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Who is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and what did he do? Secrets of the last days

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)


Predecessor:	Position established
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov

Predecessor:	The position has been created; Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky as Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov
	RSDLP, later RCP(b)
Education:	Kazan University, St. Petersburg University
Profession:
Religion:
Birth:

Buried:	Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow
	Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov
	Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova
	Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya
	None
Autograph:

Biography

First emigration 1900-1905

Return to Russia

Press reaction

July - October 1917

Role in the Red Terror

Foreign policy

Last years (1921-1924)

Lenin's main ideas

About class morality

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

Lenin Awards

Titles and awards

Posthumous "awards"

Lenin's personality

Lenin's pseudonyms

Works of Lenin

Interesting Facts

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin(real name Ulyanov; April 10 (22), 1870, Simbirsk - January 21, 1924, Gorki estate, Moscow province) - Russian and Soviet political and statesman, revolutionary, founder of the Bolshevik Party, one of the organizers and leaders October revolution 1917, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the RSFSR and the USSR. Philosopher, Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the Soviet state. Scope of main scientific works- philosophy and economics.

Biography

Childhood, education and upbringing

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of an inspector and director of public schools of the Simbirsk province Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), the son of a former serf peasant of the Nizhny Novgorod province Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the surname: Ulyanina), married to Anna Smirnova - the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer M. E. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Chuvash). Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on her mother’s side, and Jewish origin on her father’s side. I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of full state councilor.

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, headed by F. M. Kerensky, the father of A. F. Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government (1917). In 1887 he graduated from high school 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 history and literature department of the university due to the younger Ulyanov’s great success in Latin and literature.

In the same year, 1887, on May 8 (20), Vladimir Ilyich’s elder brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in a Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate the emperor. Alexandra III. Three months after admission, Vladimir Ilyich was expelled for participating in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the introduction of police surveillance of students and a campaign to combat “unreliable” students. According to the student inspector, who suffered from student unrest, Vladimir Ilyich was in the forefront of the raging students, almost with clenched fists. As a result of the unrest, Vladimir Ilyich, along with 40 other students, was arrested the next night and sent to the police station. All those arrested were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.” Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repression. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Lenin’s cousin, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ardashev. After petitions from Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich’s aunt, he was exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs’ house until the winter of 1888-1889.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

In the fall of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of K. Marx, F. Engels and G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. In 1924, N.K. Krupskaya wrote in Pravda: “Vladimir Ilyich loved Plekhanov passionately. Plekhanov played major role in the development of Vladimir Ilyich, helped him find the right revolutionary path, and therefore Plekhanov was surrounded by a halo for a long time: he experienced every slightest discrepancy with Plekhanov extremely painfully.”

For some time, Lenin tried to engage in agriculture on the estate bought by his mother in Alakaevka (83.5 dessiatinas) in the Samara province. IN Soviet time In this village, a house-museum of Lenin was created.

In the fall of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also maintained contact with local revolutionaries.

In 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams as an external student for a course at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University.

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara attorney (lawyer) N.A. Hardin, conducting most criminal cases and conducting “state defenses.”

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg, where he got a job as an assistant to the sworn attorney (lawyer) M. F. Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of Russian liberation movement, the history of the capitalist evolution of Russian post-reform villages 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, based on extensive statistical materials, make 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. Meets in Switzerland with Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue and other figures of the international labor movement, and upon returning to the capital in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries, unites disparate Marxist circles in the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

The “Union of Struggle” carried out active propaganda activities among workers; they issued more than 70 leaflets. In December 1895, like many other members of the “Union,” Ulyanov was arrested and, after a long period in prison, in 1897 he was exiled for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Yenisei province, where in July 1898 he married N.K. Krupskaya. In exile, he wrote a book, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” based on the collected material, directed against “legal Marxism” and populist theories. During his exile, over 30 works were written, contacts were established with Social Democrats in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. By the end of the 90s, under the pseudonym “K. Tulin” V.I. Ulyanov gains fame in Marxist circles. While in exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

First emigration 1900-1905

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, which “founded” the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party by 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 destroyed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in exile in Siberia, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of the newspaper.

After the end of his exile in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A.N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities by establishing connections with local organizations; On July 29, 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland, where he negotiated with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper, which received the name “Iskra” (later the magazine “Zarya” appeared), included three representatives of the emigrant group “Emancipation of Labor” - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the “Union of Struggle” - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The average circulation of the newspaper was 8,000 copies, and some issues were up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire.

In December 1901, Lenin first signed one of his articles published in Iskra with the pseudonym “Lenin”. In 1902, in the work “What to do? “Very pressing issues of our movement” Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization. In this article he writes: “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!”

Participation in the work of the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903)

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held in London. Lenin took an active part in the preparations for 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 and prepared a draft charter. The program consisted of two parts - a minimum program and a 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 lands cut off from them by landowners during the abolition of serfdom (the so-called “cuts”), the introduction of an eight-hour working day, recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equal rights nations; the maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the construction of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

At the congress itself, Lenin was elected to the bureau, worked on the program, organizational and credentials commissions, chaired a number of meetings and spoke on almost all issues on the agenda.

Both organizations that were in solidarity with Iskra (and were called “Iskra”) and those that did not share its position were invited to participate in the congress. During the discussion of the program, a polemic arose between supporters of Iskra, on the one hand, and the “economists” (for whom the position of the dictatorship of the proletariat turned out to be unacceptable) and the Bund (on the national question) on the other; as a result, 2 “economists”, and later 5 Bundists left the congress.

But the discussion of the party charter, point 1, which defined the concept of a party member, revealed disagreements among the Iskraists themselves, who were divided into “hard” supporters of Lenin and “soft” supporters of Martov. “In my project,” Lenin wrote after the congress, “this definition was as follows: “Anyone who recognizes its program and supports the party both materially and personally is considered a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.” participation in one of the party organizations“. Martov, instead of underlined words, suggested saying: work under the control and leadership of one of the party organizations... We argued that it is necessary to narrow the concept of a party member in order to separate those who work from those who talk, to eliminate organizational chaos, to eliminate such ugliness and such absurdity so that there can be organizations , consisting of party members, but not party organizations, etc. Martov stood for the expansion of the party and spoke of a broad class movement requiring a broad - vague organization, etc. ... “Under control and leadership,” I said, - in fact mean no more and no less than: without any control and without any guidance.” Lenin's opponents saw in his formulation an attempt to create not a party of the working class, but a sect of conspirators; the wording of paragraph 1 proposed by Martov was supported by 28 votes against 22 with 1 abstention; but after the departure of the Bundists and economists, Lenin’s group received a majority in the elections to the Party Central Committee; This accidental circumstance, as subsequent events showed, forever divided the party into “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks.”

Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP Rafail Abramovich (in the party since 1899) recalled in January 1958: “Of course, I was still a very young man then, but four years later I was already a member of the Central Committee, and then in this Central Committee, not only with Lenin and with other old Bolsheviks, but also with Trotsky, with all of them we were in the same Central Committee. Plekhanov, Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, Lev Deitch and a number of other old revolutionaries were still alive then. So we all worked together until 1903. In 1903, at the Second Congress, our lines diverged. Lenin and some of his friends insisted that it was necessary to act using dictatorial methods within the party and outside the party. Lenin always supported the fiction of collective leadership, but even then he was the master in the party. He was its actual owner, that’s what they called him - “master.”

Split

But it was not disputes about the charter that split the Iskraists, but the elections of the Iskra editorial board. From the very beginning, there was no mutual understanding on the editorial board between the representatives of the “Emancipation of Labor” group, who had long been cut off from Russia and the labor movement, and the young St. Petersburg residents; controversial issues they did not dare because they split the editorial board into two equal parts. Long before the congress, Lenin tried to solve the problem by proposing to introduce L. D. Trotsky to the editorial board as the seventh member; but the proposal, supported even by Axelrod and Zasulich, was decisively rejected by Plekhanov. Plekhanov's intransigence prompted Lenin to choose a different path: to reduce the editorial board to three people. The congress - at a time when Lenin's supporters already constituted the majority - was offered an editorial board consisting of Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. “The political leader of Iskra,” Trotsky testifies, “was Lenin. The main journalistic force of the newspaper was Martov.” And yet, the removal from the editorial board of albeit few working, but respected and honored “old men” seemed to both Martov and Trotsky himself to be unjustified cruelty. The congress supported Lenin's proposal by a small majority, but Martov refused to serve on the editorial board; his supporters, among whom Trotsky now found himself, declared a boycott of the “Leninist” Central Committee and refused to cooperate in Iskra. Lenin had no choice but to leave the editorial office; Plekhanov, left alone, restored the previous editorial board, but without Lenin - Iskra became the printed organ of the Menshevik faction.

After the congress, both factions had to create their own structures; at the same time, it turned out that the congress minority had the support of the majority of party members. The Bolsheviks were left without a printed organ, which prevented them not only from promoting their views, but also from responding to harsh criticism from their opponents. Only in December 1904 was the newspaper “Forward” created, which briefly became the printed organ of the Leninists.

