Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (1870–1924)

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.

Lenin led the Bolshevik government through the Russian civil war and appointed Leon Trotsky as commander of the Red Army. Lenin and Trotsky were able to defeat attack at home and from abroad, even though they controlled less than one third of the country. However, to ensure victory Lenin pursued war communism, a ruthless and often violent policy that allowed the Red Army to seize the food of Russian peasants with only worthless paper currency as compensation. Those who opposed the measures of war communism were brutally treated. Lenin personally signed orders for the execution of whole villages to scare the local population into compliance with Red Army demands. Lenin introduced the Cheka secret police with powers to execute anyone believed to be an enemy of the state. During the Kronstadt uprising of 1921, a mutiny of sailors at the Kronstadt naval base, he ordered the Red Army to attack the base, despite the sailors' contribution to Bolshevik victory in the 1917 revolution; many sailors were killed or later executed as traitors.

Lenin is generally regarded as a strong, resourceful, and ruthless leader, who showed his willingness to compromise his principles in the pursuit of his revolutionary aims. He accepted help from the Germans, Russia's enemies, in 1917 when he wished to return to Russia, and introduced the New Economic Policy in 1921 even though it went against Communist doctrine. At the same time, he was prepared to be ruthless in the pursuit of his goals; the intensive requisitioning of war communism, for instance, led to the famine of 1920–21, in which over 7 million people died. In a testament written before his death, Lenin had made it clear that he did not believe that Josef Stalin should become leader of the USSR. However, he failed to take the necessary steps to prevent this, contributing to Stalin's rise to power.

His wife Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya (1869–1939), whom he married in 1898, shared his work and wrote Memories of Lenin. Lenin's embalmed body is in a mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow.