Where did Lenin study? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - biography, information, personal life

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich(pseudonym) real name -Ulyanov"

Childhood, family, study of V.I. Lenin
Revolutionary spiritLeninVladimir Ilyich
Shushenskoye
Life abroad
PolicyLeninVladimir Ilyich after the October Revolution
last years of life
The results of Lenin's activities
Video about Lenin

"lenin Vladimir Ilich" (1870—1924)

Childhood, family, study

The future revolutionary and leader of the proletariat was born into the Ulyanov family - representatives of the intelligentsia of Simbirsk (1870).
His father worked as a teacher for a long time. Then he was appointed inspector of public schools in the province. And later he became their director.
For his outstanding services in the field of public education, Ulyanov Sr. was repeatedly awarded orders, he was awarded the rank of truly state councilor and was granted nobility.
He died when the future leader of the proletariat was barely 15 years old.
His wife was quite educated, and she herself taught the children, of whom there were six in the Ulyanov family, a lot.
According to genealogical research, Lenin's ancestors included Jews, Germans, Swedes (on his mother's side), and Kalmyks (on his father's side).
Parents encouraged their children's curiosity and supported them in every possible way.
Having entered the Simbirsk classical gymnasium (1879), he quickly became the first student, showing a special passion for history, philosophy, and literature.
Vladimir graduated from this educational institution with excellent marks. And he decided to continue his studies at Kazan University, choosing the profession of lawyer.
The death of the head of the family was a big blow for the Ulyanovs. And the execution of the eldest son that followed soon after. Alexander was arrested and sentenced to death for his participation in organizing an attempt to assassinate the emperor.
And soon Vladimir was expelled from the university as one of the participants in the student gathering. And they send her to her mother’s remote village estate.
A few years later, the Ulyanovs moved to Samara. This is where his acquaintance with Marxist ideas begins.
Having not completed his studies at Kazan University, Vladimir Ilyich managed to study as an external student at. After which he was appointed to the position of legal assistant (sworn attorney) (1892).

Revolutionary spirit

Most researchers believe that young Vladimir awakened his desire for revolutionary activity after the execution of his brother. Then there were the works of Marx, which strengthened it.
Vladimir did not work at the bar for a long time - only a year. After which he left jurisprudence and moved to St. Petersburg. Here he joined the student circle of the Institute of Technology. Members of this community engaged in in-depth study of Marxist ideas.
Two years later he went abroad, where he had the opportunity to meet many participants in the international labor movement.

Shushenskoye

After returning from a trip abroad, together with L. Martov, he took an active part in the founding of the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” in St. Petersburg, which carried out active propaganda among ordinary workers. However, he was soon arrested. He remained in custody for more than a year, and then was sent to Siberia - to the village of Shushenskoye.
The clean air and favorable climate of Shushenskoye had a beneficial effect on the health of the young revolutionary. Here he married N. Krupskaya, just as he was exiled for prohibited activities. He also found use for his legal knowledge in Siberia, giving advice to peasants. He is also actively starting to write. His works bring him popularity among followers of Marxism.

Life abroad

Back in 1898, the First Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was organized in Minsk. Its participants were dispersed and many were taken into custody. Therefore, after returning from exile, the leaders of the Union of Struggle, including Lenin, are trying to gather the scattered and scattered members of this party.
They decide to use a newspaper as one of the means of unification. To seek support and conduct negotiations with foreign supporters, Ulyanov again goes abroad.
Living for a long time in Munich, London, Geneva, he meets the right people. He is included in the editorial board of the new newspaper Iskra. On its pages he begins to sign with his pseudonym. Subsequently, he uses it in life.
Here in immigration, he formed his own vision of the tasks and goals of the Social Democratic Party.
As a result, already during the second congress of the RSDLP (1903), the party split into “Mensheviks” and “Bolsheviks”. The latter, who supported the position of Ulyanov - Lenin, got their name due to the fact that they constituted the majority in the voting. Well, their opponents began to be called “Mensheviks.”
Almost at the same time, with the light hand of Martov, the term “Leninism” appeared. Lenin's former like-minded person outlined radical methods in the theory and practice of the revolution.
Having only briefly arrived in Russia during the years of the first revolution (1905-07), he actively worked at the head of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party and their new print organ, New Life. Without sharing the opinion of those who prepared the revolution, he nevertheless hoped for its victory: it was supposed to rid the country of autocracy and open a further path for the implementation of the Bolshevik plans.
However, after the unsuccessful completion of the uprising, he goes first to Switzerland and then to Finland. But while there, he is keenly interested in what is happening in his homeland.
So, he learned about the beginning of the war while in Austria-Hungary, in the remote town of Poronino (the territory of modern Poland). Here he was arrested, suspecting him of being a Russian spy. Local Social Democrats helped him avoid a long imprisonment.
Immediately after this, he began to vehemently oppose the war and advocated for its end. Moreover, the fact that if resistance ceases, Russia could completely find itself under German occupation did not bother him or stop him.
The February Revolution came as a complete surprise to him (as well as to most immigrants and Russian Social Democrats).
After this, after 17 years spent abroad, the leader of the proletariat headed to Russia.

Return to Russia

He returned to Petrograd along with 35 of his comrades. Moreover, they crossed the territory of enemy Germany completely unhindered, having secured permission from the authorities of this country. It was in April (1917). And immediately upon arrival, right at the station, realizing that those gathered here had not come to arrest him, but to support him, he made his famous fiery speech, climbing onto an armored car.
His radical idea of an armed uprising of the workers was not supported by many party members. However, people liked it.
After Lenin's first unsuccessful attempt to take power into his own hands, as a result of which he was accused of treason in favor of Germany, he and several associates took refuge in the outskirts of Petrograd. He returned only a few months later to organize a revolutionary coup, or rather to give the final impetus to its implementation.
When the October events had already become a thing of the past, Lenin and his followers, having eliminated their political opponents and dissenters by hook or by crook, came to power. Vladimir Ilyich moved to the Kremlin, becoming not only the leader of the party, but also the country.

We can briefly say about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that he is an outstanding figure who played a significant role in Russian history. Creator of the RSDLP, etc. the leader of the world proletariat, regardless of the assessment of his activities, directed Russia along a special path of development, which affected the entire world history.

General characteristics and performance assessments

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a man to whom an incredible number of books, articles, and publications are dedicated. His characteristics range from servile worship, recognition as a genius of all times and peoples, to outright abuse and denigration, identification with the devil who plunged Russia into hell.
The assessments of the first kind include, of course, all Soviet literature. This is not surprising. The man who was the leader of the Bolsheviks and carried out the October Revolution could not help but become a role model in the state he created. Despite Stalin's purges, during which former heroes of the revolution were easily forgotten and erased from memory, Lenin's authority was never questioned. It is interesting that even rivals in ideological struggle ( Stalinists, Trotskyists, Zinovievites), disagreeing in opinions, always looked for Lenin’s statements confirming their correctness.
After the exposure of the “cult of Stalin” and his associates, during which the very principles of the development of the Soviet state were questioned, Lenin also remained at an unattainable height. Criticism of the leader not only did not exist, but it simply could not arise among the population.
Of course, this situation was possible for several reasons. Firstly, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin left an incredible literary legacy. All his notes, not excluding the most trivial ones, were carefully collected and published in the form of a collection of works, which seemed to be the pinnacle of human wisdom. Lenin was a fairly flexible politician, and in his works, depending on the political moment, one can find direct contradictions to himself. However, there are unlikely to be many people who have seriously read the entire collection of his works. Most often it was simply used to confirm one’s own thoughts or actions.
Secondly, during his lifetime Lenin was literally deified, to say nothing of the halo of inaccessibility that was created after his death. Stories for children about Lenin are striking in their naivety and simplicity, and yet more than one Soviet generation was raised on them.
Finally, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was truly an extraordinary person. Possessing enormous intellect, he could easily talk about some lofty economic problems and at the same time furiously, without understanding the expressions, attack his ideological opponents. Many, by the way, attribute to him the tradition of using not quite decent words and expressions in journalism ("sharks of imperialism", "political prostitute", etc.).
The very fact of the implementation of a socialist revolution in a particular country, the formation of a state that announced plans to build communism, cannot but evoke a special attitude towards Lenin. Being a fanatic of the revolution, he completely subordinated his life to this goal. The mentality of the Russian people allows one to forgive the most terrible actions of a person who does not strive only for personal well-being.
The opposite point of view belongs to Russian emigrants who were forced to flee Russia after the revolution and some modern Russian historians. The position of the emigrants is clear. Having lost all their fortune, they were expelled from their own country and declared enemies of the new state. For them, the main culprit of what happened was Lenin. These assessments carry a huge stamp of subjectivity (for example, Bunin about Lenin: “Oh, what an animal this is!”).
Huge streams of mud were poured after Perestroika over the entire Soviet historical period, including Lenin. This is an understandable phenomenon: after many years of censorship, people have the opportunity to openly express their opinions. But attributing all mortal sins to Lenin, declaring him the enemy of all humanity, and using unproven evidence and facts is too reminiscent of Soviet times, only with the opposite sign.
At present, when the era of the USSR is beginning to be viewed more objectively, works are appearing that illuminate the personality of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin impartially. Both negative and positive aspects of his activities are recognized.

The main directions of Lenin's policy before the seizure of power

Having led the struggle against the tsarist government, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, at the head of the Bolshevik Party, immediately took an irreconcilable position, excluding the possibility of any compromise. He considered only revolution to be the ultimate goal of his activity, to achieve which all means were suitable.
The success of the Bolshevik agitation cannot be explained solely by the personal qualities of Lenin or other party members. Russia was indeed in an extremely difficult situation. Despite its vast territory, rich natural resources and human potential, the country still lagged behind the leading world powers, but at the same time resolutely declared its imperial ambitions. The mediocre Russo-Japanese War, which resulted in the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, clearly demonstrated the failure of the state structure. The creation of the State Duma and attempts to carry out some half-hearted reforms could no longer calm the population, but only postponed the next outburst of discontent.
The true cause of the revolution, along with the poverty of the bulk of the population, was the First World War. General jingoistic enthusiasm and faith in Russian “miracle soldiers” quickly gave way to disappointment and a premonition of disaster. Whether Lenin was a genius or not, only he was able to make the most of what was happening. Having declared from the very beginning the imperialist, wrong nature of the war, he resolutely opposed its conduct and, in general, against victory in the war. Lenin agitated for the soldiers' bayonets to be turned in a different direction, towards their own government. Bolshevik agitation against the war in itself could not cause defeat, but it lay on the fertile ground of soldier discontent.
The logical result was the February Revolution, after which we can already talk about the real influence of the Bolsheviks and Lenin on political processes through the councils of workers' and soldiers' deputies. The well-known Order No. 1 of the Petrograd Council actually meant the collapse of the Russian army and defeat in the war. There is no longer an authoritative political leader or movement left in the state that can correct the situation. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin played on these sentiments, calling for a radical change in the existing system. The slogans of the Bolsheviks were as simple as possible and close to the people, who were ready to do anything to at least somehow improve their situation.
In the end, Lenin simply showed maximum concentration and readiness to take power into his own hands. The October Revolution, despite its subsequent idealization and heroic glorification, occurred almost bloodlessly. In general, there were no defenders.

The politics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin after the October Revolution

Having seized power, the Bolsheviks declared their government temporary, as they promised to hold elections to the Constituent Assembly, which was supposed to resolve the issue of the Russian state structure. The elections took place in November 1918 and did not bring Lenin the desired result (the Bolsheviks received only 25% of the votes). However, the leader of the RSDLP already possessed all the main levers of state power, so the voting results did not play a big role for him.
Lenin's critics blame him for dispersing the Constituent Assembly at the beginning of 1918. However, this body did not have any real power. The Bolsheviks’ ignorance of his decisions and his status in general did not in any way affect the political situation in the country. In fact, only the members of the Constituent Assembly were dissatisfied. The few demonstrations against its crackdown confirm this.
One of the darkest deeds of Lenin's politics is considered to be the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty (March 1918) with Germany. The terms of the agreement were extremely humiliating. Huge territories were given to Germany, Russia was obliged to immediately demobilize the army and navy, a huge amount of reparations was imposed on it, etc. On the one hand, Lenin consciously agreed to such conditions, since he understood that he needed strength to protect his own power. On the other hand, was there any real alternative to such a solution? Russia clearly could not continue the war, torn apart by internal contradictions. Prolongation of the war could lead to even worse results. It is unknown whether Lenin foresaw subsequent events, but already in November 1918, during the revolution in Germany, the Soviet government unilaterally canceled the terms of the peace treaty. Ultimately, history confirmed that signing the treaty was not the worst decision at that time.
One of the directions of Lenin's policy after the revolution was the elimination of political competitors. At first, the Cadet Party was outlawed, as contrary to the very idea of a socialist state. However, with the exception of the arrest of the party leaders, she was not persecuted for about six months and was even able to take part in the work of the Constituent Assembly.
Gradually, the Bolshevik Party gained strength, and the fight against political opponents became increasingly brutal. There are arrests, repressions, and executions of people disliked by the new government. A special focus was the fight against the church and priests. The consequence of this is the Civil War.
In this brutal clash, the Russian people suffered great losses. The country was subjected to the greatest disasters, the consequences of which were then not easy to get rid of. It is difficult to determine who is right and who is wrong in this fratricidal war, but it cannot be said that the Bolsheviks won only thanks to their harsh repressive policies. The white movement was not popular among the broad masses of the population, and this was the reason for its defeat. Lenin managed to captivate the people with his slogans, not all of which, unfortunately, were implemented in practice.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin declared the proletariat to be the main driving social force; accordingly, the dictatorship of the proletariat became the form of power. Only in alliance with him will other classes (the peasantry and the intelligentsia) be able to move along the path of social progress towards the construction of a higher phase - communism.
The main directions of Lenin's policy arising from the task were: the concentration of all power in the hands of one party; nationalization of all industries, lands, banks; abolition of private property; eradication of religion as a means of stupefying the people, etc.
Economic difficulties and the Civil War led Lenin to proclaim the policy of War Communism, which included the implementation of a large-scale “Red Terror”. The merciless destruction and robbery of the “exploiting” classes began in order to obtain material resources and food. These measures truly characterize Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as a very cruel person, walking towards his goal over the corpses of his enemies. The call for the destruction of the kulaks as a class led to the fact that agriculture lost its main producers. Protection primarily of the poor led to the fact that power in the village was often given to idlenesses and parasites.
During the Civil War, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin proved himself to be a brilliant organizer who was able to achieve maximum centralization of power and effective distribution of available limited resources in a short time. The proclaimed social equality made it possible to promote many talented military leaders from among the people who won victories over white generals. As a result, by 1920 the main centers of resistance were defeated. Until 1922, only the struggle to establish Soviet power on the outskirts of the former Russian Empire continued.
However, the end of the Civil War posed new problems for Lenin. The policy of war communism had exhausted itself; a transition to peaceful construction was needed. In March 1921, Lenin announced the transition to the New Economic Policy (NEP), which consisted of some concessions to capitalism to overcome the economic crisis. The rental of small and medium-sized enterprises was allowed, the possibility of hiring labor became possible, instead of surplus appropriation and taxes in kind, a progressive income tax was introduced for peasants, etc. In general, this policy brought results. So, by the mid-1920s. The country reached pre-war production levels.

last years of life

In August 1918, an attempt was made on the leader of the revolution. According to the official version, F. Kaplan, a fan from the Socialist Revolutionary camp, shot at him. However, despite being seriously wounded, Lenin continued to work.
4 years later, according to his recommendation, the USSR was founded. At the same time, there is a sharp deterioration in the leader's health. For some time, he has been fighting the disease with varying success, continuing to work and lead the country.
But at the beginning of 1924, the disease finally prevailed, and on January 21, the man, under whose strict leadership one state was destroyed and a completely different one was created, dies.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin initiated one of the largest events in Russian and world history - the October Revolution. The world's first socialist state was created. The statement about the inevitability of building communism, of course, did not justify itself, but the fact that a completely new model of the state was created is undoubtedly.
The USSR existed for almost 70 years, achieving, along with the United States, the status of a world leader. The Soviet state won the Second World War, gave the world a large number of scientific discoveries, scientists, artists, etc. The very existence of a socialist state influenced the development of all regions of the globe.

V.I. Lenin, whose brief biography is given later in the article, was the leader of the Bolshevik movement in Russia, as well as the leader of the October Revolution of 1917.

The full name of the historical figure is Vladimir Ilyich. He can rightfully be called the founder of a new state on the world map - the USSR.

An extraordinary personality, philosopher and ideologist, leader of the country of the Soviets, during his short life he managed to turn around the destinies of countless people.

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich - significance for Russia

The activities of the leader became a decisive factor in the preparation and implementation of the revolution in Tsarist Russia.

His numerous and persistent calls, articles and speeches became the detonator of the struggle for people's power not only in Russia, but also in other countries.

The highest ability for self-education allowed him to thoroughly study everything about the Marxist theory of world building. Scientists suggest that Vladimir Ilyich knew 11 foreign languages. Unshakable self-confidence made the Marxist the leader of the revolution.

A competent and active agitator, overwhelming any listener with his pressure, was followed by the majority of Social Democrats, who, with his help, carried out the “preparatory” revolution of 1905-1907.

The power of the Russian Empire was completely crushed only 10 years later, during the unfolding revolutionary actions of 1917. The result of the uprising was the formation of a new state with governance based on unlimited violence.

After a 7-year struggle with hunger, devastation and popular ignorance, Lenin at the end of his life realized the doom of the entire capitalist idea.

Unable to speak due to paralysis, he wrote the most important words about the failure and change of point of view on socialism. But his last weak appeals did not reach the masses; the Soviet state began its difficult path.

When and where was Lenin born

The world leader of the people's liberation movement was a descendant of the ancient Ulyanov family. His paternal grandfather was a Russian serf, and his maternal grandfather was a baptized Jew.

Vladimir's parents were Russian intellectuals. For his services, his father was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, III degree, which gave him a title of nobility, inherited. The mother was educated as a teacher and was involved in raising children.

Volodya was born in April 1870, he became the third child in a family that lived in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). The date of his birth, the 22nd according to the new style, subsequently began to be celebrated as a holiday in the Soviet Union.

Lenin's real name

At the beginning of his political activity, Vladimir Ilyich published personal works under various pseudonyms, including Ilyin and Lenin.

The latter became his second surname, under which the leader entered world history.

The leader's blood surname was Ulyanov, it was borne by Vladimir's father Ilya Vasilyevich.

Vladimir’s mother was the daughter of the doctor Israel Moishevich, a Jewish nationality, and in her maiden name she bore the surname Blank.

Lenin in childhood

Vladimir differed from the other children in the Ulyanov family by being noisy and clumsy. The boy's body developed disproportionately; he had short legs and a large head with blond, later slightly reddish hair.

Because of his weak legs, Volodya learned to walk only by the age of three; he often fell with a crash and roar and, unable to get up on his own, beat his large head on the floor in despair.

Rumble accompanied almost any activity of the baby; he loved to break and disassemble toys and objects. However, the child grew up conscientious, and still admitted to his tricks after some time.

By mistake, an ophthalmologist at an early age diagnosed Ulyanov with strabismus; his left eye saw very poorly. And only towards the end of his life did Lenin learn that in fact he was nearsighted in one eye, and he should have worn glasses all his life.

