Ture Nerman.

On April 16, 1917, he returned to Petrograd and took a leading role within the Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses [6]. The April theses called for an uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. Initially by this lurch to the left Lenin isolated his party. However, this uncompromising stand meant that the Bolsheviks were to become the obvious home for the masses as they became disillusioned with the provisional government, and with the luxury of opposition the Bolsheviks were freed of the responsibility for any consequences of the implementation of their policies (Christopher Read: From Tsar to Soviets pp151–153).

Meanwhile, Aleksandr Kerensky and other enemies of the Bolsheviks accused Lenin of being a paid German agent. On this allegation co-leader Leon Trotsky made a defensive speech on July 17, saying: "An intolerable atmosphere has been created, in which you as well as we are choking. They are throwing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. … Lenin has fought thirty years for the revolution. I have fought twenty years against the oppression of the people. And we cannot but cherish a hatred for German militarism. ... I have been sentenced by a German court to eight months’ imprisonment for my struggle against German militarism. This everybody knows. Let nobody in this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany." [7]

After a failed workers' rising 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" [8], which called for a new form of government based on workers' councils, or soviets. In this work he also claimed that ordinary workers should, in principle, be capable of running a factory or government. He emphasized, though, that to be able to govern the state, a worker should "learn communism." He furthermore insisted that a member of the government should be paid no more than the salary of an average worker.