Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is one of the most famous political figures of the 20th century. In the Soviet Union for seventy years he was considered a genius who tried to make backward Russia socialist, and after that - communist. He sought to realize his dream, where workers will receive according to their needs, and give according to their abilities.
early years
In 1887, the elder brother of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin's real name) was executed and it was then that the future politician inside began to hate the tsarist regime. The elder brother Alexander was hanged as a participant in a conspiracy against the emperor Alexander III. Vladimir was 17 years old at that time, he was the fourth child in the family of the superintendent of public schools in Simbirsk Ilya Ulyanov. In the same year, he graduated from high school with a gold medal, immediately entered the faculty of Kazan University, deciding to become a lawyer.
The death of his brother turned everything upside down in Vladimir’s soul. Since then, he began to study little, speaking more and more with angry speeches. And a little later, he completely joined a group of revolutionary students, for which he was soon expelled from the university.
In the years 1894-1895 he wrote and published his first works. In them, he affirmed a new ideology - Marxism, criticized populism. At the same time, he visited France and Germany, traveled to Switzerland, met with Paul Lafargue and Karl Liebknecht.
Link for propaganda and agitation
In 1895, Vladimir Ulyanov returned to the capital together with Julius Cederbaum, whose pseudonym is Lev Martov. They organized the Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class. In 1897, Vladimir Ilyich was arrested and exiled for 3 years for agitation and propaganda in the village of Shushenskoye, Yenisei province. While there, a year later he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, his fellow party member. Around the same time, he wrote the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia."
After the link was over, he again went abroad. Together with Martov, Plekhanov and others, while in Munich, he began to publish the Iskra newspaper and the Zarya magazine. The produced literature was distributed exclusively in the Russian Empire. In 1901, in December, Vladimir Ilyich began to use a pseudonym, becoming Lenin.
Continued agitation and action
In 1903, the II Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (abbreviated RSDLP) was held there. Here the program and party charter, personally developed by Plekhanov and Lenin, were to be adopted. The minimum program included the overthrow of tsarism, the establishment of equal rights of nationalities and nations, the establishment of a democratic republic. The maximum program was to build a socialist society through the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Some disagreements arose at the congress, and as a result, two factions, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, formed. The Bolsheviks took Lenin's position, and the rest were opposed. Among the opponents of Vladimir Ilyich was Martov, who for the first time ever used the term "Leninism".
Revolution
Lenin was in Switzerland when the revolution began in Russia in 1905. He decided to be in the thick of things, so he illegally arrived in St. Petersburg under a false name. At this point, he took up the issue of the newspaper New Life, as well as campaigning for preparations for an armed uprising. When the year 1906 arrived, Lenin left for Finland.
Once in Petrograd, Lenin put forward the slogan "From the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist." The main idea was the words "All power to the Soviets!" Plekhanov, being a former comrade-in-arms by this time, called this idea madness. Lenin was sure that he was right, therefore, he ordered on October 24, 1917, to start an armed uprising against the Provisional Government. The very next day, the Bolsheviks seized power throughout the country. The II All-Russian Congress of Soviets was held, where they adopted state decrees on land and peace. The new government was now called the Council of People's Commissars, and was headed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
