V and Lenin, who claimed that. Revolutionary Situation, "April Theses"

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

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

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

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

Vladimir Ulyanov was born in 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), an inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, the son of a former serf in the village of Androsovo, Sergach district, 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 M. S. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Kalmyks).

Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (nee Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin by mother and, by different versions, Ukrainian, German or Jewish - on the father.

According to one version, Vladimir's maternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. According to another version, he came from a family of German colonists invited to Russia). The well-known researcher of the Lenin family M. Shahinyan claimed that Alexander Blank was a Ukrainian.

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

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, which was 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.

Until 1887, nothing is known about any revolutionary activity of Vladimir Ulyanov. He received Orthodox baptism and until the age of 16 belonged to the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh, moving away from religion, probably in 1886. His grades in the law of God in the gymnasium were excellent, as in almost all other subjects. In his matriculation certificate, only one four - in logic. In 1885, the list of students of the gymnasium indicated that Vladimir was “a very gifted student, diligent and accurate. He excels in all subjects very well. He behaves himself." The first award was presented to him already in 1880, after graduating from the first class - a book with gold embossing on the cover: "For good manners and successes" and a commendation sheet.

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

At the university, Vladimir was involved in an illegal student circle"Narodnaya Volya" led by Lazar Bogoraz. Three months after entering, he was expelled for participating in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the imposition of student policing, and a campaign against "unreliable" students. According to the inspector of students, who suffered from student unrest, Ulyanov was in the forefront of the raging students.

The next night, Vladimir, along with forty other students, was arrested and sent to the police station. All those arrested were expelled from the university and sent to the "place of the motherland" in the manner typical for the period of the reign of methods of combating "disobedience". Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repressions. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Ulyanov's cousin, Vladimir Ardashev. After the petitions of Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich's aunt, Ulyanov was sent to the village of Kokushkino, Laishevsky district, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs' house until the winter of 1888-1889.

Since during the police investigation, young Ulyanov's connections with the illegal circle of Bogoraz were revealed, and also because of the execution of his brother, he was included in the list of "unreliable" persons subject to police supervision. For the same reason, he was forbidden to be reinstated at the university, and his mother's corresponding petitions were rejected over and over again.

In the autumn of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he subsequently joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of G. V. Plekhanov 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 right revolutionary approach, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for him for a long time: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.

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

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

In 1890, the authorities relented and allowed him to study externally for the legal exams. In November 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams for the course Faculty of Law Imperial Saint Petersburg University. After that he studied a large number of economic literature, especially Zemstvo statistical reports on agriculture.

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

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara barrister (lawyer) A.N.

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 Russian freedom 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 makes 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, where he met Plekhanov in Switzerland, W. Liebknecht in Germany, P. Lafargue and other leaders of the international labor movement in France, and upon returning to St. Petersburg in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries united the disparate Marxist circles into the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class".

Under the influence of Plekhanov, Lenin partly retreated from his doctrine that proclaimed Tsarist Russia a "capitalist" country, declaring it a "semi-feudal" country. The immediate goal for him is the overthrow of the autocracy, now in alliance with the "liberal bourgeoisie". The "Union of Struggle" carried out active propaganda activities among the workers, they issued more than 70 leaflets.

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

In order for Lenin's "civilian" wife, N. K. Krupskaya, to follow him into exile, he had to register his marriage with her in July 1898. Since only church marriages were recognized in Russia at that time, Lenin, at that time already a former atheist, had to get married in a church, officially identifying himself as Orthodox. Initially, neither Vladimir Ilyich nor Nadezhda Konstantinovna were going to formalize their marriage through the church, but after a very short time the order of the police chief came: either get married, or Nadezhda Konstantinovna must leave Shushenskoye and follow to Ufa, to the place of exile. “I had to do all this comedy,” Krupskaya later said.

Ulyanov, in a letter to his mother dated May 10, 1898, describes the current situation as follows: “N. K., as you know, was given a tragicomic condition: if he does not immediately (sic!) marry, then go back to Ufa. I am not in the least disposed to allow this, and therefore we have already begun “troubles” (mainly petitions for the issuance of documents, without which it is impossible to get married) in order to have time to get married before Lent (before petrovki): it is still permissible to hope that the strict authorities will find this enough "immediate" marriage. Finally, in early July, the documents were received, and it was possible to go to church. But it so happened that there were no guarantors, no best men, no wedding rings, without which the wedding ceremony is unthinkable. The police officer categorically forbade the exiles Krzhizhanovsky and Starkov from coming to the wedding. Of course, it would be possible to start troubles again, but Vladimir Ilyich decided not to wait. As guarantors and best men, he invited acquaintances of the Shushensky peasants: the clerk Stepan Nikolaevich Zhuravlev, the shopkeeper Ioanniky Ivanovich Zavertkin, Simon Afanasyevich Ermolaev, and others. And one of the exiles, Oscar Alexandrovich Engberg, made wedding rings for the bride and groom from a copper penny.

On July 10 (22), 1898, priest John Orestov performed the sacrament of the wedding in the local church. An entry in the church metric book of the village of Shushenskoye testifies that the administrative-exiled Orthodox V.I. Ulyanov and N.K. Krupskaya were married for the first time.

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 1890s, under the pseudonym "K. Tulin ”V. I. Ulyanov gained fame in Marxist circles. In exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

In 1898 in Minsk, in the absence of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held in the amount of 9 people, which established the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, adopting the Manifesto. All members of the Central Committee elected by the congress and most of the delegates were immediately arrested, many 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. February 26, 1900 Ulyanov arrives in Pskov, where he is allowed to live after exile. In April 1900, an organizational meeting was held in Pskov to create the all-Russian workers' newspaper Iskra, in which V. I. Ulyanov-Lenin, S. I. Radchenko, P. B. Struve, M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky, L. Martov, A. N. Potresov, A. M. Stopani.

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

After examining the baggage, the head of the Moscow security department, S. V. Zubatov, sends a telegram to St. Petersburg to the head of the special department of the police department, L. A. Rataev: “The cargo turned out to be a library and tendentious manuscripts, opened in accordance with the Charter of the Russian Railways, as sent unsealed. Upon review by the gendarmerie police and expertise, the department will be sent to its destination. Zubatov. The operation to arrest the Social Democrat ended in failure. As an experienced conspirator, V. I. Lenin did not give the Pskov police any pretexts against him. In the reports of the fillers and in the information of the Pskov gendarmerie department about V.I. Ulyanov, it is noted that "during the time of residence in Pskov before going abroad, he was not noticed in anything reprehensible." Lenin also served as a good cover for his work in the statistical bureau of the Pskov provincial zemstvo, his participation in the preparation of the program for the evaluation and statistical survey of the province. In addition to an illegal visit to the capital, Ulyanov had nothing to show. Ten days later he was released.

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

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 Iskra newspaper (later the magazine Zarya also appeared) included three representatives of the Emancipation of Labor emigrant group - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the Union of Struggle - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The newspaper had an average circulation of 8,000 copies, with some issues up to 10,000 copies. The distribution of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network underground organizations in the territory Russian Empire. The editors of Iskra settled in Munich, but Plekhanov remained in Geneva. Axelrod still lived in Zurich. Martov has not yet arrived from Russia. Zasulich did not come either. Having lived in Munich for a short time, Potresov left him and Potresov for a long time. Ulyanov is doing most of the work in Munich to organize the release of Iskra. The first issue of Iskra arrives from the printing house on December 24, 1900. On April 1, 1901, after serving her Ufa exile, N. K. Krupskaya arrives in Munich and starts working in the editorial office of Iskra.

In December 1901, an article was published in the Zarya magazine under the title “Gg. "criticism" in the agrarian question. Essay One "- the first work that Vladimir Ulyanov signed with the pseudonym "N. Lenin.

In the period 1900-1902, under the influence of the general crisis of the revolutionary movement that had begun at that time, Lenin came to the conclusion that the revolutionary proletariat, left to itself, would soon abandon the struggle against the autocracy, limiting itself to only economic demands.

In 1902, in the work “What is to be done? Sore Problems of Our Movement” Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization (“a new type of party”). In this article, he writes: "Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!". In this work, Lenin first formulated his doctrines of "democratic centralism" (the strict hierarchical organization of the party of revolutionaries) and "bringing consciousness."

