Vladimir Lenin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Владимир Ильич Ленин |
|
|---|---|
Portrait of Lenin: October 16, 1918
|
|
| Premier of the Russian SFSR | |
| In office 8 November 1917 – 21 January 1924 |
|
| Preceded by | Nobody (Position created) |
| Succeeded by | Alexei Rykov (Joseph Stalin as the party leader) |
| Premier of the Soviet Union | |
| In office 30 December 1922 – 21 January 1924 |
|
| Preceded by | Nobody (Position created) |
| Succeeded by | Alexei Rykov (Joseph Stalin as the party leader) |
| Chairman of the Bolshevik Party | |
| In office 17 November 1903 – 21 January 1924 |
|
| Preceded by | Nobody (Position created) |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Stalin (as General Secretary) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 22 April 1870 Simbirsk, Russian Empire |
| Died | 21 January 1924 (aged 53) Gorki, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Political party | Bolshevik Party |
| Spouse | Nadezhda Krupskaya |
| Profession | Politician, Revolutionary, Lawyer |
| Signature |  |
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as better known as Vladimir Lenin, (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924) was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary, and the leader of the Bolshevik party and of the October Revolution. He was the first leader of the USSR and the government that took over Russia in 1917. Lenin's ideas became known as Leninism.
Contents
Biography
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk, on 22 April 1870. As a child, he was known as Volodya the common nickname variant of Vladimir. He was the third of eight children. His father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, came from a family of former serfs. Despite a lower-class background, he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility. In mid-1863, Ilya married Maria, the well-educated daughter of a wealthy Swedish Lutheran mother and a Russian Jewish father who had converted to Christianity and worked as a physician.
Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, rising to become Director of Primary Schools in the Simbirsk district six years later. Five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the government's plans for modernisation. In January 1882, his dedication to education earned him the Order of Saint Vladimir, which bestowed on him the status of hereditary nobleman.
Both of Lenin's parents were monarchists. Among his siblings, Lenin was closest to his sister Olga. He had an extremely competitive nature and could be destructive, but usually admitted his misbehaviour. A keen sportsman, he spent much of his free time outdoors or playing chess, and excelled at school.
In January 1886, when Lenin was 15, his father died of a brain haemorrhage. Shortly after that his elder brother Alexander joined a revolutionary cell bent on assassinating the Tsar and was selected to construct a bomb. Before the attack could take place, the conspirators were arrested and tried, and Alexander was executed in May 1887. Despite the emotional trauma of his father's and brother's deaths, Lenin continued studying and graduated from school at the top of his class.
Before the revolution
While he studied law in St. Petersburg he learned about the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were both philosophers from Germany. Karl Marx's thoughts were called Marxism. To talk or write about Marxism like it was a good thing was illegal in Russia, and Lenin was arrested for that and sent to prison in Siberia. This punishment was harsh because Siberia is known for being very cold and isolated, and almost impossible to escape.
In 1899, Lenin wrote a book he called The Development of Capitalism in Russia. In 1900, Lenin was set free from prison and allowed to go back home. He then traveled around Europe. He began to publish a Marxist newspaper called Iskra, the Russian word for "spark" or "lightning". He also became an important member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP.
In 1903, Lenin had a major argument with another leader of the party, Julius Martov, which divided the party in two. Lenin wanted to establish socialism right away, rather than establishing capitalism first and then making the transition to socialism. Martov disagreed, he wanted to clinge to the Classical Marxist idea that in order to achieve socialism, you must go through capitalism first. People who agreed with Martov were called Mensheviks (meaning "the minority"). The people who agreed with Lenin were called Bolsheviks ("the majority").
In 1907 he travelled around Europe again, and visited many socialist meetings and events. During World War I he lived in big European cities like London, Paris and Geneva. At the beginning of the war, a big left-wing meeting called the Second International included the Bolsheviks. The meeting shut down when a lot of the groups argued whether or not to support the war. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were one of only a few groups who were against the war because of their Marxist ideas.
1917
After Tsar Nicholas II gave up his throne during the February Revolution, Lenin went back to Russia where he was still a very important Bolshevik leader. He wrote that he wanted a revolution by ordinary workers to overthrow the government that had replaced Nicholas II.
In 1917, The Kadets, a right-wing party, and elements of the Okhrana (secret police) started rumors that Lenin had got money from the Germans because he had traveled through Germany in order to reach Russia. That may have made him look bad because a lot of Russians had died fighting Germany in the war. After the July Days, a popular uprising in Petrograd which was crushed by the Provisional Government, he left Russia and went to Finland, where he could hide from and carry on with his work on Communism.
