Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a politician and revolutionary. He was born in 1870 in Simbirsk. Throughout his life he founded many parties of the Soviet Union. He graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium, and entered Kazan University. There he studied for a short time. He was expelled due to participation in the student movement. After here in Kazan, he became a member of the Marxist circle. In 1983, in St. Petersburg, he took up journalism, began to study social democracy and political economy. In 1895 he went abroad, and some time later founded the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class party.

Because of his deeds, he was exiled to the Yenisei province. Here he met his future wife N. Krupskaya. He devoted a lot of time to writing his works. His writings were based on how he sees the party. In 1900, Lenin's punishment ended, and he went to live in the city of Pskov. Collaborating with social activists, he started the publishing house of the Iskra newspaper and the Zorya magazine. During the revolution, in 1907, Lenin was in Switzerland. Many party members were arrested. Lenin continued his activities and prepared a new uprising and demonstrations. He led the proletarian revolution, but he had to go into hiding, as his arrest was announced. Later he became the head of the new leadership of the Council of People's Commissars.

In 1917 the revolution was over, Lenin concluded a peace treaty with Germany and became the founder of the Red Army.

Lenin changed the economy of the state and directed all his forces to the development of agriculture, he also founded a new state - the USSR. Lenin died on January 21, 1924, due to deteriorating health. After his death, monuments dedicated to Lenin were erected in many cities, libraries were opened, streets were named after him. Lenin's body is kept in the Moscow mausoleum.

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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)
Predecessor:	Position established
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov
Predecessor:	Position established; Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky as Prime Minister of the Provisional Government
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov
	RSDLP, later RCP(b)
Education:	Kazan University, Petersburg University
Profession:
Religion:
Birth:
Buried:	Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow
	Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov
	Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova
	Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya
	Missing
Autograph:

Biography

First emigration 1900-1905

Return to Russia

Press reaction

July - October 1917

Role in the Red Terror

Foreign policy

Last years (1921-1924)

Lenin's main ideas

On class morality

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

Lenin's awards

Titles and awards

Posthumous awards

Personality of Lenin

Aliases of Lenin

Works of Lenin

Works of Lenin

Interesting Facts

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin(real name Ulyanov; April 10 (22), 1870, Simbirsk - January 21, 1924, Gorki estate, Moscow province) - Russian and Soviet political and statesman, revolutionary, founder of the Bolshevik Party, one of the organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government ) RSFSR and the USSR. Philosopher, Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the Soviet state. Scope of major scientific works- philosophy and economics.

Biography

Childhood, education and upbringing

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), an inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province, the son of a former serf Nizhny Novgorod province Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the last name: Ulyanina), married to Anna Smirnova, the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer Shaginyan M.E., who came from a family of baptized Chuvashs). Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (nee Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on her mother, and Jewish - on her father. I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of real state councilor.

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, led by F. M. Kerensky, father of A. F. Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government (1917). In 1887 he graduated from the gymnasium 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 Faculty of History and Literature of the University due to the great success of the younger Ulyanov in Latin and literature.

In the same year, 1887, on May 8 (20), the elder brother of Vladimir Ilyich, Alexander, was executed as a participant in the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to attempt on the life of the emperor Alexander III. Three months after admission, Vladimir Ilyich was expelled for participating in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the introduction of police supervision of students, and a campaign to combat "unreliable" students. According to the inspector of students, who suffered from student unrest, Vladimir Ilyich was in the forefront of the raging students, almost with clenched fists. As a result of the unrest, Vladimir Ilyich, along with 40 other students, was arrested the next night and sent to the police station. All those arrested were expelled from the university and sent to the "place of the motherland." Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repressions. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Lenin's cousin, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ardashev. After the petitions of Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich's aunt, he was sent to the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs' house until the winter of 1888-1889.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

In the autumn of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he 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 path, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for him for a long time: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.

For some time, Lenin tried to farm in the estate bought by his mother in Alakaevka (83.5 acres) in the Samara province. IN Soviet time in this village the house-museum of Lenin was created.

In the autumn of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also kept in touch with local revolutionaries.

In 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams externally for the course of the law faculty of St. Petersburg University.

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara barrister (lawyer) N. A. Hardin, conducting most of the criminal cases, and conducted "state protection".

In 1893, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg, where he got a job as an assistant to the sworn attorney (lawyer) M. F. Volkenstein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, the history of the capitalist evolution of the Russian post-reform 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 on the basis of extensive statistical materials make him famous among social democrats and opposition-minded liberal figures, as well as in many other circles of Russian society.

In May 1895 Ulyanov went abroad. He meets Plekhanov in Switzerland, W. Liebknecht in Germany, P. Lafargue and other leaders of the international labor movement in France, and upon his return to the capital in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries, unites scattered Marxist circles in the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.

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 and after a long detention in prison in 1897 he was sent for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Yenisei province, where in July 1898 he married N. K. Krupskaya. In exile, he wrote a book based on the collected material, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, directed against "legal Marxism" and populist theories. During the exile, more than 30 works were written, contacts were established with the Social Democrats of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. By the end of the 90s, under the pseudonym "K. Tulin ”V. I. Ulyanov is gaining fame in Marxist circles. In exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

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, 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; many of the organizations represented at the congress were crushed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in Siberian exile, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of a newspaper.

After the exile ended in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A. N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities, establishing ties with local organizations; On July 29, 1900, Lenin leaves for Switzerland, where he negotiates with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and a theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper, called "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, and 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.

In December 1901, Lenin for the first time signed with the pseudonym "Lenin" one of his articles published in Iskra. In 1902, in the work “What is to be done? Painful questions of our movement ”Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization. In this article, he writes: "Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!".

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

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the II Congress of the RSDLP was held in London. Lenin took an active part in the preparation of 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, prepared a draft charter. The program consisted of two parts - the minimum program and the 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 the lands cut off from them by the landlords during the abolition of serfdom (the so-called "segments"), the introduction of an eight-hour working day, the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equality nations; the maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the building of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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

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 controversy arose between the supporters of Iskra, on the one hand, and the "economists" (for whom the provision on the dictatorship of the proletariat turned out to be unacceptable) and the Bund (on the national question) on the other; as a result, 2 "Economists" and later 5 Bundists left the congress.

But the discussion of the Party Rules, the 1st point, which defined the concept of a party member, revealed disagreements among the Iskra-ists themselves, who were divided into "hard" - supporters of Lenin and "soft" - supporters of Martov. “In my draft,” Lenin wrote after the congress, “this definition was as follows: “A member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party is considered to be anyone who recognizes its program and supports the party both materially and personally. participation in one of the party organizations“. Martov, instead of the underlined words, suggested saying: work under the control and leadership of one of the party organizations ... We argued that it was necessary to narrow the concept of a party member in order to separate the workers from the talkers, to eliminate organizational chaos, to eliminate such disgrace and such absurdity, so that there could 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, - mean in fact no more and no less than: without any control and without any leadership. 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 of paragraph 1 proposed by Martov was supported by 28 votes to 22, with 1 abstention; but after the departure of the Bundists and economists, Lenin's group won a majority in the elections to the Central Committee of the party; this accidental, 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 Deutsch and whole line other old revolutionaries. Here we all worked together until 1903. In 1903, at the Second Congress, our lines parted. Lenin and some of his friends insisted that the methods of dictatorship must be used within the party and outside the party. Lenin always supported the fiction of collective leadership, but even then he was the master of the party. He was the actual owner of it, they called him that - “master”.