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

Foreign agents of the tsarist intelligence attacked the trail of the Iskra newspaper in Munich. Therefore, in April 1902, the editorial office of the newspaper moved from Munich to London. Together with Lenin and Krupskaya, Martov and Zasulich move to London. From April 1902 to April 1903, V. I. Lenin, together with N. K. Krupskaya, lived in London, under the surname Richter, first in furnished rooms, and then rented two small rooms in a house near the British Museum, in whose library Vladimir Ilyich often worked. At the end of April 1903, Lenin and his wife moved from London to Geneva in connection with the transfer of the Iskra newspaper there. They lived in Geneva until 1905.

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.

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.

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 management of the newspaper " New life". Under the leadership of Lenin, the party was preparing an armed uprising. At the same time, Lenin wrote the book "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in 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 December 1905, the 1st conference of the RSDLP was held in Tammerfors, where V.I. Lenin and.

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

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.

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, Krupskaya, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Lenin lived here until June 1912. Here is his first meeting with Inessa Armand.

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 did the first World War 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. According to the memoirs of S. Yu. Bagotsky, after receiving information about the unanimous vote of the German Social Democrats for the military budget of the German government, Lenin declared that he had ceased to be a Social Democrat and turned into a communist.

At 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 spoke with the slogan of "revolutionary defeatism". The military historian S. V. Volkov considered that Lenin's position during the First World War in relation to his own country could most accurately be characterized as "high treason."

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he completed his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively collaborated with the Swiss Social Democrats (including the left-wing radical Fritz Platten), attended all their party meetings. Here he learned 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."

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to travel by train from Switzerland through Germany. General E. Ludendorff argued that the transfer of Lenin to Russia was expedient from a military point of view. Among Lenin's companions were Krupskaya N. K., Zinoviev G. E., Lilina Z. I., Armand I. F., Sokolnikov G. Ya., Radek K. B. and others.

April 3 (16), 1917 Lenin arrives in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, organized a solemn meeting for him. For the meeting of Lenin and the procession that followed it through the streets of Petrograd, according to the Bolsheviks, 7,000 soldiers were mobilized “along the line”.

Lenin was personally met by the chairman of the executive committee of the Petrosoviet, the Menshevik N.S. However, Lenin's very first speech at the Finland Station immediately after his arrival ended with a call for a "social revolution" and caused embarrassment even among Lenin's supporters. The sailors of the 2nd Baltic Crew, who served as an honor guard at the Finland Station, the next day expressed their indignation and regret that they were not told in time about the route by which Lenin returned to Russia, and claimed that they would have greeted Lenin with exclamations of “Down with, back to the country through which you came to us. Soldiers of the Volyn regiment and sailors in Helsingfors raised the question of Lenin's arrest; the indignation of the sailors in this Finnish port of Russia was even expressed in throwing Bolshevik agitators into the sea. Based on the information received about Lenin's path to Russia, the soldiers of the Moscow regiment decided to destroy the editorial office of the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda.

The next day, April 4, Lenin 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 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.

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

In March 1917, until the arrival of Lenin from exile, moderate moods dominated the RSDLP (b). IV Stalin even declared in March that "unification [with the Mensheviks] is possible along the Zimmerwald-Kienthal line." On April 6, the Central Committee passed a negative resolution on the Theses, and the editorial board of Pravda initially refused to publish them, allegedly due to a mechanical failure. On April 7, "Theses" nevertheless appeared with a commentary by L. B. Kamenev, saying that "Lenin's scheme" was "unacceptable."

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

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

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.

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

A month later, the Petrograd Bolsheviks became involved in anti-government demonstrations on 3 (16) - 4 (17) July 1917 under the slogans of transferring power to the Soviets and negotiating peace with Germany. The armed demonstration led by the Bolsheviks turned into skirmishes, including with troops loyal to the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks were accused of organizing "an armed uprising against state power" (subsequently, the Bolshevik leadership denied any involvement in the preparation of these events). In addition, materials provided by counterintelligence on the connections of the Bolsheviks with Germany were made public (see The question of the financing of the Bolsheviks by Germany).

On July 20 (7), the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of high treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin again went underground. 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 H2-293, he fled to the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg. Soon the investigation into Lenin's case was terminated due to lack of evidence.

Lenin, who was in Finland, could not attend the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b), which was semi-legally held in August 1917 in Petrograd. The congress approved the decision on Lenin's non-appearance in the court of the Provisional Government, and elected him in absentia as one of its honorary chairmen.

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

On August 10, accompanied by a member of the Finnish Diet K. Vikka, Lenin moved from the Malm station to Helsingfors. Here he lives in the apartment of the Finnish Social Democrat Gustav Rovno (Hagnesskaya Square, 1 sq. 22), and then in the apartment of the Finnish workers A. Usenius (Fradrikinkatu st., 64) and B. Vlumkvist (Telenkatu st., 46) . Communication goes through G. Rovno, f. postman K. Akhmal, the driver of steam locomotive No. 293 G. Yalava, N. K. Krupskaya, M. I. Ulyanov, Shotman A. V. Twice, according to the certificate of the Sestroretsk worker Agafya Atamanova, N. K. Krupskaya comes to Lenin.

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

On October 20, 1917, Lenin illegally arrived from Vyborg in Petrograd. On November 6, 1917 (10:24) after 6:00 p.m., Lenin left Margarita Fofanova’s safe house, at Serdobolskaya Street, house number 1, apartment number 41, leaving a note: “... He went where you didn’t want me to leave. Goodbye. Ilyich. For the purpose of conspiracy, Lenin changes his appearance: he puts on an old coat and cap, and ties his cheek with a handkerchief. Lenin, accompanied by E. Rakhya, heads to Sampsonievsky Prospekt, takes a tram to Botkinskaya Street, crosses Liteiny Bridge, turns onto Shpalernaya Street, is twice detained by cadets on the way, and finally arrives at Smolny (Leontievskaya Street, 1).

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

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. January 5 (18), 1918 opened constituent Assembly, in which the Social Revolutionaries received the majority, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 80% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left 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, lost its quorum and was forcibly dissolved.

For 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.

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. March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd 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 new capital Soviet Russia.

On August 30, 1918, an assassination attempt was made on Lenin, according to the official version, by a socialist-revolutionary, which led to a serious injury. After the assassination attempt, Lenin was successfully operated on by doctor Vladimir Mints.

The denunciation of the Treaty of Brest by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in November 1918 significantly strengthened Lenin's authority in the party. Doctor of Philosophy in History, professor at Harvard University Richard Pipes describes this situation as follows: “By presciently going to the humiliating world, which gave him the necessary time, and then collapsed under the influence of his own weight, Lenin earned the wide 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 elevated to an unprecedented height. Nothing better served his reputation as a man who made no political mistakes; never again did he have to threaten to resign to get his way."

As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin 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.

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

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

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

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

Illness and death of Vladimir Lenin

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

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On cooperation”, “How can we reorganize the 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 .

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

For treatment, leading German specialists in nervous diseases. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Last thing public speaking Lenin took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow City Council. On December 16, 1922, his health deteriorated sharply again, and on May 15, 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. From March 12, 1923, bulletins about Lenin's health were published daily. 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 N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Less is better”.

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

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

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. In June 2004, an article was published in the European Journal of Neurology, the authors of which suggest that Lenin died of neurosyphilis. Lenin himself did not rule out the possibility of syphilis and therefore took salvarsan, and in 1923 he still tried to be treated with drugs based on mercury and bismuth; a specialist in this field, Max Nonne, was invited to him. However, the guess was refuted by him. “Absolutely nothing testified to syphilis,” Nonne later wrote.

Height of Vladimir Lenin: 164 centimeters.

Personal life of Vladimir Lenin:

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

Robert Henderson, a specialist in Russian history at the University of London, discovered a photo of Yakubova in the bowels of the GARF in Moscow in April 2015.

Apollinaria Yakubova

The main works of Vladimir Lenin:

"On a Characterization of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
What legacy are we giving up? (1897);
Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
What to do? (1902);
One step forward, two steps back (1904);
Party organization and party literature (1905);
Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905);
Marxism and Revisionism (1908);
Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909);
Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914);
On the violation of unity, covered up by cries of unity (1914);
Karl Marx (brief biographical sketch with an exposition of Marxism) (1914);
Socialism and War (1915);
Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay) (1916);
State and Revolution (1917);
The tasks of the proletariat in our revolution (1917)
The Impending Catastrophe and How to Fight It (1917)
On dual power (1917);
How to Organize a Competition (1918);
Great Initiative (1919);
Childhood illness 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? (1919, published: 1928);
On Left Childishness and Petty-Bourgeoisness (1918);
On Our Revolution (1923);
Letter to the Congress (1922, announced: 1924, published: 1956)

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 a Marxist student circle. Institute of Technology. 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. Spent more than a year in prison, then was exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district Krasnoyarsk Territory under the supervision of the police. 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 his theoretical and organizational revolutionary activities. 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. The 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 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 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 end of military intervention in 1922, the process of restoration began. National economy countries. 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, on various buildings associated with the activities of Lenin, were installed memorial plaques, monuments to the leader were erected in the cities. The following were established: the Order of Lenin (1930), the Lenin Prize (1925), Lenin Prizes for achievements in 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). The Central Party Archive of this institute (now the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History) stores more than 30,000 documents authored by 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

Real surname, name and patronymic - Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich. Literary pseudonyms: Vladimir, Vl., V. Ilyin, N. Lenin, Petersburger, Petrov, William Frey, K. Tulin. Party nicknames: Karpov, Meyer, Nikolai Petrovich, Starik, etc.