The abnormal situation that had developed in the party prompted Lenin, in letters to the Central Committee (in November 1903) and the Party Council (in January 1904), to insist on convening a party congress; Finding no support from the opposition, the Bolshevik faction eventually took the initiative. All organizations were invited to the Third Congress of the RSDLP, which opened in London on April 12 (25), 1905, but the Mensheviks refused to participate in it, declared the congress illegal and convened their own conference in Geneva - the split of the party was thus formalized.

First Russian Revolution (1905-1907)

Already at the end of 1904, against the backdrop of a growing strike movement, differences on political issues emerged between the “majority” and “minority” factions, in addition to organizational ones.

The revolution of 1905-1907 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland.

At the Third 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 autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia. Despite the bourgeois nature of the revolution, according to Lenin, its main driving force was to be the working class, as the most interested in its victory, and its natural ally was the peasantry. Having approved Lenin's point of view, the congress determined the party's tactics: organizing strikes, demonstrations, preparing an armed uprising.

At the first opportunity, in early November 1905, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg illegally, under a false name, and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees 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 the Democratic Revolution,” in which he points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In the struggle to win over the peasantry (which was actively waged with the Socialist Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Village Poor.”

In 1906, Lenin moved to Finland, and in the fall of 1907 he emigrated again.

According to Lenin, despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the Bolsheviks used all revolutionary opportunities, they were the first to take the path of uprising and the last to leave it when this path became impossible.

Role in the Revolutionary Terror of the early 20th century

During the revolution of 1905-1907, Russia experienced the peak of revolutionary terrorism; the country was overwhelmed by a wave of violence: political and criminal murders, robberies, expropriations and extortion. Like the Socialist Revolutionaries, who widely practiced terror, the Bolsheviks had their own military organization (known as the “Combat Technical Group”, “Technical Group under the Central Committee”, “Military Technical Group”). In conditions of competition in extremist revolutionary activities with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, “famous” for the activities of their Combat Organization, after some hesitation (his vision of the issue changed many times depending on the current situation), the Bolshevik leader Lenin developed his position on terror. As historian Professor Anna Geifman, a researcher on the problem of revolutionary terrorism, notes, Lenin’s protests against terrorism, formulated before 1905 and directed against the Socialist Revolutionaries, are in sharp contradiction with Lenin’s practical policy, developed by him after the outbreak of the Russian revolution “in the light of the new tasks of the day” in the interests of of his party. Lenin called for “the most radical means and measures as the most expedient,” for which, Anna Geifman quotes documents, the Bolshevik leader proposed creating “detachments of a revolutionary army ... of all sizes, starting with two or three people, [who] should arm themselves, who than he can (a gun, a revolver, a bomb, a knife, brass knuckles, a stick, a rag with kerosene for arson...),” and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist “combat brigades” of the militant Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin, in the changed conditions, was already ready to go even further than the Socialist Revolutionaries and, as Anna Geifman notes, even went into obvious contradiction with scientific teaching Marx for the sake of promoting the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that combat units should use every opportunity for active work, without postponing their actions until the outbreak of a general uprising.

Lenin essentially gave orders for the preparation of terrorist acts, which he himself had previously condemned, calling on his supporters to carry out attacks on city officials and other government officials; in the fall of 1905 he openly called for the murder of policemen and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, to blow up police stations, to pour soldiers with boiling water, and police with sulfuric acid.

Later, dissatisfied with the insufficient level of terrorist activity of his party, in his opinion, Lenin complained to the St. Petersburg Committee:

Seeking immediate terrorist action, Lenin even had to defend the methods of terror in the face of his fellow Social Democrats:

The followers of the Bolshevik leader were not forced to wait long; in Yekaterinburg, according to some evidence, members of the Bolshevik combat detachment under the leadership of Ya. Sverdlov “constantly terrorized the supporters of the Black Hundred, killing them at every opportunity.”

As one of Lenin's closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, testifies, the Bolshevik leader, having formulated his new tactics, began to insist on its immediate implementation and turned into an “ardent supporter of terror.” The greatest concern with terror during this period was shown by the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin wrote on October 25, 1916 that the Bolsheviks were not at all opposed to political assassinations, only individual terror should be combined with mass movements.

Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks during the years of the first Russian revolution, historian and researcher Anna Geifman comes to the conclusion that for the Bolsheviks, terror turned out to be an effective and often used tool at different levels of the revolutionary hierarchy.

In addition to people specializing in political murders in the name of revolution, in each of the social democratic organizations there were people involved in armed robbery, extortion and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such actions were never encouraged by the leaders of social democratic organizations, with the exception of the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin publicly declared robbery an acceptable means of revolutionary struggle. The Bolsheviks were the only social democratic organization in Russia that resorted to expropriations (the so-called “exs”) in an organized and systematic manner.

Lenin did not limit himself to slogans or simply recognizing the participation of the Bolsheviks in military activities. Already in October 1905, he announced the need to confiscate public funds and soon began to resort to “ex” in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky), he secretly organized within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks) a small group that became known as the “Bolshevik Center”, specifically to raise money for the Leninist faction. The existence of this group "was hidden not only from the eyes of the tsarist police, but also from other party members." In practice, this meant that the Bolshevik Center was an underground body within the party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various shapes extortion.

The actions of the Bolshevik militants did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed expelling the Bolsheviks from the party for the illegal expropriations they committed. Plekhanov called for a fight against “Bolshevik Bakuninism,” many party members considered Lenin and Co. to be ordinary swindlers, and Fyodor Dan called the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP a company of criminals. Lenin's main goal was to strengthen the position of his supporters within the RSDLP with the help of money, and to bring certain people and even entire organizations to become financially dependent on the Bolshevik Center. The leaders of the Menshevik faction understood that Lenin was operating with huge expropriated sums, subsidizing the Bolshevik-controlled St. Petersburg and Moscow committees, giving the first a thousand rubles a month and the second five hundred. At the same time, relatively little of the proceeds from Bolshevik plunder went into the general party treasury, and the Mensheviks were outraged that they could not force the Bolshevik Center to share with the Central Committee of the RSDLP.

The V Congress of the RSDLP provided the Mensheviks with the opportunity to fiercely criticize the Bolsheviks for their “gangster practices.” At the congress it was decided to put an end to any participation of Social Democrats in terrorist activities and expropriations. Martov’s calls for the revival of the purity of revolutionary consciousness did not make any impression on Lenin; the Bolshevik leader listened to them with open irony, and, while reading a financial report, when the speaker mentioned a large donation from an anonymous benefactor, X, Lenin sarcastically remarked: “Not from X, and from ex"

Continuing the practice of expropriation, Lenin and his associates in the Bolshevik Center also received money from such dubious sources as fictitious marriages and forced indemnities. Finally, Lenin's habit of not honoring his faction's financial obligations angered even his supporters.

At the end of 1916, even when the wave of revolutionary extremism had almost died out, the Bolshevik leader Lenin asserted in his letter dated October 25, 1916 that the Bolsheviks were by no means against political assassinations. Lenin, historian Anna Geifman points out, was ready to once again change his theoretical principles, which he did in December 1916: in response to a request from the Bolsheviks from Petrograd for official position Party on the issue of terror, Lenin expressed his opinion: “at this historical moment, terrorist actions are permitted.” Lenin's only condition was that in the eyes of the public the initiative for terrorist attacks should not come from the party, but from individual members or small Bolshevik groups in Russia. Lenin also added that he hoped to convince the entire Central Committee of the advisability of his position

Big number terrorists remained in Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power and participated in Lenin’s “red terror” policy. A number of founders and major figures of the Soviet state, who had previously participated in extremist actions, continued their activities in a modified form after 1917.

Second emigration (1908 - April 1917)

In early January 1908, Lenin returned to Geneva. The defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907 did not force him to fold his arms; he considered a repetition of the revolutionary upsurge inevitable. “Defeated armies learn well,” Lenin later wrote about this period.

At the end of 1908, Lenin, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Here his first meeting and close acquaintance with Inessa Armand took place, who became his mistress until her death in 1920.

In 1909 he published his main philosophical work, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” The work was written after Lenin realized how widely popular Machism and empirio-criticism had become among 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 sent L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost every day, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected the editors’ mistakes. Over the course of 2 years, Pravda published about 270 Leninist articles and notes. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the IV State Duma, was a representative of the RSDLP in the II International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

When did the first one begin? World War Lenin lived on the territory of Austria-Hungary in the Galician town of Poronin, where he arrived at the end of 1912. Due to suspicion of spying for the Russian government, Lenin was arrested by Austrian gendarmes. For his release, the help of socialist deputy of the Austrian parliament V. Adler was required. On August 6, 1914, Lenin was released from prison.

17 days later in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist, unfair on both sides, and alien to the interests of the working people.

On 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, defends his thesis on the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war and comes out with the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism.”

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he finishes his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively collaborates with Swiss Social Democrats (among them the radical left Fritz Platten), and attends all their party meetings. Here he learns from the newspapers about February Revolution in Russia.