Due to poor eyesight, Vladimir developed the habit of squinting during a dialogue with his interlocutor, and thus his characteristic “Leninist squint” was born.

Lenin in his youth

Some physical disabilities did not affect Vladimir's mental abilities. His intelligence and memory were significantly higher than those of his peers.

The director of the Simbirsk gymnasium, where the boy entered in 1879, recognized the young Ulyanov as superior among other gymnasium students. After 8 years, the best student completed secondary education with a gold medal.

On the day of the final exam in geography, May 8, 1887, Vladimir's older brother was executed for participating in an assassination attempt on Alexander III, the Russian Emperor.

Volodya did not have a close relationship with his executed brother, but his death left a terrible wound in the boy’s heart. The entire subsequent struggle against the monarchy was carried out by Lenin with a hidden thirst for revenge for the grief that befell the entire family.

In the same year, Vladimir entered Kazan University, however, he was soon expelled for a student meeting and exiled to the village of Kukushkino, where he studied self-education.

In 1891, having prepared on his own, he finally received a law diploma from St. Petersburg University, having passed all the exams externally.

Participation of V.I. Lenin in political circles

After a short exile in 1888, Vladimir Ulyanov, returning to Kazan, joined the Marxist circle led by N.E. Fedoseev, actively sought connections with professional revolutionaries.

The following year, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Vladimir himself created a Marxist circle.

Among its participants, the future leader distributed his own translation from the German “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, the work of F. Engels and K. Marx.

In 1893, Ulyanov’s thirst for open spaces led him to St. Petersburg, where he actively began giving lectures in workers’ circles, becoming a member of the Marxist circle at the Technological Institute.

How Lenin came to power

For organizing the activities of the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class,” the revolutionary was exiled to the Yenisei province.

There, over the years of his life in the village of Shushenskoye, multi-volume works came from his pen, published under various pseudonyms.

There, 3 years later, Vladimir Ilyich married his faithful comrade-in-arms, who was exiled after him; his wife’s name was Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.

In 1900, the future leader went abroad for 3 years. Upon his return, he becomes the leader of the Bolshevik Party in Russia.

As a former exile, Ulyanov was prohibited from living in large cities and the capital, so the leadership of the revolution in 1905-1907. he carried out while living in St. Petersburg illegally.

After the workers' strikes subsided, Vladimir Ilyich spent 10 years abroad, where he actively participated in conferences, made connections with like-minded people and published newspapers. Lenin learned about the overthrow of the monarch in February 1917 from newspapers; at that time he lived in Switzerland.

Immediately, the future leader arrived in St. Petersburg with the aim of preparing the last, October Socialist Revolution, as a result of which he headed the new Soviet government - the Council of People's Commissars and took the position of chairman.

Lenin's role in the October events of 1917

After a forced long-term emigration, on April 3, Ulyanov returned to his homeland as a world-famous personality among the Social Democrats, the leader of the Bolsheviks and the leader of the future socialist revolution.

The peaceful demonstration in St. Petersburg, held on June 18 under the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” did not bring the desired results. Therefore, the seizure of state power had to occur during an armed uprising.

The Central Committee of the Party hesitated to take armed action; Lenin's calls for an uprising in letters were not communicated to the people. Therefore, despite the threat of arrest, the revolutionary personally came to Smolny on October 20.

He became so active in organizing the uprising that already on the night of October 25-26, the Provisional Government was arrested and power passed into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's works and reforms

The first working document of the new government, the presentation of which took place at the congress on October 26, was the peace decree created by Vladimir Ilyich, which declared illegal any armed encroachments by a large state on weak nations.

The Decree on Land abolished private ownership of land, all land passed without redemption to committees and Councils of Deputies.

In 124 days, working 15-18 hours, the leader signed the decree on the creation of the Red Army, concluded a forced peace with Germany, and created a capable new state apparatus (SNK).

In April 1918, the newspaper Pravda published the work of the leader, “The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power.” In July, the Constitution of the RSFSR was approved.

In order to split the peasant strata and eliminate the rural bourgeoisie, power in the villages was transferred to the hands of the poorest representatives of the peasants.

In response to the Civil War that broke out in the summer of 1918, the “Red Terror” was organized; the word “shoot” became one of the most frequently used.

The severe economic crisis resulting from the exhausting Civil War forced the leadership to create the New Economic Policy, allowing free trade, after which the country's economy began to struggle.

As an unbending atheist, Vladimir Ilyich waged an irreconcilable struggle with representatives of the clergy, allowing churches to be robbed and their ministers shot. In 1922, the USSR was officially created.

When Lenin died

After being wounded in 1918 and a busy work schedule, the leader’s health began to deteriorate. In 1922 he suffered 2 strokes.

In March 1923, a third stroke led to complete paralysis of the body. In 1924, in the village of Gorki near Moscow, the leader of the Russian revolution died, the date of death is January 21 according to modern style.

When asked how many years Lenin lived, the answer is: 54 years.

Historical portrait of Lenin

As a historical figure, V.I. Ulyanov laid a strong foundation for the Bolshevik ideology, which was realized during the October Revolution.

The power of the Bolshevik party, which later became the only one in the country, was maintained by the unlimited terror of the Cheka.

Lenin became a cult personality during his lifetime.

After the death of Vladimir Ilyich, thanks to the efforts of V.I. Stalin, the former leader of the revolution, began to be idolized.

The role of Lenin in the history of Russia

A brilliant Marxist revolutionary, a cunning and calculating avenger for his executed brother, Vladimir Ulyanov served to bring about the All-Russian Socialist Revolution in a short time.

Millions of people became victims of forceful actions under his leadership: both opponents of the Bolshevik regime at the hands of the Red Terror, and people devastated and starved to death during the formative years of the USSR.

The sparkling revolution, the merciless destruction of the enemies of Soviet power, the execution of the royal family, formed a political portrait of Vladimir Ilyich as a brilliant leader and tyrant who fought for power for so long and ruled for so short.

Conclusion

Vladimir Ulyanov dreamed of a World Revolution. In his plans, Russia was only the beginning of a long journey, carefully prepared during the years of forced emigration.

But illness and death stopped the never-tiring revolutionary, who played his significant role in history. His mummified body in the mausoleum was the object of worship of millions of people, but this time has passed.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin). Born on April 22, 1870 in Simbirsk - died on January 21, 1924 in the Gorki estate, Moscow province. Russian revolutionary, Soviet political and statesman, creator of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), one of the main organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR, creator of the first socialist state in world history.

Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the USSR, first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.

The scope of the main political and journalistic works is materialist philosophy, the theory of Marxism, criticism of capitalism and its highest phase: imperialism, the theory and practice of the implementation of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism, the political economy of socialism.

Regardless of the positive or negative assessment of Lenin's activities, even many non-communist researchers consider him the most significant revolutionary statesman in world history. Time magazine included Lenin among the 100 outstanding people of the 20th century in the category “Leaders and Revolutionaries.” The works of V.I. Lenin occupy first place in the world among translated literature.

Vladimir Ulyanov was born in 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of the inspector of public schools of the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), - the son of a former serf in the village of Androsovo, Sergach district, Nizhny Novgorod province, Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the surname: Ulyanina), married to Anna Smirnova, the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer M. S. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Kalmyks).

Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on the mother's side and, according to various versions, Ukrainian, German or Jewish origin on the father's side.

According to one version, Vladimir’s maternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. According to another version, he came from a family of German colonists invited to Russia). The famous researcher of the Lenin family M. Shaginyan argued that Alexander Blank was Ukrainian.

I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of actual state councilor, which in the Table of Ranks corresponded to the military rank of major general and gave the right to hereditary nobility.

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, which was headed by F. M. Kerensky, the father of A. F. Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government (1917). In 1887 he graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. F. M. Kerensky was very disappointed with the choice of Volodya Ulyanov, as he advised him to enter the history and literature department of the university due to the younger Ulyanov’s great success in Latin and literature.

Until 1887, nothing is known about any revolutionary activities of Vladimir Ulyanov. He accepted Orthodox baptism and until the age of 16 belonged to the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh, leaving religion probably in 1886. His grades according to the law of God in the gymnasium were excellent, as in almost all other subjects. There is only one B in his matriculation certificate - logically. In 1885, the list of students at the gymnasium indicated that Vladimir was “a very gifted, diligent and careful student. He does very well in all subjects. He behaves exemplary." The first award was presented to him already in 1880, after graduating from the first grade - a book with gold embossing on the binding: “For good behavior and success” and a certificate of merit.

In 1887, on May 8 (20), his older brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. What happened became a deep tragedy for the Ulyanov family, who were unaware of Alexander’s revolutionary activities.

At the university, Vladimir was involved in the illegal student circle of Narodnaya Volya, led by Lazar Bogoraz. Three months after his admission, he was expelled for his participation in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the introduction of police surveillance of students and a campaign to combat “unreliable” students. According to a student inspector who suffered from student unrest, Ulyanov was in the forefront of the raging students.

The next night, Vladimir, along with forty other students, was arrested and sent to the police station. All those arrested, in accordance with the methods of combating “disobedience” characteristic of the reign, were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.” Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repression. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Ulyanov’s cousin, Vladimir Ardashev. After petitions from Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich’s aunt, Ulyanov was exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Laishevsky district, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs’ house until the winter of 1888-1889.

Since during the police investigation, young Ulyanov’s connections with the illegal circle of Bogoraz were revealed, and also because of the execution of his brother, he was included in the list of “unreliable” persons subject to police supervision. For the same reason, he was prohibited from reinstatement at the university, and his mother’s corresponding requests were rejected over and over again.

In the fall of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he subsequently joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. In 1924, N.K. Krupskaya wrote in Pravda: “Vladimir Ilyich loved Plekhanov passionately. Plekhanov played a major role in the development of Vladimir Ilyich, helped him find the correct revolutionary approach, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for a long time: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.”

In May 1889, M. A. Ulyanova acquired the Alakaevka estate of 83.5 dessiatines (91.2 hectares) in the Samara province and the family moved there to live. Yielding to his mother’s persistent requests, Vladimir tried to manage the estate, but had no success. The surrounding peasants, taking advantage of the inexperience of the new owners, stole a horse and two cows from them. As a result, Ulyanova first sold the land, and subsequently the house. During Soviet times, a house-museum of Lenin was created in this village.

In the fall of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also maintained contact with local revolutionaries.

In 1890, the authorities relented and allowed him to study as an external student for the law exams. In November 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams as an external student for a course at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial St. Petersburg University. After that, he studied a large amount of economic literature, especially zemstvo statistical reports on agriculture.

During the period 1892-1893, Lenin's views, under the strong influence of Plekhanov's works, slowly evolved from Narodnaya Volya to Social Democratic ones. At the same time, already in 1893 he developed a doctrine that was new at that time, declaring contemporary Russia, in which four-fifths of the population was peasantry, a “capitalist” country. The credo of Leninism was finally formulated in 1894: “the Russian worker, rising at the head of all democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the Russian proletariat (along with the proletariat of all countries) along the straight road of open political struggle to a victorious communist revolution.”

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara attorney (lawyer) A. N. Hardin, conducting most criminal cases and conducting “state defenses.”

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg, where he got a job as an assistant to the sworn attorney (lawyer) M. F. Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, and the history of the capitalist evolution of the post-reform Russian village and industry. Some of them were published legally. At this time he also developed the program of the Social Democratic Party. The activities of V.I. Lenin as a publicist and researcher of the development of capitalism in Russia, based on extensive statistical materials, make him famous among Social Democrats and opposition-minded liberal figures, as well as in many other circles of Russian society.

Under the influence of Plekhanov, Lenin partially retreated from his doctrine proclaiming Tsarist Russia a “capitalist” country, declaring it a “semi-feudal” country. His immediate goal is to overthrow the autocracy, now in alliance with the “liberal bourgeoisie.” The “Union of Struggle” carried out active propaganda activities among workers; they issued more than 70 leaflets.

In December 1895, like many other members of the “Union,” Ulyanov was arrested, kept in prison for more than a year, and in 1897 exiled for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province.

Ulyanov, in a letter to his mother dated May 10, 1898, describes the current situation as follows: “N. K., as you know, was given a tragicomic condition: if he does not immediately (sic!) get married, then return to Ufa. I am not at all inclined to allow this, and therefore we have already begun “troubles” (mainly requests for the issuance of documents, without which we cannot get married) in order to have time to get married before Lent (before the Petrovka): it is still possible to hope that the strict authorities will find this sufficient “immediate” marriage.” Finally, at the beginning of July, the documents were received and it was possible to go to church. But it so happened that there were no guarantors, no best men, no wedding rings, without which the wedding ceremony was unthinkable. The police officer categorically forbade the exiles Krzhizhanovsky and Starkov from coming to the wedding. Of course, the troubles could have started again, but Vladimir Ilyich decided not to wait. He invited familiar Shushensky peasants as guarantors and best men: clerk Stepan Nikolaevich Zhuravlev, shopkeeper Ioannikiy Ivanovich Zavertkin, Simon Afanasyevich Ermolaev and others. And one of the exiles, Oscar Aleksandrovich Engberg, made wedding rings for the bride and groom from a copper coin.

On July 10 (22), 1898, in a local church, priest John Orestov performed the sacrament of wedding. An entry in the church register of the village of Shushenskoye indicates that the administrative-exiled Orthodox Christians V.I. Ulyanov and N.K. Krupskaya had their first marriage.

In exile, he wrote a book, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” based on the collected material, directed against “legal Marxism” and populist theories. During his exile, over 30 works were written, contacts were established with Social Democrats in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. By the end of the 1890s, under the pseudonym “K. Tulin" V.I. Ulyanov gained fame in Marxist circles. While in exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

In 1898, in Minsk, in the absence of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held, consisting of 9 people, which established the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, adopting the Manifesto. All members of the Central Committee elected by the congress and most of the delegates were immediately arrested, and many organizations represented at the congress were destroyed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in exile in Siberia, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of the newspaper.

In April 1900, Lenin illegally made a one-day trip to Riga from Pskov. At the negotiations with the Latvian Social Democrats, issues of transporting the Iskra newspaper from abroad to Russia through the ports of Latvia were considered. At the beginning of May 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov received a foreign passport in Pskov. On May 19 he leaves for St. Petersburg, and on May 21 he is detained by the police there. The luggage sent by Ulyanov from Pskov to Podolsk was also carefully examined.

After inspecting the luggage, the head of the Moscow security department, S.V. Zubatov, sends a telegram to St. Petersburg to the head of the special department of the police department, L.A. Rataev: “The cargo turned out to be a library and tendentious manuscripts, opened in accordance with the Charter of the Russian Railways, as sent unsealed. After consideration by the gendarmerie police and examination of the department, it will be sent to its destination. Zubatov." The operation to arrest the Social Democrat ended in failure. As an experienced conspirator, V.I. Lenin did not give the Pskov police any reason to accuse him. In the reports of the spies and in the information of the Pskov Gendarmerie Directorate about V.I. Ulyanov, it is noted that “during his residence in Pskov before going abroad, he was not noticed in anything reprehensible.” Lenin’s work in the statistical bureau of the Pskov provincial zemstvo and his participation in drawing up a program for an assessment and statistical survey of the province also served as a good cover for Lenin. Apart from an illegal visit to the capital, Ulyanov had nothing to show for it. Ten days later he was released.

In June 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov, together with his mother M.A. Ulyanova and older sister Anna Ulyanova, came to Ufa, where his wife N.K. Krupskaya was in exile.

On July 29, 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland, where he negotiated with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper Iskra (later the magazine Zarya appeared) included three representatives of the emigrant group “Emancipation of Labor” - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the “Union of Struggle” - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The average circulation of the newspaper was 8,000 copies, with some issues up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network of underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire. The editorial board of Iskra settled in Munich, but Plekhanov remained in Geneva. Axelrod still lived in Zurich. Martov has not yet arrived from Russia. Zasulich didn’t come either. Having lived in Munich for a short time, Potresov left it for a long time. The main work in Munich to organize the release of Iskra is carried out by Ulyanov. The first issue of Iskra arrives from the printing house on December 24, 1900. On April 1, 1901, after serving her exile in Ufa, N.K. Krupskaya arrived in Munich and began working in the editorial office of Iskra.

In December 1901, the magazine “Zarya” published an article entitled “Years. “critics” on the agrarian issue. The first essay" is the first work that Vladimir Ulyanov signed with the pseudonym "N. Lenin."

In the period 1900-1902, Lenin, under the influence of the general crisis of the revolutionary movement that had arisen at that time, came to the conclusion that, left to its own devices, the revolutionary proletariat would soon abandon the fight against the autocracy, limiting itself to economic demands alone.

In 1902, in the work “What to do? Urgent issues of our movement” Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization (“a party of a new type”). In this article he writes: “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!” In this work, Lenin first formulated his doctrines of “democratic centralism” (a strict hierarchical organization of the revolutionary party) and “introducing consciousness.”

According to the then new doctrine of “bringing in consciousness,” it was assumed that the industrial proletariat itself was not revolutionary and was inclined only to economic demands (“trade unionism”), the necessary “consciousness” had to be “brought in” from the outside by a party of professional revolutionaries, which in this case would become the “avant-garde”.

Foreign agents of the tsarist intelligence picked up the trail of the Iskra newspaper in Munich. Therefore, in April 1902, the newspaper's editorial office moved from Munich to London. Together with Lenin and Krupskaya, Martov and Zasulich move to London. From April 1902 to April 1903, V.I. Lenin, together with N.K. Krupskaya, lived in London, under the surname Richter, first in furnished rooms, and then rented two small rooms in a house not far from the British Museum, in whose library Vladimir Ilyich worked often. At the end of April 1903, Lenin and his wife moved from London to Geneva in connection with the transfer of the publication of the Iskra newspaper there. They lived in Geneva until 1905.

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held in London. Lenin took an active part in the preparations for the congress not only with his articles in Iskra and Zarya; Since the summer of 1901, together with Plekhanov, he worked on a draft party program and prepared a draft charter. The program consisted of two parts - a minimum program and a maximum program; the first involved the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of a democratic republic, the destruction of the remnants of serfdom in the countryside, in particular the return to the peasants of lands cut off from them by landowners during the abolition of serfdom (the so-called “cuts”), the introduction of an eight-hour working day, recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equal rights nations; the maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the construction of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Already at the end of 1904, against the backdrop of a growing strike movement, differences on political issues emerged between the “majority” and “minority” factions, in addition to organizational ones.

The revolution of 1905-1907 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland.

At the Third Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in April 1905, Lenin emphasized that the main task of the ongoing revolution was to put an end to autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia.

At the first opportunity, in early November 1905, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg illegally, under a false name, and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees elected by the congress; paid great attention to the management of the newspaper “New Life”. Under the leadership of Lenin, the party was preparing an armed uprising. At the same time, Lenin wrote the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” in which he points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In the struggle to win over the peasantry (which was actively waged with the Socialist Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Village Poor.” In December 1905, the First Conference of the RSDLP was held in Tammerfors, where V.I. Lenin and V. I. met for the first time.