Social and political figure, revolutionary, one of the leaders of the RSDLP, RSDLP (b), RCP (b), publicist. The founder of one of the directions of Marxism, who synthesized the ideas of the founders of Marxism (K. Marx, F. Engels, G. Plekhanov, K. Kautsky) and Russian Blanquism (P.N. Tkachev). Founder of the Soviet state.

Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) (10 (23). 10 - 4 (17). 11. 1917). Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (27.10. (9.11.) 1917 - 21.01.1924). Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) (03/25/1919 - 01/21/1924). Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (07/06/1923 - 01/21/1924). Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR (07/17/1923 - 01/21/1925).

Biography and career

From the family of an inspector, then director of public schools in the Simbirsk province, a real state councilor Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, who received hereditary nobility. Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank). Father's grandfather - Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanov, from the serfs of the Sergach district of the Nizhny Novgorod province, a tailor-craftsman in Astrakhan. Maternal grandfather - Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, physiotherapist, retired state councilor, nobleman, landowner of the Nizhny Novgorod province. The Ulyanov family had eight children (Anna, Alexander, Olga, Vladimir, Olga, Nikolai, Dmitry, Maria), two of whom (Olga and Nikolai) died in infancy. On July 20 (22), 1898, he was married to Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. Didn't have children.

In 1879-1887 he studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium. In 1887, V. Ulyanov graduated with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. In December of the same year, he was expelled from the university for participating in a student gathering and sent under covert police supervision to the Kokushkino estate in the Kazan province that belonged to his mother. In September 1891, he passed the exams at St. Petersburg University for an external course in the Faculty of Law.

The young Vladimir Ulyanov was greatly impressed by the execution of his elder brother Alexander, one of the organizers of the Terrorist Faction of the Narodnaya Volya party, who was hanged in 1887 for preparing an assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander III.

Living under police supervision in Kokushkino, Vladimir Ulyanov devoted time to self-education, got acquainted with the works of N.G. Chernyshevsky. Subsequently, he repeatedly recalled the novel What Is to Be Done?, which influenced the formation of his own worldview. From October 1888 he returned to Kazan, where he joined one of the Marxist circles. Here Ulyanov studied the first volume of "Capital" by K. Marx and the work of G.V. Plekhanov "Our differences". Since 1889, in Samara, he became close to the People's Will and Marxists. In 1892-1893 he worked as an assistant to a barrister in Samara. In 1893, Ulyanov submitted his first article, New Economic Movements in peasant life". However, his first work was rejected by the editors.

In August 1893 Vladimir Ulyanov moved to St. Petersburg. Here he was able to quickly gain prestige among the local Marxists. He was especially famous for his essay “On the So-Called Question of Markets” and the illegally published work “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?”, In which sharp criticism of populist ideas was voiced. In particular, Lenin tried to refute the populist thesis, according to which the ruin of the peasantry meant a narrowing of the market for the development of capitalism. Also, from the position of historical materialism, he criticized the sociological concept of N.K. Mikhailovsky. In his first works, Lenin saw the only way to socialism in Russia through the development of the labor movement, considering the proletariat as the foremost force in the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy.

In the article “The economic content of populism and criticism of it in the book of Mr. Struve” (1895), Lenin entered into a polemic with the so-called “legal Marxists”, in other words, with those authors (P.B. Struve, M.N. Tugan- Baranovsky and others), who, relying on the works of K. Marx and F. Engels, stated the fact of the progressive nature of capitalism in Russia. Accusing his opponents of "bourgeois objectivism," Lenin countered them with the concept of "partisanship" in the social sciences. In 1894-1895 he conducted propaganda in workers' circles, at the same time studying the situation of the working class in Russia.

In May 1896, in Switzerland, V. Lenin met with members of the Emancipation of Labor group. Returning from a trip abroad, he supported the idea of ​​the Marxists moving from propaganda to mass agitation. In November 1895, the group of “old men” led by him merged with the group of Yu.O. Martov to the city-wide social-democratic organization of St. Petersburg, called the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. On the night of December 8-9, he was arrested. On March 1, 1897, after being imprisoned, he was exiled to Siberia for three years. He served a link in the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province.

In exile, he completed work on the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia, published in 1899. In this work, relying on a large amount of factual material, V.I. Lenin argued that Russia had already become a capitalist country. At the same time, he noted the preservation in Russia of many vestiges of pre-capitalist relations. Lenin concluded that political force the Russian proletariat is greater than its share in the mass of the population. In 1899, he organized a protest by a group of exiles against the spread of the ideas of "economism" in the social democratic movement. At this time, as a result of correspondence, Lenin, Martov and Potresov agreed to publish an all-Russian social democratic newspaper. At the end of their exile, in February 1900, they held a meeting in Pskov. In July, they went abroad, where, together with members of the Emancipation of Labor group, they made up the editorial office of the Iskra newspaper and the Zarya magazine. At this time, Lenin lived in Munich, London, Geneva, continuing the discussion with the "economists". In 1902, his book What to Do was published, which outlined the concept of a centralized proletarian party, the purpose of which is to carry out a political coup in Russia with the help of an armed uprising of the masses. For the first time in this work, the principles of "democratic centralism" were set forth. Lenin took an active part in the discussion of G.V. Plekhanov of the draft program of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.

At the II Congress of the RSDLP in July 1903, V. Lenin headed the faction of "solid" Iskra-ists (Bolsheviks). In an effort to secure a leading role in the social democratic movement in Russia, he proposed reducing the number of members of the Iskra editorial board to three and establishing a Party Council. After Plekhanov went over to the side of the Mensheviks, Lenin retained his position in the Central Committee, where he was co-opted in November 1903. In the book "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back" (1904), in which he criticized his opponents at the II Party Congress and questioned the value of democratic norms in the party. Soon he put forward the idea of ​​convening a new congress of the RSDLP, which, however, did not receive the support of the Central Committee. In response to the disagreement with the decision of the majority, he formed from among his supporters the Bureau of Committees of the Majority (BCB), which prepared the convocation of the Third Congress, which consisted exclusively of Bolshevik delegates.

This congress, which approved Lenin's proposals on tactics, was held in London in April 1905. In the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in a Democratic Revolution”, he commented on the results of this congress, arguing the need to establish the hegemony of the proletariat in the struggle to overthrow the autocracy and an armed uprising, which would result in the establishment of the “dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” in Russia. Having solved this problem, the Social-Democratic Party will be able to proceed directly to the implementation of the socialist revolution. At the Third Congress of the RSDLP, he emphasized that the main task of the unfolding revolution was the elimination of autocracy and the remnants of the feudal system in Russia. In his letters to Russia, he demanded that the Bolsheviks organize combat detachments preparing for an armed uprising, carrying out military actions in the form of attacks on the police and military. In early November 1905, Lenin returned to St. Petersburg, where he headed the editorial office of the Novaya Zhizn newspaper.

Published in many languages ​​of the peoples of the world big number works of art literature about V.I. Lenin. Among the most early works relates, for example, the poem by V.V. Mayakovsky "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin". Also filmed many feature films about him. One of the first image of Lenin was captured in the film by S. Eisenstein "October" (1927). So, for example, most of the works of fiction and films about him are in the USSR and the countries of the "socialist" bloc. Also an integral part of the Soviet monumental art were the monuments to Lenin. He has also been featured in numerous paintings. One of the first artists who reflected the image of Lenin in his works was I.I. Brodsky (1919 - "Lenin and the manifestation"). The collection of works of fiction dedicated to him was called "Leninana". His portraits and busts adorned Soviet institutions without fail. Among the people folklore works numerous anecdotes about Lenin can be attributed, many of which are passed from mouth to mouth in our time. Also in the USSR, settlements were named after Lenin (for example: Leningrad), as well as enterprises, military and civilian ships.

