In addition to Volodya, there were five more children in the family. In May 1887, his older brother was hanged for participating in a conspiracy that aimed at the physical destruction of the Russian Tsar Alexander III. 7 months later, Vladimir was arrested for the first time for participating in a student demonstration.
Damaged monument to Lenin in Bessarabka. Photo "Today"
Since 1901, Vladimir Ulyanov began to use his party pseudonym, which subsequently became widely known throughout the world. Long before this, however, this short, stocky Marxist theorist with Mongolian eyes had decided to devote his life entirely to the cause of revolution. He first found himself in prison in 1895. Over the next 22 years, Lenin led the Bolsheviks from exile in Siberia, as well as from Switzerland, Germany, France, England and Poland. In March 1917, when a spontaneous revolt of the Russian peasantry against the Romanov dynasty began, Lenin skillfully took advantage of the situation. A huge number of all kinds of revolutionary factions fought for the political leadership of the country, but in November all power in Russia passed into the hands of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
All six years of Lenin's stay in power were cruel and bloody. Shortly before his death, Lenin began to be tormented by the thought that he had practically betrayed ordinary working people, whose interests he had defended all his life. He also felt that he was leaving behind an even more terrible legacy: in his last letter, which he dictated, Lenin demanded that Stalin be removed as General Secretary of the party. After Lenin's death, Trotsky and other party comrades raised suspicions that he was poisoned on Stalin's orders.
Lenin's entire life was devoted to the cause of the revolution. It is not surprising, therefore, that all three women he loved were also active participants in the revolutionary movement. In his life, however, there was also a fourth woman, but she left him. The reason for this was also Lenin’s dedication to the cause of the revolution.
Little is known about Lenin's short love affair with Apollinaria Yakubova in 1895. She took an active part in underground work together with Lenin. In all likelihood, he even proposed to her, but was refused.
In 1894, Lenin met Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. She was a year older than him and also actively participated in the revolutionary movement. In 1897, Lenin was exiled to Siberia. The following year, Krupskaya was also sentenced to three years of exile. At her request, she was allowed to carry out the exile together with her fiancé - Lenin - on the condition that they get married immediately. Lenin and Krupskaya became husband and wife in July 1898.
Some researchers believe that this marriage was mainly a political necessity. Krupskaya and Lenin, however, were an excellent match: she was happy to serve the cause of the revolution, which her husband personified, and he acquired a reliable and devoted comrade to the revolutionary idea, who served as secretary, assistant, cook and party leader. Their life together continued until the day of his death. After Lenin's death, Krupskaya lived alone in their four-room apartment in the Kremlin. She died on February 27, 1938 at the age of 70.
In 1905, while living in St. Petersburg under the name William Frey, Lenin met Elizabeth de C. Elizabeth was pretty, smart and a wealthy thrill-seeker. Shortly before meeting Frey, she divorced her husband. During their third meeting, "Frey" told her that he would like to hold secret meetings and meetings in her apartment. Elizabeth agreed to this. Some of these secret meetings were attended by only two people. This relationship continued, with some interruptions, for nine years. Their worlds, however, were too different, and it turned out that these people were simply impossible to reconcile. Elizabeth's world was rich in literature and art, and it was overly sophisticated and bourgeois. Lenin's cause and views were too radical for Elizabeth. Lenin once told her: “It is quite obvious that you will never become a social democrat.” “And you,” replied Elizabeth, “will never become anything other than a social democrat.”
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Elizabeth Armand was known as Inessa and spoke French, German, English and Russian. She was 31 years old when she met Lenin in Paris in the spring of 1910. By this time, she had already left her young, rich husband (taking her five children with her) and lived for some time with his brother. She then left her ex-husband's brother and began studying with the famous feminist Ellen Kay. After reading Lenin’s work “What is to be done?”, Inessa became involved in active revolutionary activities. She was arrested, imprisoned, then exiled. She managed to escape from exile. Soon she was no less devoted to Lenin than to the cause he served. Despite Lenin’s connection with Inessa, Krupskaya also really liked the company of the young revolutionary. All three often walked, traveled, and sometimes lived together. Almost from the day she met Lenin until her death in 1920 from typhus, Inessa was with him and Krupskaya. She was absent only in those cases when she was carrying out another party assignment somewhere or was in prison. Her death was a heavy blow for Lenin. During her funeral, he was in such a state that even his comrades did not dare to approach him. One of the researchers even claims that it was this October funeral that led to a sharp deterioration in Lenin’s health and practically became the starting point for Lenin’s gradual loss of power.