In the spring of 1906, Lenin moved to Finland. He lived with Krupskaya and her mother in Kuokkala (Repino (St. Petersburg)) at the Vaasa villa of Emil Edward Engeström, occasionally visiting Helsingfors. At the end of April 1906, before going to the party congress in Stockholm, he, under the name Weber, stayed in Helsingfors for two weeks in a rented apartment on the first floor of a house at Vuorimihenkatu 35. Two months later, he spent several weeks in Seyviasta (Ozerki village, west of Kuokkala) near the Knipovichs. In December (no later than 14 (27)) 1907, Lenin arrived in Stockholm by ship.

According to Lenin, despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the Bolsheviks used all revolutionary opportunities, they were the first to take the path of uprising and the last to leave it when this path became impossible.

In early January 1908, Lenin returned to Geneva. The defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907 did not force him to fold his arms; he considered a repetition of the revolutionary upsurge inevitable. “Defeated armies learn well,” Lenin later wrote about this period.

At the end of 1908, Lenin and Krupskaya, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Lenin lived here until June 1912. This is where his first meeting with Inessa Armand takes place.

In 1909 he published his main philosophical work, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” The work was written after Lenin realized how widely popular Machism and empirio-criticism had become among Social Democrats.

In 1912, he decisively broke with the Mensheviks, who insisted on the legalization of the RSDLP.

On May 5, 1912, the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Pravda was published in St. Petersburg. Extremely dissatisfied with the editing of the newspaper (Stalin was the editor-in-chief), Lenin sent L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost every day, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected the editors’ mistakes. Over the course of 2 years, Pravda published about 270 Leninist articles and notes. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the IV State Duma, was a representative of the RSDLP in the II International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

When World War I began, Lenin lived on the territory of Austria-Hungary in the Galician town of Poronin, where he arrived at the end of 1912. Due to suspicions of spying for the Russian government, Lenin was arrested by Austrian gendarmes. For his release, the help of socialist deputy of the Austrian parliament V. Adler was required. On August 6, 1914, Lenin was released from prison.

17 days later in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist, unfair on both sides, and alien to the interests of the working people. According to the memoirs of S. Yu. Bagotsky, after receiving information about the unanimous vote of German Social Democrats for the military budget of the German government, Lenin declared that he had ceased to be a Social Democrat and turned into a communist.

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he completed his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively collaborated with the Swiss Social Democrats (among them the left radical Fritz Platten), and attended all their party meetings. Here he learned from newspapers about the February Revolution in Russia.

Lenin did not expect a revolution in 1917. Lenin’s public statement in January 1917 in Switzerland is known that he did not expect to live to see the coming revolution, but that young people would see it. Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded the revolution that soon took place as the result of a “conspiracy of Anglo-French imperialists.”

On April 3 (16), 1917, Lenin arrived in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, organized a ceremonial meeting for him. To meet Lenin and the procession that followed through the streets of Petrograd, according to the Bolsheviks, 7,000 soldiers were mobilized “alongside.”

Lenin was personally met by the chairman of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Menshevik N. S. Chkheidze, who on behalf of the Soviet expressed hope for “unifying the ranks of all democracy.” However, Lenin’s first speech at the Finlyandsky Station immediately after his arrival ended with a call for a “social revolution” and caused confusion even among Lenin’s supporters. The sailors of the 2nd Baltic Crew, who performed honor guard duties at the Finlyandsky Station, the next day expressed their indignation and regret that they were not told in time about the route Lenin took to return to Russia, and claimed that they would have greeted Lenin with exclamations of “Down, back to the country through which you came to us.” Soldiers of the Volyn Regiment and sailors in Helsingfors raised the question of Lenin's arrest; the indignation of the sailors in this Finnish Russian port was even expressed in the throwing of Bolshevik agitators into the sea. Based on the information received about Lenin’s path to Russia, the soldiers of the Moscow regiment decided to destroy the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.

The next day, April 4, Lenin made a report to the Bolsheviks, the theses of which were published in Pravda only on April 7, when Lenin and Zinoviev joined the editorial board of Pravda, since, according to V. M. Molotov, the new The leader’s ideas seemed too radical even to his close associates. They were famous "April Theses". In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that changed its character with the fall of the autocracy. Lenin announced the slogans: “No support for the Provisional Government” and “all power to the Soviets”; he proclaimed a course for the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the transfer of power to the Soviets and the proletariat with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature.

On April 8, one of the leaders of German intelligence in Stockholm telegraphed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin: “Lenin’s arrival in Russia is successful. It works exactly the way we would like it to.”

In March 1917, until Lenin’s arrival from exile, moderate sentiments prevailed in the RSDLP(b). Stalin I.V. even stated in March that “unification [with the Mensheviks] is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kinthal line.” On April 6, the Central Committee passed a negative resolution on the Theses, and the editorial board of Pravda initially refused to print them, allegedly due to mechanical failure. On April 7, the “Theses” nevertheless appeared with a comment from L. B. Kamenev, who said that “Lenin’s scheme” was “unacceptable.”

Nevertheless, within literally three weeks, Lenin managed to get his party to accept the “Theses.” Stalin I.V. was one of the first to declare their support (April 11). According to the expression, “the party was taken by surprise by Lenin no less than by the February coup... there was no debate, everyone was stunned, no one wanted to expose themselves to the blows of this frantic leader.” The April party conference of 1917 (April 22-29) put an end to the Bolsheviks’ hesitations, which finally adopted the “Theses.” At this conference, Lenin also proposed for the first time that the party be renamed "communist", but this proposal was rejected.

From April to July 1917, Lenin wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and the Party Central Committee, and appeals.

Despite the fact that the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta, when writing about the arrival of the Bolshevik leader in Russia, assessed this visit as the emergence of “danger from the left flank”, the newspaper Rech - the official publication of the Minister of Foreign Affairs P. N. Milyukov - according to historian of the Russian revolution S.P. Melgunov, spoke positively about the arrival of Lenin, and that now not only Plekhanov will fight for the ideas of socialist parties.

In Petrograd, from June 3 (16) to June 24 (July 7), 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held, at which Lenin spoke. In his speech on June 4 (17), he stated that at that moment, in his opinion, the Soviets could gain all power in the country peacefully and use it to solve the main issues of the revolution: give the working people peace, bread, land and overcome economic devastation. Lenin also argued that the Bolsheviks were ready to immediately take power in the country.

A month later, the Petrograd Bolsheviks found themselves involved in anti-government protests on July 3 (16) - 4 (17), 1917 under the slogans of transferring power to the Soviets and negotiations with Germany on peace. The armed demonstration led by the Bolsheviks escalated into skirmishes, including with troops loyal to the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks were accused of organizing an “armed uprising against state power” (subsequently the Bolshevik leadership denied its involvement in the preparation of these events). In addition, the case materials provided by counterintelligence about the connections of the Bolsheviks with Germany were made public (see Question about the financing of the Bolsheviks by Germany).

On July 20 (7), the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin went underground again. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 safe houses, after which, until August 21 (8), 1917, he and Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive H2-293, he disappeared into the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg. Soon the investigation into Lenin's case was discontinued due to lack of evidence.

Lenin, who was in Finland, was unable to attend the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b), which was held semi-legally in August 1917 in Petrograd. The Congress approved the decision on Lenin's failure to appear in court of the Provisional Government, and elected him in absentia as one of its honorary chairmen.

During this period, Lenin wrote one of his fundamental works - the book "State and Revolution".

On August 10, accompanied by the deputy of the Finnish Sejm K. Wikka, Lenin moved from Malm station to Helsingfors. Here he lives in the apartment of the Finnish social democrat Gustav Rovno (Hagnes Square, 1, apt. 22), and then in the apartment of the Finnish workers A. Usenius (Fradrikinkatu St., 64) and B. Vlumkvist (Telenkatu St., 46) . Communication goes through G. Rivne, railway. postman K. Akhmalu, driver of steam locomotive No. 293 G. Yalava, N.K. Krupskaya, M.I. Ulyanov, Shotman A.V. N.K. Krupskaya comes to Lenin twice with the ID of Sestroretsk worker Agafya Atamanova.

In the second half of September, Lenin moved to Vyborg (the apartment of the editor-in-chief of the Finnish workers' newspaper "Tue" (labor) Evert Huttunen (Vilkienkatu St. 17 - in the 2000s, Turgenev St., 8), then settled with Latukka near Vyborg Talikkala, alexanderinkatu (now the village of Lenin, Rubezhnaya St. 15.) On October 7, accompanied by Rakhya, Lenin left Vyborg to move to St. Petersburg. They traveled to Raivola on a commuter train, and then Lenin moved to the booth of steam locomotive No. 293 to the driver Hugo Yalava. Udelnaya station on foot to Serdobolskaya 1/92 quarter 20 to M.V. Fofanova from where Lenin left for Smolny on the night of October 25.

On October 20, 1917, Lenin arrived illegally from Vyborg to Petrograd. On November 6, 1917 (24.10) after 6 pm Lenin left the safe house of Margarita Fofanova, at Serdobolskaya Street, building No. 1, apartment No. 41, leaving a note: “...I went to where you didn’t want me to go. Goodbye. Ilyich." For the purpose of secrecy, Lenin changes his appearance: he puts on an old coat and cap, and ties a scarf around his cheek. Lenin, accompanied by E. Rakhya, heads to Sampsonievsky Prospekt, takes a tram to Botkinskaya Street, crosses the Liteiny Bridge, turns onto Shpalernaya, is twice delayed by cadets along the way, and finally comes to Smolny (Leontyevskaya Street, 1).

Arriving in Smolny, he begins to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet L. D. Trotsky. Lenin proposed to act tough, organized, and quickly. We can't wait any longer. It is necessary to arrest the government without leaving power in the hands of Kerensky until October 25, disarm the cadets, mobilize the districts and regiments, and send representatives from them to the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Bolshevik Central Committee. On the night of October 25-26, the Provisional Government was arrested.

It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. On November 7 (October 25) Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin's decrees on peace and land were adopted and a government was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. On January 5 (18), 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 80% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, presented the Constituent Assembly with a choice: ratify the power of the Soviets and the decrees of the Bolshevik government or disperse. The Constituent Assembly, which did not agree with this formulation of the issue, lost its quorum and was forcibly dissolved.

During the 124 days of the “Smolny period,” Lenin wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, and participated in the editing of more than 40 state and party documents. The working day of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars lasted 15-18 hours. During this period, Lenin chaired 77 meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, led 26 meetings and meetings of the Central Committee, participated in 17 meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and its Presidium, and in the preparation and conduct of 6 different All-Russian Congresses of Working People. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, from March 11, 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. Lenin's personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building.

On January 15 (28), 1918, Lenin signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Red Army. In accordance with the Peace Decree, it was necessary to withdraw from the world war. Despite the opposition of the left communists and L.D. Trotsky, Lenin achieved the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany. On March 3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, withdrew from the Soviet government. On March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops, at the suggestion of Lenin, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) moved to Moscow, which became the new capital of Soviet Russia.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin, according to the official version, by a Socialist Revolutionary Party, which led to severe injury. After the assassination attempt, Lenin was successfully operated on by doctor Vladimir Mints.

The denunciation of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November 1918 significantly strengthened Lenin’s authority in the party. Doctor of Philosophy in history, Harvard University professor Richard Pipes describes this situation as follows: “By shrewdly accepting a humiliating peace that gave him the necessary time and then collapsed under its own gravity, Lenin earned the widespread trust of the Bolsheviks. When they tore up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on November 13, 1918, followed by Germany's capitulation to the Western Allies, Lenin's authority in the Bolshevik movement was elevated to unprecedented heights. Nothing better served his reputation as a man who made no political mistakes; never again did he have to threaten to resign to get his way.”

As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin chaired 375 meetings of the Soviet government out of 406. From December 1918 to February 1920, out of 101 meetings of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, only two he did not preside over. In 1919, V.I. Lenin led the work of 14 plenums of the Central Committee and 40 meetings of the Politburo, at which military issues were discussed. From November 1917 to November 1920, V.I. Lenin wrote over 600 letters and telegrams on various issues of defense of the Soviet state, and spoke at rallies over 200 times.

In March 1919, after the failure of the Entente countries’ initiative to end the Civil War in Russia, V. Bullitt, who secretly arrived in Moscow on behalf of US President William Wilson and British Prime Minister D. Lloyd George, proposed that Soviet Russia make peace with all other governments, formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, while paying off its debts together with them. Lenin agreed to this proposal, motivating this decision as follows: “The price of the blood of our workers and soldiers is too dear to us; We, as merchants, will pay for peace at the price of a heavy tribute... just to save the lives of workers and peasants.” However, the initially successful offensive of A.V. Kolchak’s army on the Eastern Front against Soviet troops, which began in March 1919, instilling confidence in the Entente countries in the imminent fall of Soviet power, led to the fact that negotiations were not continued by the United States and Great Britain.

In 1919, on the initiative of Lenin, the Communist International was created.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot along with his family and servants by order of the Ural Regional Council in Yekaterinburg, headed by the Bolsheviks.

In February 1920, the Irkutsk Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee secretly executed without trial Admiral A.V. Kolchak, who was under arrest in the Irkutsk prison after his allies had extradited him to the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Political Center. According to a number of modern Russian historians, this was done in accordance with Lenin's order.

Illness and death of Vladimir Lenin

At the end of May 1922, due to cerebral vascular sclerosis, Lenin suffered his first serious attack of the disease - speech was lost, the movement of his right limbs was weakened, and there was almost complete memory loss - Lenin, for example, did not know how to use a toothbrush. Only on July 13, 1922, when Lenin’s condition improved, was he able to write his first note. From the end of July 1922, Lenin's condition deteriorated again. Improvement came only at the beginning of September 1922.

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On cooperation”, “How can we reorganize the workers’ krin”, “Less is better”, in which he offers his vision of the economic policy of the Soviet state and measures to improve the work of the state apparatus and parties. On January 4, 1923, V.I. Lenin dictates the so-called “Addition to the letter of December 24, 1922,” in which, in particular, the characteristics of individual Bolsheviks claiming to be the leader of the party (Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Pyatakov) were given. .

Presumably, Vladimir Ilyich’s illness was caused by severe overwork and the consequences of the assassination attempt on August 30, 1918. At least these reasons are referred to by the authoritative researcher of this issue, surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin.

Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and on May 15, 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. Since March 12, 1923, daily bulletins on Lenin's health were published. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923. During this period, he, however, dictated several notes: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization””, “Pages from the diary”, “On cooperation”, “About our revolution (regarding N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Less is better”.

Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) is often viewed as Lenin's testament.

In January 1924, Lenin's health suddenly deteriorated; On January 21, 1924 at 18:50 he died.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read: “...The basis of the disease of the deceased is widespread atherosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear (Abnutzungssclerose). Due to the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries of the brain and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorders). The immediate cause of death was: 1) increased circulatory disorders in the brain; 2) hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.” In June 2004, an article was published in the European Journal of Neurology, the authors of which suggest that Lenin died of neurosyphilis. Lenin himself did not exclude the possibility of syphilis and therefore took salvarsan, and in 1923 he also tried to be treated with drugs based on mercury and bismuth; Max Nonne, a specialist in this field, was invited to see him. However, his guess was refuted by him. “There was absolutely nothing to indicate syphilis,” Nonna later wrote.

Vladimir Lenin's height: 164 centimeters.

Personal life of Vladimir Lenin:

Apollinaria Yakubova and her husband were close associates of Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, who lived in London periodically from 1902 to 1911, although Yakubova and Lenin were known to have had a tumultuous and tense relationship due to politics within the RSDLP.

Robert Henderson, a specialist in Russian history from the University of London, discovered a photograph of Yakubova in the depths of the State Archive of Russian Federation in Moscow in April 2015.

Apollinaria Yakubova

Major works of Vladimir Lenin:

"On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
What inheritance are we giving up? (1897);
Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
What to do? (1902);
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904);
Party organization and party literature (1905);
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905);
Marxism and Revisionism (1908);
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909);
Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914);
On the breakdown of unity covered by cries for unity (1914);
Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism) (1914);
Socialism and War (1915);
Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay) (1916);
State and Revolution (1917);
Tasks of the proletariat in our revolution (1917)
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Deal with It (1917)
On dual power (1917);
How to Organize a Competition (1918);
The Great Initiative (1919);
The childhood disease of “leftism” in communism (1920);
Tasks of youth unions (1920);
About the food tax (1921);
Pages from the diary, About cooperation (1923);
About the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924);
What is Soviet power? (1919, publ.: 1928);
On left-wing childishness and petty-bourgeoisism (1918);
About our revolution (1923);
Letter to the Congress (1922, read out: 1924, published: 1956)

Vladimir Lenin

main alias Lenin

Russian revolutionary, major theorist of Marxism, Soviet politician and statesman, creator of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), main organizer and leader of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR, creator of the first in world history socialist state

short biography

Lenin(real name - Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich - the largest Russian Soviet politician, statesman, publicist, Marxist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, one of the organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, founder of the Communist Party, creator of the first socialist state, the Communist International, one of leaders of the international communist movement. Ulyanov was from Simbirsk, where he was born on April 22 (April 10, O.S.), 1870. His father was an official, an inspector of public schools. During the period 1879-1887. Vladimir Ulyanov successfully studied at the local gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. Until the age of 16, being a baptized Orthodox, he was a member of the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh.

The turning point in the biography of V. Lenin is considered to be the execution in 1887 of his elder brother, Alexander, who took part in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Alexander III. Although the brothers did not have a particularly close relationship, this event made a huge impression on the whole family. In 1887, Vladimir became a student at Kazan University (Faculty of Law), but participation in student unrest resulted in expulsion and exile to Kokushkino, his mother’s estate. He was allowed to return to Kazan in the fall of 1888, and exactly a year later the Ulyanovs moved to Samara. Living in this city, Vladimir, thanks to active reading of Marxist literature, begins to become acquainted with this teaching in the most detailed way.

Having graduated from the law department of St. Petersburg University as an external student in 1891, Lenin moved to this city in 1893 and worked as an assistant to a sworn attorney. However, he is not concerned about jurisprudence, but about issues of government. Already in 1894, he formulated a political credo, according to which the Russian proletariat, having led all democratic forces, must lead society to a communist revolution through open political struggle.

In 1895, with the active participation of Lenin, the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class” was created. For this he was arrested in December and then more than a year later he was sent to Siberia, the village of Shushenskoye, for three years. While in exile, in July 1898 he married N.K. Krupskaya due to the threat of her being transferred to another place. For the rest of his life, this woman was his faithful companion, comrade-in-arms and assistant.

In 1900, V. Lenin went abroad and lived in Germany, England, and Switzerland. There, together with G.V. Plekhanov, who played an important role in his life, started the publication of Iskra, the first all-Russian illegal Marxist newspaper. At the Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats, held in 1903 and marked by a split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, he led the former, subsequently creating the Bolshevik Party. He found the revolution of 1905 in Switzerland, in November of the same year, under a false name, he illegally came to St. Petersburg, where he lived until December 1907, taking over the leadership of the Central and St. Petersburg Committees of the Bolsheviks.

During the First World War, V.I. Lenin, who was in Switzerland at that time, put forward the slogan about the need to defeat the government and turn the imperialist war into a civil war. Having learned from the newspapers the news about the February Revolution, he began to prepare to return to his homeland.