Lenin (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich, the greatest proletarian revolutionary and thinker, successor to the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, organizer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, founder of the Soviet socialist state, teacher and leader of the working people of the whole world.

Lenin's grandfather, Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanov, a serf from the Nizhny Novgorod province, later lived in the city of Astrakhan, was a tailor-craftsman. Father - Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, after graduating from Kazan University, taught in secondary schools in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod, and then was an inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province. Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (nee Blank), the daughter of a doctor, having received a home education, passed the exams for the title of teacher externally; devoted herself entirely to the upbringing of her children. The elder brother, Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov, was executed in 1887 for participating in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. Sisters - Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova and younger brother- Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov became prominent figures in the Communist Party.

In 1879-87 L. (Lenin) studied at the Simbirsk Gymnasium. The spirit of protest against the tsarist system, social and national oppression, awakened early in him. Advanced Russian literature, the works of V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev and especially N. G. Chernyshevsky contributed to the formation of his revolutionary views. From his older brother L. learned about Marxist literature. After graduating from high school with a gold medal, L. entered Kazan University, but in December 1887 he was arrested for active participation in a revolutionary gathering of students, expelled from the university, and exiled to the village of Kokushkino in the Kazan province. From that time on, L. devoted his entire life to the struggle against autocracy and capitalism, to the cause of the liberation of the working people from oppression and exploitation. In October 1888 L. returned to Kazan. Here he joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, in which the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. The works of Marx and Engels played a decisive role in shaping L.'s worldview—he became a staunch Marxist.

In 1891, L. passed the exams externally for the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University and began working as an assistant to a barrister in Samara, where the Ulyanov family moved in 1889. Here he organized a circle of Marxists, established contacts with the revolutionary youth of other cities of the Volga region, and delivered essays directed against populism. The first of the surviving works of L. belongs to the Samara period - the article "New Economic Movements in Peasant Life."

At the end of August 1893, L. moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined a Marxist circle, whose members were S. I. Radchenko, P. K. Zaporozhets, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, and others. . Unshakable faith in the victory of the working class, extensive knowledge, a deep understanding of Marxism and the ability to apply it to the resolution of vital issues that worried the masses, earned L. the respect of the St. Petersburg Marxists and made L. their recognized leader. He establishes contacts with advanced workers (I. V. Babushkin, V. A. Shelgunov, and others), leads workers' circles, and explains the need for a transition from circle propaganda of Marxism to revolutionary agitation among the broad proletarian masses.

L. was the first of the Russian Marxists to set the task of creating a party of the working class in Russia as an urgent practical task and led the struggle of the revolutionary Social Democrats for its implementation. L. believed that it should be a proletarian party of a new type, in terms of its principles, forms and methods of activity meeting the requirements of a new era - the era of imperialism and socialist revolution.

Having accepted the central idea of ​​Marxism about the historical mission of the working class as the grave-digger of capitalism and the builder of communist society, L. gives all his strength to creative genius, comprehensive erudition, colossal energy, rare capacity for selfless service to the cause of the proletariat, becomes a professional revolutionary, is formed as the leader of the working class.

In 1894, L. wrote the work “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?”, At the end of 1894 - early 1895 - the work “The economic content of populism and criticism of it in the book of Mr. Struve (Reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature )". Already these first major works of L. were distinguished by a creative approach to the theory and practice of the labor movement. In them, L. subjected the subjectivism of the Narodniks and the objectivism of the “legal Marxists” to devastating criticism, and showed a consistently Marxist approach to the analysis of Russian. In reality, he characterized the tasks of the proletariat of Russia, developed the idea of ​​an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, substantiated the need to create a truly revolutionary party in Russia. In April 1895, L. went abroad to establish contact with the Emancipation of Labor group. In Switzerland he met Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue and other leaders of the international working-class movement. In September 1895, returning from abroad, L. visited Vilnius, Moscow and Orekhovo-Zuevo, where he established contacts with local Social Democrats. In the autumn of 1895, on the initiative and under the leadership of L., the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single organization—the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which was the germ of a revolutionary proletarian party and, for the first time in Russia, began to unite scientific socialism with the mass working-class movement.

On the night of December 8 (20) to December 9 (21), 1895, L., together with his associates in the Union of Struggle, was arrested and imprisoned, from where he continued to lead the Union. In prison, L. wrote "Project and explanation of the program of the Social Democratic Party", a number of articles and leaflets, prepared materials for his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." In February 1897, L. was exiled for 3 years to the village. Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province. For active revolutionary work, N. K. Krupskaya was also sentenced to exile. As the bride of L., she was also sent to Shushenskoye, where she became his wife. Here, L. established and maintained contact with the Social Democrats of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, and other cities, with the Emancipation of Labor group, corresponded with the Social Democrats who were in exile in the North and Siberia, rallied around him exiled social democrats of the Minusinsk district. In exile, L. wrote over 30 works, including the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" and the pamphlet "The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats", which were of great importance for the development of the program, strategy and tactics of the party. In 1898, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held in Minsk, proclaiming the formation of a Social Democratic Party in Russia and publishing the Manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. With the main provisions of the "Manifesto" L. solidarized. However, the party has not actually been created yet. The congress, which took place without the participation of L. and other prominent Marxists, was unable to work out a program and party rules and overcome the disunity of the Social Democratic movement. L. developed practical plan creation of a Marxist party in Russia; The most important means of achieving this goal was to become, as L. believed, an all-Russian illegal political newspaper. Fighting for the creation of a new type of proletarian party, irreconcilable to opportunism, L. opposed the revisionists in the international Social Democracy (E. Bernstein and others) and their supporters in Russia (the Economists). In 1899 he composed the "Protest of the Russian Social Democrats" directed against "Economism". The "Protest" was discussed and signed by 17 exiled Marxists.

After the end of his exile, L. on January 29 (February 10), 1900, left Shushenskoye. Following to a new place of residence, L. stopped in Ufa, Moscow, etc., illegally visited St. Petersburg, everywhere establishing ties with the Social Democrats. Having settled in Pskov in February 1900, L. did a great deal of work in organizing the newspaper, and in a number of cities he created strongholds for it. In July 1900, L. went abroad, where he set up the publication of the Iskra newspaper. L. was the direct head of the newspaper. Iskra played an exceptional role in the ideological and organizational preparation of the revolutionary proletarian party, in demarcation with the opportunists. It became the center of association of parties. forces, education desks. frames. Subsequently, L. noted that “the entire flower of the class-conscious proletariat took the side of the Iskra” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 344).

From 1900 to 1905, L. lived in Munich, London, and Geneva. In December 1901, L. for the first time signed one of his articles published in Iskra with the pseudonym Lenin (he also had pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, and others).

In the struggle to create a new type of party, Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? Painful questions of our movement” (1902). In it L. criticized "economism" and highlighted the main problems of building the party, its ideology and politics. L. outlined the most important theoretical questions in the articles The Agrarian Program of Russian Social Democracy (1902) and The National Question in Our Program (1903). With the leading participation of L., the editors of Iskra developed a draft Party Program, which formulated the demand for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the socialist transformation of society, which is absent in the programs of Western European Social Democratic parties. L. wrote the draft Charter of the RSDLP, drew up a work plan and drafts of almost all the resolutions of the upcoming party congress. In 1903, the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP was held. At this congress, the process of unification of revolutionary Marxist organizations was completed and the party of the working class of Russia was formed on the ideological, political and organizational principles developed by L. A proletarian party of a new type, the Bolshevik Party, was created. “Bolshevism has existed as a current of political thought and as a political party since 1903,” L. wrote in 1920 (ibid., vol. 41, p. 6). After the congress, L. launched a struggle against Menshevism. In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904), he exposed the anti-party activities of the Mensheviks and substantiated the organizational principles of a new type of proletarian party.

During the Revolution of 1905–07, L. directed the work of the Bolshevik Party in leading the masses. At the 3rd (1905), 4th (1906), 5th (1907) congresses of the RSDLP, in the book Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905) and numerous articles, L. developed and substantiated strategic plan and the tactics of the Bolshevik Party in the revolution, criticized the opportunist line of the Mensheviks, on November 8 (21), 1905, L. arrived in St. Petersburg, where he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks, and the preparation of an armed uprising. L. headed the work of the Bolshevik newspapers Vperyod, Proletary, and Novaya Zhizn. In the summer of 1906, due to police persecution, L. moved to Kuokkala (Finland), in December 1907 he was again forced to emigrate to Switzerland, and at the end of 1908 to France (Paris).