(1870 - 1924)
Lenin's biography is very long, some things in it are subject to doubt, some events are probably still hidden.
The great leader and teacher of the working people of the whole world, the successor of the revolutionary teachings of K. Marx and F. Engels, the organizer of the CPSU and the founder of the Soviet state, was born on April 22 (according to the old style - April 10), 1870, in the city of Simbirsk, in the family of an inspector of public schools. The elder brother Alexander, a Narodnaya Volya member, was executed in 1887 after participating in the preparation of an assassination attempt on the Tsar. In the year of his brother’s death, Lenin graduated from high school and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. However, in December of the same year he was arrested for participating in the revolutionary movement of students, which was the reason for his expulsion and deportation to the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province.
In 1888 he returned to Kazan, where he joined a Marxist circle, and the following year he moved to Samara. In 1891, he passed the exams as an external student for the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University and began working as an assistant to a sworn attorney in Samara. In the book “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?” (1984), “The Development of Capitalism in Russia” (1899) Lenin completed the ideological defeat of populism.
The next part is best presented in the form of a short biography of Lenin (Ulyanov) - at this time Vladimir Ilyich made many useful acquaintances and trips.
In April 1895, L. went abroad to establish contact with the Liberation of Labor group. In Switzerland he met Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue and other figures of the international labor movement. In September 1895, having returned from abroad, Lenin visited Vilnius, Moscow and Orekhovo-Zuevo, where he established connections with local Social Democrats. And already in the fall of 1895, on the initiative and under the leadership of Vladimir Ilyich, the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single organization - the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class,” which was the beginning of a revolutionary proletarian party, for the first time in Russia began to combine scientific socialism with the mass labor movement.
On the night of December 8 (20) to December 9 (21) of the same year, Lenin, along with his comrades in the Union of Struggle, was arrested and imprisoned, from where he continued to lead the Union. However, Ulyanov’s activities did not subside even in prison - there he wrote “The Project and Explanation of the Program of the Social Democratic Party,” a number of articles and leaflets, and prepared materials for his book “The Development of Capitalism in Russia.” After 2 years, in February, Lenin was exiled for 3 years to the village. Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province. For active revolutionary work, his future wife, N.K. Krupskaya, was also sentenced to exile. As L.'s bride, she was also sent to Shushenskoye, where she became his wife. While in exile, Vladimir Ilyich established and maintained contacts with the Social Democrats of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities, with the Emancipation of Labor group, corresponded with the Social Democrats who were in exile in the North and Siberia, rallied surrounded by exiled Social Democrats of the Minusinsk district. In addition, he wrote over 30 works while in exile.
Lenin left Shushenskoye immediately after the end of his exile (January 29 (February 10), 1900) left Shushenskoye. He established connections with Social Democrats everywhere - in Ufa, Moscow, St. Petersburg (he visited it illegally), and in other cities. In 1900, he settled in Pskov, where he did a lot of work organizing the newspaper and created strongholds for it in a number of cities. In July of the same year, Lenin went abroad, where he established the publication of the newspaper Iskra - he was its immediate leader. Iskra played an exceptional role in the ideological and organizational preparation of the revolutionary proletarian party. Subsequently, Lenin noted that “the entire flower of the conscious proletariat took the side of Iskra.” It was one of his articles published in Iskra that Ulyanov wrote under the “fatal” pseudonym - Lenin. This happened in December 1901.
For the next five years (1900 - 1905) Vladimir Ilyich lived in Munich, London, and Geneva.
In the struggle for the creation of a new type of party, Lenin’s work “What is to be done?” was of outstanding importance. Urgent issues of our movement" (1902), in which Lenin criticized "economism" and highlighted the main problems of building the party, its ideology and politics.
In 1903, the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP took place. At this congress, the process of unification of revolutionary Marxist organizations was completed and the party of the working class of Russia was formed on the ideological, political and organizational principles developed by Lenin. A new type of proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party, was created. After the congress, Ulyanov launched a struggle against Menshevism.
During the Revolution of 1905-1907, Lenin directed the work of the Bolshevik Party to lead the masses. Already on November 8 (21), 1905, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where he led the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks, the preparation of an armed uprising, and also headed the work of the Bolshevik newspapers “Forward”, “Proletary”, “New Life”. In the summer of 1906, due to police persecution, Lenin moved to Kuokkala (Finland), and in December 1907 he was again forced to emigrate to Switzerland, and at the end of 1908 to Paris.
