Vladimir Ilich Ulianov (VI) was born
on April 10, 1870 (old calendar), in Simbirsk on the Volga. He was the son of Ilia
Nikolaevich Ulianov, whose mother was of Kalmyk ancestry (Mongolian ethnic group), and
Maria Alexandrovna Blank. VI's father was a school inspector in the Simbirsk
district, and in 1874 he had the rank of Actual State Councilor and the title of
Excellency, and had thus attained heredetary nobility.Vladimir Ilich was a very good
student, who was especially fond of literature. Unlike his older brother Alexander,
he was not very interested in political and social questions.
Early 1887 Alexander was involved in an assassination attempt
on Alexander III in St. Petersburg, and he was hanged May 8, 1887. Thus he
sacrificed his life to the struggle for freedom in Russia.
That summer VI enrolled as a law student in the university at Kazan, where he got
involved in student protests. He was expelled in December 1887 for his activities.
VI continued his studies, and earned a degree in Law by the St. Petersburg Board of
Education in January 1892.
On the night of December 8, 1895 Vladimir Ilich was caught in
the process of printing illegal literature, and was taken to the "House of
Preliminary Detention" (cell 193), where he was imprisoned until February 13,
1897. Then he was banished for three years to Siberia without police
surveillance. He lived in a peasants' house in Shushenskoye, and enjoyed hunting and
hiking there, in addition to reading and writing. July 22, 1898 (new calendar) he
married Krupskaya, another Marxist revolutionary that VI had
gotten to know well in St. Petersburg.
After returning from Siberia, VI became involved with the publication of Iskra, a revolutionary paper that reached a
substantial illegal circulation, and it was at this time he became known as Lenin. In the summer of 1903 the Second Congress of the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) was held, and there Lenin established
himself as the revolutionary leader he has since been known as.
On January 22, 1905 (new calendar) about 1000 civilians
were killed or wounded by tsarist troops in St. Petersburg, and this date has since been
known as Bloody Sunday (of the 1905 revolution).
In December 1907 Lenin took up residence in Switzerland, and about a year later he
moved to Paris, where he stayed until the summer of 1912, when he moved to Crakow in the
Austrian Poland. On August 8, 1914 Lenin was arrested there as a Russian spy, but he
was released nine days later. In September that year Lenin returned to Switzerland.
Russian Revolution Posters
Leon Trotsky
In the spring of 1917 the revolution was in its formative stage. Both Lenin and
Stalin returned to Petrograd, and there the Bolshevik Red Guards
were organized, and The First Congress of Soviets was held. However, on July 4
arrest orders for Lenin and other leading bolsheviks, were issued, and Lenin fled to
Finland. He returned secretly to Petrograd in October, to approve armed uprising by
the Bolshevik Red Guards.
After the October Revolution Lenin
was busy with political leadership duties such as attending and
speaking at meetings, and writing about political and organizational matters. After
giving a speech at the Michelson factory in Moscow on August 30, 1918, Lenin was shot in
the shoulder and neck and was in pain. He recovered quite swiftly, but two bullets
were left in his body.
In 1921 Lenin suffered from painful headaches, and this
distracted him from work. It was thought that the headaches were possibly caused by
lead poisining due to two bullets still remaining in Lenins body after the assassination
attempt in 1918, and in April 1922 one of those bullets were surgically
removed. However, on May 26, 1922, Lenin suffered
his first stroke, and he was left partially paralyzed, and unable to speak properly.
From this on Lenin spent most of his time at the country estate at Gorki, struggling in
vain to recover, and on January 21, 1924, Lenin died there.
Was this painting Diego Rivera's tribute to Lenin?
