Vladimir Lenin (1870 - 1924)

Fri Apr 22, 1870

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Vladimir Lenin, born on this day in 1870, was a revolutionary Marxist theorist who played a leading role in the October Revolution.

Born into a prosperous family, Lenin was radicalized at least in part after his older brother Alexander was executed in 1887 for conspiring to assassinate Alexander III. He was subsequently expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empire’s Tsarist government and later arrested for sedition, exiled to Siberia in 1897.

Over the next two decades, Lenin remained committed to revolutionary activity, authoring influential texts such as “What is to Be Done?” (1901-2), “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” (1904), “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” (1916), and “The State and Revolution” (1917). During this time period, Lenin and his wife, fellow revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya, moved frequently, living both in Russia and abroad.

After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted the Tsar and established a Provisional Government, Lenin returned to Russia from Switzerland and played a leading role in the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the new State Duma government.

A civil war of significant political complexity subsequently broke out, in which the Bolsheviks defeated conservative, social democratic, and anarchist forces to consolidate its own power. Lenin served as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Russian SFSR from 1917 to 1924. In 1918, he survived two separate assassination attempts.

Lenin’s ideas are foundational to the political tradition of Marxism-Leninism, a political tradition which emphasizes the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat by means of a revolutionary vanguard party and democratic centralism, in which political decisions reached through free discussion are binding upon all members of the political party.

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”

- Vladimir Lenin