During the years of reaction 1908-1810, Lenin fought for the preservation of the illegal Bolshevik Party against the Menshevik liquidators, otzovists, and against the schismatic actions of the Trotskyists ,
against conciliation towards opportunism (a detailed description of these trends will not be given in the short biography of Lenin). He deeply analyzed the experience of the Revolution of 1905–07. At the same time, L. repulsed the onslaught of reaction against the ideological foundations of the party.
At the end of 1910, a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement began in Russia. In December 1910, on Lenin's initiative, new newspapers began to be published in St. Petersburg (Zvezda, Pravda). To train party workers, Lenin in 1911 organized a party school in Longjumeau (near Paris), in which he gave 29 lectures. In January 1912, the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP was held in Prague under the leadership of L., which expelled the Menshevik liquidators from the RSDLP and defined the tasks of the party in an environment of revolutionary upsurge. To be closer to Russia, Lenin moved to Krakow in June 1912. From there he directs the work of the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Russia, the editorial office of the newspaper Pravda, and manages the activities of the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma.
During the First World War (1914-1918), the Bolshevik Party, led by Lenin, raised high the banner of proletarian internationalism, exposed the social chauvinism of the leaders of the 2nd International, and put forward the slogan of transforming the imperialist war into a civil war.
On July 26 (August 8), 1914, Lenin, following a false denunciation, was arrested by the Austrian authorities and imprisoned in the city of New Targ. Thanks to the assistance of Polish and Austrian Social Democrats, he was soon released, after which he continued to remain abroad. Having received in Zurich on March 2 (15), 1917, the first reliable news about the February bourgeois-democratic revolution that had begun in Russia, Lenin defined new tasks for the proletariat and the Bolshevik Party. April 3(16), 1917 L. returned from emigration to Petrograd. Solemnly greeted by thousands of workers and soldiers, he made a short speech, ending with the words: “Long live the socialist revolution!” Under L.'s leadership, the party launched political and organizational work among the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers.
In July 1917, after the elimination of dual power and the concentration of power in the hands of the counter-revolution, the peaceful period of development of the revolution ended. On July 7 (20), the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin, and he was forced to go underground. Until August 8 (21), 1917, L. was hiding in a hut beyond the lake. Razliv, near Petrograd, then until the beginning of October - in Finland (Yalkala, Helsingfors, Vyborg). However, even underground, he continued to lead the activities of the party, publishing various brochures.
On the evening of October 24 (November 6), Lenin illegally arrived in Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. At the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which opened on October 25 (November 7), which proclaimed the transfer of all power in the center and locally into the hands of the Soviets, he made reports on peace and land. The congress adopted Lenin's decrees on peace and land and formed a workers' and peasants' government - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin.
The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, won under the leadership of the Communist Party, opened a new era in the history of mankind - the era of transition from capitalism to socialism.
Lenin led the struggle of the Communist Party and the people of Russia to solve the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to build socialism; under his leadership, the party and government created a new, Soviet state apparatus. The confiscation of landowners' lands and the nationalization of all land, banks, transport, and large-scale industry were carried out, and a foreign trade monopoly was introduced. The Red Army was created. National oppression has been destroyed. The party attracted the broad masses of the people to the grandiose work of building the Soviet state and implementing fundamental socio-economic transformations. In December 1917 Lenin, in his article “How to organize a competition?” put forward the idea of socialist competition of the masses as an effective method of building socialism.
From March 11, 1918, L. lived and worked in Moscow, after the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved here from Petrograd.
In May 1918, on the initiative and with the participation of Lenin, decrees on the food issue were developed and adopted. At L.'s suggestion, food detachments were created from workers, sent to the villages to rouse the poor to fight the kulaks, to fight for bread. The socialist measures of the Soviet government met fierce resistance from the overthrown exploiting classes. They launched an armed struggle against Soviet power and resorted to terror. On August 30, 1918, Lenin was seriously wounded by the Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist F.E. Kaplan.
During the Civil War and military intervention of 1918–20, Lenin was chairman of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, created on November 30, 1918 to mobilize all forces and resources to defeat the enemy. He put forward the slogan “Everything for the front!” At his suggestion, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared the Soviet Republic a military camp. Under the leadership of Lenin, the party and the Soviet government in a short time managed to rebuild the country's economy on a war footing, developed and implemented a system of emergency measures, called “war communism.”
After the victorious end of the Civil War, Lenin led the struggle of the party and all workers of the Soviet Republic for the restoration and further development of the economy, and led cultural construction.