In April 1917, Lenin arrived in Petrograd, and the very next day after his arrival he proposed a program for the transition of the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, proclaiming the slogan “All power to the Soviets!” Already in October he was one of the main organizers and leaders of the October armed uprising; at the end of October and beginning of November, detachments sent by his personal order contributed to the establishment of Soviet power in Moscow.

The October Revolution, the repressive first steps of the government headed by Lenin, turned into a bloody Civil War that lasted until 1922, which became a national tragedy, claiming the lives of millions of people. In the summer of 1918, the family of Nicholas II was shot in Yekaterinburg, and it was established that the leader of the world proletariat approved of the execution.

Since March 1918, Lenin's biography has been connected with Moscow, where the capital was moved from Petrograd. On August 30, he was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, the response to which was the so-called. red terror. On Lenin's initiative and in accordance with his ideology, the policy of war communism was pursued, which in March 1921 was replaced by the NEP. In December 1922, V. Lenin became the creator of the USSR - a new type of state that had no precedent in world history.

The same year was marked by a serious deterioration in health, which forced the head of the Soviet Union to curtail his active activities in the political arena. In May 1923, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow, where he died on January 21, 1924. The official cause of death was problems with blood circulation and premature wear of blood vessels, caused, in particular, by enormous loads.

IN AND. Lenin is one of the individuals whose assessment of their activities ranges from harsh criticism to the creation of a cult. However, no matter how his contemporaries and future generations treated him, it is quite obvious that, being a politician on a global scale, Lenin, with his ideology and activities at the beginning of the last century, had a colossal influence on world history, setting its further vector of development.

Biography from Wikipedia

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov(main alias Lenin; April 10 (22), 1870, Simbirsk - January 21, 1924, Gorki estate, Moscow province) - Russian revolutionary, major theorist of Marxism, Soviet politician and statesman, founder of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks), main organizer and leader of the October Revolution 1917 in Russia, the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR, the creator of the first socialist state in world history.

Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the USSR, first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The scope of the main political and journalistic works is materialist philosophy, the theory of Marxism, criticism of capitalism and imperialism, the theory and practice of the implementation of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism, the political economy of socialism.

Opinions and assessments of the historical role of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) are extremely polar. Regardless of the positive or negative assessment of Lenin's activities, even many non-communist researchers consider him the most significant revolutionary statesman in world history.

Childhood, education and upbringing

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of an inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), the son of a former serf in the village of Androsovo, Sergach district, Nizhny Novgorod province, Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the surname: Ulyanina) , married to Anna Smirnova, the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer M. S. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Kalmyks). Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on the mother's side and, according to various versions, Ukrainian, German or Jewish origin on the father's side. According to one version, Vladimir’s maternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. According to another version, he came from a family of German colonists invited to Russia by Catherine II). The famous researcher of the Lenin family M. Shaginyan argued that Alexander Blank was Ukrainian.

I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of actual state councilor, which in the Table of Ranks corresponded to the military rank of major general and gave the right to hereditary nobility.

V. I. Lenin’s room, in which he lived from 1878 to 1887. Nowadays the House-Museum of the Ulyanov family

Until 1887, nothing is known about any revolutionary activities of Vladimir Ulyanov. He was baptized according to the Orthodox rite and until the age of 16 he belonged to the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh, leaving religion probably in 1886. His grades according to the law of God in the gymnasium were excellent, as in almost all other subjects. There is only one B in his matriculation certificate - logically. In 1885, the list of students at the gymnasium indicated that Vladimir - “ The student is very gifted, diligent and careful. He does very well in all subjects. Behaves approximately"(Extract from the "Conduit and apartment list of students of the VIII grade of the Simbirsk gymnasium." House-Museum of V.I. Lenin in Ulyanovsk). The first award, by decision of the pedagogical council, was presented to him already in 1880, after graduating from the first grade - a book with gold embossing on the binding: “For good behavior and success” and a certificate of merit.

The historian V. T. Loginov, in his work dedicated to Lenin’s childhood and youth, cites a large fragment from the memoirs of V. Ulyanov’s classmate A. Naumov, the future minister of the tsarist government. The same memoirs are quoted by the historian V.P. Buldakov, according to whom Naumov’s evidence is valuable and unbiased; The historian considers this description of V. Ulyanov very characteristic:

He had absolutely exceptional abilities, possessed an enormous memory, was distinguished by insatiable scientific curiosity and extraordinary capacity for work... Truly, he was a walking encyclopedia... He enjoyed great respect and business authority among all his comrades, but... one cannot say that he was loved, rather appreciated... In the class, his mental and work superiority was felt... although... Ulyanov himself never showed it or emphasized it.

According to Richard Pipes,

What is surprising about Lenin as a young man is that, unlike most of his contemporaries, he did not show any interest in public life. In the memoirs that came from the pen of one of his sisters before the iron claw of censorship laid down on everything that was written about Lenin, he appears as an extremely diligent, neat and pedantic boy - in modern psychology this is called the compulsive type. He was an ideal high school student, receiving excellent grades in almost all subjects, including behavior, and this brought him gold medals year after year. His name was at the top of the list of those who completed the gymnasium course. Nothing in the scant information we have suggests a rebellion - neither against the family nor against the regime. Fyodor Kerensky, the father of Lenin's future political rival, who was the director of the gymnasium in Simbirsk that Lenin attended, recommended him for admission to Kazan University as a “closed” and “uncommunicative” young man. “Neither in the gymnasium nor outside it,” wrote Kerensky, “not a single case was noticed for Ulyanov when, by word or deed, he aroused a disgraceful opinion of himself among the commanders and teachers of the gymnasium.” By the time he graduated from high school in 1887, Lenin had no “definite” political convictions. Nothing at the beginning of his biography exposed him as a future revolutionary; on the contrary, there was much evidence that Lenin would follow in his father’s footsteps and make a noticeable career.

In the same year, 1887, on May 8, his older brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. What happened became a deep tragedy for the Ulyanov family, who were unaware of Alexander’s revolutionary activities.

The next night, Vladimir, along with forty other students, was arrested and sent to the police station. All those arrested, in accordance with the methods of combating “disobedience” characteristic of the reign of Alexander III, were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.” Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repression. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Ulyanov’s cousin, Vladimir Ardashev. After petitions from Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva (née Blank), Vladimir Ilyich’s aunt, Ulyanov was exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Laishevsky district, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs’ house until the winter of 1888-1889.

During the period described, Lenin read a lot. He studied “progressive” magazines and books of the 1860-1870s, especially the works of N. G. Chernyshevsky, which, in his own words, had a decisive influence on him. It was a difficult time for all the Ulyanovs: Simbirsk society boycotted them, since connections with the family of an executed terrorist could attract unwanted attention from the police...

The beginning of revolutionary activity

In the fall of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he subsequently joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of K. Marx, F. Engels and G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. In 1924, N.K. Krupskaya wrote in Pravda: “Vladimir Ilyich loved Plekhanov passionately. Plekhanov played a major role in the development of Vladimir Ilyich, helped him find the correct revolutionary approach, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for a long time: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.”

In May 1889, M. A. Ulyanova acquired the Alakaevka estate of 83.5 dessiatines (91.2 hectares) in the Samara province, and the family moved there to live. Yielding to his mother’s persistent requests, Vladimir tried to manage the estate, but had no success. The surrounding peasants, taking advantage of the inexperience of the new owners, stole a horse and two cows from them. As a result, Ulyanova first sold the land, and subsequently the house. During Soviet times, a house-museum of Lenin was created in this village.

In the fall of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also maintained contact with local revolutionaries.

According to Richard Pipes, in the period 1887-1891, young Ulyanov became, following his executed brother, a supporter of Narodnaya Volya. In Kazan and Samara, he consistently sought out Narodnaya Volya members, from whom he learned information about the practical organization of the movement, which at that time looked like a secret, disciplined organization of “professional revolutionaries.”

As researcher M. S. Voslensky writes in his work “Nomenclature”,

The main practical goal of Lenin's life was henceforth to achieve a revolution in Russia, regardless of whether the material conditions there were ripe for new relations of production.
The young man was not embarrassed by what was a stumbling block for other Russian Marxists of that time. Even if Russia is backward, he believed, even if its proletariat is weak, even if Russian capitalism is far from developing all its productive forces - that’s not the point. The main thing is to make a revolution!
...the experience of “Land and Freedom” showed that the hope for the peasantry as the main revolutionary force did not justify itself. The handful of revolutionary intelligentsia was too small to overturn the colossus of the tsarist state without the support of some large class: the ineffectiveness of the populists’ terror demonstrated this with all clarity. Under those conditions, such a large class in Russia could only be the proletariat, which rapidly grew in numbers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Due to its concentration on production and the discipline developed by working conditions, the working class was the social stratum that could best be used as a striking force to overthrow the existing system.

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara attorney (lawyer) A. N. Hardin, conducting most criminal cases and conducting “state defenses.”

With great humor, he began to tell us about his short legal practice in Samara, that out of all the cases that he had to conduct as intended (and he only conducted them as intended), he did not win a single one and only one of his clients received a more lenient sentence than the one the prosecutor insisted on.
Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, memoirs

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg, where, on Hardin’s recommendation, he got a job as an assistant to the attorney at law M. F. Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, and the history of the capitalist evolution of the post-reform Russian village and industry. Some of them were published legally. At this time he also developed the program of the Social Democratic Party. The activities of V.I. Lenin as a publicist and researcher of the development of capitalism in Russia, based on extensive statistical materials, make him famous among Social Democrats and opposition-minded liberal figures, as well as in many other circles of Russian society.

Police photograph of V. I. Ulyanov, December 1895

According to Richard Pipes, Lenin as a personality was finally formed at the age of 23, by the time he moved to St. Petersburg in 1893:

...this unattractive man radiated such inner strength that people quickly forgot about the first impression. The amazing effect that the combination of willpower, relentless discipline, energy, asceticism and unshakable faith in the cause produced in him can only be described by the well-worn word “charisma”. According to Potresov, this “nondescript and rude” man, devoid of charm, had a “hypnotic effect”: “Plekhanov was revered, Martov was loved, but only Lenin was unquestioningly followed as the only undisputed leader. For only Lenin represented, especially in Russia, a rare phenomenon of a man of iron will, indomitable energy, merging fanatical faith in the movement, in the cause, with no less faith in himself.”

Vl. Ulyanov... sharply and definitely opposed feeding the starving. His position, as far as I remember it now - and I remembered it well, because I had to argue with him quite a bit about it - boiled down to the following: hunger is a direct result of a certain social system; as long as this system exists, such hunger strikes are inevitable; They can only be destroyed by destroying this system. Being inevitable in this sense, famine currently plays the role of a progressive factor. By destroying the peasant economy, throwing the peasant out of the village into the city, famine creates the proletariat and promotes the industrialization of the region... It will force the peasant to think about the foundations of the capitalist system, will break faith in the tsar and tsarism and, therefore, in due time will facilitate the victory of the revolution.

According to Maxim Gorky’s description: “for him the working class is like ore for a blacksmith.”

However, Vodovozova is refuted by A. A. Belyakov:

Vladimir Ilyich, no less than other revolutionaries, suffered, was tormented, horrified, watching nightmarish pictures of the death of people and listening to eyewitness accounts of what was happening in distant, abandoned villages, where help did not reach and where almost all the inhabitants died out. (...) Everywhere and everywhere, Vladimir Ilyich asserted only one thing: in helping the starving, not only revolutionaries, but also radicals should not act together with the police, governors, together with the government - the only culprit of the famine and “all-Russian ruin”, and never against feeding the starving did not speak out, and could not speak out.

Lenin himself spoke quite unequivocally on this issue, without questioning the need for “the broadest possible assistance to the starving.”

In May 1895, Ulyanov went abroad, where he met with Plekhanov in Switzerland, with V. Liebknecht in Germany, with P. Lafargue and other figures of the international labor movement in France, and upon returning to St. Petersburg in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries united scattered Marxist circles into the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” Under the influence of Plekhanov, Lenin partially retreated from his doctrine proclaiming Tsarist Russia a “capitalist” country, declaring it a “semi-feudal” country. His immediate goal is to overthrow the autocracy, now in alliance with the “liberal bourgeoisie.” The “Union of Struggle” carried out active propaganda activities among the workers, they issued more than 70 leaflets. In December 1895, like many other members of the “Union,” Ulyanov was arrested, kept in prison for more than a year, and in 1897 exiled for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province.

So that Lenin’s “common-law” wife, N.K. Krupskaya, could follow him into exile, he had to register his marriage with her in July 1898. Since in Russia at that time only church marriages were recognized, Lenin, who was already an atheist at that time, had to get married in a church, officially identifying himself as Orthodox. Initially, neither Vladimir Ilyich nor Nadezhda Konstantinovna intended to formalize their marriage through the church, but after a very short time the police chief’s order came: either get married, or Nadezhda Konstantinovna must leave Shushenskoye and go to Ufa, to the place of exile. “I had to do this whole comedy,” Krupskaya said later. Ulyanov, in a letter to his mother dated May 10, 1898, describes the current situation as follows: “N. K., as you know, was given a tragicomic condition: if he does not immediately (sic!) get married, then return to Ufa. I am not at all inclined to allow this, and therefore we have already begun “troubles” (mainly requests for the issuance of documents, without which we cannot get married) in order to have time to get married before Lent (before Petrovka): it is still possible to hope that the strict authorities will find this sufficient “immediate” marriage.” Finally, in early July, the documents were received and it was possible to go to church. But it so happened that there were no guarantors, no best men, no wedding rings, without which the wedding ceremony was unthinkable. The police officer categorically forbade the exiles Krzhizhanovsky and Starkov from coming to the wedding. Of course, the troubles could have started again, but Vladimir Ilyich decided not to wait. He invited familiar Shushensky peasants as guarantors and best men: clerk Stepan Nikolaevich Zhuravlev, shopkeeper Ioannikiy Ivanovich Zavertkin, Simon Afanasyevich Ermolaev and others. And one of the exiles, Oscar Aleksandrovich Engberg, made wedding rings for the bride and groom from a copper coin.

On July 10, 1898, priest John Orestov performed the sacrament of wedding in a local church. An entry in the church register of the village of Shushenskoye indicates that the administrative-exiled Orthodox Christians V.I. Ulyanov and N.K. Krupskaya had their first marriage.

First emigration (1900-1905)

In 1898, in Minsk, in the absence of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held, consisting of 9 people, which established the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party by adopting the Manifesto. All members of the Central Committee elected by the congress and most of the delegates were immediately arrested, and many organizations represented at the congress were destroyed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in exile in Siberia, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of the newspaper.

V. I. Lenin, Pskov 1900

After the end of their exile in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A.N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities, establishing connections with local organizations. On February 26, 1900, Ulyanov arrived in Pskov, where he was allowed to reside after exile. In April 1900, an organizational meeting was held in Pskov to create an all-Russian workers' newspaper "Iskra", in which V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin, S. I. Radchenko, P. B. Struve, M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, L. Martov, A. N. Potresov, A. M. Stopani. In April 1900, Lenin illegally made a one-day trip to Riga from Pskov. At the negotiations with the Latvian Social Democrats, issues of transporting the Iskra newspaper from abroad to Russia through the ports of Latvia were considered. At the beginning of May 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov received a foreign passport in Pskov. On May 19 he leaves for St. Petersburg, and on May 21 he is detained by the police there. The luggage sent by Ulyanov from Pskov to Podolsk was also carefully examined. After inspecting the luggage, the head of the Moscow security department, S.V. Zubatov, sends a telegram to St. Petersburg to the head of the special department of the police department, L.A. Rataev: “The cargo turned out to be a library and tendentious manuscripts, opened in accordance with the Charter of the Russian Railways, as sent unsealed. After consideration by the gendarmerie police and examination of the department, it will be sent to its destination. Zubatov." The operation to arrest the Social Democrat ended in failure. As an experienced conspirator, V.I. Lenin did not give the Pskov police any reason to accuse him. In the reports of the spies and in the information of the Pskov Gendarmerie Directorate about V.I. Ulyanov, it is noted that “during his residence in Pskov before going abroad, he was not noticed in anything reprehensible.” Lenin’s work in the statistical bureau of the Pskov provincial zemstvo and his participation in drawing up a program for an assessment and statistical survey of the province also served as a good cover for Lenin. Apart from an illegal visit to the capital, Ulyanov had nothing to show for it. Ten days later he was released.

In June 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov, together with his mother M.A. Ulyanova and older sister Anna Ulyanova, came to Ufa, where his wife N.K. Krupskaya was in exile.

On July 29, 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland, where he negotiated with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper Iskra (later the magazine Zarya appeared) included three representatives of the emigrant group “Emancipation of Labor” - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the “Union of Struggle” - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The newspaper's average circulation was 8,000 copies, with some issues up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network of underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire. The editorial board of Iskra settled in Munich, but Plekhanov remained in Geneva. Axelrod still lived in Zurich. Martov has not yet arrived from Russia. Zasulich didn’t come either. Having lived in Munich for a short time, Potresov left it for a long time. The main work in Munich to organize the release of Iskra is carried out by Ulyanov. The first issue of Iskra arrives from the printing house on December 24, 1900. On April 1, 1901, after serving her exile in Ufa, N.K. Krupskaya arrived in Munich and began working in the editorial office of Iskra.

Foreign agents of the tsarist intelligence picked up the trail of the Iskra newspaper in Munich. Therefore, in April 1902, the newspaper's editorial office moved from Munich to London. Together with Lenin and Krupskaya, Martov and Zasulich move to London. From April 1902 to April 1903, V.I. Lenin, together with N.K. Krupskaya, lived in London, under the surname Richter, first in furnished rooms, and then in rented two small rooms in a house not far from the British Museum, in whose library Vladimir Ilyich worked often. At the end of April 1903, Lenin and his wife moved from London to Geneva in connection with the transfer of the publication of the Iskra newspaper there. They lived in Geneva until 1905.

Participation in the work of the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903)

At the congress itself, Lenin was elected to the bureau, worked on the program, organizational and credentials commissions, chaired a number of meetings and spoke on almost all issues on the agenda.

Both organizations that were in solidarity with Iskra (and were called “Iskra”) and those that did not share its position were invited to participate in the congress. During the discussion of the program, a polemic arose between supporters of Iskra, on the one hand, and the “economists” (for whom the position of the dictatorship of the proletariat turned out to be unacceptable) and the Bund (on the national question within the party) on the other; as a result, 2 “economists”, and later 5 Bundists left the congress.

But the discussion of the party charter, point 1, which defined the concept of a party member, revealed disagreements among the Iskraists themselves, who were divided into “hard” (Lenin’s supporters) and “soft” (Martov’s supporters). After the congress, Lenin wrote:

In my draft, this definition was as follows: “A member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party is anyone who recognizes its program and supports the party both materially and personally participation in one of the party organizations" Martov, instead of emphasizing words, suggested saying: work under the control and leadership of one of the party organizations... We argued that it is necessary to narrow the concept of a party member in order to separate those who work from those who talk, to eliminate organizational chaos, to eliminate such ugliness and such absurdity so that there can be organizations , consisting of party members, but not party organizations, etc. Martov stood for the expansion of the party and spoke of a broad class movement requiring a broad - vague organization, etc. ... “Under control and leadership,” I said, - in fact mean no more and no less than: without any control and without any guidance.