Lenin did not expect a revolution in 1917. Lenin’s public statement in January 1917 in Switzerland is known that he did not expect to live to see the coming revolution, but that young people would see it. The revolution that soon took place, Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded as the result of a “conspiracy of Anglo-French imperialists.”

Return to Russia

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to leave Switzerland by train through Germany. Among them were Krupskaya N.K., Zinoviev G.E., Lilina Z.I., Armand I.F., Sokolnikov G.Ya., Radek K.B. and others.

April - July 1917. “April Theses”

On April 3, 1917, Lenin arrived in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, organized a solemn meeting for him as a prominent fighter against autocracy. The next day, April 4, Lenin made a report to the Bolsheviks, the theses 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, the new The leader’s ideas seemed too radical even to his close associates. These were the famous “April Theses”. In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that 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 for the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the transfer of power to the Soviets and the proletariat with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature. Having taken control of the RSDLP(b), Lenin implements this plan. From April to July 1917, he wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and the Party Central Committee, and appeals.

Press reaction

Despite the fact that the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta, when writing about the arrival of the Bolshevik leader in Russia, assessed this visit as the emergence of “danger from the left flank”, the newspaper Rech - the official publication of the Minister of Foreign Affairs P. N. Milyukov - according to historian of the Russian revolution S.P. Melgunov, spoke positively about the arrival of Lenin, and that now not only Plekhanov will fight for the ideas of socialist parties.

July - October 1917

On July 5, during the uprising, the Provisional Government made public the information it had about the connections of the Bolsheviks with the Germans. July 20 (7) The Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin goes underground again. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 safe houses, after which, until August 21 (8), 1917, he and Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive N-293, he moved to the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg.

October Revolution of 1917

Lenin arrived in Smolny and began to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet L. D. Trotsky. It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. On November 7 (October 25) Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the Second 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. On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 90% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, presented the Constituent Assembly with 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 issue, was forcibly dissolved.

During the 124 days of the “Smolny period,” Lenin wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, and participated in the editing of 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 chaired 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, and in the preparation and conduct of 6 different All-Russian Congresses of Working People. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, from 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.

After the revolution and during the Civil War (1917-1921)

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-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany on March 3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, withdrew from the Soviet government. March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd by 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 the new capital Soviet Russia. On July 6, two left Socialist Revolutionaries, employees of the Cheka Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev, presenting the mandates of the Cheka, went to the German embassy in Moscow and killed the ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. This is a provocation to cause an aggravation of relations with Germany, even to the point of war. And there was already a threat that German military units would be sent to Moscow. Immediately - the Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion. In short, everything is balancing on the edge. Lenin is making great efforts to somehow smooth out the imposed Soviet-German conflict and avoid a clash. On July 16, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family, along with their servants, were shot in Yekaterinburg.

In his memoirs, Trotsky accuses Lenin of organizing the execution royal family:

My next visit to Moscow came after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:

The senior investigator for especially important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, discovered that in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which Sverdlov announced the decision of the Urals Council regarding the execution of the royal family, Trotsky's name appears among those present. Therefore, he later composed that conversation “after arriving from the front” with Sverdlov about Lenin. Solovyov came to the conclusion that Lenin was against the execution of the royal family, and the execution itself was organized by the same left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had enormous influence in the Urals Soviet, with the aim of disrupting the Brest-Litovsk Treaty between Soviet Russia and Kaiser Germany. After the February Revolution, the Germans, despite the war with Russia, were worried about the fate of the Russian imperial family, because the wife of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, was German, and their daughters were both Russian princesses and German princesses. Spirit of the Great french revolution with the then execution of the king and queen, it hovered over the heads of the Ural Socialist Revolutionaries and the local Bolsheviks who joined them, the leaders of the Urals Council (Alexander Beloborodov, Yakov Yurovsky, Philip Goloshchekin). Lenin became, in a sense, a hostage to the radicalism and obsession of the leaders of the Urals Council. Make public the “feat” of the Urals - the murder of German princesses and find yourself between a rock and a hard place - between the White Guards and the Germans? Information about the death of the entire royal family and servants was hidden for years. Referring to Trotsky’s fake, the famous Russian director Gleb Panfilov made the film “The Romanovs. The Crowned Family”, where Lenin is presented as the organizer of the execution of the royal family, played by People’s Artist of Russia Alexander Filippenko.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin, according to official version- Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, which led to serious injury.

As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin chaired 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 he did not preside over. In 1919, V.I. Lenin led 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 defense of the Soviet state, and spoke at rallies over 200 times.

Lenin paid significant attention to the development of the country's economy. Lenin believed that in order to restore the economy destroyed by the war, it was necessary to organize the state into a “national, state “syndicate”. Soon after the revolution, Lenin set the task for scientists to develop a plan for the reorganization of industry and the economic revival of Russia, and also contributed to the development of the country's science.

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

Role in the Red Terror

During the Russian Civil War, Lenin was one of the main organizers of the Bolshevik policy of red terror, carried out directly on his instructions. These Leninist instructions prescribed the start of mass terror, organizing executions, isolating unreliable people in concentration camps and carrying out other emergency measures. On August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee, where he wrote: “It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; those who are dubious will be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.” On August 10, 1918, Lenin sent a telegram about the suppression of the kulak uprising in the Penza province, in which he called for hanging 100 kulaks, taking away all their bread and assigning hostages.

A description of the ways to implement the instructions of the Bolshevik leader on the mass Red Terror is presented in acts, investigations, certificates, reports and other materials of the Special Commission for the Investigation of Bolshevik Atrocities.

The KGB history textbook states that Lenin spoke to employees of the Cheka, received security officers, was interested in the progress of operational developments and investigations, and gave instructions on specific cases. When the Chekists fabricated the Whirlwind case in 1921, Lenin personally participated in the operation, certifying with his signature the forged mandate of the Cheka agent provocateur.

In mid-August 1920, in connection with receiving information that in Estonia and Latvia, with which Soviet Russia had concluded peace treaties, volunteers were being enrolled in anti-Bolshevik detachments, Lenin in a letter to E.M. Sklyansky called for “hanging kulaks, priests, landowners " In another letter he wrote about the admissibility of “putting in prison several dozen or hundreds of instigators, guilty or innocent” in order to save the lives of “thousands of Red Army soldiers and workers.”

Even after the end of the Civil War, in 1922, V.I. Lenin declared the impossibility of ending terror and the need for its legislative regulation.

This problem was not raised in Soviet historiography, but at present it is being studied not only by foreign, but also by domestic historians.

Doctors of historical sciences Yu. G. Felshtinsky and G. I. Chernyavsky explain in their work why it is only today that the discrepancy between the reality of the image of the Bolshevik leader traditional for Soviet historiography is becoming obvious:

...Now, when the veil of secrecy has been lifted from the Lenin Archive Fund in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) and the first collections of previously unpublished manuscripts and speeches of Lenin have appeared, it becomes even more obvious that the textbook image of a wise state leader and thinker who , supposedly, he only thought about the good of the people, was a cover for the real appearance of a totalitarian dictator, who cared only about strengthening the power of his party and his own power, ready to commit any crimes in the name of this goal, tirelessly and hysterically repeating calls to shoot, hang, take hostages and so on.

The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives

A 2007 textbook on Russian history says:

Foreign policy

Immediately after the October Revolution, Lenin recognized the independence of Finland.

During the Civil War, Lenin tried to reach an agreement with the Entente powers. In March 1919, Lenin negotiated with William Bullitt, who had arrived in Moscow. Lenin agreed to pay off pre-revolutionary Russian debts in exchange for an end to the intervention and the Entente's support for the Whites. A draft agreement was developed with the Entente powers.

After the end of the civil war, Lenin's foreign policy was unsuccessful. Of the great powers, only Germany established diplomatic relations with the USSR before Lenin’s death, having signed the Rappal Treaty (1922) with the RSFSR. Peace treaties were concluded and diplomatic relations were established with a number of border states: Finland (1920), Estonia (1920), Poland (1921), Turkey (1921), Iran (1921), Mongolia (1921).

In October 1920, Lenin met with a Mongolian delegation that had arrived in Moscow, hoping for support from the “Reds” who were victorious in the Civil War on the issue of Mongolian independence. As a condition for supporting Mongolian independence, Lenin pointed to the need to create a “united organization of forces, political and state,” preferably under the red banner.

Last years (1921-1924)

The economic and political situation required the Bolsheviks to change their previous policies. In this regard, at the insistence of Lenin, in 1921, at the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), “war communism” was abolished, food allocation was replaced by a food tax. The so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced, which allowed private free trade and gave the opportunity to large sections of the population to independently seek the means of subsistence that the state could not give them. At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-owned enterprises, on electrification (with the participation of Lenin, a special commission was created to develop a project for the electrification of Russia - GOELRO), on the development of cooperation. Lenin believed that in anticipation of the world proletarian revolution, keeping all large industry in the hands of the state, it was necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this could, in his opinion, help put the backward Soviet country on the same level as the most developed European countries.