Split

But it was not disputes over the Rules that split the Iskra-ists, but the election of the editors of Iskra. From the very beginning, there was no mutual understanding in the editorial board between the representatives of the Emancipation of Labor group, long cut off from Russia and from the labor movement, and the young Petersburgers; controversial issues were not resolved, because they split the editorial board 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. Plekhanov's intransigence prompted Lenin to choose a different path: to reduce the editorial board to three people. The congress, at a time when Lenin's supporters were already in the majority, was offered an editorial board consisting of Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. “The political leader of Iskra,” testifies Trotsky, “was Lenin. Martov was the main journalistic force of the newspaper. Nevertheless, the removal from the editorial office of the respected and well-deserved "old men", albeit not working well, seemed to both Martov and Trotsky himself to be unjustified cruelty. The congress supported Lenin's proposal with a small majority, but Martov refused to serve on the editorial board; his supporters, among whom was now Trotsky, declared a boycott of the "Leninist" Central Committee and refused to cooperate in Iskra. Lenin had no choice but to leave the editorial office; Left alone, Plekhanov restored the former editorial board, but without Lenin, and Iskra became the press organ of the Menshevik faction.

After the congress, both factions had to create their own structures; at the same time, it turned out that the congress minority had the support of the majority of the members of the party. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, were left without a print organ, which prevented them not only from propagating their views, but also from responding to the sharp criticism of their opponents - only in December 1904 was the Vperyod newspaper created, which briefly became the print organ of the Leninists.

The abnormal situation that had developed 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. All organizations were invited to the III Congress of the RSDLP, which opened in London on April 12 (25), 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)

Already at the end of 1904, against the backdrop of a growing strike movement, disagreements on political issues were revealed between the "majority" and "minority" factions, in addition to organizational ones.

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

At the III 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 the autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia. Despite the bourgeois nature of the revolution, according to Lenin, its main driving force was to be the working class, as the most interested in its victory, and its natural ally - the peasantry. Having approved the point of view of Lenin, the congress determined the tactics of the party: organizing strikes, demonstrations, preparing an armed uprising.

At the first opportunity, in early November 1905, Lenin illegally, under a false name, arrived in St. Petersburg and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Committees of the Bolsheviks elected by the congress; paid great attention to the leadership 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 a Democratic Revolution", in which he points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In the struggle to win the peasantry over to his side (which was actively waged with the Socialist-Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet Towards the Rural Poor.

In 1906, Lenin moved to Finland, and in the autumn of 1907 he emigrated again.

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

Role in the Revolutionary Terror of the early 20th century

During the years of the revolution of 1905-1907, the peak of revolutionary terrorism was observed in Russia, the country was swept by a wave of violence: political and criminal murders, robberies, expropriations and extortion. Like the Social Revolutionaries, who widely practiced terror, the Bolsheviks had their own military organization (known under the names "Combat Technical Group", "Technical Group under the Central Committee", "Military-Technical Group"). In the conditions of rivalry in extremist revolutionary activity 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 Professor Anna Geifman, a researcher of 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 of his party. Lenin called for “the most radical means and measures as the most expedient”, for which, Anna Geifman quotes the documents, the Bolshevik leader proposed creating “detachments of the revolutionary army ... of all sizes, starting with two or three people, [who] should arm themselves, who than he can (a gun, a revolver, a bomb, a knife, brass knuckles, a stick, a rag with kerosene for arson ...) ”, and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist “combat brigades” of the militant Social Revolutionaries.

Lenin, in the changed conditions, was already ready to go even further than the Socialist-Revolutionaries and, as Anna Geifman notes, even went to a clear contradiction with the scientific teachings of Marx in order to promote the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that combat detachments should use every opportunity for active work, not postponing their actions until the start of a general uprising.

Lenin essentially ordered the preparation of terrorist acts, which he himself had previously condemned, calling on his supporters to attack city and other government officials, in the autumn of 1905 he openly called for the murder of policemen and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, to blow up police stations, to pour water over soldiers with boiling water, and policemen with sulfuric acid.

Later, dissatisfied with the insufficient level of terrorist activity of his party, in his opinion, Lenin complained to the St. Petersburg Committee:

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

The followers of the Bolshevik leader did not take long to wait, so in Yekaterinburg, according to some evidence, members of the Bolshevik combat detachment under the leadership of Y. Sverdlov “constantly terrorized the supporters of the Black Hundreds, killing them at every opportunity.”

As one of Lenin's closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, the leader of the Bolsheviks, testifies, formulating her new tactics, began to insist on immediately bringing it to life and turned into an "ardent supporter of terror." The greatest concern for terror during this period was shown by the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin wrote on October 25, 1916, that the Bolsheviks did not object at all to political assassinations, only individual terror should be combined with mass movements.

Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks during the years of the first Russian revolution, the historian and researcher Anna Geifman comes to the conclusion that for the Bolsheviks, terror turned out to be effective and often used on different levels revolutionary hierarchy tool.

In addition to persons specializing in political assassinations in the name of the revolution, in each of the social democratic organizations there were people engaged in armed robbery, extortion and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such actions were never encouraged by the leaders of the 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 "exams") in an organized and systematic way.

Lenin was not limited to slogans or simply recognition of the participation of the Bolsheviks in combat activities. Already in October 1905, he announced the need to confiscate public funds and soon began to resort to "exes" in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky), he secretly organized within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks) a small group, which became known as the "Bolshevik Center", specifically to raise money for the Leninist faction. The existence of this group "was hidden not only from the eyes of the tsarist police, but also from other members of the party." In practice, this meant that the "Bolshevik Center" was an underground body within the party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various forms extortion.

The actions of the Bolshevik militants did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed that the Bolsheviks be expelled from the party for their illegal expropriations. Plekhanov called for a fight against "Bolshevik Bakuninism", many members of the party considered "Lenin and Co" ordinary crooks, 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 former a thousand rubles a month and the latter five hundred. At the same time, a relatively small part of the proceeds from the Bolshevik robberies ended up in 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 Fifth Congress of the RSDLP provided the Mensheviks with the opportunity to vehemently criticize the Bolsheviks for their "bandit practices". At the congress it was decided to put an end to all participation of the Social Democrats in terrorist activities and expropriations. Martov's calls for the revival of the purity of the revolutionary consciousness made no impression on Lenin, the Bolshevik leader listened to them with undisguised irony and, during the reading of the financial report, when the speaker mentioned a large donation from an anonymous benefactor, X, Lenin sarcastically remarked: “Not from X, but from ex"

Continuing the practice of expropriation, Lenin and his associates in the "Bolshevik Center" also received money from such dubious sources as fictitious marriages and forced indemnities. Finally, Lenin's habit of not honoring his faction's financial obligations angered even his supporters.

In late 1916, even when the tide of revolutionary extremism had almost died down, the Bolshevik leader Lenin argued in his letter of October 25, 1916, that the Bolsheviks were by no means opposed to political assassinations. Lenin, historian Anna Geifman points out, was ready to once again change his theoretical principles, which he did in December 1916: 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 actions are allowed." Lenin's only condition was that, in the eyes of the public, the initiative for the attacks should come not from the party, but from its individual members or small Bolshevik groups in Russia. Lenin also added that he hoped to convince the entire Central Committee of the expediency of his position.

A large number of terrorists remained in Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power and participated in the Leninist policy of "Red Terror". 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)

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

At the end of 1908, Lenin, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. It is also here that he first met and became intimately acquainted with Inessa Armand, who became his mistress until her death in 1920.

In 1909 he published his main philosophical work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. The work was written after Lenin realized how widespread Machism and empirio-criticism were among the 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 seconded L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost daily, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected editorial errors. For 2 years, about 270 Leninist articles and notes were published in Pravda. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the Fourth State Duma, was the representative of the RSDLP in the Second International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

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

After 17 days in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik émigrés, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the outbreak of the war was imperialistic, unfair on both sides, alien to the interests of the working people.

At the 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 turn the imperialist war into a civil war and came up with the slogan of "revolutionary defeatism".

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he finishes his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively cooperates with the Swiss Social Democrats (including the left-wing radical Fritz Platten), attends all their party meetings. Here he learns from the newspapers about the February Revolution in Russia.

Lenin did not expect a revolution in 1917. We know Lenin's public statement in January 1917 in Switzerland that he does not expect to live to see the coming revolution, but that the youth will see it. Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded the revolution that took place soon as the result of a "conspiracy of the Anglo-French imperialists."