Lenin's opponents saw in his formulation an attempt to create not a party of the working class, but a sect of conspirators. The wording proposed by Martov for paragraph 1 of the charter was supported by 28 votes against 22 with 1 abstention. During the elections to the Central Committee of the RSDLP, after the departure of the Bundists and economists, Lenin’s group received a majority. This accidental circumstance, as subsequent events showed, forever divided the party into “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks.”

Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP Rafail Abramovich (in the party since 1899) recalled in January 1958:

Of course, I was still a very young man then, but four years later I was already a member of the Central Committee, and then in this Central Committee, not only with Lenin and with other old Bolsheviks, but also with Trotsky, with all of them we were in the same Central Committee. Plekhanov, Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, Lev Deitch and a number of other old revolutionaries were still alive then. So we all worked together until 1903. In 1903, at the Second Congress, our lines diverged. Lenin and some of his friends insisted that it was necessary to act using dictatorial methods within the party and outside the party.<…>Lenin always supported the fiction of collective leadership, but even then he was the master in the party. He was its actual owner, that’s what they called him - “master”.

Split of the RSDLP

But it was not disputes about the charter that split the Iskraists, but the elections of the Iskra editorial board. From the very beginning, controversial issues were not resolved in the editorial board, since the editorial board was split into two equal parts. Long before the congress, Lenin tried to solve the problem by proposing to introduce L. D. Trotsky to the editorial board as the seventh member; but the proposal, supported even by Axelrod and Zasulich, was decisively rejected by Plekhanov. The congress - at a time when Lenin's supporters already constituted the majority - was offered an editorial board consisting of Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. “The political leader of Iskra,” Trotsky testifies, “was Lenin. The main journalistic force of the newspaper was Martov.” And yet, the removal from the editorial board of albeit few working, but respected and honored “old men” seemed to both Martov and Trotsky himself to be unjustified cruelty.

After the congress, it was discovered that the congress minority had the support of the majority of party members. The Congress majority was left without a printed organ, which prevented it not only from promoting its views, but also from responding to harsh criticism from opponents - and only in December 1904 was the newspaper “Forward” created, which briefly became the printed organ of the Leninists.

The situation in the party prompted Lenin, in letters to the Central Committee (in November 1903) and the Party Council (in January 1904), to insist on convening a party congress. Finding no support from the opposition, the Bolshevik faction eventually took the initiative. Until 1905, Lenin did not use the terms "Bolsheviks" and "Mensheviks". For example, quoting P. Struve from Osvobozhdenie, No. 57 in November 1904, he cites “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks” and from himself “minority”. The term “Bolsheviks” was used in December 1904 in the “Letter to Comrades (Towards the Exit of the Organ of the Party Majority)”, and “Mensheviks” - in the first issue of the newspaper “Forward” on December 22, 1904. All organizations were invited to the Third Congress of the RSDLP, which opened in London on April 12, 1905, but the Mensheviks refused to participate in it, declared the congress illegal and convened their own conference in Geneva - the split of the party was thus formalized.

First Russian Revolution (1905-1907)

The revolution of 1905-1907 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland.

At the Third Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in April 1905, Lenin emphasized that the main task of the ongoing revolution was to put an end to autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia.

At the first opportunity, at the beginning of November 1905, Lenin illegally, under a false name, arrived in St. Petersburg and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees elected by the congress; paid great attention to the management of the newspaper “New Life”. Under the leadership of Lenin, the party was preparing an armed uprising. At the same time, Lenin wrote the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” in which he points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In the struggle to win over the peasantry (which was actively waged with the Socialist Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Village Poor.” In December 1905, the First Conference of the RSDLP was held in Tammerfors, where V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin met for the first time

Role in the Revolutionary Terror of the early 20th century

Back in 1901, Lenin wrote: “In principle, we have never renounced and cannot renounce terror. This is one of the military actions that can be quite suitable and even necessary at a certain moment of the battle, under a certain state of the army and under certain conditions.”

During the revolution of 1905-1907, Russia experienced the peak of revolutionary terrorism; the country was overwhelmed by a wave of violence: political and criminal murders, robberies, expropriations and extortion. In conditions of competition in extremist revolutionary activities with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, “famous” for the activities of their Combat Organization, after some hesitation (his vision of the issue changed many times depending on the current situation), the Bolshevik leader Lenin developed his position on terror. As historian Anna Geifman, a researcher on the problem of revolutionary terrorism, notes, Lenin’s protests against terrorism, formulated before 1905 and directed against the Socialist Revolutionaries, are in sharp contradiction with Lenin’s practical policy, developed by him after the start of the Russian revolution “in the light of the new tasks of the day” in the interests of his own parties. Lenin called for “the most radical means and measures as the most expedient,” for which the Bolshevik leader proposed creating “detachments of the revolutionary army... of all sizes, starting with two or three people, [who] should arm themselves with whatever they can (gun, revolver , bomb, knife, brass knuckles, stick, rag with kerosene for arson...)”, and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist “combat brigades” of the militant Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin, in the changed conditions, was already ready to go even further than the Socialist Revolutionaries and even went into obvious contradiction with the scientific teachings of Marx in order to promote the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that combat units should use every opportunity for active work, without postponing their actions until the start of a general uprisings

According to Geifman, Lenin essentially gave orders for the preparation of terrorist acts, which he himself had previously condemned, calling on his supporters to carry out attacks on city officials and other government officials; in the fall of 1905, he openly called for the murder of policemen and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, and to blow up police stations, pour boiling water on soldiers and sulfuric acid on police officers.

Later, not satisfied with the insufficient level of terrorist activity of his party in his opinion, Lenin complained to the St. Petersburg committee:

I am horrified, by God, I am horrified to see that [the revolutionaries] have been talking about bombs for more than six months and haven’t made a single one.

Seeking immediate terrorist action, Lenin even had to defend the methods of terror in the face of his fellow Social Democrats:

When I see Social Democrats proudly and smugly declaring: “We are not anarchists, not thieves, not robbers, we are above this, we reject guerrilla warfare,” then I ask myself: do these people understand what they are saying?

As one of Lenin's closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, testifies, the Bolshevik leader, having formulated his new tactics, began to insist on its immediate implementation and turned into an “ardent supporter of terror.” The Bolsheviks showed the greatest concern about terror during this period, whose leader Lenin October 25 1906 wrote that the Bolsheviks are not at all opposed to political murders, only individual terror must be combined with mass movements.

In addition to people specializing in political murders in the name of revolution, in each of the social democratic organizations there were people involved in armed robbery, extortion and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such actions were never encouraged by the leaders of social democratic organizations, with the exception of the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin publicly declared robbery an acceptable means of revolutionary struggle. The Bolsheviks were the only social democratic organization in Russia that resorted to expropriations (the so-called “exs”) in an organized and systematic manner.

Lenin did not limit himself to slogans or simply recognizing the participation of the Bolsheviks in military activities. Already in October 1905, he announced the need to confiscate public funds and soon began to resort to “ex” in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Alexander Bogdanov and Leonid Krasin, he secretly organized within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks) a small group that became known as the Bolshevik Center, specifically to raise money for the Leninist faction. In practice, this meant that the Bolshevik Center was an underground body within the party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various forms of extortion.

The actions of the Bolshevik militants did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed expelling the Bolsheviks from the party for the illegal expropriations they committed. Plekhanov called for a fight against “Bolshevik Bakuninism,” many party members considered Lenin and Co. to be ordinary swindlers, and Fyodor Dan called the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP a company of criminals. Lenin’s main goal was to strengthen the position of his supporters within the RSDLP with the help of money and to bring certain people and even entire organizations to financial dependence on the “Bolshevik Center”. The leaders of the Menshevik faction understood that Lenin was operating with huge expropriated sums, subsidizing the Bolshevik-controlled St. Petersburg and Moscow committees, giving the first a thousand rubles a month and the second five hundred. At the same time, relatively little of the proceeds from Bolshevik plunder went into the general party treasury, and the Mensheviks were outraged that they could not force the Bolshevik Center to share with the Central Committee of the RSDLP. The V Congress of the RSDLP (May 1907) provided the Mensheviks with the opportunity to fiercely criticize the Bolsheviks for their “gangster practices.” At the congress it was decided to put an end to any participation of Social Democrats in terrorist activities and expropriations. Martov’s calls for the revival of the purity of revolutionary consciousness made no impression on Lenin; the Bolshevik leader listened to them with open irony, and while reading a financial report, when the speaker mentioned a large donation from an anonymous benefactor, X, Lenin sarcastically remarked: “Not from X, and from ex"

At the end of 1906, even when the wave of revolutionary extremism had almost died out, the Bolshevik leader Lenin asserted in his letter of October 25, 1906 that the Bolsheviks were not at all against political assassinations. Lenin, historian Anna Geifman points out, was ready to once again change his theoretical principles, which he did in December 1906: in response to a request from the Bolsheviks from Petrograd about the official position of the party on the issue of terror, Lenin expressed his own: “at this historical moment terrorist acts are permitted.” Lenin's only condition was that in the eyes of the public, the initiative for terrorist attacks should come not from the party, but from individual members or small Bolshevik groups in Russia. Lenin also added that he hoped to convince the entire Central Committee of the advisability of his position.

A large number of terrorists remained in Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power and participated in Lenin's "Red Terror" policy. A number of founders and major figures of the Soviet state, who had previously participated in extremist actions, continued their activities in a modified form after 1917.

Second emigration (1908 - April 1917)

At the end of 1908, Lenin and Krupskaya, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Lenin lived here until June 1912. This is where his first meeting with Inessa Armand takes place.

He fought against otzovists and ultimatists - radical Bolsheviks who opposed participation in the work of the State Duma. In 1909 he published his main philosophical work, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” The work was written after Lenin realized how widely popular Machism and empirio-criticism had become among Social Democrats. At a meeting of the expanded editorial board of the newspaper Proletary in June 1909, the Bolsheviks separated from the otzovists, ultimatists and Machists.

At the Paris Plenum of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in the winter of 1910, Lenin and his supporters suffered a heavy defeat: the semi-official “Bolshevik Center” was closed, and the monthly “Proletary”, which was under Lenin’s control, was closed. The Russian Collegium was created, to which leadership powers were transferred on behalf of the Central Committee on the territory of Russia; Lenin’s group lost control over the money received through the “Schmit inheritance”.

In the spring of 1911 he created a Bolshevik party school in Longjumeau, a suburb of Paris, and gave lectures there. In January 1912, he organized a Bolshevik party conference in Prague, at which a break with the Menshevik liquidators was declared.

From December 1910 to April 1912, the Bolsheviks published the legal newspaper Zvezda in St. Petersburg, which was published first weekly, then 3 times a week. On May 5, 1912, the first issue of the daily legal Bolshevik newspaper Pravda was published in St. Petersburg. Extremely dissatisfied with the editing of the newspaper (Stalin was the editor-in-chief), Lenin sent L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost every day, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected the editors’ mistakes. Over the course of 2 years, Pravda published about 270 Leninist articles and notes. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the IV State Duma, was a representative of the RSDLP in the II International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

17 days later in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist, unfair on both sides, alien to the interests of the working people of the warring states. According to the memoirs of S. Yu. Bagotsky, after receiving information about the unanimous vote of German Social Democrats for the military budget of the German government, Lenin declared that he had ceased to be a Social Democrat and turned into a communist.

At international conferences in Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916), Lenin, in accordance with the resolution of the Stuttgart Congress and the Basel Manifesto of the Second International, defended his thesis on the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war and spoke with the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism”: the same desire for defeat in an imperialist war that is senseless for the people, who, in case of victory, will remain in the same oppressed position, fratricidal for the sake of the profit of monopolies and sales markets - both for one’s own country and for its enemy, since the collapse of bourgeois power creates a revolutionary situation and opens up opportunities for working people to defend their interests , and not the interests of their oppressors and create a more just social system both in their own country and in the enemy country. Military historian S.V. Volkov considered that Lenin’s position during the First World War in relation to his own country can most accurately be described as “high treason.”

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to travel by train from Switzerland through Germany. General E. Ludendorff argued that transporting Lenin to Russia was expedient from a military point of view. Among Lenin's companions were Krupskaya N.K., Zinoviev G.E., Lilina Z.I., Armand I.F., Sokolnikov G.Ya., Radek K.B. and others. On April 8, one of the leaders of German intelligence in Stockholm telegraphed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin: “Lenin’s arrival in Russia is successful. It works exactly the way we would like it to.”

In mid-April 1917, P. A. Alexandrov, an investigator of the extraordinary investigative commission, opened a criminal case against Lenin and the Bolsheviks. By the end of October 1917, the investigation was coming to an end and Lenin was planning to be charged on the grounds of “a criminal act stipulated by 51 [complicity and incitement], 100 [violent attempt to change the form of government or to tear away any part of Russia from Russia] and 1 p. 108 [assisting the enemy in military or other hostile acts against Russia] Art. Criminal Code of the Russian Empire". But the case against the Bolsheviks was never completed due to the October Revolution.

April - June 1917. "April Theses"

Demonstrators on the streets of Petrograd demanding the return of Lenin to Wilhelm. April 1917

On April 3, 1917, Lenin arrived in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, organized a ceremonial meeting for him. To meet Lenin and the procession that followed through the streets of Petrograd, according to the Bolsheviks, 7,000 soldiers were mobilized “alongside.”

Lenin was personally met by the chairman of the executive committee of the Petrograd Soviet, Menshevik N. S. Chkheidze, who on behalf of the Soviet expressed hope for “unifying the ranks of all democracy.” However, Lenin’s first speech at the Finlyandsky Station immediately after his arrival ended with a call for a “social revolution” and caused confusion even among Lenin’s supporters. The sailors of the 2nd Baltic crew, who performed honor guard duties at the Finland Station, the next day expressed their indignation and regret that they were not told in time about the route Lenin took to return to Russia, and claimed that they would have greeted Lenin with exclamations of “Down, back to the country through which you came to us.” Soldiers of the Volyn Regiment and sailors in Helsingfors raised the question of Lenin's arrest; the indignation of the sailors in this Finnish Russian port was even expressed in the throwing of Bolshevik agitators into the sea. Based on the information received about Lenin’s path to Russia, the soldiers of the Moscow regiment decided to destroy the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.

The next day, April 4, Lenin made a report to the Bolsheviks, the theses of which were published in Pravda only on April 7, when Lenin and Zinoviev joined the editorial board of Pravda, since, according to V. M. Molotov, the new The leader’s ideas seemed too radical even to his close associates. These were the famous “April Theses”. In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that changed its character with the fall of the autocracy. Lenin announced the slogans: “No support for the Provisional Government” and “all power to the Soviets”; he proclaimed a course for the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the transfer of power to the Soviets and the proletariat with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature.

In March 1917, until Lenin’s arrival from exile, moderate sentiments prevailed in the RSDLP(b). Stalin even declared in March that "unification [with the Mensheviks] is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kinthal line." On April 6, the Central Committee passed a negative resolution on the Theses, and the editorial board of Pravda initially refused to print them, allegedly due to mechanical failure. On April 7, the “Theses” nevertheless appeared with a comment from L. B. Kamenev, who said that “Lenin’s scheme” was “unacceptable.”

Nevertheless, within literally three weeks, Lenin managed to get his party to accept the “Theses.” Stalin I.V. was one of the first to declare their support (April 11). In the words of Trotsky L.D., “the party was taken by surprise by Lenin no less than by the February Revolution... there was no debate, everyone was stunned, no one wanted to expose themselves to the blows of this frantic leader.” The April party conference of 1917 (April 22-29) put an end to the Bolsheviks’ hesitations, which finally adopted the “Theses.”

Memorial plaque in the Assembly Hall of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, dedicated to V. I. Lenin’s speech on May 17, 1917 at a rally of workers and students

N. N. Sukhanov described his personal impression of the “Theses”:

...It was generally quite monotonous and dragging. But from time to time, characteristic touches of the Bolshevik “life of life”, specific methods of Bolshevik party work, which were very interesting to me, slipped through. And it was revealed with complete clarity that all Bolshevik work was held within the iron framework of a foreign spiritual center, without which the party workers would have felt completely helpless, of which they were at the same time proud, to which the best of them felt themselves to be devoted servants, like knights to the Holy Grail... And The illustrious Grand Master of the Order himself rose to answer. I will not forget this thunderous speech, which shocked and amazed not only me, an accidental heretic, but also all the faithful. I claim that no one expected anything like this. It seemed as if all the elements had risen from their lairs, and the spirit of all-destruction, knowing neither barriers, nor doubts, nor human difficulties, nor human calculations, was rushing through the Kshesinskaya hall over the heads of the enchanted students...
After Lenin, it seems, no one spoke again. In any case, no one objected, did not dispute, and no debate arose on the report... I went outside. It felt as if that night they were hitting me on the head with flails....
Sukhanov N.N. Notes on the revolution.

From April to July 1917, Lenin wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and the Party Central Committee, and appeals.

The Menshevik Rabochaya Gazeta assessed Lenin's arrival as the emergence of "danger from the left flank", the newspaper Rech - the official publication of Foreign Minister P. N. Milyukov - according to the historian of the Russian revolution S. P. Melgunov, responded positively to Lenin's arrival , and that now not only Plekhanov will fight for the ideas of socialist parties.

June - October 1917

Lenin in makeup during the last underground. Card on the identity card in the name of the worker K. P. Ivanov, according to which Lenin lived illegally after the July days of 1917.

In Petrograd, from June 3 to June 24, 1917, the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies was held, at which Lenin spoke. In his speech on June 4, he stated that at that moment, in his opinion, the Soviets could gain all power in the country peacefully and use it to solve the main issues of the revolution: give the working people peace, bread, land and overcome economic devastation. Lenin also argued that the Bolsheviks were ready to immediately take power in the country.

A month later, the Petrograd Bolsheviks found themselves involved in anti-government protests on July 3-4, 1917 under the slogans of transferring power to the Soviets and negotiating peace with Germany. The armed demonstration led by the Bolsheviks escalated into skirmishes, including with troops loyal to the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks were accused of organizing an “armed uprising against state power” (subsequently the Bolshevik leadership denied its involvement in the preparation of these events). In addition, the case materials provided by counterintelligence about the Bolshevik connections with Germany were made public.

Pass to the Sestroretsk arms factory in the name of K. P. Ivanov

On July 7, the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin went underground again. In Petrograd he had to change 17 safe houses, after which until August 8 he and Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive H2-293, he disappeared into the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg. Soon the investigation into Lenin's case was discontinued due to lack of evidence.

Lenin, who was in Finland, was unable to attend the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b), which was held semi-legally in August 1917 in Petrograd. The Congress approved the decision on Lenin's failure to appear in the court of the Provisional Government and elected him in absentia as one of its honorary chairmen. During this period, Lenin wrote one of his fundamental works - the book “State and Revolution”.