Lenin was one of the initiators of the campaign to confiscate church valuables, which caused resistance from representatives of the clergy and some parishioners. The shooting of parishioners in Shuya caused great resonance. In connection with these events, on March 19, 1922, Lenin drafted a secret letter that qualified the events in Shuya as just one manifestation of a general plan of resistance to the decree of Soviet power on the part of “the most influential group of the Black Hundred clergy.” On March 30, at a meeting of the Politburo, on the recommendations of Lenin, a plan was adopted to destroy the church organization.

Lenin contributed to the establishment of a one-party system in the country and the spread of atheistic views. In 1922, on his recommendations, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created.

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On cooperation”, “How can we reorganize the workers’ krin”, “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 dictates the so-called “Addition 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. Stalin was given an unflattering description in this letter.

Illness and death. Question about cause of death

The consequences of the injury and overload, according to the surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin, led Lenin to a serious illness. In March 1922, Lenin led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he became seriously ill, but returned to work in early October. Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. 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 Soviet. On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and in May 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. In Moscow last time Lenin was born on October 18-19, 1923. During this period, he, however, dictated several notes: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization””, “Pages from the diary”, “On cooperation”, “About our revolution (regarding N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Better less, but better.”

Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) is often viewed as Lenin's testament. Some believe that this letter contained Lenin's real will, which Stalin later deviated from. Supporters of this point of view believe that if the country had developed along a truly Leninist path, many problems would not have arisen.

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

The widespread belief that Lenin had syphilis, which he allegedly contracted in Europe, has never been officially confirmed by Soviet or Russian authorities.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read: “The basis of the deceased’s disease 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 disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue 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 into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.”

According to Alexander Grudinkin, rumors about syphilis arose due to the fact that advanced syphilis was one of the preliminary diagnoses put forward by doctors at the onset of the disease; Lenin himself also did not exclude this possibility and took salvarsan, and in 1923, drugs based on mercury and bismuth.

Lenin's main ideas

Historiosophical analysis of contemporary capitalism

Communism, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat

Before building communism, an intermediate stage is necessary - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism is divided into two periods: socialism and communism proper. Under socialism there is no exploitation, but there is still no abundance of material goods to satisfy any needs of all members of society.

In 1920, in his speech “Tasks of Youth Unions,” Lenin argued that communism would be built in 1930-1950.

Attitude to the imperialist war and revolutionary defeatism

According to Lenin, the First World War was of an imperialist nature, was unfair for all parties involved, and alien to the interests of the working people. Lenin put forward the thesis about the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war (in each country against its own government) and the need for workers to use war to overthrow “their” governments. At the same time, pointing out the need for Social Democrats to participate in the anti-war movement, which came up with pacifist slogans for peace, Lenin considered such slogans to be “a deception of the people” and emphasized the need for a civil war.

Lenin put forward the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, the essence of which was voting in parliament against war loans to the government, creating and strengthening revolutionary organizations among workers and soldiers, fighting government patriotic propaganda, and supporting the fraternization of soldiers at the front. At the same time, Lenin considered his position to be patriotic - national pride, in his opinion, was the basis of hatred towards the “slave past” and the “slave present.”

The possibility of an initial victory of the revolution in one country

In the article “On the Slogan of the United States of Europe” in 1915, Lenin wrote that revolution would not necessarily occur simultaneously throughout the world, as Marx believed. It may first occur in one single country. This country will then help the revolution in other countries.

About class morality

There is no universal morality, but only class morality. Each class enforces its own morals, its own moral values. The morality of the proletariat is moral that which meets the interests of the proletariat (“Our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat”).

As political scientist Alexander Tarasov notes, Lenin brought ethics from the realm of religious dogma to the realm of verifiability: ethics must be verified and proven whether a particular action serves the cause of the revolution, whether it is useful to the cause of the working class.

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

On January 23, the coffin with Lenin’s body was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. The official farewell took place over five days and nights. On January 27, the coffin with Lenin’s embalmed body was placed in a specially built Mausoleum on Red Square (architect A.V. Shchusev).

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the V.I. Lenin Institute, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels, a single Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was formed under the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) (later the Institute Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). The Central Party Archive of this institute contains more than 30 thousand documents, the author of which is V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin).

During the Great Patriotic War Lenin's body was evacuated from the Moscow Mausoleum to Tyumen, where it was kept in the building of the current Tyumen State Agricultural Academy. The Mausoleum itself was disguised as a mansion.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some political parties expressed the opinion that it was necessary to remove Lenin’s body and brain from the Mausoleum and bury it (the brain is stored separately, at the Brain Institute, including in the form of tens of thousands of histological preparations). Statements about the removal of Lenin's body from the Mausoleum, as well as about the liquidation of memorial burials near the Kremlin wall, are periodically heard to this day from various Russian government officials, political parties and forces, and representatives of religious organizations.

Attitude towards Lenin after death. Grade

The name and ideas of V. I. Lenin were glorified in the USSR along with the October Revolution and I. V. Stalin (before the 20th Congress of the CPSU). On January 26, 1924, after the death of Lenin, the 2nd All-Union Congress of Soviets granted the request of the Petrograd Soviet to rename Petrograd to Leningrad. A city delegation (about 1 thousand people) participated in Lenin’s funeral in Moscow. Cities, towns and collective farms were named after Lenin. In every city there was a monument to Lenin. Numerous stories about “Grandfather Lenin” were written for children, including Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Stories about Lenin, partly based on the memoirs of his sister Anna Ulyanova. Even his driver Gil wrote memoirs about Lenin.

The cult of Lenin began to take shape during his lifetime through party propaganda and means mass media. In 1918, the city of Taldom was renamed Leninsk, and in 1923, higher educational institutions in the USSR received the name of Lenin.

In the 1930s, villages, streets and squares of cities, premises of educational institutions, assembly halls of factories began to be filled with tens of thousands of busts and monuments to Lenin, among which, along with works of Soviet art, there were also typical “objects of worship” devoid of artistic value. There were massive campaigns of renaming various objects and giving them, contrary to the wishes of N. Krupskaya, the name of Lenin. The highest state award was the Order of Lenin. Sometimes the opinion is expressed that such actions were coordinated by the Stalinist leadership in the context of the formation of Stalin’s personality cult with the aim of usurping power and declaring Stalin as Lenin’s successor and worthy disciple.

After the collapse of the USSR, the attitude towards Lenin among the population of the Russian Federation became differentiated; According to a FOM survey, in 1999, 65% of the Russian population considered Lenin’s role in Russian history to be positive, 23% - negative, 13% found it difficult to answer. Four years later, in April 2003, FOM conducted a similar survey - this time 58% assessed Lenin’s role positively, 17% negatively, and the number of those who found it difficult to answer grew to 24%, and therefore FOM noted a trend.

Lenin in culture, art and language

In the USSR, a lot of memoirs, poems, poems, short stories, stories and novels about Lenin were published. Many films about Lenin were also made. In Soviet times, the opportunity to play Lenin in a movie was considered a sign of high trust for the actor by the leadership of the CPSU.

Monuments to Lenin have become an integral part of the Soviet tradition of monumental art. After the collapse of the USSR, many monuments to Lenin were dismantled by the authorities or destroyed by various individuals.

Soon after the emergence of the USSR, a series of jokes about Lenin arose. These jokes are still in circulation to this day.

Lenin made many statements that have become catchphrases. Moreover, a number of statements attributed to Lenin do not belong to him, but first appeared in literary works and cinema. These statements became widespread in the political and everyday languages of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Such phrases include, for example, the words “We will go a different way,” allegedly uttered by him in connection with the execution of his older brother, the phrase “There is such a party!”, uttered by him at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, or the characterization “Political prostitute.”

Lenin Awards

Official lifetime award

The only official state award that V.I. Lenin was awarded was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Socialist Republic (1922).

Lenin had no other state awards, either from the RSFSR and the USSR, or from foreign countries.

Titles and awards

In 1917, Norway took the initiative to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Vladimir Lenin, with the wording “For the triumph of the ideas of peace,” as a response to the “Decree on Peace” issued in Soviet Russia, which separately led Russia out of the First World War. The Nobel Committee rejected this proposal due to the lateness of the application by the deadline - February 1, 1918, but made a decision that the committee would not object to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to V. I. Lenin if the existing Russian government establishes peace and tranquility in the country (as you know, the path to establishing peace in Russia was blocked by the Civil War, which began in 1918). Lenin’s idea about transforming the imperialist war into a civil war was formulated in his work “Socialism and War,” written back in July-August 1915.

In 1919, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, V.I. Lenin was accepted as an honorary Red Army soldier of the 1st squad of the 1st platoon of the 1st company of the 195th Yeisk Infantry Regiment.