Return to Russia

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to leave Switzerland by train through Germany. Among them were Krupskaya N.K., Zinoviev G.E., Lilina Z.I., Armand I.F., Sokolnikov G.Ya., Radek K.B. and others.

April - July 1917. "April Theses"

April 3, 1917 Lenin arrives in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, organized a solemn meeting for him as a prominent fighter against the autocracy. The next day, April 4, Lenin addressed the Bolsheviks with a report, the abstracts 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, new the ideas of the leader seemed too radical even to close associates. These were the famous "April Theses". In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among the Social Democracy in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, and which boiled down to the idea of ​​expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in the war, which 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 towards the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian one, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and transferring power to the Soviets and the proletariat, followed by the liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded extensive anti-war propaganda, since, according to him, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to have an imperialist and "predatory" character. Taking control of the RSDLP (b) into his own hands, Lenin implements this plan. From April to July 1917, he wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of the Bolshevik conferences and the Central Committee of the party, appeals.

Press reaction

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

July - October 1917

On July 5, during the uprising, the Provisional Government made public the information it had about the connections of the Bolsheviks with the Germans. On July 20 (7), the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of high treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin goes underground again. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 secret apartments, after which, until August 21 (8), 1917, he, along with Zinoviev, hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive N-293, he moves to the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lives until early October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg.

October Revolution of 1917

Lenin arrived in Smolny and began to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, L. D. Trotsky. It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. November 7 (October 25) Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the II 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 was opened, in which the Socialist-Revolutionaries received the majority, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 90% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left SRs, put the Constituent Assembly before 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 question, was forcibly dissolved.

During the 124 days of the “Smolnin period”, Lenin wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, participated in editing 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 presided over 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, in the preparation and holding of 6 various All-Russian Congresses of Workers. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, on 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.

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

On January 15 (28), 1918, Lenin signs 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 Peace Treaty with Germany on March 3, 1918, the Left Social Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest 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 July 6, two Left Social Revolutionaries, members of the Cheka Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev, presenting the mandates of the Cheka, went to the German embassy in Moscow and killed the ambassador, Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. This is a provocation to cause an aggravation of relations with Germany, up to the war. And there was already a threat that German military units would be sent to Moscow. Right there - the Left Socialist-Revolutionary rebellion. In a word, everything balances on the edge. Lenin is making great efforts to somehow smooth out the imposed Soviet-German conflict, to avoid a clash. On July 16, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family, along with servants, were shot in Yekaterinburg.

In his memoirs, Trotsky accuses Lenin of organizing the execution royal family:

My next visit to Moscow fell after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:

Vladimir Solovyov, senior investigator for particularly important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, found that in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which Sverdlov announced the decision of the Ural Council regarding the execution of the royal family, the name of Trotsky appears among those present. So, he later composed that conversation “after his arrival from the front” with Sverdlov about Lenin. Solovyov came to the conclusion that Lenin was against the execution of the royal family, and the execution itself was organized by all the same Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, who had great influence in the Ural Council, in order to disrupt the Brest peace between Soviet Russia and Kaiser Germany. The Germans after the February Revolution, despite the war with Russia, were worried about the fate of the Russian imperial family, because the wife of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, was German, and their daughters were both Russian princesses and German princesses. The spirit of the Great French Revolution with the then execution of the king and queen hovered over the heads of the Ural Social Revolutionaries and the local Bolsheviks who joined them, the leaders of the Ural Council (Alexander Beloborodov, Yakov Yurovsky, Philip Goloshchekin). Lenin became, in a certain sense, a hostage to the radicalism and obsession of the leaders of the Ural Council. To publish the "feat" of the Urals - the murder of German princesses and find themselves between a rock and a hard place - between the White Guards and the Germans? Information about the death of the entire royal family and servants was hidden for years. Referring to Trotsky's fake, the famous Russian director Gleb Panfilov made the film The Romanovs. The Crowned Family, where the organizer of the execution of the royal family is Lenin, who was played by the People's Artist of Russia Alexander Filippenko.

On August 30, 1918, an assassination attempt was made on Lenin, according to official version- SR Fanny Kaplan, which led to a serious wound.

As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin held 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 did not chair. In 1919, V. I. Lenin directed 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 the defense of the Soviet state, spoke at rallies over 200 times.

Lenin devoted considerable 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 "nationwide, 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 Red Terror

During the Civil War in Russia, Lenin was one of the main organizers of the Red Terror policy pursued by the Bolsheviks, carried out directly on his instructions. These Leninist instructions ordered to start mass terror, organize executions, isolate the unreliable in concentration camps, and carry out other emergency measures. On August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee, where he wrote: “It is necessary to carry out a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful ones to be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.” On August 10, 1918, Lenin sent a telegram about the suppression of the kulak uprising in the Penza province, in which he called for 100 kulaks to be hanged, all their bread taken away and hostages appointed.

A description of the ways to put into practice the instructions of the Bolshevik leader on the massive Red Terror is presented in acts, investigations, certificates, summaries and other materials of the Special Commission for Investigating the Atrocities of the Bolsheviks.

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

In mid-August 1920, in connection with the receipt of 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, urged “to hang kulaks, priests, landowners ". In another letter, he wrote about the admissibility of "imprisoning several tens or hundreds of instigators, guilty or innocent" in order to save the lives of "thousands of Red Army soldiers and workers."

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.

In Soviet historiography, this problem was not raised, 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 only today it becomes obvious that the image of the Bolshevik leader, traditional for Soviet historiography, does not correspond to reality:

... Now, when the veil of secrecy has been removed from the Lenin archival 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 , allegedly only thinking about the welfare 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

The textbook of 2007 on the history of Russia says:

Foreign policy

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

During the Civil War, Lenin tried to reach an agreement with the powers of the Entente. In March 1919, Lenin negotiated with William Bullitt, who arrived in Moscow. Lenin agreed to the payment of pre-revolutionary Russian debts in exchange for an end to the intervention and support of the whites from the Entente. A draft agreement was drawn up with the Entente powers.

After the end of the civil war foreign policy Lenin was unsuccessful. Of the great powers, only Germany established diplomatic relations with the USSR before Lenin's death, signing the Rappal Treaty with the RSFSR (1922). Peace treaties were concluded and diplomatic relations were established with a number of border states: Finland (1920), Estonia (1920), Poland (1921), Turkey (1921), Iran (1921), Mongolia (1921).

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

Last years (1921-1924)

The economic and political situation required the Bolsheviks to change their previous policy. In this regard, at the insistence of Lenin, in 1921, at the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), “war communism” was abolished, food apportionment was replaced by a food tax. The so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced, allowing private free trade and enabling large sections of the population to independently seek those means of subsistence that the state could not provide them. At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-type enterprises, on electrification (with the participation of Lenin, a special commission, GOELRO, was created to develop a project for the electrification of Russia), and on the development of cooperation. Lenin believed that in anticipation of a world proletarian revolution, while keeping all large-scale industry in the hands of the state, it was necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this could, in his opinion, help to put the backward Soviet country on the same level with the most developed European countries.

Lenin was one of the initiators of the campaign to confiscate church valuables, which provoked resistance from representatives of the clergy and part of the parishioners. The execution of parishioners in Shuya caused a great resonance. In connection with these events, on March 19, 1922, Lenin wrote a secret letter, qualifying the events in Shuya as just one of the manifestations of the general plan of resistance to the decree of Soviet power on the part of "the most influential group of the Black Hundred clergy." On March 30, at a meeting of the Politburo, on the recommendations of Lenin, a plan was adopted to destroy the church organization.

Lenin contributed to the establishment of a one-party system in the country and the spread of atheistic views. In 1922, on his recommendations, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created.

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On cooperation”, “How can we reorganize the worker’s committee”, “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 dictated the so-called “Addendum 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. Stalin in this letter was given an unflattering description.