On August 10, accompanied by member of the Finnish Sejm Karl Viik, Lenin moved from Malm station to Helsingfors. Here he lives in the apartment of the Finnish social democrat Gustav Rovio (Hagnes Square, 1, apt. 22), and then in the apartment of the Finnish workers A. Usenius (Fradrikinkatu St., 64) and B. Vlumkvist (Telenkatu St., 46) . The connection goes through G. Rovio, the writer Kossi Akhmal, who worked as a postman on the railway. d., driver of steam locomotive No. 293 Hugo Yalav, N.K. Krupskaya, M.I. Ulyanov, A.V. Shotman. N.K. Krupskaya comes to Lenin twice, using the ID of Sestroretsk worker Agafya Atamanova. In the second half of September, Lenin moved to Vyborg (the apartment of the editor-in-chief of the Finnish workers' newspaper "Tyuyo" (Labor) Evert Huttunen (Vilkkeenkatu St. 17 - in the 2000s, Turgenev St., 8), then settled with journalist Juho Latukki near Vyborg ( in the working-class village of Talikkala, in a house on Aleksanterinkatu Street - now Vyborg, Rubezhnaya Street 15). On October 7, accompanied by Eino Rakhya, Lenin left Vyborg to move to Petrograd. They rode to Raivola on a commuter train, and then Lenin moved to the cabin of steam locomotive No. 293 to the driver Hugo Yalava. We got off at Udelnaya station, walked to Serdobolskaya 1/92 sq. 20 to M.V. Fofanova, from where Lenin left for Smolny on the night of October 25.

October Revolution of 1917

V. I. Lenin makes a speech at a rally

On October 7, 1917, Lenin arrived illegally from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 24, 1917, after 6 pm, Lenin left the safe house of Margarita Fofanova, at Serdobolskaya Street, building No. 1, apartment No. 41, leaving a note: “...I went to where you didn’t want me to go. Goodbye. Ilyich." For the purpose of secrecy, Lenin changes his appearance: he shaved off his beard and mustache, put on an old coat and cap, and tied a scarf around his cheek. Lenin, accompanied by E. Rakhya, heads to Sampsonievsky Prospekt, takes a tram to Botkinskaya Street, passes the Liteiny Bridge, turns onto Shpalernaya, is stopped twice by cadets along the way and finally comes to Smolny (Leontyevskaya Street, 1). Arriving in Smolny, he began to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet L. D. Trotsky. Lenin proposed to act tough, organized, and quickly, since it was impossible to wait any longer. It was necessary to arrest the government without leaving power in the hands of Kerensky until October 25, disarm the cadets, mobilize districts and regiments, and send representatives from them to the Military Revolutionary Committee and the Bolshevik Central Committee. On the night of October 25-26, the Provisional Government was arrested. It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. On October 25, Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin's decrees on peace and land were adopted, and a government was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 80% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, presented the Constituent Assembly with a choice: ratify the power of the Soviets and the decrees of the Bolshevik government or disperse. The Constituent Assembly, which did not agree with this formulation of the issue, lost its quorum and was forcibly dissolved.

After the revolution and during the Civil War (1917-1921)

Lenin walks around the guard of honor, heading to the site of the laying of the Liberated Labor monument on Prechistenskaya Embankment. May 1, 1920. Photo by A. I. Savelyev

On January 15, 1918, Lenin signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Red Army. In accordance with the Peace Decree, it was necessary to withdraw from the First World War. Despite the opposition of the left communists and L.D. Trotsky, Lenin achieved the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany. On March 3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, withdrew from the Soviet government. On March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops, at the suggestion of Lenin, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) moved to Moscow, which became the new capital of Soviet Russia. From March 11, 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. Lenin's personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin, according to the official version, by the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, which led to severe injury. After the assassination attempt, Lenin was successfully operated on by doctor Vladimir Mints.

Decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, as amended by V. I. Lenin

In March 1919, after the failure of the Entente countries’ initiative to end the Civil War in Russia, V. Bullitt, who secretly arrived in Moscow on behalf of US President William Wilson and British Prime Minister D. Lloyd George, proposed that Soviet Russia make peace with all other governments, formed on the territory of the former Russian Empire, while paying off its debts together with them. Lenin agreed to this proposal, motivating this decision as follows: “The price of the blood of our workers and soldiers is too dear to us; We, as merchants, will pay for peace at the price of a heavy tribute... just to save the lives of workers and peasants.”. However, the initially successful offensive of A.V. Kolchak’s army on the Eastern Front against Soviet troops, which began in March 1919, instilling confidence in the Entente countries in the imminent fall of Soviet power, led to the fact that negotiations were not continued by the United States and Great Britain.

Lenin had a negative attitude towards “leftism” in the sphere of education and culture, which denied all the positive achievements of the past. Speaking at the III All-Russian Congress of the Russian Communist Youth Union in 1920, he stated that “you can become a communist only when you enrich your memory with the knowledge of all the riches that humanity has developed.” “Not the invention of a new proletarian culture, but the development of the best examples, traditions, results of the existing culture from the point of view of the worldview of Marxism” - this is what, in his opinion, should be at the forefront of the cultural revolution (1920).

Lenin paid significant attention to the development of the country's economy. Lenin believed that in order to restore the economy destroyed by the war, it was necessary to organize the state into a “national, state “syndicate”. Soon after the revolution, Lenin set the task for scientists to develop a plan for the reorganization of industry and the economic revival of Russia, and also contributed to the development of the country's science.

In 1919, on the initiative of Lenin, the Communist International was created.

Role in the execution of the family of Nicholas II

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the former Russian Emperor Nicholas II was shot along with his family and servants by order of the Ural Regional Council in Yekaterinburg, headed by the Bolsheviks. The existence of sanctions by the Bolshevik leadership (Lenin and Sverdlov) for the execution of Nicholas II is recognized by modern historical science as an established fact. Not all modern historians - specialists on this topic - agree with this opinion. The question of the existence of Lenin’s sanctions on the murder of the family and servants of Nicholas II remains debatable in modern historiography: some historians recognize their existence, some deny it.

Initially, the Soviet leadership decided to try Nicholas II. It is known that the issue of the court was discussed at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, held on January 29-30 (February 11-12), 1918, as well as at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on May 19, 1918, and the party board confirmed the need for such a court. According to historians Yu. A. Buranov and V. M. Khrustalev, this idea was supported by Lenin in May 1918.

It is possible that it was for this purpose that Nicholas II and his family were transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. According to M. Medvedev (Kudrin), in Moscow Goloshchekin failed to obtain permission to shoot Nicholas II, while Lenin spoke out in favor of transferring the former tsar to a safe place. On July 13, a conversation took place over a direct wire between the chairman of the Urals Council (Beloborodov) and V.I. Lenin, during which the “military review and protection of the former tsar” was discussed.

N.K. Krupskaya recalled that Ilyich spent the entire night of the execution at work and returned home only in the morning.

Role in the "Red Terror"

OSVAG poster from the Civil War. In the center, in red, is the figure of Lenin - in front of the altar with the tied figure of a Russian girl on it. The composition symbolizes Russia, sacrificed by the Bolsheviks to the Third International

During the Civil War in Russia, Lenin personally was the initiator and one of the main organizers of the policy of red terror, carried out directly on his instructions. Lenin's instructions ordered the start of mass terror, organizing executions, isolating unreliable people in concentration camps and carrying out other emergency measures.

On August 5, 1918, in the village of Kuchki, Penza district, five pro-army members and three members of the village committee of the poor were killed. The uprising that broke out spread to a number of neighboring counties. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Eastern Front was passing 45 kilometers from the scene of events. On August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee: “It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; those who are dubious will be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.” On August 11, 1918, Lenin sent a telegram about the suppression of the kulak uprising in the Penza province, in which he called for hanging 100 kulaks, taking away all their bread and assigning hostages. After Lenin's telegrams were sent, 13 direct participants in the murder and organizers of the uprising were arrested and shot. In addition, gatherings and rallies were held in the districts, at which the food policy of the Soviet government was explained, after which the peasant unrest ceased.

In this regard, it is worth considering that Lenin often used harsh but declarative expressions. Thus, F. Raskolnikov recalls that Lenin, when the Kronstadt Soviet adopted a resolution on the transfer of power to it (which the Bolsheviks, by the way, had nothing to do with), said: “What did you do there? Is it possible to do such things without consulting the Central Committee? This is a violation of elementary party discipline. This is the kind of thing we will shoot for..." In 1918, Lenin noted that Lunacharsky should be “hanged” for disrupting monumental propaganda; in 1921, Vladimir Ilyich wrote to P. Bogdanov that the “communist bastard” should be put in prison, and “all of us and the People’s Commissariat of Justice should be hanged on stinking ropes.” " From this it is clear that such a declarative style was typical of Lenin, although it did not always imply practical implementation.

A description of the ways to implement the instructions of the Bolshevik leader on the mass Red Terror is presented in acts, investigations, certificates, reports and other materials of the Special Commission for the Investigation of Bolshevik Atrocities.

The KGB history textbook indicates that Lenin spoke to employees of the Cheka, received security officers, was interested in the progress of operational developments and investigations, and gave instructions on specific cases. When the Chekists were developing the Whirlwind case in 1921, Lenin personally participated in the operation, certifying with his signature the forged mandate of the Cheka agent provocateur.

In mid-August 1920, in connection with receiving information that in Estonia and Latvia, with which Soviet Russia had concluded peace treaties, volunteers were being enrolled in anti-Bolshevik detachments, Lenin in a letter to E.M. Sklyansky called for “hanging kulaks, priests, landowners " At the same time, the plan was not continued. On the contrary, on October 28, 1920, the government of the RSFSR sent a note to the government of Great Britain pointing out the criminal acts of Bulak-Balakhovich’s detachments, and on the same day a note to Latvia, which pointed to Article IV of the peace treaty on “prohibiting the formation of military detachments in the territories of both countries, directed against the other contracting party."

Even after the end of the Civil War, in 1922, V.I. Lenin declared the impossibility of ending terror and the need for its legislative regulation

This problem was not raised in Soviet historiography, but at present it is being studied not only by foreign, but also by domestic historians.

Doctors of historical sciences Yu. G. Felshtinsky and G. I. Chernyavsky explain in their work why it is only today that the discrepancy with reality of the image of the Bolshevik leader traditional for Soviet historiography is becoming obvious:

...Now, when the veil of secrecy has been lifted from the Lenin Archive Fund in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the first collections of previously unpublished manuscripts and speeches of Lenin have appeared, it becomes even more obvious that the textbook image of a wise state leader and thinker who , supposedly, he only thought about the good of the people, was a cover for the real appearance of a totalitarian dictator, who cared only about strengthening the power of his party and his own power, ready to commit any crimes in the name of this goal, tirelessly and hysterically repeating calls to shoot, hang, take hostages and so on.
The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives

Professor V.T. Loginov expresses his opinion on the need to carefully conduct scientific research in connection with the publication of previously unknown Lenin documents:

Needless to say, the opening of the archives really made it possible to introduce into scientific circulation a huge array of new materials on the most diverse periods of Russian history. Dozens, if not hundreds, of professional researchers are painstakingly studying them, preparing new fundamental works. As for historical journalism, it, having separated from science, has become a completely independent genre. The trouble with Leninism is that thanks to the press, radio and television, through this particular genre, information about Lenin comes to millions of people today. It was in journalism that some previously unknown Leninist documents were first presented with clearly unscientific, politicized commentary. Meanwhile, quotations from new documents by themselves often explain little. For a historian, a document as such is not indisputable evidence, but an object of careful and scrupulous scientific research. It is necessary, first of all, to put each document, each specific fact in a real historical context.

Historian I. F. Plotnikov believes that it was Lenin who played the leading role in the deaths of many victims of the Red Terror:

It must be said that recently, for the first time, copies of documents have appeared on the pages of our press indicating that the main perpetrator of the execution of Kolchak, as well as members of the royal family, and many other people, was the head of the Soviet government and the RCP (b) V. I. Lenin
- Plotnikov I.F. Alexander Vasilievich Kolchak. Life and activity.

According to historian V.P. Buldakov, Lenin's statements about terror are often viewed not as expressions of emotional reactions, but as direct orders for murders and executions. V.P. Buldakov believes that this is incorrect: Lenin’s ruthless calls, such as “execution on the spot of speculators,” were addressed to abstract “class enemies.” In addition, according to Buldakov, when establishing the new government, Lenin tried to use calls for state violence to stop the escalation of violence and lynching by the crowd, while Buldakov believes that at a certain stage Lenin was probably the only one who understood this need. According to Buldakov, the Red Terror was a consequence and element of the inevitable escalation of violence on the part of the broad masses, and the nature of Lenin’s actions was determined by the fact that he followed the masses, trying to somehow streamline this violence.

V.I. Lenin was defined by the philosopher V.V. Sokolov in the journal “Problems of Philosophy” as the founder of Russian Russophobia of his time.

In February 1920, the Irkutsk Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee executed without trial Admiral A.V. Kolchak, who was under arrest in the Irkutsk prison after being extradited by their allies to the Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik Political Center. According to a number of historians, this was done in accordance with Lenin's orders.

Role in the expulsion abroad of part of the national intelligentsia

V. I. Lenin and I. V. Stalin in Gorki, 1922

Lenin was irreconcilable with the bourgeois intelligentsia. The Bolshevik leader feared the free-thinking, independent intelligentsia as a possible intellectual support for the opposition. In order to be classified by Lenin as an enemy of the Soviet regime, it was not necessary to fight it; it was enough to simply disapprove of its actions. When in the fall of 1919 there were general searches and arrests among the Petrograd intelligentsia, about which M. Gorky wrote to Lenin, the latter reassured the writer, admitting that there were mistakes in the arrests of “bourgeois intellectuals of the near-cadet type,” but is it worth complaining “about the fact that several dozen (or at least even hundreds) of cadet and near-cadet gentlemen will spend several days in prison... What a disaster, just think! What injustice! Lenin spoke of the outstanding writer Vladimir Korolenko this way: “A pathetic philistine, captivated by bourgeois prejudices!... It’s not a sin for such “talents” to spend weeks in prison.” Lenin called any non-Bolshevik intellectual “near-cadet public.” Declaring intellectuals enemies of the Soviet regime, Lenin, in a letter to Gorky, assessed them as “lackeys of capital, imagining themselves to be the brains of the nation. In fact, this is not a brain, but shit.” According to historian A.G. Latyshev, Lenin is responsible for the premature death of the poet Alexander Blok.

At the end of the civil war, the Bolshevik government carried out an action that the historian Latyshev described as one of its most shameful acts - the expulsion from the country in the fall of 1922 of famous Russian philosophers, writers and other representatives of the intelligentsia. The initiator of this action was Lenin.

Lenin first voiced his idea of expelling enemies of Soviet power abroad back in March 1919, in an interview with American journalist Lincoln Steffens. He returned to this idea again in the spring of 1922 after the forced transition to the NEP policy. By this time, he felt a threat to the one-party dictatorship he had created, which, in the new conditions of economic liberalization, could come from the independent intelligentsia - in Moscow alone by that time the number of private and cooperative publishing houses exceeded 150, independent unions and societies of writers were registered throughout Soviet Russia, philosophers, artists, associations of poets, etc.

In March 1922, in his work “On the Significance of Militant Materialism,” Lenin criticized the author and publishers of the magazine “The Economist” and ultimately wished that the Russian working class would “politely transfer such teachers and members of educational societies ... to the countries of bourgeois ‘democracy’.” .

This method of dealing with dissidents, such as deportation abroad, needed to be given the appearance of legality, and therefore on May 15, 1922, Lenin sent a letter to the People's Commissar of Justice of the RSFSR D. Kursky with instructions to introduce additional articles into the new Criminal Code being developed at that time, namely:

... add the right to replace execution by deportation abroad, by decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (for a term or indefinitely) ... add: execution for unauthorized return from abroad, ... expand the use of execution by replacement of deportation abroad ... to all types of activities of the Mensheviks, pp.- R. and so on.
V. I. Lenin

On May 19, 1922, Lenin sent detailed instructions to F. E. Dzerzhinsky, in which he carefully described the practical measures that the GPU must carry out to organize the upcoming expulsion of “writers and professors helping the counter-revolution.” This letter was written in restrained tones; Lenin proposed appointing “an intelligent, educated and careful person” to the leadership post for the implementation of this plan. At the end of May 1922, due to cerebral vascular sclerosis, Lenin suffered his first serious attack of the disease - speech was lost, the movement of his right limbs was weakened, and there was almost complete memory loss - Lenin, for example, did not know how to use a toothbrush. Only on July 13, 1922, when Lenin’s condition improved, was he able to write his first note. And already on July 17, apparently only under the influence of a depressed state of health, he wrote a letter to J.V. Stalin, filled with furious attacks on the expelled Russian intelligentsia:

T. Stalin!
On the question of the expulsion of the Mensheviks from Russia, n. village, cadets, etc. I would like to ask a few questions in view of the fact that this operation, which began before my leave, has not been completed even now. Has it been decided to “eradicate” all the Popular Socialists...?
In my opinion, send everyone away...
The commission ... should provide lists and several hundred such gentlemen should be sent abroad mercilessly. Cleanse Russia for a long time. ... Get them all out of Russia.
Arrest several hundred and without announcing a motive - leave, gentlemen!
With communist greetings, Lenin.
V. I. Lenin. The letter was preserved in a copy copied by Genrikh Yagoda. There is a resolution on it: “t. Dzerzhinsky with return. Stalin"

From the end of July 1922, Lenin's condition deteriorated again. Improvement came only at the beginning of September 1922. During this period, the question of how the deportation of the intelligentsia was progressing worried Lenin no less than before. After meeting with Lenin on September 4, 1922, F. Dzerzhinsky made a note in his diary: “Directives of Vladimir Ilyich. Continue to steadily expel the active anti-Soviet intelligentsia (and the Mensheviks in the first place) abroad...” Lenin tirelessly, as soon as his health allowed, was interested in and hastened the deportation, personally checking the compiled lists and making notes in the margins of the lists. In total, about two hundred scientists and literary figures were sent abroad. The total number of people expelled from their homeland, including family members, was more than three hundred people.

Attitude to religion

Religious scholar and sociologist M. Yu. Smirnov in his work “Religion and the Bible in the Works of V. I. Lenin: a new look at an old topic” writes that Lenin could speak positively about those clergy whose activities corresponded to his ideas about the struggle for social justice . In the article “Socialism and Religion” (1905), Lenin called for the support of “honest and sincere people from the clergy” in their demands for freedom and protests against the “officialdom” imposed by the autocracy, “bureaucratic arbitrariness” and “police investigation”. Preparing the “Draft Speech on the Agrarian Question in the Second State Duma” (1907), he wrote: “...we, Social Democrats, have a negative attitude towards Christian teaching. But in saying this, I consider it my duty to say right now, directly and openly, that Social Democracy fights for complete freedom of conscience and treats with full respect every sincere conviction in matters of faith...” At the same time, he described priest Tikhvinsky as “a deputy from the peasants, worthy of all respect for his sincere devotion to the interests of the peasantry, the interests of the people, which he fearlessly and decisively defends...”

Lenin, as chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, signed on January 20, 1918 the Decree on freedom of conscience, church and religious societies in the editing of which he took part. In the Collection of Legislation and Orders of the Workers' and Peasants' Government, this decree was published on January 26 under a different name - On the separation of church from state and school from church. By this decree, all the property of church and religious societies that existed in Russia was declared “national property.” The decree prohibited “the issuance of any local laws or regulations that would restrict or restrict freedom of conscience” and established that “every citizen may profess any religion or not profess any. All legal deprivations associated with the confession of any faith or non-profession of any faith are abolished.”