At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921, a discussion unfolded in the party about the role and tasks of trade unions, in which questions were actually resolved about methods of approaching the masses, about the role of the party, about the fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in Russia. Lenin spoke out against the erroneous platforms and factional activities of Trotsky, N.I. Bukharin, the “workers’ opposition”, and the group of “democratic centralism”. He pointed out that, being a school of communism in general, trade unions should be for workers, in particular, a school of economic management.
At the 10th Congress of the RCP (b) (1921), L. summed up the results of the trade union discussion in the party and put forward the task of transition from the policy of “war communism” to the new economic policy (NEP). The congress approved the transition to the NEP, which ensured the strengthening of the alliance of the working class and the peasantry and the creation of the production base of a socialist society. Many economic issues were resolved, including the development of
the principles of uniting the Soviet republics into a single multinational state on the basis of voluntariness and equality - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was created in December 1922.
In March 1922, L. led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. Hard work and the consequences of being wounded in 1918 undermined Lenin’s health, and after 2 months he became seriously ill and returned to work only in early October. His last public appearance was on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, Lenin’s health condition deteriorated sharply again. At the end of December 1922 - beginning of 1923, L. dictated letters on internal party and state issues: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization”” and a number of articles - “Pages from the diary”, “About cooperation”, “About our revolution”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Less is better”. These letters and articles are rightly called L.’s political testament. They were the final stage in Lenin’s development of a plan for building socialism in the USSR. In them, L. outlined in general form the program for the socialist transformation of the country and the prospects for the world revolutionary process, the foundations of the party’s policy, strategy and tactics.
In May 1923, Lenin moved to Gorki due to illness, and in January 1924 his condition worsened sharply, and on January 21, 1924 at 6 o’clock. 50 min. Lenin died in the evening. On January 23, the coffin with the body of the former leader was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions, where everyone who wanted to say goodbye to him could say goodbye. On January 27, a funeral took place on Red Square; the coffin with L.'s embalmed body was placed in a specially built Mausoleum.
This is where Lenin's biography ends. Of course, in our time the attitude towards Vladimir Ilyich is not clear, but there is no doubt that he was an unsurpassed philosopher. He developed all the components of Marxism - philosophy, political economy, scientific communism. Having summarized the achievements of science, especially physics, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the perspective of Marxist philosophy, Lenin further developed the doctrine of dialectical materialism. He deepened the concept of matter, defining it as an objective reality that exists outside of human consciousness, and developed the fundamental problems of the theory of man’s reflection of objective reality and the theory of knowledge. Lenin's great merit is the comprehensive development of materialist dialectics, especially the law of unity and struggle of opposites. L. made his greatest contribution to Marxist sociology. He specified, substantiated and developed the most important problems, categories and provisions of historical materialism about socio-economic formations, about the laws of development of societies.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin hated the West. But he went there very willingly - to relax, swim, fish, work in the library and treat his stomach.
Swimming in Berlin, carnival in Munich
Ilyich's first long trip abroad began in April 1895. The 25-year-old Marxist traveled to Switzerland, visited Salzburg, Paris and Berlin, where he met with like-minded Russians who lived there. And at the same time, as he wrote to his mother, he tried to recover from “an annoying stomach disease.” While in Berlin, the future leader of the world proletariat swam every day in the Spree River, which he also reported in letters to his mother, at the same time asking her to send him “another hundred rubles” (considerable money at that time).
When it got colder and it became impossible to swim, the rested Lenin returned to St. Petersburg, where he actively engaged in illegal activities. Eventually, he was arrested and sentenced to exile in Siberia. But after Shushensky, I received a foreign passport without any problems and again went to Germany and Switzerland. He especially liked Munich. In February 1901, Vladimir Ilyich wrote to his mother:
“The other day the carnival ended here. For the first time I saw the last day of the carnival abroad: processions of mummers on the street, general tomfoolery, clouds of confetti, paper snakes, and so on and so forth. They know how to have fun here publicly, on the streets!”
By the way, we still haven’t forgotten how. The traditional "Fasching" (the so-called carnival in Bavaria) attracts many hundreds of thousands of tourists to Munich every year.
Shitty Mensheviks
In Munich, by the way, Lenin was known as “Herr Mayer.” In London, Geneva, Zurich, Lausanne, Paris and Logivy (a resort town in northern France, where Ilyich spent the summer with his mother and sister), he also used a variety of pseudonyms. In 1902-1903, Lenin and Krupskaya lived in London. Here no one was interested in their passports at all, so the revolutionary spouses even rented an apartment under fictitious names - Mr. and Mrs. Richter.