Illness and death. Question about cause of death

The consequences of the injury and overload, according to the surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin, led Lenin to a serious illness. In March 1922, Lenin presided over the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP(b), the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he fell seriously ill, but returned to work in early October. For treatment, leading German specialists in nervous diseases. 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 deteriorated sharply again, and in May 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. Lenin was in Moscow for the last time on October 18-19, 1923. During this period, however, he dictated several notes: "Letter to the Congress", "On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Commission", "On the question of nationalities or "autonomization"", "Pages from a diary", "On cooperation", “On our revolution (on the notes of N. Sukhanov)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Better less, but better”.

Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) dictated by Lenin is often regarded as Lenin's testament. Some believe that this letter contained the real testament of Lenin, from which Stalin later deviated. Supporters of this point of view believe that if the country had developed along the true Leninist path, many problems would not have arisen.

In January 1924, Lenin's health suddenly deteriorated sharply; On January 21, 1924, at 6:50 p.m., he died.

The widespread belief that Lenin was ill with syphilis, which he allegedly contracted in Europe, was never officially confirmed by the Soviet or Russian authorities.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy protocol 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 the violation of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissues 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 in the pia mater in the region of the quadrigemina.

According to Alexander Grudinkin, rumors about syphilis arose due to the fact that advanced syphilis was one of the preliminary diagnoses put forward by doctors at the beginning of the disease; Lenin himself also did not rule out such a possibility and took salvarsan, and in 1923 - preparations based on mercury and bismuth.

Lenin's main ideas

Historiosophical analysis of contemporary capitalism

Communism, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat

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, but there is still no abundance of material goods that would satisfy any needs of all members of society.

In 1920, in his speech "The Tasks of the Youth Unions", Lenin stated that communism would be built in the years 1930-1950.

Attitude towards 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 the workers to use the war to overthrow "their" governments. At the same time, while pointing out the need for the Social Democrats to participate in the anti-war movement, which came out with pacifist slogans of 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 to vote in parliament against military loans to the government, to create and strengthen revolutionary organizations among the workers and soldiers, to combat 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".

The possibility of the initial victory of the revolution in one country

In an article "On the Slogan of a United States of Europe" in 1915, Lenin wrote that the revolution would not necessarily take place all over the world at the same time, as Marx believed. It can first occur in one, separately taken country. This country will then help the revolution in other countries.

On class morality

There is no universal morality, but only class morality. Each class puts into practice its own morality, its own moral values. The morality of the proletariat is morally that which meets the interests of the proletariat ("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").

As the political scientist Alexander Tarasov notes, Lenin brought ethics from the realm of religious dogmas to the realm of verifiability: ethics must be checked and proved whether this or that action serves the cause of the revolution, whether it is useful to the cause of the working class.

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

On January 23, the coffin with the body of Lenin was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns. The official farewell took place over five days and nights. On January 27, the coffin with the embalmed body of Lenin was placed in the Mausoleum specially built on Red Square (architect A. V. Shchusev).

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the Institute of V. I. Lenin, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels, a single Institute of Marx - Engels - Lenin was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (later the Institute Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). More than 30 thousand documents are stored in the Central Party Archive of this institute, the author of which is V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin).

During the Great Patriotic War, Lenin's body was evacuated from the Moscow Mausoleum to Tyumen, where it was kept in the building of the current Tyumen State Agricultural Academy. The Mausoleum itself was disguised as a mansion.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some political parties expressed the opinion that it was necessary to remove Lenin's body and brain from the Mausoleum and bury it (the brain is stored separately, at the Brain Institute, including in the form of tens of thousands of histological preparations). Statements about the removal of Lenin's body from the Mausoleum, as well as the elimination of memorial burials near the Kremlin wall, are periodically heard to this day from various Russian statesmen, political parties and forces, representatives of religious organizations.

Attitude towards Lenin after death. Grade

The name and ideas of V. I. Lenin were glorified in the USSR along with the October Revolution and I. V. Stalin (until the XX Congress of the CPSU). On January 26, 1924, after the death of Lenin, the 2nd All-Union Congress of Soviets granted the request of the Petrograd Soviet to rename Petrograd to Leningrad. The delegation of the city (about 1 thousand people) participated in Lenin's funeral in Moscow. Cities, towns and collective farms were named after Lenin. In every city there was a monument to Lenin. Numerous stories about "grandfather Lenin" were written for children, including Stories about Lenin written by Mikhail Zoshchenko, partly based on the memoirs of his sister Anna Ulyanova. Even his driver Gil wrote memoirs about Lenin.

The cult of Lenin began to take shape during his lifetime through party propaganda and the media. In 1918 the city of Taldom was renamed into Leninsk, and in 1923 higher educational institutions in the USSR received the name of Lenin.

In the 1930s, villages, streets and squares of cities, premises of educational institutions, assembly halls of factories began to fill up with tens of thousands of busts and monuments to Lenin, among which, along with works of Soviet art, were typical “objects of worship” devoid of artistic value. There were mass campaigns of renaming various objects and giving them, contrary to the wishes of N. Krupskaya, the name of Lenin. The Order of Lenin became the highest state award. Sometimes the opinion is expressed that such actions were coordinated by the Stalinist leadership in the context of the formation of Stalin's personality cult with the aim of usurping power and declaring Stalin the successor and worthy disciple of Lenin.

After the collapse of the USSR, the attitude towards Lenin among the population of the Russian Federation became differentiated; according to a poll by FOM, in 1999, 65% of the Russian population considered Lenin's role in the history of Russia positive, 23% - negative, 13% found it difficult to answer. Four years later, in April 2003, the FOM conducted a similar survey - this time 58% positively assessed the role of Lenin, 17% negatively, and the number of those who found it difficult to answer increased to 24%, in connection with which the FOM noted a trend.

Lenin in culture, art and language

In the USSR, a lot of memoirs, poems, poems, short stories, novels and novels about Lenin were published. Many films about Lenin were also made. In Soviet times, the opportunity to play Lenin in the cinema was considered for the actor a sign of high trust provided by the leadership of the CPSU.

Monuments to Lenin have become an integral part of the Soviet tradition of monumental art. After the collapse of the USSR, many monuments to Lenin were dismantled by the authorities or destroyed by various individuals.

Shortly after the rise of the USSR, a cycle of anecdotes about Lenin arose. These anecdotes are still in circulation today.

Lenin belongs to many statements that have become popular expressions. At the same time, a number of statements attributed to Lenin do not belong to him, but first appeared in literary works and cinema. These statements became widespread in the political and everyday languages ​​of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Such phrases include, for example, the words “We will go the other way”, allegedly uttered by him in connection with the execution of his elder brother, the phrase “There is such a party!”, pronounced by him at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, or the characterization “Political prostitute”.

Lenin's awards

Official lifetime award

The only official state award that V. I. Lenin was awarded was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Socialist Republic (1922).

Other state awards, both the RSFSR and the USSR, and foreign countries, Lenin did not have.

Titles and awards

In 1917, Norway took the initiative to award Nobel Prize peace to Vladimir Lenin, with the wording "For the triumph of the ideas of peace", as a response to the "Decree on Peace" issued in Soviet Russia, which led Russia out of the First World War separately. The Nobel Committee rejected this proposal due to the delay of the application by the deadline - February 1, 1918, however, it decided that the committee would not object to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to V. I. Lenin if the existing Russian government establishes peace and calmness in the country (as you know, the path to establishing peace in Russia was blocked by the Civil War, which began in 1918). Lenin's idea of ​​turning the imperialist war into a civil war was formulated in his work "Socialism and War", written back in July-August 1915.

In 1919, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, V. I. Lenin was admitted to the honorary Red Army soldiers of the 1st department of the 1st platoon of the 1st company of the 195th Yeysk rifle regiment.

Posthumous awards

On January 22, 1924, N.P. Gorbunov, Lenin's secretary, removed the Order of the Red Banner (No. 4274) from his jacket and pinned it to the jacket of the already deceased Lenin. This award was on the body of Lenin until 1943, and Gorbunov himself received a duplicate of the order in 1930. According to some reports, N. I. Podvoisky did the same, standing in the guard of honor at the coffin of Lenin. Another Order of the Red Banner was laid at the coffin of Lenin along with a wreath from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Currently, the orders of N.P. Gorbunov and the Military Academy are kept in the Lenin Museum in Moscow.