During the Civil War, Lenin drew attention to the danger of infringement of the interests of believers. He spoke about this when speaking at the First All-Russian Congress of Working Women on November 19, 1918, and wrote in the draft Program of the RCP(b) in 1919 (“to carry out the actual liberation of the working masses from religious prejudices, achieving this through propaganda and raising the consciousness of the masses, at the same time carefully avoiding any insult to the feelings of the believing part of the population...") and in instructions to V.M. Molotov in April 1921.

Lenin supported the requests of believers from the Yaganovskaya volost of the Cherepovets district to assist in the completion of the local temple, founded back in 1915 (Lenin’s note to the chairman of the Afanasyevsky village council V. Bakhvalov dated April 2, 1919 said: “The completion of the construction of the temple, of course, is permitted...”).

Numerous examples demonstrate the wide range of V.I. Lenin’s judgments on the “religious issue” and the variety of practical approaches to it. Behind the categoricalness in some cases and the manifestation of tolerance in others, one can see a clear position in relation to the sphere of religion. It is based, firstly, on the fundamental incompatibility of the dialectical-materialist worldview with any religion, the idea of the exclusively earthly roots of religions. Secondly, anti-clericalism, which in the post-revolutionary period turned into a militant attitude towards religious organizations as political opponents of the Communist Party. Thirdly, Lenin’s conviction in the significantly lower importance of problems related to religion compared to solving the problems of reorganizing society and, therefore, the subordination of the former to the latter.

In Socialism and Religion, Lenin writes:

Religion is one of the types of spiritual oppression that lies everywhere on the masses of the people, oppressed by eternal work for others, by poverty and loneliness. The powerlessness of the exploited classes in the fight against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to faith in a better afterlife, just as the powerlessness of the savage in the fight against nature gives rise to faith in gods, devils, miracles, etc. Religion teaches humility to those who work and need all their lives and patience in earthly life, comforting with the hope of a heavenly reward. And for those who live on the labor of others, religion teaches charity in earthly life, offering them a very cheap justification for their entire exploitative existence and selling tickets to heavenly well-being at a reasonable price. Religion is the opium of the people. Religion is a kind of spiritual booze in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demands for a life somewhat worthy of a human being.

In private correspondence, Lenin spoke even more harshly:

every religious idea, every idea about every little god, every flirtation even with a little god is the most unspeakable abomination, especially tolerantly (and often even kindly) greeted by the democratic bourgeoisie - that is why it is the most dangerous abomination, the most vile “infection”.

In the fall of 1920, while vacationing in the village of Monino near Moscow, Lenin stayed in the house of the local priest Predtechin, who lived next to the existing church. Having learned while hunting that Predtechin was a minister of cult, the head of the Soviet government did not show any hostile feelings towards him and subsequently recalled this acquaintance quite good-naturedly.

In March 1919, priest Vasily Pyatnitsky was arrested in the Novgorod province by officers of the local Cheka. He was accused of disobedience to Soviet power, beating officials, etc. The priest's brother Konstantin Pyatnitsky wrote a detailed letter to Lenin, in which, in particular, he noted that “...for many, wearing a cassock is already a crime.” As a result, the priest remained alive and was soon released.

After the Soviet government moved to the Kremlin in 1918, Patriarch Tikhon continued to serve liturgies, all-night vigils, prayer services, and memorial services, which often took place near Lenin’s place of work and residence - in the Assumption and Archangel Cathedrals of the Moscow Kremlin.

Role in the defeat of the Orthodox Church

The historian Latyshev believed that in world history it is rare to find a statesman who hated religion so much and persecuted the church so much, considering religion one of the most vile things that exist in the world, like Lenin.

First of all, the Russian Orthodox Church was persecuted, which Lenin, long before coming to power, branded as a “department of police Orthodoxy,” a “police-state church.” At the same time, Lenin saw Islam as an ally in the spread of world revolution in the East. When persecuting Western Christian churches, the Bolsheviks faced protests from the Vatican and European states, which they had to reckon with. Sectarian communities were often supported in order to, with their help, weaken the Orthodox Church, which, after the defeat of the White Fronts in the Civil War, was left defenseless in the face of the power of the people's commissars.

According to Latyshev, Lenin was the initiator of four mass campaigns directed against Orthodoxy, indicating, in his opinion, Lenin’s desire to destroy as many Orthodox clergy as possible:

November 1917 - 1919 - deprivation of the Church of the rights of a legal entity, deprivation of the clergy of political rights, the beginning of the closure of monasteries, some churches, requisition of their property.
1919-1920 - opening of holy relics.
Since the end of 1920 - the organization of a schism of the Church.
From the beginning of 1922 - the looting of all churches, and the execution of the maximum number of Orthodox clergy.

The campaign to confiscate church valuables caused resistance from representatives of the clergy and some parishioners. The shooting of parishioners in Shuya caused great resonance. In connection with these events, on March 19, 1922, Lenin drafted a secret letter in which he outlined his plan to deal with the church, taking advantage of the famine and the events in Shuya. On March 22, at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), an action plan prepared by L. D. Trotsky was adopted to destroy the church organization.

Ideas were born in Lenin’s head about how in the future it would be possible to replace religion in the lives of believers. Thus, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee M.I. Kalinin recalled that at the beginning of 1922 Lenin, in a private conversation on this topic, told him: “this task<замены религии>rests entirely with the theatre, the theater must excommunicate the peasant masses from ritual gatherings.” And when discussing the problem of electrification with V.P. Milyutin and L.B. Krasin, Lenin noted that God would be replaced by electricity for the peasant, to whom he would pray, feeling the power of the central government instead of heavenly power.

As Lenin's illness progressed, he was less and less able to work fully. But issues of anti-church struggle worried Lenin until the very last days of his active life. Thus, in the few days of improved health in October 1922, Lenin imposed on the resolution of the organizing bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) “On the creation of a commission on anti-religious propaganda” dated October 13, 1922, a resolution demanding that the GPU be involved in the work of the commission. A week before his final retirement as a result of another attack of illness - December 5, 1922 - Lenin protested the decision of the Small Council of People's Commissars to terminate the work of the special VIII department of the People's Commissariat for the separation of church and state, noting: “As for the statement that the process of separation of church and state is completed , then this is probably so; We have already separated the church from the state, but we have not yet separated religion from the people.”

After Lenin's final retirement, his successor as head of the Soviet government, A. I. Rykov, reduced to some extent the pressure of the Soviet state on the Orthodox Church.

Foreign policy

V. I. Lenin in 1920

We are told that Russia will fragment, disintegrate into separate republics, but we have nothing to fear from this. No matter how many independent republics there are, we will not be afraid of this. What is important for us is not where the state border lies, but that the alliance be maintained between the working people of all nations to fight the bourgeoisie of any nation.

In an appeal “To all working Muslims of Russia and the East,” published on November 24, 1917 and signed by Lenin and Stalin, Soviet Russia renounced the terms of the Anglo-Franco-Russian Agreement of 1915 and the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the division of the world after the war:

We declare that the secret agreements of the deposed tsar on the capture of Constantinople, confirmed by the deposed Kerensky, are now torn and destroyed. The Russian Republic and its government, the Council of People's Commissars, are against the seizure of foreign lands: Constantinople must remain in the hands of Muslims.
We declare that the treaty on the division of Persia has been torn and destroyed. As soon as hostilities cease, the troops will be withdrawn from Persia and the Persians will be guaranteed the right to freely determine their fate.
We declare that the agreement on the division of Turkey and the taking away of Armenia from it has been torn and destroyed. As soon as hostilities cease, Armenians will be guaranteed the right to freely determine their political destiny.

Immediately after the October Revolution, Lenin recognized the independence of Finland.

During the Civil War, Lenin tried to reach an agreement with the Entente powers. In March 1919, Lenin negotiated with William Bullitt, who had arrived in Moscow. Lenin agreed to pay off pre-revolutionary Russian debts in exchange for an end to the intervention and the Entente's support for the Whites. A draft agreement was developed with the Entente powers.

In 1919, it was necessary to admit that the world revolution “will, judging by the beginning, continue for many years.” Lenin forms a new concept of foreign policy “for the period when socialist and capitalist states will exist side by side,” which he characterizes as “peaceful coexistence with the peoples, with the workers and peasants of all nations,” the development of international trade. In addition, V. Lenin called for “using the opposites and contradictions between the two groups of capitalist states, pitting them against each other.” He put forward “the tactic of pitting the imperialists against each other” for a period “until we have conquered the whole world.” And he simply explained its meaning: “If we had not adhered to this rule, we would have long ago, to the delight of the capitalists, all been hanging on different aspens.” Lenin had a negative attitude towards the League of Nations due to the lack of “real establishment of equality of nations” and “real plans for peaceful coexistence between them.”

The decline of revolutionary unrest in capitalist countries forced Lenin to place more hope in the implementation of the world revolution on the “exploited masses” of the East. “Now our Soviet Republic will have to group around itself all the awakening peoples of the East in order to fight together with them against international imperialism,” - this was the task set by V. Lenin in his report at the 11th All-Russian Congress of Communist Organizations of the Peoples of the East on November 22, 1919. In order to so that in the “history of the world revolution” the eastern working masses could play “a big role and merge in this struggle with our struggle against international imperialism,” according to V. Lenin, it was necessary to “translate the true communist teaching, which is intended for the communists of more advanced countries, into the language of every people."

After the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia managed to break through the economic blockade thanks to the establishment of diplomatic relations with Germany and the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo (1922). Peace treaties were concluded and diplomatic relations were established with a number of border states: Finland (1920), Estonia (1920), Georgia (1920), Poland (1921), Turkey (1921), Iran (1921), Mongolia (1921). The most active support came from Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran, which resisted European colonialism.

In October 1920, Lenin met with a Mongolian delegation that had arrived in Moscow, hoping for support from the “Reds” who were victorious in the Civil War on the issue of Mongolian independence. As a condition for supporting Mongolian independence, Lenin pointed to the need to create a “united organization of forces, political and state,” preferably under the red banner.

Last years (1921-1924)

The economic and political situation required the Bolsheviks to change their previous policies. In this regard, at the insistence of Lenin, in 1921, at the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), “war communism” was abolished, food allocation was replaced by a food tax. The so-called New Economic Policy was introduced, which allowed private free trade and enabled large sections of the population to independently seek the means of subsistence that the state could not give them.

At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-owned enterprises, on electrification (with the participation of Lenin, a special commission was created to develop a project for the electrification of Russia - GOELRO), on the development of cooperation. Lenin believed that in anticipation of the world proletarian revolution, keeping all large industry in the hands of the state, it was necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this could, in his opinion, help put the backward Soviet country on the same level as the most developed European countries.

And in 1922, V.I. Lenin declared the need for a legislative regulation of terror, as follows from his letter to the People's Commissar of Justice Kursky dated May 17, 1922:

The court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-deception or deception, but to justify and legitimize it in principle, clearly, without falsehood and without embellishment. It is necessary to formulate it as broadly as possible, because only revolutionary legal consciousness and revolutionary conscience will set the conditions for application in practice, more or less broadly. With communist greetings, Lenin.
PSS. T. 45. pp. 190–191

In a letter to Kursky dated May 15, 1922, Lenin proposed adding to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR the right to replace execution by deportation abroad, by decision of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (for a term or indefinitely).

Illness and death. Question about cause of death

V.I. Lenin during illness. Gorki near Moscow. 1923

In March 1922, Lenin led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he became seriously ill, but returned to work in early October. Presumably, Vladimir Ilyich’s illness was caused by severe overwork and the consequences of the assassination attempt on August 30, 1918. At least these reasons are cited by the authoritative researcher of this issue, surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin. Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and on May 15, 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. Since March 12, 1923, daily bulletins on Lenin's health were published. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923.

During this period, he, however, dictated several notes: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization””, “Pages from the diary”, “On cooperation”, “About our revolution (regarding N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Less is better”. Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) is often viewed as Lenin's testament.

In January 1924, Lenin's health suddenly deteriorated sharply. On January 21, 1924 at 18:50, at the 54th year of his life, he died.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read: “<…>The basis of the disease of the deceased is widespread atherosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear (Abnutzungssclerose). Due to the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries of the brain and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorders). The immediate cause of death was: 1) increased circulatory disorders in the brain; 2) hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.” In June 2004, an article was published in the magazine European Journal of Neurology, the authors of which suggest that Lenin died of neurosyphilis. Lenin himself did not exclude the possibility of syphilis and therefore took salvarsan, and in 1923 he also tried to be treated with drugs based on mercury and bismuth; Max Nonne, a specialist in this field, was invited to see him. However, his guess was refuted by him. " Absolutely nothing indicated syphilis“Nonna later wrote down.

Personality

British historian Helen Rappaport, who wrote a book about Lenin, “The Conspirator,” citing memoir sources, described him as “demanding,” “punctual,” “neat,” and “very clean” in everyday life. At the same time, “Lenin was obsessed with obsessions,” “he was very authoritarian, very inflexible, and did not tolerate disagreement with his opinions.” “Friendship was a secondary matter for him.” Rappaport points out that “Lenin was a cynical opportunist - changing his party tactics depending on circumstances and political gain. Perhaps this was his extraordinary talent as a tactician.” “He was ruthless and cruel, shamelessly using people for his own purposes.”

The English writer Arthur Ransome wrote: “Lenin struck me with his love of life. I could not remember any person of similar caliber who had the same joyful temperament. This short, bald, wrinkled man, rocking in his chair this way and that, laughing at this or that joke, is at any moment ready to give serious advice to anyone who interrupts him to ask a question - advice so well founded, that for his followers he has a much greater motivating power than any orders; all his wrinkles are from laughter, not from anxiety.”

After the victory of the October Revolution, Lenin and his wife lived in a five-room, one-bedroom apartment in the Kremlin. When traveling around Moscow, Lenin used several cars, one of which was a Rolls-Royce. Throughout his life, Lenin played chess.

Appearance

According to Trotsky's description, Lenin's appearance was characterized by simplicity and strength. He was below average height (164 cm), with a Slavic type of face and piercing eyes.

Russian inventor Lev Theremin, who personally met Lenin, noted that he was very surprised by the leader’s bright red hair.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had a noticeable speech impediment - burr. This can be heard on the surviving recordings of the leader’s speech. Burr was inherent in the incarnations of the image of Lenin in films.

Nicknames

In December 1901, Vladimir Ulyanov first used the pseudonym “N.” as a signature in the Zarya magazine. Lenin." The exact reason for its appearance is unknown, so there were many versions about the origin of this pseudonym. For example, toponymic - according to the Siberian Lena River (family version of the Ulyanovs). According to historian Vladlen Loginov, the most plausible version seems to be related to the use of the passport of the real Nikolai Lenin.

After V.I. Lenin came to power, official party and state documents were signed by “V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin).” Lenin is the most famous pseudonym, but far from the only one. In total, due to conspiracy, Ulyanov had more than 150 pseudonyms.

In addition to pseudonyms, Lenin also had a party nickname, which was used by his comrades and himself: “Old Man.”

Creation

Party card No. 527, early 1920

Party card No. 224332, after September 1920

Party card No. 114482, 1922

Key Ideas

The assessment of V. I. Lenin’s theoretical heritage is extremely controversial and politicized; it includes both positive and negative reviews.

Historiosophical analysis of contemporary capitalism

Today many of Lenin's ideas are very relevant. For example, criticism of bourgeois democracy as a hidden form of dictatorship of capital. He wrote: whoever owns, rules. In such a situation, talking about people's power is simply a lie. Lenin's theory of imperialism is also relevant, especially with regard to its transition to financial capitalism. This is a self-devouring monster, an economy that produces money that ends up with the bankers. This is what caused the current global crisis. Read Lenin, he predicted it.

Political philosophy

As researchers believe, in order to know itself through theory, philosophy must admit: it is nothing more than a replacement for politics, a kind of continuation of politics, a kind of chewing on politics - and it turns out that Lenin was the first to say this.

Lenin's political philosophy was oriented toward a radical reorganization of society, eliminating all oppression and social inequality. The means of such reconstruction had to be revolution. Summarizing the experience of previous revolutions, Lenin develops a doctrine of the revolutionary situation and the dictatorship of the proletariat as a means of protecting and developing the gains of the revolution. Like the founders of Marxism, Lenin views revolution as a consequence primarily of objective processes, pointing out that it is not done by order or at the request of revolutionaries. At the same time, Lenin introduces into Marxist theory the position that the socialist revolution does not have to occur in the most developed capitalist countries; The chain of imperialist states can break through in the weakest link, due to the interweaving of many contradictions in it. In Lenin’s perception, Russia in 1917 was such a link.

By politics, Lenin understood primarily the actions of large masses of people. “...When there is no open political action of the masses,” he wrote, “no putches can replace it or artificially cause it.” Instead of talking about elites and parties, which was typical for other politicians, Lenin spoke about the masses and social groups. He carefully studied the life of different segments of the population, trying to identify changes in the mood of classes and groups, the balance of their forces, etc. On this basis, conclusions were drawn about class alliances, the slogans of the day and possible practical actions.

At the same time, Lenin assigned a large role to the subjective factor. He argued that socialist consciousness does not arise by itself from the economic situation of the proletariat, that its development requires the activity of theorists based on broader foundations, and that this consciousness must be brought into the working class from the outside. Lenin developed and implemented the doctrine of the party as the leading part of the class, pointed out the role of subjective components in the revolution, which themselves do not arise from the revolutionary situation. In connection with these provisions, some interpreters began to talk about Lenin’s significant contribution to Marxist theory, others - about his voluntarism.

Lenin also expressed a number of provisions that developed the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state, which, according to Lenin, should be preceded by its radical democratization, including the election and rotation of deputies and officials, whose work should be paid at the level of workers’ salaries, the increasingly widespread involvement of representatives of the people in public administration of the masses, so that eventually everyone would rule in turn, and governance would cease to be a privilege.

Communism, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat

According to Lenin, every state has a class character. In the article “The petty-bourgeois position on the question of devastation” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 32) V. I. Lenin writes: “On the question of the state, first of all, distinguish what class the “state” serves, what class interests it conducts” (p. 247). In the Program of the RCP (b) prepared by Lenin, it was written: “In contrast to bourgeois democracy, which hid the class character of its state, Soviet power openly recognizes the inevitability of the class character of any state, until the division of society into classes and with it all state power has completely disappeared” ( P. 424). In the brochure “Letter to the workers and peasants regarding the victory over Kolchak” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 39), V. I. Lenin emphasizes the class character of the state in the most decisive way: “Either the dictatorship (that is, the iron power) of the landowners and capitalists, or the dictatorship of the working class."

In the Theses of the report on the tactics of the Russian Communist Party at the Third Congress of the Communist International (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 44), V. I. Lenin notes: “The dictatorship of the proletariat does not mean the cessation of the class struggle, but its continuation in a new form and with new tools. As long as classes remain, as long as the bourgeoisie overthrown in one country intensifies its attacks on socialism on an international scale tenfold, so long is this dictatorship necessary.” (p. 10) And since, as emphasized in the Report on the tactics of the Russian Communist Party at the Third Congress of the Communist International on July 5, 1921 (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 44), “the task of socialism is to abolish classes” ( P. 39), insofar as the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat covers the entire first phase of communism, that is, the entire period of socialism.