During the reaction years of 1908–10, Leningrad waged a struggle to preserve the illegal Bolshevik Party against the liquidator Mensheviks and Otzovists, against the splitting actions of the Trotskyists (see Trotskyism), and against conciliation to opportunism. He deeply analyzed the experience of the Revolution of 1905–07. At the same time, L. rebuffed the offensive of the reaction against the ideological foundations of the party. In his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (published in 1909), L. exposed the sophisticated methods of defending idealism by bourgeois philosophers, the attempts of the revisionists to distort the philosophy of Marxism, and developed dialectical materialism.

From the end of 1910, a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement began in Russia. In December 1910, on the initiative of L., the newspaper Zvezda began to be published in St. Petersburg; on April 22 (May 5), 1912, the first issue of the daily legal Bolshevik workers' newspaper Pravda was published. To train cadres of party workers, L. in 1911 organized a party school in Longjumeau (near Paris), in which he gave 29 lectures. In January 1912, under the leadership of L., the Sixth (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP was held in Prague. In order to be closer to Russia, L. moved to Krakow in June 1912. From there, he directs the work of the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Russia, the editorial office of the Pravda newspaper, directs the activities of the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma. In December 1912 in Krakow and in September 1913 in Poronin, under the leadership of L., meetings of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with party workers were held on the most important issues of the revolutionary movement. great attention L. devoted himself to developing the theory of the national question and to educating party members and the broad masses of working people in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. He wrote program works: "Critical Notes on the National Question" (1913), "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (1914).

From October 1905 to 1912 L. was the representative of the RSDLP in the International Socialist Bureau of the 2nd International. Heading a Bolshevik delegation, he took an active part in the work of the Stuttgart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) International Socialist Congresses. L. waged a resolute struggle against opportunism in the international working-class movement, rallying leftist revolutionary elements, and paid much attention to exposing militarism and developing the tactics of the Bolshevik Party in relation to imperialist wars.

During World War I (1914–18), the Bolshevik Party, led by L., raised high the banner of proletarian internationalism, exposed the social-chauvinism of the leaders of the Second International, and put forward the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. The war found L. in Poronin. On July 26 (August 8), 1914, on a false denunciation, L. was arrested by the Austrian authorities and imprisoned in Novy Targ. Thanks to the assistance of the Polish and Austrian Social Democrats, L. was released from prison on August 6 (19). On August 23 (September 5) he left for Switzerland (Bern); in February 1916 he moved to Zurich, where he lived until March (April) 1917. In the manifesto of the Central Committee of the RSDLP "War and Russian Social Democracy", in the works "On the National Pride of the Great Russians", "The Collapse of the Second International", "Socialism and War", "On the slogan of the United States of Europe", " military program proletarian revolution”, “Results of the discussion on self-determination”, “On the caricature of Marxism and “imperialist economism””, etc. L. further developed the most important provisions of Marxist theory, developed the strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks in the conditions of war. L.'s work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) provided a profound foundation for the Party's theory and policy on questions of war, peace, and revolution. During the war, L. worked a lot on questions of philosophy (see "Philosophical Notebooks"). Despite the difficulties of wartime, L. established a regular publication of the Central Organ of the party of the newspaper "Social Democrat", established links with the party organizations of Russia, directed their work. At international socialist conferences in Zimmerwald (August (September) 1915) and Kienthal (April 1916), L. defended revolutionary Marxist principles and fought against opportunism and centrism (Kautskyism). By rallying the revolutionary forces in the international working-class movement, L. laid the foundation for the formation of the Third, Communist International.

Having received in Zurich on March 2 (15), 1917, the first reliable news of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution that had begun in Russia, L. determined the new tasks of the proletariat and the Bolshevik Party. In Letters from Afar, he formulated the political course of the party for the transition from the first, democratic, stage to the second, socialist, stage of the revolution, warned against supporting the bourgeois Provisional Government, put forward the position on the need to transfer all power into the hands of the Soviets. On April 3 (16), 1917, L. returned from exile to Petrograd. Solemnly welcomed by thousands of workers and soldiers, he made a short speech, ending it with the words: "Long live the socialist revolution!" On April 4 (17), at a meeting of the Bolsheviks, L. delivered a document that went down in history under the title of V. I. Lenin’s April Theses (“On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution”). In these theses, in "Letters on tactics", in reports and speeches at the 7th (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b), L. developed a plan for the party's struggle for the transition from a bourgeois-democratic revolution to a socialist revolution, the tactics of the party in conditions of dual power - installation on the peaceful development of the revolution, put forward and justified the slogan "All power to the Soviets!". Under the leadership of L., the party launched political and organizational work among the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers. L. directed the activities of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) and the central printed organ of the party - the newspaper Pravda, spoke at meetings and rallies. From April to July 1917, L. wrote over 170 articles, pamphlets, draft resolutions of the Bolshevik conferences and the Central Committee of the Party, appeals. At the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets (June 1917) L. delivered speeches on the question of the war, on the attitude towards the bourgeois Provisional Government, exposing its imperialist, anti-people policy and the conciliation of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. In July 1917, after the liquidation of dual power and the concentration of power in the hands of the counter-revolution, the peaceful period of the development of the revolution ended. On July 7 (20) the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of L. He was forced to go underground. Until August 8 (21), 1917, L. was hiding in a hut behind the lake. Spill, near Petrograd, then until the beginning of October - in Finland (Jalkala, Helsingfors, Vyborg). And in the underground, he continued to direct the activities of the party. In the theses "Political Situation" and in the pamphlet "To the Slogans" L. defined and substantiated the tactics of the party in the new conditions. Based on Lenin's guidelines, the 6th Congress of the RSDLP (b) (1917) decided on the need for the working class to take power in alliance with the poorest peasantry through an armed uprising. In the underground, L. wrote the book The State and Revolution, the pamphlet The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It, and Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? and other works. On September 12-14 (25-27), 1917, L. wrote a letter to the Central, Petrograd and Moscow committees of the RSDLP (b) “The Bolsheviks must take power” and a letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) “Marxism and the uprising”, and then on September 29 (12 October) article "Crisis is ripe". In them, on the basis of a deep analysis of the alignment and correlation of class forces in the country and in the international arena, L. concluded that the moment had come for a victorious socialist revolution, and developed a plan for an armed uprising. In early October, L. returned illegally from Vyborg to Petrograd. In the article “Advice from an outsider” on October 8 (21), he outlined the tactics of carrying out an armed uprising. October 10 (23) at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) L. made a report on the current situation; at his suggestion, the Central Committee adopted a resolution on an armed uprising. On October 16 (29) at the expanded meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) L. in his report defended the course of the uprising, sharply criticized the position of the opponents of the uprising L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev. L. Trotsky considered the position of postponing the insurrection until the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets to be extremely dangerous for the fate of the revolution. The meeting of the Central Committee confirmed Lenin's resolution on an armed uprising. During the preparation of the uprising, L. directed the activities of the Military Revolutionary Center, created by the Central Committee of the Party, and the Military Revolutionary Committee (VRC), formed at the suggestion of the Central Committee under the Petrograd Soviet. On October 24 (November 6), in a letter to the Central Committee, L. demanded to immediately go on the offensive, arrest the Provisional Government and seize power, emphasizing that “delay in speaking out is like death” (ibid., vol. 34 p. 436).

On the evening of October 24 (November 6), L. illegally arrived at Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. At the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which opened on October 25 (November 7), which proclaimed the transfer of all power in the center and localities into the hands of the Soviets, L. made presentations on peace and land. The congress adopted Lenin's decrees on peace and land and formed a workers' and peasants' government - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by L. The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, won under the leadership of the Communist Party, opened a new era in the history of mankind - the era of transition from capitalism to socialism.

L. led the struggle of the Communist Party and the masses of Russia for the solution of the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the building of socialism. Under the leadership of L., the party and government created a new, Soviet state apparatus. The confiscation of landed estates was carried out and the nationalization of all land, banks, transport, large-scale industry, a monopoly of foreign trade was introduced. The Red Army was created. The national oppression has been destroyed. The party enlisted the broad masses of the people in the grandiose work of building the Soviet state and carrying out fundamental socio-economic transformations. In December 1917, L. in the article "How to organize a competition?" put forward the idea of ​​socialist competition of the masses as an effective method of building socialism. At the beginning of January 1918, L. prepared the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which became the basis of the first Soviet Constitution of 1918. Thanks to L.’s principles and perseverance, as a result of his struggle against the “Left Communists” and Trotskyists, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918 was concluded with Germany, which gave The Soviet government needed a peaceful respite.