The fact of the presence of the order on the chest of the deceased Lenin during the funeral ceremony in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions was captured in V. Inber's poem "Five Nights and Days (On the Death of Lenin)".

Personality of Lenin

British historian Helen Rappaport, who wrote a book about Lenin, described him as "demanding", "punctual", "neat", "brilliant" and "very clean" in everyday life. At the same time, Lenin is described as "very authoritarian", "very inflexible", he "did not tolerate disagreement with his opinion", "ruthless", "cruel". It is indicated that friendship for Lenin was secondary in relation to politics. Rappaport points out that Lenin "changed his party tactics depending on the circumstances and political advantage."

Aliases of Lenin

At the end of 1901, Vladimir Ulyanov got the pseudonym "N. Lenin”, with which, in particular, he signed his printed works during this period. Abroad, the initial "N" is usually deciphered as "Nikolai", although in reality this initial was not deciphered in any of Lenin's lifetime publications. There were many versions about the origin of this pseudonym. For example, toponymic - along the Siberian river Lena.

According to historian Vladlen Loginov, the version associated with the use of the passport of the real-life Nikolai Lenin seems to be the most plausible.

The Lenin clan can be traced back to the Cossack Posnik, who in the 17th century was awarded the nobility and the surname Lenin for his services related to the conquest of Siberia and the creation of winter quarters along the Lena River. Numerous descendants of him distinguished themselves more than once both in military and civil service. One of them, Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin, having risen to the rank of State Councilor, retired and in the 80s of the XIX century settled in the Yaroslavl province, where he died in 1902. His children, who sympathized with the emerging social democratic movement in Russia, were well acquainted with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and, after the death of their father, gave Vladimir Ulyanov his passport, albeit with a corrected date of birth. There is a version that Vladimir Ilyich got a passport back in the spring of 1900, when Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin himself was still alive.

According to the family version of the Ulyanovs, the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich comes from the name of the Lena River. So, Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova, the niece of V. I. Lenin and the daughter of his brother D. I. Ulyanov, acting as an author studying the life of the Ulyanov family, writes in defense of this version based on the stories of her father:

After V. I. Lenin came to power, he signed official party and state documents “ V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin)».

He also had other pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, Starik and others.

Works of Lenin

Works of Lenin

• What are "friends of the people" and how do they fight against the Social Democrats? (1894);
• "On a Characterization of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
• Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
• What to do? (1902)
• One step forward, two steps back (1904);
• Party organization and party literature (1905);
• Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909);
• Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
• On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (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);
• On dual power (1917);
• How to Organize a Competition (1918);
• Great Initiative (1919);
• Childhood disease of "leftism" in communism (1920);
• Tasks of youth unions (1920);
• On the food tax (1921);
• Pages from a diary, About cooperation (1923);
• On the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924);
• What is Soviet power?;
• On Left Childishness and Petty-Bourgeoisness (1918);
• About our revolution

Speeches recorded on gramophone records

In 1919-1921. V. I. Lenin recorded 16 speeches on gramophone records. For three sessions in March 1919 (on the 19th, 23rd and 31st), 8 recordings were made, which became the most famous and were published in ten thousand copies, including “The Third Communist International”, “Appeal to the Red Army” (2 parts recorded separately) and the especially popular "What is Soviet power?", which was considered the most successful in technical terms.

During the next recording session on April 5, 1920, 3 speeches were recorded - “On work for transport”, part 1 and part 2, “On labor discipline” and “How to save the working people forever from the oppression of landowners and capitalists.” Another record, most likely dedicated to the outbreak of the Polish war, was damaged and lost in the same 1920.

The five speeches recorded during the last session on April 25, 1921, proved to be technically unsuitable for mass production- in connection with the departure of a foreign specialist, engineer A.Kybart, to Germany. These gramophone records remained unknown for a long time, four of them were found in 1970. Of these, only three were restored and released for the first time on long-playing discs - one of the two speeches “On Tax in Kind”, “On Consumer and Industrial Cooperation” and “Non-Party and Soviet power "(Firma" Melodiya ", M00 46623-24, 1986).

In addition to the second speech “On the Tax in Kind”, which has not been found, the entry of 1921 “On Concessions and the Development of Capitalism” has not yet been published. The first part of the speech "On work for transport" has not been reprinted since 1929, and the speech "On the pogrom persecution of Jews" has not appeared on discs since the late 1930s.

Descendants

Lenin's niece (daughter of his younger brother Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova), the last direct descendant of the Ulyanov family, died in Moscow at the age of 90.

• During his famous speech at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin did not have a beard (conspiracy), although Vladimir Serov's now textbook painting depicts him with a traditional beard.
• Nizhny Novgorod residents joke (and not without reason) that Lenin was conceived in Nizhny Novgorod, since Ilya Ulyanov was there as a teacher at the provincial male gymnasium until the end of 1869, and his son Vladimir was born in Simbirsk in the spring of 1870.
• On June 16, 1921, Bernard Shaw sent the book Back to Methuselah to Lenin. On the title page, he wrote: "Nikolai Lenin, the only statesman Europe, who has the talent, character and knowledge appropriate to his responsible position". Lenin subsequently left numerous notes in the margins of the manuscript, testifying to his keen interest in the work of Bernard Shaw.
• Albert Einstein wrote about Lenin: “I respect in Lenin a man who, with complete selflessness, gave all his strength to the implementation of social justice. His method seems inappropriate to me. But one thing is certain: people like him preserve and renew the conscience of mankind..
• On January 19, 1919, the car that Lenin and his sister were in was attacked by a group of bandits led by the famous Moscow raider Yakov Koshelkov. The bandits got everyone out of the car and stole it. Subsequently, having learned about who was in their hands, they tried to return and take Lenin hostage, but by that time the latter had already fled.

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich- Russian revolutionary, organizer and leader of the October Revolution of 1917, the largest theoretician of Marxism, the first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, the creator of the world's first socialist state.

Childhood, family, education

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born on April 22, 1870 in the city of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk).

Father - Ulyanov Ilya Nikolaevich- an educator, paid great attention to the education of non-Russian peoples of the Volga region, organized public schools for children. He rose to the rank of real councilor of state, which allowed him to receive the title of nobility.

Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova(née Blank) - externally passed the exams for the title of teacher elementary school. She devoted herself entirely to raising children, of whom there were four in the family.

Vladimir Lenin's paternal grandfather Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanov- was the son of a serf. He died when Ilya Nikolaevich was still a child. In the orphaned family of the younger brother, Ilya was raised and taught by the elder brother Vasily, the clerk of the Astrakhan company Brothers Sapozhnikovs.

Maternal grandfather - Alexander Dmitrievich Blank- Trained as a doctor. He married Anna Grigoryevna Grosskopf(the Grosskopf family had Swedish and German roots). Dr. Blank, after retiring, was assigned to the Kazan nobility. Soon he acquired the Kukushkino estate and became a landowner. Maria Alexandrovna lost her mother early and she and her sisters were raised by her mother's sister. The aunt taught the children music and foreign languages.

Having married Ilya Nikolaevich, Maria Alexandrovna devoted herself completely to her family. And although she was an emancipated woman, at the same time she impeccably led the household. Being highly educated, Maria Alexandrovna studied music and foreign languages ​​with children. Vladimir was fluent in German, French, spoke English worse. Living surrounded by Russian nature, Vladimir Ulyanov loved his native culture, but also paid tribute to Western thought.

Father died when Vladimir Ulyanov was 16 years old. Maria Alexandrovna managed the family budget until her death in 1916.

Vladimir was the third child in the family. In the gymnasium, Volodya was the first student. By the way, the director of the gymnasium was Fyodor Mikhailovich Kerensky, father Alexander Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government.

The gymnasium gave young Vladimir Lenin a solid foundation of knowledge. Vladimir Ilyich treated his studies with truly German pedantry. Notebooks, books - everything is in the neatest condition. Of the subjects, the high school student Vladimir Ulyanov was most interested in philosophy and political economy, although he also had excellent marks in the exact sciences.