Posthumous "awards"

On January 22, 1924, N.P. Gorbunov, Lenin’s secretary, took the Order of the Red Banner (No. 4274) from his jacket and pinned it to the jacket of the already deceased Lenin. This award was on Lenin’s body until 1943, and Gorbunov himself received a duplicate of the order in 1930. According to some reports, N.I. Podvoisky did the same, standing in the guard of honor at Lenin’s tomb. Another Order of the Red Banner was laid at Lenin’s coffin along with a wreath from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Currently, the orders of N.P. Gorbunov and the Military Academy are kept in the Lenin Museum in Moscow.

The fact of the presence of the order on the chest of the deceased Lenin during the funeral ceremony in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions was captured in the poem by V. Inber “Five nights and days (On the death of Lenin).”

Lenin's personality

British historian Helen Rappaport, who wrote a book about Lenin, described him as “demanding”, “punctual”, “neat”, “brilliant” and “very clean” in everyday life. At the same time, Lenin is described as “very authoritarian”, “very inflexible”, he “did not tolerate disagreement with his opinion”, “ruthless”, “cruel”. It is indicated that friendship for Lenin was secondary to politics. Rappaport points out that Lenin "changed his party tactics depending on circumstances and political advantage."

Lenin's pseudonyms

At the end of 1901, Vladimir Ulyanov acquired the pseudonym “N. Lenin,” with which, in particular, he signed his printed works during this period. Abroad, the initial “N” is usually deciphered as “Nikolai,” although in reality this initial was not deciphered in any of Lenin’s lifetime publications. There were many versions about the origin of this pseudonym. For example, toponymic - along the Siberian Lena River.

According to historian Vladlen Loginov, the most plausible version seems to be related to the use of the passport of the real Nikolai Lenin.

The Lenin family can be traced back to the Cossack Posnik, who in the 17th century was granted nobility and the surname Lenin for his services associated with the conquest of Siberia and the creation of winter huts along the Lena River. His numerous descendants distinguished themselves more than once in both military and official service. One of them, Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin, having risen to the rank of state councilor, retired and in the 80s of the 19th century settled in the Yaroslavl province, where he died in 1902. His children, who sympathized with the emerging Social Democratic movement in Russia, were well acquainted with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and after their father’s death they gave Vladimir Ulyanov his passport, albeit with the date of birth changed. There is a version that Vladimir Ilyich received the passport in the spring of 1900, when Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin himself was still alive.

According to the Ulyanov family version, Vladimir Ilyich’s pseudonym comes from the name of the Lena River. Thus, Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova, the niece of V.I. Lenin and the daughter of his brother D.I. Ulyanova, who acts as an author studying the life of the Ulyanov family, writes in defense of this version based on the stories of her father:

After V.I. Lenin came to power, he signed official party and state documents “ V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin)».

He also had other pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, Starik, etc.

Works of Lenin

What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats? (1894);
"On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
What to do? (1902)
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904);
Party organization and party literature (1905);
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909);
Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914);
Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism) (1914);
Socialism and War (1915);
Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay) (1916);
State and Revolution (1917);
On dual power (1917);
How to Organize a Competition (1918);
The Great Initiative (1919);
The childhood disease of “leftism” in communism (1920);
Tasks of youth unions (1920);
About the food tax (1921);
Pages from the diary, About cooperation (1923);
About the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924);
What is Soviet power?;
On left-wing childishness and petty-bourgeoisism (1918);
About our revolution

Speeches recorded on gramophone records

In 1919-1921 V.I. Lenin recorded 16 speeches on gramophone records. Over three sessions in March 1919 (19, 23 and 31), 8 recordings were made, which became the most famous and were published in copies of ten thousand, including “The Third Communist International”, “Appeal to the Red Army” (2 parts recorded separately) and the especially popular “What is Soviet power?”, which was considered the most successful in technical terms.

During the next recording session on April 5, 1920, 3 speeches were recorded - “On work for transport,” part 1 and part 2, “On labor discipline” and “How to forever save workers from the oppression of landowners and capitalists.” Another entry, most likely dedicated to the ongoing Polish war, was damaged and lost in the same 1920.

Five speeches recorded during the last session on April 25, 1921 turned out to be technically unsuitable for mass production - due to the departure of a foreign specialist, engineer A. Kibart, to Germany. These gramophone recordings remained unknown for a long time, four of them were found in 1970. Of these, only three were restored and released for the first time on long-playing discs - one of the two speeches “On the tax in kind”, “On consumer and trade cooperation” and “Non-party and Soviet power" (Company "Melodiya", M00 46623-24, 1986).

In addition to the second speech “On the Tax in Kind” that has not been found, the 1921 entry “On Concessions and the Development of Capitalism” has not yet been published. The first part of the speech, “On Work for Transport,” has not been reprinted since 1929, and the speech, “On the pogrom persecution of the Jews,” has not appeared on disk since the late 1930s.

Descendants

Lenin's niece (daughter of his younger brother Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova), the last direct descendant of the Ulyanov family, died in Moscow at the age of 90.

During his famous speech at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin did not have a beard (conspiracy), although Vladimir Serov’s now textbook painting depicts him with a traditional beard.
Nizhny Novgorod residents joke (and not without reason) that Lenin was conceived in Nizhny Novgorod, since Ilya Ulyanov was there as a teacher at the provincial male gymnasium until the end of 1869, and his son Vladimir was born in Simbirsk in the spring of 1870.
On June 16, 1921, Bernard Shaw sent Lenin the book “Back to Methuselah.” On the title page he wrote: "To Nikolai Lenin, the only statesman in Europe who possesses the talent, character and knowledge corresponding to his responsible position". Lenin subsequently left numerous notes in the margins of the manuscript, indicating his keen interest in the work of Bernard Shaw.
Albert Einstein wrote about Lenin: “I respect in Lenin a man who, with complete selflessness, devoted all his strength to the implementation of social justice. His method seems inappropriate to me. But one thing is certain: people like him preserve and renew the conscience of humanity.”.
On January 19, 1919, the car in which Lenin and his sister were was attacked by a group of bandits led by the famous Moscow raider Yakov Koshelkov. The bandits got everyone out of the car and stole it. Subsequently, having learned who was in their hands, they tried to return and take Lenin hostage, but by that time the latter had already disappeared.

Disputes about Lenin's personality and his influence on history have not subsided to this day. Some praise him, others attribute to him all existing sins. We will try to avoid extremes and briefly tell you what Lenin is famous for and what mark he left on history.

Origin of Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, whom the world knows today as Lenin, was born on April 22, 1870. His father was an inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, and his grandfather was a former serf. The subject of controversy and debate is Lenin's nationality. There is no reliable information about whether he himself attached any significance to this. His family included representatives of Russians, Jews, Kalmyks, Germans, Swedes and Chuvashs.

Vladimir Ilyich's brother, Alexander, found himself in the ranks of the conspirators who were preparing an attempt on the life of the emperor. For this, the young man was executed, which was a heavy blow for the whole family. Perhaps it is this event and led Lenin on the path of revolution.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

In 1892-1893 Lenin became a supporter of social democratic ideas. He believed that Russian workers should overthrow the tsarist government and lead their country, and then the whole world, to a communist revolution. Other Marxists were not so decisive. They believed that Russia was not ready for such radical changes, that its proletariat was too weak, and the material base for new production relations was not yet ripe. Lenin, on the other hand, preferred to ignore the concerns of his contemporaries and believed that the most important thing was to make a revolution.

Vladimir Ilyich contributed to the fact that disparate revolutionary circles became a single “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” This organization was very active in propaganda activities. In 1895, Lenin, like many other members of the Union, was arrested. In 1897 he was sent into exile to the village of Shushenskoye. In 1898, he entered into an official marriage with his companion N. Krupskaya. At the request of the police chief, they even got married, although they were atheists. One of the exiles made them wedding rings from a copper coin.

In exile, Lenin advised peasants on legal issues, prepared documents for them, established connections with Social Democrats in large cities, and also wrote many of his fundamental works. Later he settled in Pskov, published the newspaper Iskra, the magazine Zarya, organized the second congress of the RSDLP, drew up the party charter and work plan. During the revolution of 1905-1907. he was in Switzerland. Many party members were arrested, as a result of which the leadership passed to Lenin. A long period of emigration begins. In January 1917, in Switzerland, he says that he does not hope to live to see the coming great revolution, but believes that the current young generation will see it. Soon the February Revolution takes place in Russia, which Lenin considered a conspiracy of “Anglo-French imperialists.”

Rise to power

April 3 (16) Lenin returns to his homeland. Speaking at the Finland Station, he called for a “social revolution.” Such radicalism confused even his devoted supporters. In the famous “April Theses” he proclaims a course towards the transition of the bourgeois revolution to the proletarian one.

Lenin becomes the leader of the October armed uprising. The seizure of power was successful, as the country was experiencing an acute economic, political and military crisis. How old was Lenin when he made the revolution? He was 47, but he fought for his ideas with youthful uncompromisingness.