From March 11, 1918, L. lived and worked in Moscow, after the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved here from Petrograd.

In his work The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power, in his work On "Left" Childishness and Petty-Bourgeoisness (1918), and others, L. outlined a plan for laying the foundations of a socialist economy. In May 1918, on the initiative and with the participation of L., decrees on the food question were drafted and adopted. At L.'s suggestion, food detachments of workers were created and sent to the countryside to raise the poor (see Committees of the Poor Peasants) to fight against the kulaks, to fight for bread. The socialist measures of the Soviet government met with fierce resistance from the overthrown exploiting classes. They launched an armed struggle against Soviet power and resorted to terror. On August 30, 1918, L. was seriously wounded by a terrorist Social Revolutionary F. E. Kaplan.

During the years of the Civil War and the military intervention of 1918–20, L. was chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Defense Council, which was set up on November 30, 1918, to mobilize all forces and resources to defeat the enemy. L. put forward the slogan "Everything for the front!" At his suggestion, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared the Soviet Republic a military camp. Under the leadership of L., the party and the Soviet government in a short time were able to rebuild the country's economy on a war footing, developed and put into practice a system of emergency measures, called "war communism." Lenin wrote the most important party documents, which were a combat program for mobilizing the forces of the party and the people to defeat the enemy: “Theses of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) in connection with the situation Eastern Front”(April 1919), a letter from the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to all organizations of the party “Everyone to fight against Denikin!” (July 1919) and others. L. directly supervised the development of plans for the most important strategic operations Red Army to defeat the White Guard armies and troops of foreign interventionists.

At the same time, L. continued to conduct theoretical work. In the autumn of 1918 he wrote the book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, in which he exposed Kautsky's opportunism and showed the radical opposition between bourgeois and proletarian democracy, Soviet democracy. L. pointed to the international significance of the strategy and tactics of the Russian Communists. “... Bolshevism,” L. wrote, “is suitable as a model of tactics for everyone” (ibid., vol. 37, p. 305). L. basically drafted the second Party Program, which determined the tasks of building socialism, adopted by the 8th Congress of the RCP (b) (March 1919). The focus of L. was then the question of the transition period from capitalism to socialism. In June 1919, he wrote the article "The Great Initiative", dedicated to communist subbotniks, in the fall - the article "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", in the spring of 1920 - the article "From the destruction of the age-old way of life to the creation of a new one." In these and many other works, L., generalizing the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, deepened the Marxist doctrine of the transition period, illuminated critical issues communist construction in the conditions of the struggle of two systems: socialism and capitalism. After the victorious end of the Civil War, L. led the struggle of the party and all the working people of the Soviet Republic for the restoration and further development economy, supervised cultural construction. In the Report of the Central Committee to the Ninth Congress of the Party, L. defined the tasks of economic development and emphasized the exceptional importance of a single economic plan, the basis of which should be the electrification of the country. Under the leadership of L., the GOELRO plan was developed - a plan for the electrification of Russia (for 10-15 years), the first long-term plan for the development of the national economy of the Soviet country, which L. called "the second program of the party" (see ibid., vol. 42, p. 157).

In late 1920 and early 1921, a discussion unfolded in the party about the role and tasks of the trade unions, in which questions were actually decided about the methods of approaching the masses, the role of the party, and the fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in Russia. L. spoke out against the erroneous platforms and factional activities of Trotsky, N. I. Bukharin, the “workers’ opposition,” and the group of “democratic centralism.” He pointed out that, being the school of communism in general, the trade unions should be for the working people, in particular, the school of economic management.

At the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921, L. summed up the results of the trade union discussion in the party and put forward the task of transitioning from the policy of “war communism” to the New Economic Policy (NEP). The congress approved the transition to the New Economic Policy, which ensured the strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, the creation of the production base of a socialist society; adopted written L. resolution "On the unity of the party." In the pamphlet On the Food Tax (The Significance of the New Policy and Its Conditions) (1921) and the article On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution (1921), L. revealed the essence of the New Economic Policy as the economic policy of the proletariat in the transitional period and outlined the ways of implementing it.

In his speech “The Tasks of Youth Unions” at the 3rd Congress of the RKSM (1920), in the draft and draft resolution “On Proletarian Culture” (1920), in the article “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (1922), and in other works, L. elucidated the problems the creation of a socialist culture, the tasks of the party's ideological work; L. showed great concern for the development of science.

L. identified ways to solve the national question. The problems of nation-building and socialist transformations in national regions are covered by L. in the report on the party program at the 8th Congress of the RCP (b), in the “Initial Outline of Theses on National and Colonial Questions” (1920) for the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, in a letter “On the Formation of the USSR” (1922) and others. L. developed the principles of uniting the Soviet republics into a single multinational state on the basis of voluntariness and equality - Union SSR, which was established in December 1922.

The Soviet government, headed by L., consistently fought for the preservation of peace, for the prevention of a new world war, and sought to improve the economy and diplomatic relations with other countries. At the same time, the Soviet people supported the revolutionary and national liberation movements.

In March 1922, L. led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. Hard work, the consequences of being wounded in 1918 undermined L.'s health. In May 1922, he fell seriously ill. In early October 1922, L. returned to work. His last public speech was November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow City Council. On December 16, 1922, L.'s health deteriorated sharply again. In late December 1922 and early 1923, L. dictated letters on internal party and state issues: “Letter to the Congress”, “On the Attribution of Legislative Functions to the State Planning Commission”, “On the Question of Nationalities or “Autonomization”” ”and a number of articles -“ Pages from a diary”, “On cooperation”, “On our revolution”, “How do we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Better less, but better”. These letters and articles are rightly called L.'s political testament. They were the final stage in L.'s development of a plan for building socialism in the USSR. In them, L. outlined in a generalized form the program for the socialist transformation of the country and the prospects for the world revolutionary process, and the fundamentals of the party's policy, strategy, and tactics. He substantiated the possibility of building a socialist society in the USSR, developed the propositions on the industrialization of the country, on the transition of the peasants to large-scale social production through cooperation (see V. I. Lenin’s Cooperative Plan), on the cultural revolution, emphasized the need to strengthen the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, friendship of the peoples of the USSR, improvement of the state apparatus, ensuring the leading role of the Communist Party, the unity of its ranks.

L. consistently pursued the principle of collective leadership. He put all the most important questions for discussion at regular party congresses and conferences, plenums of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party, All-Russian Congresses of Soviets, sessions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and meetings of the Council of People's Commissars. Such prominent figures of the party and the Soviet state as V. V. Borovsky, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, M. I. Kalinin, L. B. Krasin, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, V. V. Kuibyshev, A. V. Lunacharsky, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, G. I. Petrovsky, Ya. M. Sverdlov, I. V. Stalin, P. I. Stuchka, M. V. Frunze, G. V. Chicherin, S. G. Shaumyan and others.

L. was the leader not only of the Russian, but also of the international labor and communist movement. In letters to the working people of Western Europe, America, and Asia, L. explained the essence and international significance of the October Socialist Revolution and the most important tasks of the world revolutionary movement. On the initiative of L. in 1919, the 3rd, Communist International was created. Under the leadership of L. passed the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th congresses of the Comintern. He drafted many resolutions and congress documents. In the works of L., primarily in the work “Children's disease of “leftism” in communism” (1920), the program foundations, strategy and principles of tactics of the international communist movement were developed.

In May 1923 L. moved to Gorki due to illness. In January 1924, his health suddenly deteriorated sharply. January 21, 1924 at 6 o'clock. 50 min. L. died in the evening. On January 23, the coffin with the body of L. was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns. For five days and nights, the people said goodbye to their leader. On January 27, the funeral took place on Red Square; the coffin with the embalmed body of L. was placed in a specially built Mausoleum (see Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin).

Never since Marx has the history of the liberation movement of the proletariat given the world a thinker and leader of the working class, of all working people, on such a gigantic scale as Lenin. The genius of a scientist, political wisdom and insight were combined in him with the talent of the greatest organizer, with an iron will, courage and courage. L. boundlessly believed in the creative forces of the masses, was closely associated with them, enjoyed their boundless trust, love and support. All the activity of L. is the embodiment of the organic unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. Selfless devotion to communist ideals, the cause of the party, the working class, the greatest conviction in the rightness and justice of this cause, the subordination of his whole life to the struggle for the liberation of working people from social and national oppression, love for the motherland and consistent internationalism, implacability towards class enemies and touching attention to comrades , demanding of oneself and others, moral purity, simplicity and modesty are the characteristic features of Lenin - a leader and a man.