In 1887, Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the gymnasium with a gold medal. But for the family, these last years were a difficult test. Recently my father died (1886), and then a new misfortune fell - they arrested Alexandra Ulyanova, the elder brother of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in connection with the attempt on the life of the king. In 1887, Alexander was executed as a member of the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy, this was a deep tragedy for the entire Ulyanov family.

Formation of views

After graduating from high school, Lenin Vladimir Ilyich entered the law faculty of Kazan University. After the tragic death of his brother, as they say in the biography of the future leader of the proletariat, Vladimir Ulyanov began to think about his views, and also became involved in politics. Of course, the young Vladimir Lenin was already under the control of the authorities because of his brother, so he was expelled from the university for participating in liberal meetings.

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich was exiled to the estate of his mother Kukushkino. It was here that the revolutionary consciousness of the young man began to take shape. He read a lot Pisarev, Nechaev, Chernyshevsky. Years later, Lenin said: "The novel Chto Delat deeply plowed me."

In 1889 the Ulyanov family moved to Samara. The so-called pointer fell into the hands of Vladimir Ilyich Fedoseeva- one of the first propagandists of Marxism in Russia. It was a list of Marxist literature recommended for self-education.

In September 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed an external course at the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University, and in 1892 got a job as an assistant to a barrister in Samara. However, Lenin was bored with this work, Vladimir Ilyich did not prove himself as a lawyer, and, having not worked for even a year, left in 1893 for St. Petersburg. There, Vladimir began to attend the Marxist student association of the Technological Institute.

There was a remarkable quality in the character of Vladimir Lenin: he knew how to listen and easily learned new things. Except Marx, Ulyanov-Lenin for some time admired the ideas Plekhanov, however, even then he felt a certain political strength in himself and began to criticize the former populist-black peredelist. When, in 1895, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin met abroad with members of the Emancipation of Labor group, Plekhanov, after listening to the young revolutionary's passionate speeches, called him "rather a Blanquist than a Marxist."

Political activity and party work

In the same 1895, Lenin, together with Martov organized the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. Naturally, after a while, many members of the "Union" were arrested. Vladimir Ilyich was also arrested. At first, Ulyanov was kept in prison for more than a year, and in March 1897 he was exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye. Here in July 1898 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin married Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, also exiled in the case of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.

In exile, Ulyanov-Lenin could use the rich Krasnoyarsk library of a Russian bibliophile and merchant of the 2nd guild Gennady Yudin. Lenin Vladimir Ilyich wrote more than 30 articles, as well as a solid work, The Development of Capitalism in Russia.

After the end of his exile in 1900, Lenin went abroad. Vladimir Ilyich lived in Germany, visited London and Geneva. The future leader of the world proletariat came up with a plan to create a Social Democratic Party as an organization of professional revolutionaries. Ulyanov perfectly understood the role of the mass media, so he made the all-Russian newspaper Iskra the core of the party. It was then that articles appeared in the newspaper, signed by the pseudonym Lenin.

In July-August 1903, the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP) was held, prepared by Lenin, Plekhanov and Martov. Meetings of the congress began to be held in Brussels, but then, after a ban by the Belgian police, they were moved to London. It was at this congress that the party split into two factions - the Bolsheviks (those who were attracted by Lenin's idea of ​​seizing power by force of arms) and the Mensheviks (Plekhanov, Martov and their supporters leaned towards classical European social democracy). But Lenin Vladimir Ilyich did not want to follow the parliamentary path. He was sure that tsarism would not give up power voluntarily, and therefore it could be taken away only with the help of an armed uprising. According to N.A. Berdyaeva Vladimir Lenin was a revolutionary theorist, unlike Georgy Plekhanov, a Marxist theorist.

Like-minded people of Vladimir Ilyich considered him an unbalanced person by nature. Maksim Gorky characterized him as "the creator of constant squabbling in the party." Yes, and his colleague Leon Trotsky spoke about some of Lenin's actions "... a squabble that master Lenin systematically stirs up these affairs." Indeed, for example, in 1907, Lenin's resolution of the Fifth Congress of the RSDLP led to confrontation with almost all Russian parties. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin fought resolutely against the Mensheviks, the Bolshevik liquidators, the Bolshevik otzovists, the God-seekers, the God-organizers, the Trotskyists. The factional struggle of the pre-October period reached its apogee at the Prague Conference (1912), at which, in the words of Vladimir Lenin, "they put an end to the liquidationist and otzovist bastards." From that moment on, the word "Bolsheviks" - RSDLP (b) was added to the name of the party. Also, Lenin Vladimir Ilyich managed to reorient the non-factional newspaper Pravda (published by L.D. Trotsky since 1908), becoming the de facto editor. Since May 5, 1912, a legal Bolshevik newspaper was published under the same name.

Revolutionary Situation, "April Theses"

When did February Revolution, Lenin was not in Russia. Upon learning of the revolution, Vladimir Ilyich immediately telegraphed to a member of the Petrograd committee of the RSDLP (b) A.G. Shlyapnikov: "No contact with other parties!". During this period, he wrote "Letters from afar", in which he analyzed the situation in Russia. Vladimir Ilyich spoke with conviction about the inevitable development of the bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution. Many did not agree with him. Central Committee members Kamenev, And Joseph Stalin headed for an alliance with the Mensheviks, as they believed that Lenin's "Letters from afar" speak of Vladimir Ilyich's isolation from Russian realities. Only four out of five letters were published in the Pravda newspaper, and even those with cuts. By the way, despite his long absence, Lenin Vladimir Ilyich was well versed in the revolutionary situation in Russia and in his letters he foresight predicted the result.

April 3, 1917 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrived in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, organized a solemn meeting for him, according to Lenin's biography on Wikipedia. Seeing the guard of honor lined up, Vladimir Ilyich said to his wife: "Nadya, they will arrest me now." But, seeing that people greeted him, Lenin climbed onto an armored car and made a fiery speech, ending it with glory: "Long live the world socialist revolution!"

Then Vladimir Ilyich proposed a program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist revolution under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" ("April Theses"). The April Theses, published in Pravda, seemed too radical even to close associates. In his report, Lenin sharply opposed the expansion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, announced the slogans: "No support for the Provisional Government" and "All power to the Soviets." Vladimir Ilyich Lenin proclaimed a course towards the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian one, with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy.

Without Lenin there would be no October 1917

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 changed 17 safe houses, then, together with Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, he fled to the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg.

In early autumn, Lenin was in Finland. From there, in letters, he urged his comrades-in-arms to prepare an armed uprising. Famous words: “Procrastination is like death!” frightened by their radicalism. However, in October Vladimir Ilyich returned to Petrograd to lead the uprising organized by the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Leon Trotsky.

On the morning of October 25 (November 7, NS), Lenin wrote an appeal “To the Citizens of Russia”: “The Provisional Government has been overthrown!”, although at that moment the Provisional Government was still meeting in the Winter Palace. But Lenin was not interested in such trifles. Vladimir Ilyich wrote decrees about the world, about the land. On the night of October 25-26, the Provisional Government was arrested.

Lenin described his condition with the following words: "Es Schwindelt" (dizziness). Leon Trotsky noted: "If there were no Lenin, there would be no October."

After the revolution

It was during this period that the most difficult times came. Political maneuvers began among Lenin's associates. Vladimir Ilyich was elected chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. One of the first steps of the Leninist government was the abolition of freedom of speech (opposition newspapers were closed). And the promises related to bread and peace could not be fulfilled at that moment.

Under these conditions, Germany entered into negotiations with Russia, but put forward territorial demands. These requirements were discussed by the new government. The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany (March 1918) was not accepted by many. However, despite the fact that Lenin was in the minority, the so-called "shameful" Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed.

Vladimir Ilyich found himself alone. But he didn't give up. He firmly stated that he would leave if his proposals were not accepted. And he won, as he was a generally recognized leader.