In 1917, contemporaries did not take the revolution seriously. They called it a coup and considered it a misunderstanding - accidental and temporary. But no matter how we evaluate Lenin’s personality today, one thing cannot be taken away from him: he was able to feel the pain points of the people and subtly played on this. He understood that ordinary people were most concerned about two issues: the distribution of land and the conclusion of peace. The elite called Lenin's supporters German spies and accused them of treason. But for ordinary people, traitors were those who drove soldiers to war and did not give land to peasants. Having come to power, the Bolsheviks began to eliminate the chaos in which the country was mired after the February Revolution. They countered the anarchy and squabbles in the ranks of their opponents with order - and it naturally won.

In December 1922, Lenin's health deteriorated. During this period, he dictated a number of notes, including the famous “Letter to the Congress.” Some are inclined to look at this document as Lenin's will. They argue that if the country had continued to follow the real Leninist path, then many problems would not have arisen. If we adhere to this point of view, then Stalin deviated from the precepts of his predecessor, for which the entire people paid.

Lenin's key statements in the letter boil down to the following:

difficulties in relations between Stalin and Trotsky threaten the unity of the party;
perhaps Stalin will not be able to use power carefully enough;
Trotsky is a very capable man, but overly self-confident.

IN last years some historians are beginning to doubt that the famous letter was really dictated by Lenin and attribute the authorship to N. Krupskaya. This issue will obviously be the subject of debate for a long time.

When Lenin died, the New Economic Policy was replaced by Stalin's radical industrialization. Because of this, Lenin and Stalin are sometimes contrasted on the principle of “good versus bad.” But Lenin himself viewed the NEP as a temporary measure. In addition, Stalin's NKVD is the heir to Lenin's VKCh. History does not know the subjunctive mood, so we can evaluate Lenin only by his achievements.

For many people of the older generation, the leader of the revolution remains a great personality. They remember Lenin's birthday and believe that his path was in many ways correct. Well, the younger generation still has to give objective assessment his activities and do everything to prevent future leaders from repeating his mistakes.

Soviet statesman and political figure, Marxist theorist, founder of the Communist Party and the Soviet socialist state in Russia Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born on April 22 (April 10, old style) 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) in the family of a public school inspector, who became a hereditary nobleman

His older brother Alexander, a People's Volunteer revolutionary, was executed in May 1887 for preparing an assassination attempt on the Tsar.

In the same year, Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, was admitted to Kazan University, but three months after admission he was expelled for participating in student riots. In 1891, Ulyanov graduated from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University as an external student, after which he worked in Samara as an assistant to a sworn attorney.

In August 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist circle of students at the Technological Institute. In April 1895, Vladimir Ulyanov went abroad and met the Liberation of Labor group created in Geneva by Russian emigrants led by Georgy Plekhanov. In the autumn of the same year, on his initiative and under his leadership, the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” In December 1895, Ulyanov was arrested by the police. Spent more than a year in prison, then exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Krasnoyarsk Territory, under open police supervision.

In 1898, the Union participants 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 work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” where he tried to challenge the populists’ views on socio-economic relations in the country and prove that a bourgeois revolution was brewing in Russia. He became acquainted with the works of the leading theorist of German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, from whom he borrowed the idea of organizing the Russian Marxist movement in the form of a centralized party of a “new type”.

After the end of his exile in January 1900, he went abroad (for the next five years he lived in Munich, London and Geneva). There, together with Georgy Plekhanov, his associates Vera Zasulich and Pavel Axelrod, as well as his friend Yuli Martov, Vladimir 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.

In 1903, at the Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats, as a result of a split between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, Lenin led the “majority,” then creating the Bolshevik Party.

From 1905 to 1907, Lenin lived illegally in St. Petersburg, leading the leftist forces. From 1907 to 1917 he was in exile, where he defended his political views in the Second International.

At the beginning of the First World War, while on the territory of Austria-Hungary, Lenin was arrested on suspicion of spying for the Russian government, but thanks to the participation of the Austrian Social Democrats, he was released. After his liberation, he went to Switzerland, where he put forward the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war.

In the spring of 1917, Lenin returned to Russia. On April 17 (April 4, old style), 1917, the day after arriving in Petrograd, he spoke with the so-called “April Theses”, where he outlined a program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, and also began preparing an armed uprising and overthrow Provisional Government.

Since April 1917, Lenin became one of the main organizers and leaders of the October armed uprising and the establishment of Soviet power.

At the beginning of October 1917, he illegally moved from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 23 (October 10, old style) at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), at his proposal, a resolution on an armed uprising was adopted. On November 6 (October 24, old style), 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, old style), 1917, an uprising and capture took place in Petrograd. state power Bolsheviks. 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 ending the war and on the transfer of private land for the use of workers.

On Lenin's initiative, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded with Germany in 1918.

After the capital was transferred 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 as a deputy of the Moscow Soviet.

In the spring of 1918, Lenin's government began the fight against the opposition by closing 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.

During the Civil War, Lenin became the initiator and ideologist of the policy of "war communism". He approved the creation of the All-Russian emergency commission to combat counter-revolution and sabotage (VChK), which widely and uncontrollably used methods of violence and repression.

With the end of the Civil War and the end of military intervention in 1922, the process of reconstruction began National economy countries. For this purpose, at the insistence of Lenin, “war communism” was abolished, food allocation 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-owned enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation.

In May and December 1922, Lenin suffered two strokes, but continued to dictate notes and articles on party and state affairs. A third stroke, which followed in March 1923, left him practically incapacitated.

On January 21, 1924, Vladimir Lenin died 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 of the House of Unions. The official farewell took place over five days.

On January 27, 1924, the coffin with Lenin’s embalmed body was designed by the architect Alexei Shchusev.

During the years of Soviet power, memorial plaques were installed on various buildings associated with Lenin's activities, and monuments to the leader were erected in cities. The following were established: the Order of Lenin (1930), the Lenin Prize (1925), Lenin Prizes for achievements in the field of science, technology, literature, art, architecture (1957). In 1924-1991, the Central Lenin Museum operated 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. Lenin, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of Marx and Engels, a single Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) (later it became known as the Institute of Marxism -Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). In the Central Party Archive of this institute (now the Russian state archive socio-political history) contains more than 30 thousand documents, the author of which is Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin, whom he knew from the St. Petersburg revolutionary underground. They got married on July 22, 1898, during Vladimir Ulyanov’s exile to the village of Shushenskoye.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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 tsar.

In 1887, Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, was admitted to Kazan University, but three months after admission he was expelled for participating in student riots. In 1891, Ulyanov graduated from the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University as an external student, after which he worked in Samara as an assistant to a sworn attorney. In August 1893, he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist circle of students at the Technological Institute. In April 1895, Vladimir Ulyanov went abroad and met the Liberation 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 Liberation of the Working Class.” In December 1985, Lenin was arrested by the police. He spent more than a year in prison, then was exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Krasnoyarsk Territory, under open police supervision. In 1898, the Union participants 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 work “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” where he tried to challenge the populists’ views on socio-economic relations in the country and thereby prove that a bourgeois revolution was brewing in Russia. He became acquainted with the works of the leading theorist of German Social Democracy, Karl Kautsky, from whom he borrowed the idea of organizing the Russian Marxist movement in the form of a centralized party of a “new type”.

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, leading the leftist 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), essentially 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 due to suspicion of espionage for the 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 arriving in Petrograd, he delivered the so-called “April Theses,” where he outlined a program for the transition from the bourgeois-democratic revolution to the socialist one, and also began preparing for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

At the beginning of October 1917, Lenin illegally moved from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 23, at a meeting of the Central Committee (Central Committee) of the RSDLP(b), at his proposal, a resolution on an armed uprising was adopted. 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 (Old Style - October 25), 1917, an uprising and seizure of state power by the Bolsheviks occurred in Petrograd. 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 ending the war and on the transfer of private land for the use of workers.

On Lenin's initiative, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded with Germany in 1918.

The confrontation intensified during the civil war, the Socialist Revolutionaries, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, in turn, struck at the leaders of the Bolshevik regime; On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin.

With the end of the Civil War and the cessation of military intervention in 1922, the process of restoring the country's national economy began. For this purpose, at the insistence of Lenin, “war communism”, food allocation 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-owned enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation.

In May and December 1922, Lenin suffered two strokes, but continued to lead the state. A 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 of the House of Unions. The official farewell took place over five days. On January 27, 1924, the coffin with Lenin’s embalmed body was placed in a specially built Mausoleum on Red Square designed by the architect Alexei Shchusev. The leader's body 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.

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) created the Institute of V.I. Lenin, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of Marx and Engels, a single Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) (later it became known as the Institute 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 thousand documents authored by Vladimir Lenin.

Lenin on Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he knew from the St. Petersburg revolutionary underground. They got married on July 22, 1898, during Vladimir Ulyanov’s exile to the village of Shushenskoye.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

November 7, 1917

February 21, 1920

According to his recommendations December 30, 1922

January 21, 1924

Posthumous "awards"

Works of Vladimir Lenin

Lenin's main works

What to do? (1902)

Marxism and Revisionism (1908)

Socialism and War (1915)

On dual power (1917)

The Great Initiative (1919)

Tasks of youth unions (1920)

About the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924)

What is Soviet power? (1919, publ.: 1928)

On leftist childishness and petty-bourgeoisism (1918)

About our revolution (1923)

Letter to the Congress (1922, read out: 1924, published: 1956)

Speeches recorded on gramophone records

In 1919-1921 V.I. Lenin recorded 16 speeches on gramophone records - among them “The Third Communist International”, “Appeal to the Red Army” and the especially popular “What is Soviet power?”, which was considered the most successful in technical terms.