L. built the leadership of the party and the Soviet state on the basis of creative Marxism. He tirelessly fought against attempts to turn the teachings of Marx and Engels into a dead dogma.

“We do not at all look at Marx’s theory as something complete and inviolable,” wrote L., “we are convinced, on the contrary, that she laid only the cornerstones of the science that socialists must move forward in all directions if they do not want to lag behind life” (ibid., vol. 4, p. 184).

L. raised revolutionary theory to a new, higher level, enriched Marxism with scientific discoveries of world-historical significance.

“Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the era of the collapse of colonialism and the victory of national liberation movements, the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to socialism and the building of a communist society” (“On the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin”, Theses Central Committee of the CPSU, 1970, p. 5).

L. developed all the constituent parts of Marxism—philosophy, political economy, and scientific communism (see Marxism-Leninism).

Generalizing from the standpoint of Marxist philosophy the achievements of science, especially physics, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, L. further developed the doctrine of dialectical materialism. He deepened the concept of matter, defining it as objective reality, existing outside of human consciousness, developed the fundamental problems of the theory of human reflection of objective reality and the theory of knowledge. L.'s great merit is the comprehensive development of materialist dialectics, in particular the law of unity and struggle of opposites.

“Lenin is the first thinker of the century who saw in the achievements of contemporary natural science the beginning of a grandiose scientific revolution, managed to reveal and philosophically generalize the revolutionary meaning of the fundamental discoveries of the great researchers of nature ... The idea he expressed about the inexhaustibility of matter became the principle of natural science knowledge” (ibid., p. 14).

L. made a major contribution to Marxist sociology. He concretized, substantiated and developed the most important problems, categories and provisions of historical materialism about socio-economic formations, about the laws of the development of society, about the development of productive forces and production relations, about the relationship between the base and the superstructure, about classes and the class struggle, about the state, about the social revolution, about the nation and national liberation movements, about the correlation of objective and subjective factors in public life, about public consciousness and the role of ideas in the development of society, the role of the masses and the individual in history.

L. significantly supplemented the Marxist analysis of capitalism by posing such problems as the formation and development of the capitalist mode of production, in particular in relatively backward countries with strong feudal remnants, agrarian relations under capitalism, as well as an analysis of bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic revolutions, the social structure of the capitalist society, the essence and forms of the bourgeois state, the historical mission and forms of the class struggle of the proletariat. Of great importance is the conclusion of L. that the strength of the proletariat in historical development is immeasurably greater than its share in the total mass of the population.

L. created the doctrine of imperialism as the highest and last stage in the development of capitalism. Having revealed the essence of imperialism as monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism, having characterized its main features, showing the extreme sharpening of all its contradictions, and the objective acceleration of the creation of the material and sociopolitical prerequisites for socialism, L. concluded that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.

L. comprehensively developed in relation to the new historical era Marxist theory of socialist revolution. He deeply developed the idea of ​​the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution, the need for an alliance between the working class and the working peasantry, determined the attitude of the proletariat towards the various sections of the peasantry at different stages of the revolution; created the theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution, shed light on the question of the relationship between the struggle for democracy and for socialism. Having revealed the mechanism of operation of the law of uneven development of capitalism in the era of imperialism, L. made the most important, having a huge theoretical and political significance the conclusion about the possibility and inevitability of the victory of socialism initially in a few or even in one single capitalist country; this conclusion of L., confirmed by the course of historical development, formed the basis for the development important issues the world revolutionary process, the building of socialism in countries where the proletarian revolution has triumphed. L. developed propositions about a revolutionary situation, about an armed uprising, about the possibility, under certain conditions, of the peaceful development of the revolution; substantiated the idea of ​​the world revolution as a single process, as an epoch connecting the struggle of the proletariat and its allies for socialism with democratic, including national liberation, movements.

L. deeply developed the national question, pointing out the need to consider it from the standpoint of the class struggle of the proletariat, revealed the thesis about the two tendencies of capitalism in the national question, substantiated the position on the complete equality of nations, on the right of the oppressed, colonial and dependent peoples to self-determination and at the same time the principle internationalism of the labor movement and proletarian organizations, the idea of ​​the joint struggle of working people of all nationalities in the name of social and national liberation, the creation of a voluntary union of peoples.

L. revealed the essence and characterized the driving forces of the national liberation movements. He came up with the idea of ​​organizing a united front of the revolutionary movement of the international proletariat and of national liberation movements against the common enemy—imperialism. He formulated a thesis on the possibility and conditions for the transition of backward countries to socialism, bypassing the capitalist stage of development. L. developed the principles of the national policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which ensures the flourishing of nations, nationalities, their close rallying and rapprochement.

L. defined the main content of the modern era as the transition of mankind from capitalism to socialism, characterized the driving forces and prospects for the world revolutionary process after the split of the world into two systems. The main contradiction of this era is the contradiction between socialism and capitalism. L. considered the socialist system and the international working class to be the leading force in the struggle against imperialism. L. foresaw the formation of a world system of socialist states, which would have a decisive influence on all world politics.

L. developed an integral theory of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, revealed its content and patterns. Summarizing the experience of the Paris Commune and the three Russian revolutions, L. developed and concretized the teachings of Marx and Engels on the dictatorship of the proletariat, and comprehensively revealed historical meaning The Republics of Soviets are states of a new type, immeasurably more democratic than any bourgeois-parliamentary republic. The transition from capitalism to socialism, L. taught, cannot but give a variety of political forms, but the essence of all these forms will be the same - the dictatorship of the proletariat. He comprehensively developed the question of the functions and tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, pointed out that the main thing in it is not violence, but the rallying of the non-proletarian strata of the working people around the working class, the building of socialism. The main condition for the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, L. taught, is the leadership of the Communist Party. In the works of L. deeply illuminated the theoretical and practical problems of building socialism. The most important task after the victory of the revolution is the socialist transformation and planned development of the national economy, the achievement of higher labor productivity than under capitalism. Crucial in the construction of socialism have the creation of an appropriate material and technical base, the industrialization of the country. L. deeply developed the question of socialist reorganization Agriculture through education state farms and the development of cooperation, the transition of the peasants to large-scale social production. L. put forward and substantiated the principle of democratic centralism as the basic principle of economic management in the conditions of building a socialist and communist society. He showed the need to preserve and use commodity-money relations, to implement the principle of material interest.

L. considered the implementation of the cultural revolution as one of the main conditions for building socialism: the rise public education, familiarizing the broadest masses with knowledge, cultural values, developing science, literature and art, ensuring the most profound revolution in the consciousness, ideology and spiritual life of the working people, re-educating them in the spirit of socialism. L. emphasized the need to use the culture of the past, its progressive, democratic elements in the interests of building a socialist society. He considered it necessary to enlist the old, bourgeois specialists to participate in socialist construction. At the same time, L. put forward the task of training numerous cadres of the new, popular intelligentsia. In articles about L. Tolstoy, in the article “Party Organization and Party Literature” (1905), as well as in letters to M. Gorky, I. Armand, and others, L. substantiated the principle of party spirit in literature and art, considered their role in the class struggle of the proletariat , formulated the principle of party leadership in literature and art.

In the works of L. developed the principles of socialist foreign policy as an important factor in building a new society, the development of the world revolutionary process. This is a policy of close state, economic and military alliance socialist republics, solidarity with peoples fighting for social and national liberation, peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, international cooperation, resolute opposition to imperialist aggression.

L. developed the Marxist doctrine of the two phases of communist society, the transition from the first to the higher phase, the essence and ways of creating the material and technical basis of communism, the development of statehood, the formation of communist public relations, about the communist education of the working people.

L. created the doctrine of a new type of proletarian party as the highest form of the revolutionary organization of the proletariat, as the vanguard and leader of the working class in the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the construction of socialism and communism. He developed the organizational foundations of the party, the international principle of its construction, the norms of party life, pointed out the need for democratic centralism in the party, unity and conscious iron discipline, the development of inner-party democracy, the activity of party members and the collective leadership, intransigence towards opportunism, and close ties between the party and the masses.

L. was firmly convinced of the inevitability of the victory of socialism throughout the world. He considered the indispensable conditions for this victory: the unity of the revolutionary forces of our time - the world system of socialism, the international working class, the national liberation movement; the correct strategy and tactics of the communist parties; resolute struggle against reformism, revisionism, right and left opportunism, nationalism; solidarity and unity of the international communist movement on the basis of Marxism and the principles of proletarian internationalism.