Professor at Harvard University Richard Pipes wrote*: “By perspicaciously accepting a humiliating peace, which gave him the necessary time to win, and then collapsed under the influence of his own gravity, Lenin earned the broad confidence of the Bolsheviks. When, on November 13, 1918, they tore up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, following which Germany capitulated to the Western Allies, Lenin's authority in the Bolshevik movement was raised to an unprecedented height.

Civil War, War Communism

So, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became the head of the Russian state. After the victory in the revolution, Lenin enjoyed great prestige among his comrades-in-arms. He was elected chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense. He achieved the seizure of power - the former state structure was completely destroyed. To build a new system, peace is needed, but there was none.

Economic ruin, deep social, national, political and ideological split of the Russian society became the reason for the outbreak of civil war on the scale of the whole of Russia between armed forces soviet government, white movement and separatists with the intervention of the Central Powers and the Entente. The Bolsheviks were merciless towards their enemies. However, the enemies did not show mercy to them.

August 30 at the Michelson plant in Moscow Fanny Kaplan committed a terrorist act - she shot at Lenin. True, there were rumors that it was not she who shot at the leader of the world revolution, but she was punished for the crime. Who actually shot Vladimir Ilyich is still not known for certain. In response to this and to the assassination of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka Uritsky The Red Terror began.

It was announced by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of September 05, 1918 "On the Red Terror", terminated on November 6, 1918. In an atmosphere of growing terror, the construction of the first concentration camps, forced mobilization into the army. In such a difficult situation, Vladimir Ilyich tried to solve his main task - to move towards the construction of communism in Russia.

On November 21, 1918, Lenin signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On organizing the supply of the population with all products and items for personal use and household." Trade was banned, commodity-money relations were replaced by barter (for example, a sewing machine was exchanged for a bag of flour). In the state, a surplus appraisal was introduced.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin introduced labor service: free public Works. Everyone, except for members of the RSDLP (b), in parallel with the main work, had to take part in the restoration of roads, the preparation of firewood, etc. The poet also participated in such work Alexander Blok, and academician Sergei Oldenburg. People worked for 14-16 hours.

Vladimir Ilyich did not trust the intelligentsia, although he himself belonged to this estate. There are documents that confirm that it was on the instructions of Lenin that many figures of science and culture were sent abroad.

As for national policy, Vladimir Ilyich insisted on the democratic "right of nations to self-determination." In December 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created.

Creation of the Red Army

With the outbreak of the Civil War and intervention, Lenin personally took part in the creation of a regular Red Army. He understood that the seized power must be saved. Vladimir Ilyich followed the course of mobilization, weapons and equipment, and managed to organize work in the rear (supplying food). He managed to persuade some of the tsarist specialists to go over to the side of the Bolsheviks. Commander-in-Chief appointed by him naval forces Leon Trotsky competently conducted military operations.

Despite the difficult situation, the mutiny of the sailors in Kronstadt, the peasant uprisings against the policy of war communism in 1921, the Bolsheviks were able to stay in power.

New economic policy

English writer H. G. Wells called Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "the Kremlin dreamer", but in fact the proletarian leader was not like that. He saw that the economy in the country was in a catastrophic situation. At the 10th Party Congress in March 1921, at the insistence of Lenin, "war communism" was abolished, the food distribution was replaced by a food tax.

Lenin put forward a program of "new economic policy", a special GOELRO commission was created to develop a project for the electrification of Russia. Vladimir Ilyich believed that in anticipation of a world proletarian revolution, the state should keep all large-scale industry in its hands and build socialism, according to Lenin's biography on Wikipedia.

Vladimir Ilyich wanted to stabilize the situation in Russia at all costs. The NEP gave immediate positive results. The recovery process has begun National economy.

Disease. "Lenin's Testament"

On May 25, 1922, Lenin suffered his first stroke. The right side of his body was paralyzed and he could not speak. However, in October 1922, he gradually returned to business. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922, at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet.

The next stroke occurred in December 1922. And the third stroke, which occurred in March 1923, was the most severe. On May 15, 1923, due to illness, Vladimir Ilyich moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow.

What happened among his associates? There was a fierce struggle for leadership between the party members. The main rivals were Trotsky and Stalin.

By the way, as early as the beginning of 1923, Lenin was seriously concerned about a possible split in the Central Committee. In his "Letter to the Congress" (the so-called "Lenin's Testament"), he gave characteristics to the leading figures of the Central Committee. Vladimir Ilyich proposed to remove Joseph Stalin from the post of general secretary. The letter was read out in 1924 before the XIII Congress of the RCP (b) N.K. Krupskaya.

Another concern of the leader was an exorbitantly enlarged and useless apparatus - unprofessional and illiterate.

In his last works, Lenin Vladimir Ilyich soberly raised the question of the need to "recognize the fundamental change in our whole point of view on socialism" ("we failed"). But Lenin's condition worsened also because of the political isolation into which he fell through the efforts of Stalin and other party comrades. Perhaps, having rethought a lot, Vladimir Ilyich wanted to have time to correct his mistakes.

Researchers from the University of California at Sacramento came to the conclusion that Vladimir Lenin suffered from a rare genetic disease, which resulted in "petrification" of the vessels of the brain. An unusual disease could have been transmitted to Vladimir Ilyich from his father, who also died at the age of 53.

"More than alive"

Such a person as Lenin Vladimir Ilyich cannot be described in a short essay. Huge volumes, both documentary and fiction, have been written about his life and work. Being a politician, of course, of a global scale, Vladimir Ilyich determined the vector of development world history XX century. In 1917, Lenin achieved a brilliant victory, but, as the future showed, his cause was ultimately lost.

Vladimir Lenin was respected even by ideological opponents.

“Among a number of historians there are two opposing views on Lenin. Some present him as a soft, purely civilian person, completely devoid of military organizational abilities, others show him as a tough, ruthless leader, a fan of violence. It is perhaps difficult to fully agree with both views, although Trotsky, in his decisive actions at the post of the drug warlord, received Lenin's full support in organizing iron military discipline in the army, ”wrote Jan Schwartz.

Many scholars have searched for the cause of Lenin's genius in special properties his brain. World-famous neurophysiologist, academician Natalia Bekhtereva wrote:

— Scientists have repeatedly tried to explain the phenomenon of genius. They even wanted to create a research institute in Moscow to study the brain of gifted people during their lifetime. But neither then nor now have they found any differences between a genius and an ordinary person. I personally think it's a special biochemistry of the brain. As for Pushkin, for example, it was natural to "think" in rhyme. This is an "anomaly", most likely non-heritable. They say that genius and madness are similar. Madness is also the result of a special biochemistry of the brain. A breakthrough in the study of this phenomenon will most likely occur in the field of genetics.

The question of the reburial of Vladimir Lenin

Almost a hundred years after Lenin's death, the topic of his burial remains relevant. From time to time, there are active speeches in the media about the reburial of Vladimir Lenin, and even the demolition of the Mausoleum in general.

LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky called for the burial of the body of the leader of the socialist revolution. In the spring of 2017, deputies from the LDPR and United Russia parties submitted to the State Duma a draft law that provides for a legal mechanism for burying the body of Vladimir Lenin. According to parliamentarians, the document should fill the legal gap preventing the reburial of the remains historical figures, and thereby "put an end to the case of Lenin."

It became more active on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. In particular, the speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko noted that the burial of the body of the founder of the Soviet state will be possible when society comes to a consensus on this issue. The head of Chechnya also proposed to betray the body of the leader of the world proletariat Ramzan Kadyrov.

- Despite the fact that in different strata of society the attitude towards Lenin is very contradictory, up to a purely negative one, one cannot but admit that in general a positive attitude towards him still dominates in society. And this is historical memory and the historical consciousness of the people.

Moreover, it is impossible to deny that Vladimir Lenin is one of the major political figures of the 20th century. He undoubtedly influenced the course of world history, and the evidence that it is exclusively negative is rather inconclusive.

Finally, it is generally recognized that the Lenin Mausoleum is an architectural masterpiece created by one of the best architects of the first half of the 20th century - Alexey Shchusev. And this masterpiece is very tactfully and harmoniously inscribed in the historical ensembles of Red Square and the side of the Moscow Kremlin facing it," says V. Tretyakov.

