Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Russian revolutionary, first leader of the USSR, and communist theoretician. Active in the 1905 Revolution, Lenin had to leave Russia when it failed, settling in Switzerland in 1914. He returned to Russia after the February revolution of 1917 (see Russian Revolution). He led the Bolshevik revolution of November 1917 and became leader of a Soviet government, concluded peace with Germany, and organized a successful resistance to White Russian (pro-tsarist) uprisings and foreign intervention during the Russian civil war 1918–21. His modification of traditional Marxist doctrine to fit conditions prevailing in Russia became known as Marxism-Leninism, the basis of communist ideology.

Lenin was born on 22 April 1870 in Simbirsk (now renamed Ulyanovsk), on the River Volga, and became a lawyer in St Petersburg. His brother was executed in 1887 for attempting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. A Marxist from 1889, Lenin was sent to Siberia for spreading revolutionary propaganda 1895–1900. He then edited the political paper Iskra (‘The Spark’) from abroad, and visited London several times. In What is to be Done? (1902), he advocated that a professional core of Social Democratic Party activists should spearhead the revolution in Russia, a suggestion accepted by the majority (bolsheviki) at the London party congress 1903. From Switzerland he attacked socialist support for World War I as aiding an ‘imperialist’ struggle, and wrote Imperialism (1917).

After the renewed outbreak of revolution February–March 1917, he was smuggled back into Russia in April by the Germans so that he could take up his revolutionary activities and remove Russia from the war, allowing Germany to concentrate the war effort on the Western Front. On arriving in Russia, Lenin established himself at the head of the Bolsheviks, against the provisional government of Kerensky. A complicated power struggle ensued, but eventually Lenin triumphed on 8 November 1917; a Bolshevik government was formed, and peace negotiations with Germany were begun, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk on 3 March 1918.

From the overthrow of the provisional government in November 1917 until his death, Lenin effectively controlled the USSR, although an assassination attempt in 1918 injured his health. He founded the Third (Communist) International in 1919. With communism proving inadequate to put the country on its feet, he introduced the private-enterprise New Economic Policy in 1921.