In October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, headed the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviets all over Russia in a revolution against Kerensky's government, which was known as the October Revolution. They won, and announced that Russia was a socialist country. In November, Lenin was chosen as its leader.
In power
Because Lenin wanted an end to World War I in Russia, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in February 1918. While the treaty ended the attack by Germany, Russia lost a lot of land that it used for farming.
The treaty also made Germany's other enemies angry, and together with Russian people who supported the Tsar or Kerensky's government, they attacked Russia. Lenin made rules that as much food as possible was to be given to Bolshevik soldiers in Russia's new Red Army. This meant that they won the war, but ordinary people were starving, and many died of hunger or disease.
After the war, Lenin brought in the New Economic Policy to try and make things better for the country and move from capitalism towards socialism. Some private enterprise was still allowed, but not much. Businessmen, known as nepmen, could only own small industries, not factories. Factories and large industry became public property to be owned by the workers.
Final years
Lenin became seriously ill by the latter half of 1921, experiencing hyperacusis, insomnia, and regular headaches. In July he left Moscow for a month's leave at his Gorki mansion, where he was cared for by his wife and sister. Twenty-six physicians were hired to help Lenin during his final years; many of them were foreign and had been hired at great expense. Some suggested that his sickness could have been caused by metal oxidation from the bullets that were lodged in his body from the 1918 assassination attempt; in April 1922 he underwent a surgical operation to successfully remove them. The symptoms continued after this, with Lenin's doctors unsure of the cause; some suggested that he had neurasthenia or cerebral arteriosclerosis. In May 1922, he had his first stroke, temporarily losing his ability to speak and being paralysed on his right side. He convalesced at Gorki and had largely recovered by July. In October, he returned to Moscow; in December, he had a second stroke, which killed him. Before he died, Lenin dictated "Lenin's Testament", in which he recommended that Stalin be removed from the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party, deeming him ill-suited for the position.
Personal life
Lenin had a conservative attitude towards marriage. Throughout his adult life, he was in a relationship with Krupskaya, a fellow Marxist whom he married. Lenin and Krupskaya both regretted that they never had children, and they enjoyed entertaining their friends' offspring.
Aside from Russian, Lenin spoke and read French, German, and English. Concerned with physical fitness, he exercised regularly, enjoyed cycling, swimming, and hunting, and also developed a passion for mountain walking in the Swiss peaks. He was also fond of pets, in particular cats. Tending to eschew luxury, he lived a spartan lifestyle.
After his death
The city of St. Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd by the Tsar in 1914, but was renamed Leningrad in memory of Lenin in 1924. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 Leningrad was again named St. Petersburg, which it remains to this today.
Before Lenin died, he said he wished to be buried beside his mother. When he died, Stalin let the people in Russia look at his body. Because people kept coming they decided not to bury him, and preserved his body instead. A building was built in Red Square, Moscow over the body so that people could see it. It is called the Lenin Mausoleum. Many Russians and tourists still go there to see his body today.
Images for kids
-
Lenin's childhood home in Simbirsk
-
Lenin came under the influence of Karl Marx.
-
Lenin (seated centre) with other members of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class in 1897
-
Lenin's house in Zurich, Switzerland.
-
Lenin undertook research at the British Museum in London
-
Lenin returned to Russia aboard a train pulled by this steam locomotive, now on permanent exhibit at the Finland Station
-
Painting of Lenin in front of the Smolny Institute by Isaak Brodsky
-
The Moscow Kremlin, which Lenin moved into in 1918
-
Bolshevik political cartoon poster from 1920, showing Lenin sweeping away monarchs, clergy, and capitalists
-
The signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
-
Lenin with his wife and sister in a car after watching a Red Army parade at Khodynka Field in Moscow, May Day 1918.
-
A White Russian anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, in which Lenin is depicted in a red robe, aiding other Bolsheviks in sacrificing Russia to a statue of Marx
-
Photograph of Lenin in 1919, taken by Grigori Petrovich Goldstein
-
Lenin spent his final years largely at his Gorki mansion
-
Lenin speaking in 1919
-
Lenin's Mausoleum, in front of the Kremlin, in 2007
-
Commemorative one rouble coin minted in 1970 in honour of Lenin's centenary
-
Statue of Lenin erected by the East German Marxist-Leninist government at Leninplatz in East Berlin, East Germany (removed in 1992)
See also
In Spanish: Lenin para niños