The President of Russia spoke several times about the activities of Vladimir Lenin in recent years. Vladimir Putin. In 2016, at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education, Putin said that the actions of the leader of the revolution ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During the event, the head of the Kurchatov Institute Mikhail Kovalchuk, recalling Lenin, said that "he controlled the flow of thought and only because of this - the country." To this, the president noted that it was right to control the flow of thought, but in the case of Vladimir Ilyich, this thought "led to the collapse of the Soviet Union." “There were many such thoughts: autonomy and so on. Laid down atomic bomb under the building, which is called Russia, she then rushed. And we did not need a world revolution. This is the idea there, ”the president was quoted in the news.

In January 2018, the head of the Russian state compared the body of Vladimir Lenin, lying in the mausoleum on Red Square, with the relics of saints that are stored on Mount Athos, and noted that there were many borrowings from Christianity in the communist ideology. In particular, according to Putin, the Code of Builders of Communism was a primitive excerpt from the Bible.

*) Pipes Richard. Russian Revolution: In 3 books. Book. 2. Bolsheviks in the struggle for power. 1917−1918.

In the biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin this time occupied a special place: at first the boy received an education at home - the family spoke several languages ​​\u200b\u200band attached great importance to discipline, which she followed mother . The Ulyanovs at that time lived in Simbirsk, so he later studied at the local gymnasium, where he entered in 1879 and was headed by the father of the future head of the Provisional Government Alexander Kerensky - F.M. Kerensky. In 1887 Lenin graduated 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 were discussed, but also G. Plekhanov, who had a great influence on the young man. A little later, this became the reason for expulsion from the university. Subsequently, Lenin externally passed the exams for a lawyer.

The beginning of the revolutionary path

Leaving his native Simbirsk, where he lived parents , he studied political economy, was interested in social democracy. Also, this period was distinguished by the trips of the future leader to Europe, upon his return from which he founded the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation 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 arranged a personal life with N. Krupskaya.

In 1900, his 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 engaged in the publication.

Years of the first emigration

Much is connected with the life of Lenin 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 passed very fruitfully for V.I. Lenin: he published the newspaper Pravda, worked on his journalism and the preparation of the February uprising, and after the October revolution, which ended in victory. Complete the biography says that during these years Zinoviev and Kamenev were his associates, at the same time he first met I. Stalin.

The last years of life and the cult of personality

At the Congress of Soviets, he headed the 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 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 of widespread electrification and insisted on a legislative settlement 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 brought to life a phenomenon that later became known as the cult of personality. The body of the leader was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum, monuments were erected throughout the country and numerous infrastructure facilities were renamed. Subsequently, the life of Vladimir Lenin was devoted to many books and films. for children and adults who painted him exclusively in a positive way. After the collapse of the USSR, controversial issues of the biography of the great politician began to rise, in particular nationality.

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In Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) in the family of an inspector of public schools, who became a hereditary nobleman.

The elder brother, Alexander, participated in the populist movement, in May of the year he was executed for preparing an assassination attempt on the king.

In 1887, Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, was admitted to Kazan University, but three months after admission was expelled for participating in student riots. In 1891, Ulyanov externally graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, after which he worked in Samara as an assistant to a barrister. In August 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist circle of students at the Technological Institute. In April 1895, Vladimir Ulyanov went abroad and got acquainted with the Emancipation of Labor group. In the autumn of the same year, on the initiative and under the leadership of Lenin, the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class." In December 1985, Lenin was arrested by the police. He spent more than a year in prison, then was sent for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Krasnoyarsk Territory, under open police supervision. In 1898, the participants of the "Union" held the first congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) in Minsk.

While in exile, Vladimir Ulyanov continued the theoretical and organizational revolutionary activity. In 1897, he published The Development of Capitalism in Russia, where he tried to challenge the views of the populists on socio-economic relations in the country and thereby prove that a bourgeois revolution was brewing in Russia. He got acquainted with the works of the leading theoretician of German social democracy, Karl Kautsky, from whom he borrowed the idea of ​​organizing the Russian Marxist movement in the form of a centralized "new type" party.

After the end of his exile in January 1900, he went abroad (for the next five years he lived in Munich, London and Geneva). Together with Georgy Plekhanov, his associates Vera Zasulich and Pavel Axelrod, as well as his friend Yuli Martov, Ulyanov began publishing the Social Democratic newspaper Iskra.

From 1901, he began to use the pseudonym "Lenin" and from then on was known in the party under this name.

From 1905 to 1907, Lenin lived illegally in St. Petersburg, exercising leadership of the left forces. From 1907 to 1917, Lenin was in exile, where he defended his political views in the Second International. In 1912, Lenin and like-minded people separated from the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), in fact, founding their own - the Bolshevik. New party published the newspaper Pravda.

At the beginning of the First World War, while on the territory of Austria-Hungary, Lenin was arrested on suspicion of spying for the Russian government, but thanks to the participation of the Austrian Social Democrats, he was released, after which he left for Switzerland.

In the spring of 1917, Lenin returned to Russia. On April 4, 1917, the day after his arrival in Petrograd, he delivered the so-called "April Theses", where he outlined the program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, and also began preparations for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

In early October 1917, Lenin illegally moved from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 23, at a meeting of the Central Committee (CC) of the RSDLP (b), at its proposal, a resolution was adopted on an armed uprising. On November 6, in a letter to the Central Committee, Lenin demanded an immediate offensive, the arrest of the Provisional Government and the seizure of power. In the evening, he illegally arrived in Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. The next day, November 7 (October 25, according to the old style), 1917, an uprising took place in Petrograd and the Bolsheviks seized state power. At the meeting of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets that opened in the evening, the Soviet government was proclaimed - the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), whose chairman was Vladimir Lenin. The congress adopted the first decrees prepared by Lenin: on the cessation of the war and on the transfer of private land for the use of the working people.

On the initiative of Lenin, in 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded with Germany.

After the transfer of the capital from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. His personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building. Lenin was elected to the Moscow Soviet.

In the spring of 1918, Lenin's government began the fight against the opposition by closing down anarchist and socialist workers' organizations; in July 1918, Lenin led the suppression of the armed uprising of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.

The confrontation intensified during the civil war, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists, in turn, attacked the leaders of the Bolshevik regime; On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin's life.

With the end of the Civil War and the cessation of military intervention in 1922, the process of restoring the national economy of the country began. To this end, at the insistence of Lenin "war communism", the food appropriation was replaced by a food tax. Lenin introduced the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP), which allowed private free trade. At the same time, he insisted on the development of state-type enterprises, on electrification, and on the development of cooperation.

In May and December 1922, Lenin suffered two strokes, but continued to lead the state. The third stroke, which followed in March 1923, left him practically incapacitated.

Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924 in the village of Gorki near Moscow. On January 23, the coffin with his body was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns. The official farewell took place over five days. On January 27, 1924, the coffin with the embalmed body of Lenin was placed in the Mausoleum, specially built on Red Square, designed by the architect Alexei Shchusev. The body of the leader is in a transparent sarcophagus, which was made according to the plans and drawings of engineer Kurochkin, the creator of ruby ​​glass for the Kremlin stars.

During the years of Soviet power, memorial plaques were erected on various buildings associated with Lenin's activities, and monuments to the leader were erected in the cities. The following were established: the Order of Lenin (1930), the Lenin Prize (1925), the Lenin Prizes for achievements in the field of science, technology, literature, art, architecture (1957). In 1924-1991, the Central Lenin Museum worked in Moscow. A number of enterprises, institutions and educational institutions were named after Lenin.

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the Institute of V.I. Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). In the Central Party Archive of this institute (now the Russian state archive socio-political history) contains more than 30 thousand documents, the author of which is Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin on Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he knew from the Petersburg revolutionary underground. They got married on July 22, 1898 during the exile of Vladimir Ulyanov to the village of Shushenskoye.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources