His family, with the last name Ulyanov, was middle class and prosperous. Two events shaped his revolutionary beliefs: the execution of his older brother, Alexandr for an attempt to murder the Russian Tsar; and his expulsion from Kazan University for being the ringleader of a student uprising.
While becoming a Marxist in , he later was allowed to sit for his law examinations and earned a law degree from St. Petersburg University.
He became a public defender and part of a group of revolutionary Marxists. Eventually, his activities got him exiled to Siberia for three years, from to After that he adopted the pseudonym, "Lenin", and moved to Europe, to continue his revolutionary activities.
He returned to Russia to agitate for the, ultimately failed, Revolution of , then returned abroad to Europe in Lenin returned to Russia in April after the czar had abdicated and the Soviet Revolution was underway. Once in power Lenin withdrew Russia from WW I, but his Red Army ended up fighting a three-year civil war with the White Army, a coalition of monarchists, capitalists, and democratic socialists. After an attempted assassination in in which he was seriously wounded, Lenin waged the Red Terror through the Bolshevik secret police, known as the Cheka.
After the Russian famine of , which killed at least five million people, he introduced his New Economic Policy in an attempt to prevent a second revolution.
It permitted some private enterprise, introduced a wage system and let peasants sell produce and other goods on the open market while having to pay tax on any earnings, either in money or raw goods.
State-owned enterprises such as steel operated on a for-profit basis. Lenin suffered a series of strokes between and that made speaking and governing difficult. Lenin was the leader of the October Revolution in Russia that led to the founding of the Soviet Union.
Lenin was known for his revolutionary zeal and his ruthlessness toward anyone who did not support him. Lenin led the revolutionary uprising that brought the Bolshevik faction of communism to power in Russia and across the territories of the old Russian Empire. This was one of the major events of world history in the 20th century, which would influence the course of economic, political, and strategic trends all over the world. Lenin's revolution and establishment of the Soviet Union resulted in the deaths of many millions of Russians and others, and it drove the world into a century of episodic wars and diplomatic conflicts known as the Cold War.
BBC - History. Accessed September 15, Levada Center. Guinness Book of World Records. Alpha History. Wealth Management. Lenin was convinced that the war signaled the final decline of the worldwide capitalist economy and thus was bringing nearer the socialist revolution. He declared himself a "defeatist," arguing that imperial Russia's defeat in the war would be the surest means of bringing about revolution in Russia. In advocating Russia's defeat in World War I, Lenin found himself very much alone among his fellow Russian Marxists, for whom the war had aroused a fair measure of patriotism That summer, former officers of the imperial military, as well as political figures who had been deposed in the Bolshevik seizure of power, began to form anti-Bolshevik armies in southern Russia and Siberia.
Called the White Armies, these groups strongly opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the antidemocratic seizure of power by the Bolshevik Party. Meanwhile, the Soviet government began to organize its own military force, the Red Army, under the direction of Lenin's longtime associate Leon Trotsky.
In August Lenin was seriously wounded by two bullets in an assassination attempt carried out by a political opponent. His strong recovery from the wounds, and his quick return to work, did much to contribute to the "cult" of Lenin as a Christ-like figure who could perform miracles. In the summer of the Soviet government, under Lenin's leadership, launched the Red Terror, a brutal campaign aimed at eliminating political opponents among the civilian population.
The government also introduced a series of economic policies in an effort to put socialist principles into practice and to respond to Russia's pressing economic needs. As part of this program, which came to be known as War Communism, the government began forcibly seizing grain and other food products from the peasantry in order to increase the supply of food to army troops and workers in the cities. In urban areas, factories were nationalized and workers were subject to strict discipline.
While contending with civil war and economic upheaval at home, Lenin also turned his attention to the international arena. In March he organized the Third International, popularly known as the Communist International, or Comintern, to promote world revolution according to the Russian communist model.
The Comintern initially focused on Europe as the center for the future revolution. However, when a European upheaval failed to materialize, the Comintern shifted its attention to Asia, where it supported the cause of colonial peoples struggling against European imperialism. The policies of War Communism led to significant declines in Russia's agricultural and industrial output.
Widespread strikes and uprisings broke out in cities and rural areas, and by early mass unrest was threatening the stability of the Soviet government. The policy signified a temporary retreat from Lenin's goal of transforming the Soviet economy into a fully communist one. In May Lenin suffered a stroke. He recovered and resumed work three months later, but then in December he suffered a second stroke and it became apparent that his health was in serious decline.
That month the Soviet government declared the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR , a federal union consisting of Soviet Russia and neighboring areas that were under Russian military occupation or ruled by branches of the communist movement. 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 , Lenin narrowly survived an assassination attempt, but was severely wounded. His long term health was affected, and in he suffered a stroke from which he never fully recovered.
In his declining years, he worried about the bureaucratisation of the regime and also expressed concern over the increasing power of his eventual successor Joseph Stalin. Lenin died on 24 January His corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.
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