During the next recording session on April 5, 1920, 3 speeches were recorded - “On work for transport,” part 1 and part 2, “On labor discipline” and “How to forever save workers from the oppression of landowners and capitalists.” Another recording, most likely dedicated to the outbreak of the Polish war, was damaged and lost in the same 1920.

Five speeches recorded during the last session on April 25, 1921, were technically unsuitable for mass production. Of these, only three were restored and released for the first time on long-playing discs - one of the two speeches “On the tax in kind”, “On consumer and trade cooperation” and “Non-party people and Soviet power”.

In addition to the second speech “On the Tax in Kind” that has not been found, the 1921 entry “On Concessions and the Development of Capitalism” has not yet been published. The first part of the speech, “On Work for Transport,” has not been reissued since 1929, and the speech, “On the pogrom persecution of the Jews,” has not appeared on disk since the early 1940s.

Memory of Vladimir Lenin

The asteroid (852) Vladilena is named after Lenin.

Lenin's name is present in the first message to extraterrestrial civilizations - “Peace”, “Lenin”, “USSR” - by 2014 it had covered a distance of 51 light years.

Several pennants with a bas-relief of Lenin were delivered to Venus, as well as to the Moon.

Already in the post-Soviet period, Leninia, a species of ichthyosaur, was named after Lenin.

Cult of personality

An extensive cult arose around the name of Lenin during the Soviet period. The former capital Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. Cities, towns and streets were named after Lenin, and in every city there was a monument to Lenin. Quotes from Lenin were used to prove statements in journalism and scientific works.

Monuments to Lenin became part of the Soviet tradition of monumental art. After the collapse of the USSR, many monuments to Lenin were dismantled and repeatedly vandalized, including being blown up.

Image in culture and art

A lot of memoirs, poems, short stories, novellas, and films about Lenin have been published. In the USSR, the opportunity to play Lenin in films or on stage was considered for an actor a sign of high trust shown by the leadership of the CPSU. Among documentaries: “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” (1948) by Mikhail Romm, “Three Songs about Lenin” (1934) by Dziga Vertov. Among the feature films are “Lenin in October” (1937), “Man with a Gun” (1938).

A lot of memoirs, poems, poems, short stories, stories and novels about Lenin have been published in the USSR. Many films about Lenin were also made. In Soviet times, the opportunity to play Lenin in films or on stage was considered for an actor a sign of high trust shown by the leadership of the CPSU.

Family of Vladimir Lenin

Father - Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), inspector of public schools.
Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (1835-1916).

The family had eight children (two died in infancy).

Lenin's brothers and sisters:

Anna Ilyinichna Elizarova-Ulyanova (1864-1935);
Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov (1866-1887);
Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova (1871-1891);
Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov (1874-1943);
Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova (1878-1937).

Wife - Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (1869-1939). Marriage from 1898 until his death.

21.01.1924

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich
Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich

Russian Revolutionary

Creator of the socialist state

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR (1923-1924)

Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the USSR (1923-1924)

Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense of the RSFSR (1920-1923)

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (1918-1922)

Chairman of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense of the RSFSR (1918-1920)

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Socialist Republic (1917-1918)

Russian revolutionary. A major theorist of Marxism. Soviet statesman. Founder of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks). The main organizer and leader of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. The first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of Russia. 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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The first chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The scope of the main political and journalistic works: materialist philosophy, the theory of Marxism, criticism of capitalism and imperialism, the theory and practice of the implementation of the socialist revolution, the construction of socialism and communism, the political economy of socialism.

Vladimir Ulyanov was born on April 22, 1870 in the city of Ulyanovsk. The boy was born into the family of an inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich, and a housewife, Maria Alexandrovna. Until the age of seventeen, the young man studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium and graduated with a gold medal, after which he entered the law faculty of Kazan University.

Before 1887, nothing is known about any revolutionary activities of Vladimir Ulyanov. He accepted Orthodox baptism and belonged to the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh. His grades according to the law of God in the gymnasium were excellent, as in all other subjects. There is only one B in his matriculation certificate: logically. The first award was presented in the gymnasium: a book with gold embossing on the cover: “For good behavior and success” and a certificate of merit.

In 1887, the calm life of the Ulyanov family was disrupted by tragedy. Vladimir's elder brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in the Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. What happened became a deep wound for the Ulyanov family.

After this, at the university, Vladimir joined the illegal student circle of “Narodnaya Volya” led by Lazar Bogoraz. Three months after admission, he was expelled for participating in student riots. According to a student inspector 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, in accordance with the methods of combating “disobedience” characteristic of the reign of Alexander III, were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.”

During the police investigation, Ulyanov’s connections with the illegal circle of Bogoraz were revealed, and also due to the execution of his brother, he was included in the list of “unreliable” persons subject to supervision. For the same reason, he was prohibited from reinstatement at the university.

At the same time, Vladimir Ilyich read a lot. The future revolutionary studied “progressive” magazines and books of the 1860s and 1870s, especially the works of Nikolai Chernyshevsky, which, in his own words, had a decisive influence on him. It was a difficult time for all the Ulyanovs: Simbirsk society boycotted them, since connections with the family of an executed terrorist could attract unwanted attention from the police.

It was only in 1890 that the authorities relented and allowed Ulyanov to prepare as an external student for the law exams. In November 1891, Vladimir Ilyich passed the exams as an external student for a course at the Faculty of Law of the Imperial St. Petersburg University.

In 1893, Ulyanov developed a doctrine that was new at that time, declaring contemporary Russia to be a “capitalist” country. The credo was finally formulated in 1894: “the Russian worker, rising at the head of all democratic elements, will overthrow absolutism and lead the Russian proletariat along the straight road of open political struggle to a victorious communist revolution.”

Arriving in St. Petersburg, he got a job as an assistant to a sworn attorney, lawyer Mikhail Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, the history of the capitalist evolution of the post-reform Russian village and industry. Some of them were published legally. At this time, he also developed the program of the Social Democratic Party.

In May 1895, Ulyanov went abroad, where he met with leaders of the international labor movement, and upon returning to St. Petersburg, in 1895, together with Yuli Martov and other young revolutionaries, he united scattered Marxist circles into the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” In December 1895, like many other members of the Union, Ulyanov was arrested and kept in prison for more than a year. In 1897, he was exiled for three years to the village of Shushenskoye, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In order for his “common-law” wife Nadezhda Krupskaya to follow him into exile, he had to marry her in July 1898. In exile, Vladimir Ilyich wrote a book, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” based on the collected material, directed against “legal Marxism” and populist theories. In total, during his exile he wrote over thirty works.

After the end of their exile in February 1900, Ulyanov and Martov traveled around Russian cities, establishing connections with local organizations. Arrived on February 26, 1900 in Pskov, where he was allowed to live after exile. In April 1900, an organizational meeting was held there to create an all-Russian workers' newspaper, Iskra. In April 1900, he made a one-day trip to Riga illegally from Pskov. At the negotiations with the Latvian Social Democrats, issues of transporting the Iskra newspaper from abroad to Russia through the ports of Latvia were considered. The average circulation of the newspaper was 8,000 copies, and some issues up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper was facilitated by the creation of a network of underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire.

The pseudonym Lenin appeared to the future leader of the proletariat in 1901. He began to sign his published works with this pseudonym. And it was under this name that he went down in history.

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was held in London. Lenin, together with Georgy Plekhanov, worked on a draft party program, which consisted of two parts: a minimum program and a 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 landowners during the abolition of serfdom, the introduction of an eight-hour working day, the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equality of nations. The maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the construction of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The proposed wording was supported by 28 votes to 22, with one abstention. During the elections to the Central Committee of the RSDLP, Lenin's group received a majority. This accidental circumstance forever divided the party into “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks.”

The revolution of 1905 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland. At the III Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in April 1905, Vladimir Ilyich emphasized that the main task of the ongoing revolution was to put an end to autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia.

At the beginning of November 1905, Lenin illegally arrived in St. Petersburg and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees elected by the congress. He paid much attention to the management of the newspaper “New Life”. Under his leadership, the party prepared an armed uprising. At the same time, Vladimir Ilyich wrote the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,” in which he pointed out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and an armed uprising. In his struggle to win over the peasantry, Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Rural Poor.” In December 1905, the First Conference of the RSDLP was held in Tammerfors, where Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin met for the first time.

When World War I began, Lenin lived on the territory of Austria-Hungary. Due to suspicion of spying for Russian government was arrested by Austrian gendarmes and was released from prison only on August 6, 1914. After 17 days in Switzerland, he took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses about the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist and unfair on both sides.