Before building communism, an intermediate stage is necessary - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism is divided into two periods: socialism and communism proper. Under socialism, there is no exploitation of man by man, but there is still no abundance of material goods to satisfy any needs of all members of society.

V. I. Lenin considered the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in October 1917 as the beginning of the socialist revolution, the success of which was problematic for him for a long time. The declaration of the Soviet republic as socialist meant for him only “the determination of the Soviet government to carry out the transition to socialism” (Lenin V.I. Poln. sobr. soch. T.36. P.295).

In 1920, in his speech “Tasks of Youth Unions,” Lenin argued that communism would be built in 1930-1940. In this work, V.I. Lenin argued that one can become a communist only by enriching one’s memory with the knowledge of the riches that humanity has developed, while critically rethinking them to build a new socialist society. In one of his last works, “On Cooperation,” V.I. Lenin considered socialism as a system of civilized cooperators with public ownership of the means of production and the class victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.

Attitude to the imperialist war and revolutionary defeatism

According to Lenin, the First World War was of an imperialist nature, was unfair for all parties involved, and alien to the interests of the working people. Lenin put forward the thesis about the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war (in each country against its own government) and the need for workers to use war to overthrow “their” governments. At the same time, pointing out the need for Social Democrats to participate in the anti-war movement, which came up with pacifist slogans for peace, Lenin considered such slogans to be “a deception of the people” and emphasized the need for a civil war.

Lenin put forward the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, the essence of which was not to vote in parliament for war loans to the government, to create and strengthen revolutionary organizations among workers and soldiers, to fight government patriotic propaganda, and to support the fraternization of soldiers at the front. At the same time, Lenin considered his position to be patriotic - national pride, in his opinion, was the basis of hatred towards the “slave past” and the “slave present.”

Possibility of victory of the socialist revolution in one country

In the article “On the Slogan of the United States of Europe” in 1915, Lenin wrote that the socialist revolution would not necessarily occur simultaneously throughout the world, as Karl Marx believed. It may first occur in one single country. This country will then help the revolution in other countries.

About absolute truth

V. Lenin, in his work Materialism and Empirio-criticism, argued that “human thinking by its nature is capable of giving and does give us absolute truth, which consists of the sum of relative truths. Each stage in the development of science adds new grains to this sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific statement are relative, being either expanded or narrowed by the further growth of knowledge" (PSS, 4th ed., T., 18, p. 137) .

Lenin's idea of the dialectic of objective, absolute and relative truths is based on the Marxist theory of knowledge. Sensation and concepts, being reflections of the objective world, contain objective content. It is this objective content in the feelings and consciousness of a person, but at the same time independent of either man or humanity, that Lenin called objective truth. “Historical materialism and the entire economic teaching of Marx are thoroughly imbued with the recognition of objective truth,” Lenin emphasized.

The movement of human knowledge, that is, the movement of objective truth itself, is imbued with the dialectic of the interaction of absolute and relative truths.

About class morality

“Our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat and the liberation of all working people from the oppression of the capitalists.” Lenin argued that morality is what serves to destroy the old exploitative society and unite all working people around the proletariat, creating a new society of communists.

As political scientist Alexander Tarasov notes, Lenin brought ethics from the realm of religious dogma to the realm of verifiability: ethics must be verified and proven whether a particular action serves the cause of the revolution, whether it is useful to the cause of the working class.

About social justice and equality

For V.I. Lenin, as a practice of revolutionary struggle, the achievement of social justice was a concentrated expression of all his activities, but he understood it, first of all, in a practical aspect, as the destruction of exploitative relations, the gradual process of eliminating class differences, which would allow all workers, independently from their social status in the hierarchy of power, participate in government, receive equal access, approximately the same share of public wealth and public goods: “the first phase of communism (socialism) cannot yet give justice and equality: differences in wealth will remain and differences unjust, but the exploitation of man by man will be impossible, because it is impossible to seize the means of production, factories, machines, land, etc. into private ownership (Lenin V.I. PSS, T.33, p.93).

Social transformations

Pay reform

On November 18, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars, based on the project of V.I. Lenin, adopted a resolution limiting the salary of the people's commissars to 500 rubles per month and ordering the Ministry of Finance and the commissars to “cut all exorbitantly high salaries and pensions.” The decree of the Council of People's Commissars of June 27, 1918 established the maximum wage: for specialists - 1,200 rubles, people's commissars - 800 rubles, which approximately equalized the highest echelon of power and skilled workers in wages. In 1920, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution establishing a single wage scale for all managers; the maximum wage for their labor should not exceed the wage of a skilled worker; the upper and lower acceptable levels of wages were established: the state minimum and the party maximum. At the third congress of trade unions (April 1920), a new wage system was approved, according to which the salary of a specialist could not exceed the salary of an unskilled worker by more than 3.5 times, while discrimination against women was abolished and the pay of female and male labor was equalized.

In Soviet Russia, for the first time in the world, an eight-hour working day was legally approved. By the Decree of June 14, 1918 “On Leave,” all workers for the first time in the history of Russia received a state-guaranteed right to leave, etc. - all this contributed to increasing labor productivity and convincing the majority of the population that the new government has as its main goal caring on improving the living conditions of workers. For the first time in Russian history, workers received the right to old-age pensions.

Despite the largely fair accusations of political opponents of the socialist system of excessive egalitarianism of the socialist wage system, this system contributed to the formation of social homogeneity and the constitution of the Soviet people with a common civic identity; it constantly developed and differentiated on the basis of many criteria, where one of the main ones was the assessment of the real contribution of a citizen to the working and social life of the country.

Right to education

The most important element in overcoming social inequality and building a new society for V.I. Lenin was the development of education, ensuring equal access to education for all workers, regardless of their national origin and gender differences (Education in the USSR). In October 1918, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, the “Regulations on the Unified Labor School of the RSFSR” were introduced, which introduced free and cooperative education for school-age children. Modern researchers note that the communist attack on the system of distribution of scientific statuses began in 1918 and the point was not so much the “re-education of the bourgeois professors”, but rather the establishment of equal access to education and the destruction of class privileges, which included the privilege of being educated.

Lenin's policy in the field of education, ensuring its accessibility for all groups of workers served as the basis for the fact that in 1959, political opponents of the USSR believed that the Soviet education system, especially in engineering and technical specialties, occupied a leading position in the world.

Right to healthcare

Lenin's healthcare policy, based on the principles of free and equal access to medical care for all social groups of the population, contributed to the fact that medicine in the USSR was recognized as one of the best in the world.

Socialist democracy

According to researchers (Bell D.), the most important criterion for the democracy of a society is the openness of its social structure, the ability to create equal opportunities for the promotion of the most talented representatives of the lower social classes into the country's elite (Meritocracy, Post-industrial society). The participation of the broad masses of workers in government was one of the main tasks of the revolution. The decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars (RSFSR) of November 11, 1917 “On the abolition of estates and civil ranks,” signed by Lenin, abolished all estate privileges and restrictions and proclaimed the equality of citizens.

Lenin believed that “we know that any laborer and any cook are not capable of immediately entering into government, but we demand an immediate break with the prejudice that only rich people or officials taken from rich families are capable of running the state, carrying out the everyday work of government.” "(V.I. Lenin. Will the Bolsheviks retain state power, 1917).

“Capitalism stifled, suppressed, crushed a lot of talent among the workers and toiling peasants. These talents perished under the yoke of need, poverty, and outrage against the human person. Our duty now is to find these talents and put them to work” (V.I. Lenin, PSS, 4th ed., T.30, p.54)

Much of what Lenin planned to do to build a mechanism for updating the Soviet elite, democratizing the state apparatus, making it subject to public control, was not implemented, in particular, expanding the Central Committee to include representatives of workers and peasants, organizing worker-peasant control over the activities of the Politburo (How do we reorganize the Workers' and Peasants' Institution), but the criterion of worker-peasant origin introduced by Lenin as one of the main conditions for advancement up the social ladder, and the full encouragement of the promotion of workers and peasants to the state apparatus (the institution of promoters) - opened up opportunities for advancement to higher status positions in society.

Despite the shortcomings reflected in the criticism of opponents of the Soviet government (totalitarianism, nomenklatura) of the principles of Soviet democracy and the real participation of citizens in government, the social structure of the USSR gave citizens confidence in the future and was characterized by democracy and openness: it had significant opportunities for the advancement of citizens (rising social mobility, social elevator) who are on the lower steps of the social ladder - into the country's elite (political, military, scientific), which gave them real opportunities to govern the country. According to data for 1983, among respondents aged 50-59 years, 82.1% had a social and professional status higher than their parents, among respondents 40-49 years old - 74%, and among respondents 30-39 years old - 67%, while these indicators are approximately identical for both men and women, which serves as an example of female emancipation in Soviet society. The USSR was the only country in the world where all the top leaders of the state, except Lenin, came from the lower social classes and had worker-peasant origins: I. Stalin, G. Malenkov, N. Khrushchev, L. Brezhnev, Yu. Andropov, K. Chernenko, M. Gorbachev.

The Soviet social system had much greater social homogeneity, democracy and openness not only in comparison with the post-Soviet one, but also in comparison with its main geopolitical opponent: the United States, where there has been a growing trend of increasing social inequality and reducing opportunities for representatives of lower and middle social groups. achieve higher status positions, while the opportunities for representatives of the middle class to maintain their status are reduced (Capital in the 21st century).

Cultural Revolution

Lenin believed that proletarian culture is a natural development of those reserves of knowledge that humanity has developed under the yoke of capitalist society (PSS, ed. 4, Vol. 41, p. 304). In the article “On Cooperation” (January 1923), V. Lenin argued that the cultural revolution is a necessary condition for Russia, overcoming its civilizational backwardness, to become a completely socialist country. A cultural revolution is... a whole revolution, a whole period of cultural development of the entire mass of the people (V.I. Lenin, PSS, 5th edition, T.40, p. 372, 376-377). In “Pages from the Diary,” V. Lenin believed that one of the main tasks of the cultural revolution was to increase the authority of the people’s teacher: “We must place the people’s teacher at a height at which he has never stood, does not stand and cannot stand in bourgeois society (V.I. Lenin, PSS, 4th ed., T.40, p.23).

In this work, V. Lenin set the following tasks for the cultural revolution:

Elimination of cultural backwardness, first of all, illiteracy of the population.
Providing conditions for the development of the creative forces of workers.
Formation of the socialist intelligentsia.
The establishment of communist ideology in the minds of the broad masses.

On the methodology of revolutionary struggle

From the balcony of the Mossovet building
On November 3, 1918, Lenin spoke to participants in a demonstration in honor of the Austro-Hungarian Revolution, as well as on other occasions

In the article “The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power,” Lenin substantiated the general principles of Soviet power and argued that it was not enough to be a revolutionary and a supporter of socialism or communism in general. You must be able to find at each special moment that special link in the chain that you need to grab hold of with all your might in order to hold the entire chain and firmly prepare the transition to the next link, and the order of the links, their shape, their cohesion, their difference from each other in the historical chain of events is not so simple and not as stupid as in an ordinary chain made by a blacksmith.

Historian Richard Pipes wrote that in order to save the revolution in backward Russia, Lenin considered it necessary to export the revolution to the more developed countries of Western Europe during the First World War - in order to “unleash an all-European civil war.” Lenin provoked labor strikes and military revolts both in the Entente countries and among its opponents. The historian wrote that Lenin made attempts to export the revolution to those countries that had only recently gained independence, having previously been part of the Russian Empire: in the winter of 1918-1919, attempts were made to carry out a military coup in Finland and a military invasion of the Baltic countries. And a document discovered in the archives by historian Yu. N. Tikhonov indicates that Lenin was directly involved in the practical organization in the summer of 1920 of the “Afghan-Hindu mission,” which was tasked with exporting the revolution to British India through Tashkent and Afghanistan.

On the other hand, according to Academician E.M. Primakov, as well as Candidate of Philosophy, Head of the Department of History and Cultural Studies, Professor I.S. Shatilo, Lenin rejected the idea of imposing a revolution from the outside. In 1918, at a congress of trade unions in Moscow, he stated: “of course, there are people who think that a revolution can be born in a foreign country by order, by agreement. These people are either crazy or provocateurs.” He noted that the theory of “pushing” revolutions in other countries through wars means “a complete break with Marxism, which has always denied the “pushing” of revolutions that develop as the severity of class contradictions that give rise to revolutions matures.” Revolution is a natural result of the internal development of each country, the work of its masses.

About the national question

In 1916, V.I. Lenin highly appreciated the Irish uprising of 1916, considering it as an example confirming the importance of the national question in the revolutionary struggle. He saw national uprisings in Europe as a special force that could significantly “aggravate the revolutionary crisis in Europe.” Therefore, the significance of the Irish uprising is a hundred times greater than the actions in Asia or Africa. Small nations, powerless as an independent factor in the fight against imperialism, are considered by Lenin as “one of the bacilli” that help the rise of the real force - the socialist proletariat. The use of nationalist and revolutionary movements, in his opinion, is correct. Borrowing from this experience, he writes:

We would be very bad revolutionaries if, in the great liberation war of the proletariat for socialism, we had not been able to use every popular movement against the individual disasters of imperialism in the interests of aggravating and expanding the crisis.

In the articles “Critical Notes on the National Question,” “On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” and “On the National Pride of the Great Russians,” Lenin formulated a program for resolving the national question.

Complete equality of nations; the right of self-determination of nations; the unification of the workers of all nations - this national program is taught to the workers by Marxism, the experience of the whole world and the experience of Russia.

Works

In the USSR, five collected works of Lenin and forty “Lenin collections” were published, compiled by the Lenin Institute, specially created by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the study of Lenin’s creative heritage. Many of the works included in it were edited and corrected before publication, and many of Lenin's works were not included in it at all. In Soviet times, a collection of selected works was published periodically (every few years), in two to four volumes. In addition, “Selected Works” were published in 10 volumes (11 books) in 1984-1987. V. Lavrov claims that Lenin’s works occupy first place in the world among translated literature; the modern UNESCO translation index gives 7th place.

Among the main works are “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” (1899), “What to Do?” (1902), “Materialism and Empirio-criticism” (1909), “Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism” (1916), “State and Revolution” (1917), “The Great Initiative” (1919), “On the pogrom persecution of the Jews” (1924) .

In 2012, V. M. Lavrov, an employee of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, contacted the Investigative Committee of Russia with a statement to check Lenin’s works for the presence of extremism in them. For verification, Lavrov proposed a list of works, many of which were not included in Lenin’s collected works.

In 1919-1921, Lenin recorded 16 speeches on gramophone records.

Bibliography

Collections of documents

Lenin, V.I. Unknown documents. 1891-1922. - Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2000. - 607 p.

Essays

Lenin V.I. Complete works (in PDF format). - 5th ed. - M.: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1967.
Lenin V.I. Complete works (page by page). - 5th ed. - M.: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1967.
Lenin V.I. Complete works (in DOC format). - 5th ed. - M.: Publishing House of Political Literature, 1967.

Awards

Lenin's only official state award was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (which makes Lenin the first holder of this order). Lenin had no other state awards, either from the RSFSR and the USSR, or from foreign countries.

On January 22, 1924, N.P. Gorbunov, Lenin’s secretary, took the Order of the Red Banner from his jacket and pinned it to the jacket of the already deceased Lenin. This award was on Lenin's body until 1943. Another Order of the Red Banner was laid at Lenin’s coffin along with a wreath from the Military Academy of the Red Army.

Family and relatives

Ulyanov family
Anna Ilyinichna Elizarova-Ulyanova is Lenin’s older sister.
Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov - Lenin's older brother

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich at Rodovode. Tree of ancestors and descendants

Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov - Lenin's younger brother
- Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova (1922-2011) - Lenin’s niece. Information appeared in the media that with her death there were no direct descendants of the Ulyanov family. This information was refuted by Tatyana Brylyaeva, head of the Lenin House Museum:
  - firstly, there is Olga Dmitrievna’s daughter - Nadezhda Alekseevna Maltseva
    - and granddaughter Elena. All of the listed descendants of the Ulyanovs live in Moscow.
- Viktor Dmitrievich (1917-1984) - Lenin’s nephew, illegitimate son of D. I. Ulyanov
  - Maria Viktorovna Ulyanova (b. 1943)

In the biography of Lenin by Vladimir Ilyich this time occupied a special place: at first the boy received a home education - the family spoke several languages and attached great importance to discipline, which was monitored mother . The Ulyanovs lived in Simbirsk at that time, so he subsequently studied at the local gymnasium, where he entered in 1879 and whose director was the father of the future head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, F.M. Kerensky. In 1887, Lenin graduated from the educational institution with honors and continued his studies at the University of Kazan. It was there that his passion for Marxism began, which led to joining a circle where the works of not only K. Marx and F. Engels, but also G. Plekhanov, who had a great influence on the young man, were discussed. A little later, this became the reason for his expulsion from the university. Subsequently, Lenin passed the law exams as an external student.

The beginning of the revolutionary path

Having left his native Simbirsk, where he lived parents , he studied political economy and was interested in social democracy. This period was also distinguished by the future leader’s trips to Europe, upon his return from which he founded the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

For this, the revolutionary was arrested and exiled to the Yenisei province, where he not only wrote most of his works, but also established a personal life with N. Krupskaya.

In 1900, his period of exile ended, and Lenin settled in Pskov, where Vladimir Ilyich published the Zarya magazine and the Iskra newspaper. In addition to him, S. I. Radchenko, as well as P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky were involved in the publication.

Years of the first emigration

There are many things connected with Lenin’s life during this period. interesting facts . In July of the same year, Vladimir Ulyanov left for Munich, where Iskra settled for two years, then moved first to London, where the first congress of the RSDLP was held, and then to Geneva.

Between 1905 and 1907 Lenin lived in Switzerland. After the failure of the first Russian revolution and the arrest of its instigators, he became the leader of the party.

Active political activity

Despite the constant moving, the decade from the first to the second revolution was very fruitful for V.I. Lenin: he published the newspaper “Pravda”, worked on his journalism and preparation for the February uprising, and after the October revolution, which ended in victory. Full the biography says that during these years his comrades-in-arms were Zinoviev and Kamenev, and then he first met I. Stalin.

The last years of life and the cult of personality

At the Congress of Soviets he headed a new government, called the Council of People's Commissars (SNK).

Brief biography of Lenin says that it was he who negotiated peace with Germany and softened domestic policy, creating conditions for private trade - since the state was not able to provide for citizens, it gave them the opportunity to feed themselves. Under his leadership, the Red Army was founded, and in 1922, a whole new state on the world map, called the USSR. It was also Lenin who introduced the initiative for widespread electrification and insisted on a legislative regulation of terror.

In the same year, the health of the leader of the proletariat deteriorated sharply. After a two-year illness, he died on January 21, 1924.

Lenin's death gave rise to a phenomenon that later became known as the cult of personality. The leader's body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum, monuments were erected throughout the country and numerous infrastructure facilities were renamed. Subsequently, many books and films were dedicated to the life of Vladimir Lenin for children and adults who painted him exclusively in a positive way. After the collapse of the USSR, controversial issues began to arise in the biography of the great politician, in particular, about his nationality.

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