Theoretical and political activity of L. marked the beginning of a new, Leninist stage in the development of Marxism, in the international working-class movement. The name of Lenin and Leninism are associated with the greatest revolutionary accomplishments of the 20th century, which radically changed the social face of the world and marked the turn of mankind towards socialism and communism. The revolutionary transformation of society in the Soviet Union on the basis of Lenin's brilliant plans and plans, the victory of socialism and the building of a developed socialist society in the USSR are the triumph of Leninism. Marxism-Leninism, as the great and united international doctrine of the proletariat, is the property of all communist parties, all revolutionary workers of the world, all working people. All indigenous social problems modernity can be correctly assessed and decided on the basis of the ideological heritage of L., guided by a reliable compass—the ever-living and creative Marxist-Leninist teaching. The Appeal of the International Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties (Moscow, 1969) "On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" states:

“The entire experience of world socialism, the workers' and national liberation movement, has confirmed the international significance of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The victory of the socialist revolution in a group of countries, the emergence of the world system of socialism, the conquest of the working-class movement in capital countries, the entry into the arena of independent socio-political activity of the peoples of the former colonies and semi-colonies, the unprecedented upsurge in the anti-imperialist struggle—all this proves the historical correctness of Leninism, which expresses the fundamental needs of the modern era. "(" International Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties. Documents and Materials, M., 1969, p. 332).

The CPSU attaches great importance to the study, preservation, and publication of L.'s literary heritage, as well as documents related to his life and work. In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the V. I. Lenin Institute, which was entrusted with these functions. In 1932, as a result of the merger of the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels with the Institute of V. I. Lenin, a single Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (now the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). More than 30,000 Lenin's documents are stored in the Central Party Archive of this institute. Five editions of Lenin's works have been published in the USSR (see the Works of V. I. Lenin), and "Lenin Collections" are being published. Thematic collections of works by L. and his individual works are printed in millions of copies. Much attention is paid to the publication of memoirs and biographical works about L., as well as literature on various problems of Leninism.

The Soviet people sacredly honor the memory of Lenin. The All-Union Communist Youth Union and the Pioneer Organization in the USSR bear Lenin's name, and many cities, including Leningrad, the city where Leningrad proclaimed the power of the Soviets; Ulyanovsk, where children's and youth L. In all cities, the central or most beautiful streets are named after L. Factories and collective farms, ships and mountain peaks bear his name. In honor of L. in 1930, the highest award in the USSR, the Order of Lenin, was established; the Lenin Prizes were established for outstanding services in the field of science and technology (1925), in the field of literature and art (1956); International Lenin Prizes "For strengthening peace among peoples" (1949). A unique memorial and historical monument is the Central Archive of V. I. Lenin and its branches in many cities of the USSR. There are also museums of V. I. Lenin in other socialist countries, in Finland and France.

In April 1970 the Communist Party Soviet Union, the entire Soviet people, the international communist movement, the working masses, the progressive forces of all countries solemnly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. The celebration of this significant date resulted in the greatest demonstration of the vitality of Leninism. Lenin's ideas arm and inspire communists and all working people in the struggle for the complete triumph of communism.

Compositions:

• Collected works, vols. 1-20, M. - L., 1920-1926;
• Soch., 2nd ed., vols. 1-30, Moscow-Leningrad, 1925-1932;
• Soch., 3rd ed., vols. 1-30, Moscow-Leningrad, 1925-1932;
• Soch., 4th ed., vols. 1-45, Moscow, 1941-67;
• Complete collection of works, 5th ed., vols. 1-55, M., 1958-65;
• Lenin collections, book. 1-37, M. - L., 1924-70.

Literature:

1. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. Abstracts of the Central Committee of the CPSU, M., 1970;
2. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, Collection of documents and materials, M., 1970.
3. V. I. Lenin. Biography, 5th ed., M., 1972;
4. V. I. Lenin. Biographical chronicle, 1870-1924, vol. 1-3, M., 1970-72;
5. Memories of V. I. Lenin, vol. 1-5, M., 1968-1969;
6. Krupskaya N. K., About Lenin. Sat. Art. and speeches. 2nd ed., M., 1965;
7. Leninian, Library of V. I. Lenin's works and literature about him 1956-1967, in 3 volumes, vols. 1-2, M., 1971-72;
8. Lenin is still more alive than all the living. Advisory index of memoirs and biographical literature about V. I. Lenin, M., 1968;
9. Memories of V. I. Lenin. Annotated index of books and journal articles 1954-1961, M., 1963;
10. Lenin. Historical and biographical atlas, M., 1970;
11. Lenin. Collection of photographs and film frames, vols. 1-2, Moscow, 1970-72.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( real name- Ulyanov) - a great Russian political and public figure, revolutionary, founder of the RSDLP party (Bolsheviks), creator of the first socialist state in history.

The years of Lenin's life: 1870 - 1924.

Lenin is known primarily as one of the leaders of the great October Revolution of 1917, when the monarchy was overthrown and Russia turned into a socialist country. Lenin was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the new Russia - the RSFSR, considered the founder of the USSR.

Vladimir Ilyich was not only one of the most prominent political leaders in the entire history of Russia, he was also known as the author of many theoretical works on politics and social sciences, the founder of the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the creator and main ideologist of the Third International (an alliance of communist parties from different countries) .

Brief biography of Lenin

Lenin was born on April 22 in the city of Simbirsk, where he lived until the end of the Simbirsk gymnasium in 1887. After graduating from the gymnasium, Lenin left for Kazan and entered the university there at the Faculty of Law. In the same year, Alexander, Lenin's brother, was executed for participating in the assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander 3 - this becomes a tragedy for the whole family, as it is about Alexander's revolutionary activities.

While studying at the university, Vladimir Ilyich is an active member of the forbidden circle " People's Will", also participates in all student riots, for which three months later he is expelled from the university. A police investigation conducted after the student riot revealed Lenin's connections with banned societies, as well as his brother's participation in the assassination of the Emperor - this entailed a ban on Vladimir Ilyich to recover at the university and the installation of close supervision over him. Lenin was included in the list of "unreliable" persons.

In 1888, Lenin again came to Kazan and joined one of the local Marxist circles, where he began to actively study the works of Marx, Engels and Plekhanov, which in the future would have huge impact on his political consciousness. Around this time it starts revolutionary activity Lenin.

In 1889, Lenin moved to Samara and there he continued to look for supporters of a future coup d'état. In 1891, he externally took exams for the course of the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. At the same time, under the influence of Plekhanov, his views evolved from populist to social democratic, and Lenin developed his first doctrine, which laid the foundation for Leninism.

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg and got a job as a lawyer's assistant, while continuing to conduct an active journalistic activity - he published many works in which he studied the process of capitalization of Russia.

In 1895, after a trip abroad, where Lenin met with Plekhanov and many other public figures, he organized the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" in St. Petersburg and began an active struggle against the autocracy. For his activities, Lenin was arrested, spent a year in prison, and then sent into exile in 1897, where, however, he continued his activities, despite the prohibitions. During the exile, Lenin was officially married to his common-law wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya.

In 1898, the first secret congress of the Social Democratic Party (RSDLP) was held, headed by Lenin. Soon after the Congress, all its members (9 people) were arrested, but the beginning of the revolution was laid.

The next time, Lenin returned to Russia only in February 1917 and immediately became the head of another uprising. Despite being ordered to arrest him pretty soon, Lenin continues his activities illegally. In October 1917, after the coup d'etat and the overthrow of the autocracy, power in the country completely passes to Lenin and his party.

Lenin's reforms

From 1917 until his death, Lenin was engaged in the reformation of the country in accordance with social democratic ideals:

• Makes peace with Germany, creates the Red Army, which takes an active part in the civil war of 1917-1921;
• Creates the NEP - the new economic policy;
• Gives civil rights to peasants and workers (the working class becomes the main one in the new political system of Russia);
• Reforms the church, seeking to replace Christianity with a new "religion" - communism.

He dies in 1924 after a sharp deterioration in health. By order of Stalin, the body of the leader is placed in a mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.

The role of Lenin in the history of Russia

The role of Lenin in the history of Russia is enormous. He was the main ideologist of the revolution and the overthrow of the autocracy in Russia, organized the Bolshevik Party, which was able to come to power in a fairly short time and completely change Russia politically and economically. Thanks to Lenin, Russia turned from an Empire into a socialist state based on the ideas of communism and the rule of the working class.

The state created by Lenin existed for almost the entire 20th century and became one of the strongest in the world. Lenin's personality is still controversial among historians, but everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest world leaders that ever existed in world history.