In February 1916, Lenin moved to Zurich. Here he completed his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, collaborated with Swiss Social Democrats, and attended party meetings. There I learned from the newspapers about the February Revolution in Russia.

Already on April 3, 1917, Vladimir Ilyich returned to Russia. The Petrograd Soviet organized a ceremonial meeting for him. However, Lenin’s first speech at the Finlyandsky Station immediately after his arrival ended with a call for a “social revolution” and caused confusion even among Lenin’s supporters.

The next day, April 4, he made a report to the Bolsheviks. In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that changed its character with the fall of the autocracy. He demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature.

In July 1917, the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Vladimir Ilyich went underground again. During this period he wrote one of his fundamental works: “State and Revolution.”

Arriving illegally on October 20, 1917 from Vyborg to Petrograd, Lenin began leading the uprising in the Smolny Palace, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, Leon Trotsky. On the night of November 7, 1917 The Provisional Government was arrested and already on November 7, 1917, Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government.

On the same day, at the opening of the Second 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. Two months later, on January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 80% of the country's population. With their support, Lenin presented the Constituent Assembly with 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 issue, lost its quorum and was forcibly dissolved.

On January 15, 1918, Vladimir Ilyich signed the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Red Army. In accordance with the Peace Decree, it is necessary to withdraw from the world war. Despite the opposition of the left communists and Leon Trotsky, Lenin achieved the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany on March 3, 1918.

The Left Socialist Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, left the Soviet government. Fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops, at the suggestion of Lenin, on March 10, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) moved to Moscow, which became the new capital of Soviet Russia.

Against the backdrop of these events, on August 30, 1918, an assassination attempt was made on Vladimir Lenin, according to the official version: by the Socialist Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, which led to serious injury. After the assassination attempt, the leader of the revolution was successfully operated on, and on September 4 the criminal was shot.

Lenin paid significant attention to the development of the country's economy. He believed that in order to restore the economy destroyed by the war, it was necessary to organize the state into a “national, state “syndicate”. Soon after the revolution, Vladimir Ilyich set scientists the task of developing a plan for the reorganization of industry and the economic revival of Russia, and also contributed to the development of the country's science.

After the end of the Civil War, Soviet Russia managed to break through the economic blockade thanks to the establishment of diplomatic relations with Germany and the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo. Peace treaties were concluded with a number of border states: Finland, Estonia, Poland, Turkey, Iran, Mongolia. The most active support came from Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran, which resisted European colonialism.

By decision of the government of the Soviet country, the electrification program GOELRO was developed and created February 21, 1920 State Commission for Electrification of Russia. Restoring the country's national economy was the most important task. The development of industrial enterprises suffered greatly from the lack of electrical energy. The commission included: Ivan Alexandrov, Heinrich Graftio, Alexander Kogan, Karl Krug, Boris Ugrimov, Mikhail Chatelain and others. Headed State Commission Gleb Maksimovich Krzhizhanovsky.

The economic and political situation required the Bolsheviks to change their previous policies. In this regard, at the insistence of Lenin, in 1921, at the X Congress of the RCP (b), “war communism” was abolished, food appropriation was replaced by a food tax. The so-called new economic policy was introduced, which allowed private free trade and made it possible for large sections of the population to independently seek the means of subsistence that the state could not give them.

At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-type enterprises, electrification, and the development of cooperation. Vladimir Ilyich believed that in anticipation of the world proletarian revolution, keeping all large industry in the hands of the state, it was necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this could, in his opinion, help put the backward Soviet country on the same level with the most developed European countries.

According to his recommendations December 30, 1922 The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was created. In 1923, Lenin wrote his last works: “On Cooperation”, “How Can We Reorganize the Workers’ Economy”, “Better 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 the party. After this, the revolutionary had to step down from power due to his rapidly deteriorating health.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died January 21, 1924 in the Gorki estate, Moscow region. The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report stated: 1) increased circulatory impairment in the brain; 2) hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.” After his death, Vladimir Lenin's body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum on Red Square near the Kremlin wall.

Results of Vladimir Lenin's activities

Results of activities and transformations carried out under the leadership of V.I. Lenin:

The Soviet state developed its own methods of moral and material stimulation of labor: various social payments, construction of free housing, organization of free healthcare, including the development of a wide network of free sanatoriums for workers, free education, transport, industrial clothing, payments in kind, creation normal conditions, organization of recreation, after Lenin’s decree of June 14, 1918 “On vacations,” all workers for the first time in the history of Russia received a state-guaranteed right to vacation, etc. - all this contributed to increasing labor productivity and convincing the majority of the population that the new government has his main goal concern for improving the living conditions of workers. For the first time in Russian history, workers received the right to old-age pensions.

Despite the largely fair accusations of political opponents of the socialist system of excessive equalization of the socialist wage system, this system contributed to the formation of social homogeneity and the constitution Soviet people, having a common civic identity, although the socialist wage system, in the context of its equalization, was also criticized by senior Soviet officials, it constantly developed and differentiated on the basis of many criteria, where one of the main ones was the assessment of the citizen’s real contribution to labor and social life countries.

The most important element in overcoming social inequality and building a new society for V. Lenin was the development of education, ensuring equal access to education for all workers, regardless of their national origin and gender differences. In October 1918, at the suggestion of V.I. Lenin, the “Regulations on a single labor school RSFSR", which introduced free and cooperative learning children school age. Modern researchers note that the communist attack on the system of distribution of scientific statuses began in 1918 and the matter ended not so much in the “re-education of the bourgeois professors”, but in the establishment of equal access to education and the destruction of class privileges, which included the privilege of being educated.

Lenin's policy in the field of education, ensuring its accessibility for all groups of workers served as the basis for the fact that in 1959, political opponents of the USSR believed that the Soviet education system, especially in engineering and technical specialties, occupied a leading position in the world.

Lenin's health care policy, based on the principles of free and equal access to medical care for all social groups population contributed to the fact that medicine in the USSR was recognized as one of the best in the world.

Awards and Recognition of Vladimir Lenin

The only official state award awarded to V.I. Lenin was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Socialist Republic.

In 1919, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, Vladimir Lenin was accepted as an honorary Red Army soldier of the 1st section of the 1st platoon of the 1st company of the 195th Yeisk Infantry Regiment.

Posthumous "awards"

Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov, on January 22, 1924, took the Order of the Red Banner (No. 4274) from his jacket and pinned it to the jacket of the already deceased Lenin. This award was on Lenin’s body until 1943, and Gorbunov himself received a duplicate of the order in 1930. Nikolai Podvoisky did the same, standing on the guard of honor at Lenin’s tomb. Another Order of the Red Banner was laid at Lenin’s coffin along with a wreath from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Currently, the orders are kept in the Lenin Museum in Moscow.

Works of Vladimir Lenin

In the USSR, five collected works of Lenin and forty “Lenin collections” were published, compiled by the Lenin Institute, specially created by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for the study of Lenin’s creative heritage. However, even the last, 5th, collected works in 55 volumes, called “complete,” could not claim either objectivity and academic quality, or completeness. Many of the works included in it were edited and corrected before publication, many of Lenin's works were not included in it at all.

During Soviet times, a collection was periodically published selected works, in two to four volumes. In addition, “Selected Works” were published in 10 volumes (11 books) in 1984-1987.

Lenin's main works

What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats? (1894)

"On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", (1897)

What inheritance are we giving up? (1897)

The 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 Empirio-criticism (1909)

Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913)

On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914)

On the breakdown of unity covered by cries for unity (1914)

Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism) (1914)

Socialism and War (1915)

Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay) (1916)

State and Revolution (1917)

Tasks of the proletariat in our revolution (1917)

The Impending Catastrophe and How to Deal with It (1917)

On dual power (1917)

How to Organize a Competition (1918)

The Great Initiative (1919)

The childhood disease of “leftism” in communism (1920)

Tasks of youth unions (1920)

About the food tax (1921)

Pages from a diary, About cooperation (1923)

Who is Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and what did he do? Secrets of the last days

Biography

Childhood, education and upbringing

The beginning of revolutionary activity

First emigration 1900-1905

Participation in the work of the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903)

Split

First Russian Revolution (1905-1907)

Role in the Revolutionary Terror of the early 20th century

Second emigration (1908 - April 1917)

Return to Russia

April - July 1917. “April Theses”

Press reaction

July - October 1917

October Revolution of 1917

After the revolution and during the Civil War (1917-1921)

Role in the Red Terror

Foreign policy

Last years (1921-1924)

Illness and death. Question about cause of death

Lenin's main ideas

Historiosophical analysis of contemporary capitalism

Communism, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat

Attitude to the imperialist war and revolutionary defeatism

The possibility of an initial victory of the revolution in one country

About class morality

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

Attitude towards Lenin after death. Grade

Lenin in culture, art and language

Lenin Awards

Official lifetime award

Titles and awards

Posthumous "awards"

Lenin's personality

Lenin's pseudonyms

Works of Lenin

Works of Lenin

Speeches recorded on gramophone records

Descendants

Origin of Lenin

The beginning of revolutionary activity

Rise to power

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