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Any mention of communism in Russia has to start with a discussion of
Vladimir Lenin. Here is an overview of Lenin, an undeniably important
historical figure.
Lenin and His Role In Bringing Communism to Russia
Vladimir Lenin was born on April 22, 1870, as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
He is known as the father of Russian Communism, as well as the first
Communist leader of the Soviet Union. His rise to fame and power
brought him through several revolutions and the end of imperial power
in Russia, and he will forever be known as the man who changed Russia's
entire course of history. His early history shows why he started on
this path of revolutionary thinking.
Lenin has a rough childhood. His father died when he was young, and his
brother, Alexander, was hung the next year because of his plot to cause
the death of Czar Alexander III. His sister was with her brother at the
time of his arrest, and she was also punished – banished to the small
town of Kokuchinko. These episodes made Vladimir Lenin ready for
action. He started his belief in Marxism, deciding that a revolution
that focused on a group instead of individual radicals would work
better.
Lenin was first arrested and exiled in 1895, after he had been
distributing Marxist propaganda. In 1898, he met and married his wife,
who was a socialist activist. This is also the period in time where he
started using the alias, Lenin, which he decided on from reading many
books. He became active in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party
(RSDLP) , and then in the Bolshevik party when it broke from the rest
of the group, a fraction that he helped enact with his pamphlet
writing. He was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP in 1906, and
moved to Finland in 1907 for security reasons.
When the start of World War I happened, other Marxist parties
throughout Europe began to support the war, which shocked Vladimir
Lenin. He took an “unpatriotic” approach and thought that the only goal
of the World War should be to remove the Czarist government. After the
February Revolution in 1917, Lenin was eager to get back to Russia, as
he knew he would be needed. He ended up stranded in neutral
Switzerland, however, because WWI was still in progress. He did not
make it back to Russia until April 16, 1917.
From 1917 onward, Vladimir Lenin was considered the leader of the
Communist/Bolshevik party, until his untimely death on January 21,
1924. He had suffered several strokes and had become paralyzed, partly
from an assassination attempt. The bullet left lodged in his neck
eventually caused his death, at which time he was bedridden and unable
to speak.
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