It is interesting that Lenin had little interest in the rich culture of all the above cities and countries. The Russian revolutionary Maria Essen, who knew him well and was involved in distributing Iskra, wrote in her memoirs: “Vladimir Ilyich could barely bear visiting museums and exhibitions.”
Peru Maria Essen has another wonderful story. It’s a pity that it’s impossible to give it in full (it would take too much time), but in short it’s a must:
“We took a walk together in the mountains. We took a boat to Montreux. We visited the gloomy Chillon Castle, so colorfully described by Byron (“Chillon stands in the bosom of the waters...”). We came out of the gloomy crypt and immediately became blind from the bright sun and lush, jubilant nature. We decided to climb one of the snowy peaks. The landscape is endless, the play of colors is indescribable... I am ready to recite Shakespeare, Byron. He sits, deep in thought, and suddenly blurts out: “And. The Mensheviks are doing great shit!..”
Parisian love
When the 1905 revolution began, Lenin returned to Russia, but just two years later he emigrated abroad for the second time and lived in different countries for ten years - until April 1917. But he never settled in any one place. He seemed to like the prosperous, bourgeois Geneva before, but later Lenin called it “cursed.” This was due, first of all, to the fact that the leader fell into pessimism due to the feeling of hopelessness of the struggle: in Russia no one needed him. He concluded one of his speeches with the words: “We old men may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution.”
In Stockholm, Lenin took part in the congress of the Second International, went ice skating in Krakow, and received Gorky in Berlin. In April 1908 - a return visit: Lenin came to Gorky in Capri, where the proletarian writer lived with his large retinue in a luxurious villa. Together with Gorky, Ilyich examined the outskirts of Naples, the remains of ancient Pompeii, fished... Lenin and Krupskaya spent three and a half years in Paris.
He (probably alone even among Russian revolutionaries) hated Paris. I had to travel a long way to the library, by bicycle. Once Lenin almost got hit by a car (by the way, he sued the owner of the car and won the case). Then the bike was completely stolen.
In general, Ilyich had no luck in damned Paris. One consolation is Inessa Armand. Lenin met her in 1910. He was then already 40 years old, she was 36. Lenin’s relationship with her is a different topic. Apparently they were quite close. This is evidenced, in particular, by his letters to Inessa Armand, published only in recent years. “Oh, I would like to kiss you a thousand times!..” - Ilyich wrote to her. From the stories of the famous Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, it is known that in Paris Krupskaya was even planning to leave her husband because of his relationship with Inessa. They ended only after Lenin returned in a sealed carriage to Russia to make the Bolshevik revolution. I did it and never went abroad again.
Time passes, and political systems, views, and values change. Leaders change. Many children born in the 21st century cannot answer with confidence who Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev were... Although until recently, every self-respecting Soviet citizen knew not only the year of Lenin’s birth and where the leader of the world proletariat was born, but also the main theses each plenum. Our contemporaries do not consider it necessary to remember such information. There is no point in discussing whether this is good or bad, but for the sake of erudition you can find out where Lenin was born. And this happened in the city of Simbirsk. In 1924 it was renamed Ulyanovsk.
A little history of the city where Lenin was born
This city is located on the banks of the Volga and Sviyaga rivers, almost 1000 km southeast of Moscow. Founded in 1648 as a fortress to protect against raids by nomadic tribes from the east. A decree on this was issued by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. This fortress was called Simber. More than 200 years later, Catherine the Second renamed the city Simbirsk and made it the center. Emperor Paul in 1796 confirmed this administrative status of the city.
Moving the Ulyanov family to Simbirsk
Vladimir Ulyanov's parents were educated and intelligent people. In particular, his father, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kazan University, and in 1854 received a Candidate of Mathematical Sciences. He was a successful teacher in gymnasiums in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod, but for ideological reasons he moved to Simbirsk. Why? The fact is that after 1861, Russia was swept by a wave of Europeanization and public education. All conscious teachers were eager to work in this field and make their contribution to the education of the common people, and not just the children of wealthy parents, as was the case before. Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov was captured by this idea. Therefore, when the position of inspector of public schools became vacant in Simbirsk, he moved his family there without hesitation and was appointed to the position in 1869.
Simbirsk during the time of the Ulyanovs
The population of the city at the time of the arrival of Vladimir Ulyanov’s (Lenin’s) parents was 26 thousand inhabitants, but it could not be called a province far from cultural life. Back in the 18th century, the first theater in Russia existed here; in 1838, its own newspaper began to be printed, a public library functioned, and a telegraph worked. That is, all the benefits of civilization of that time were available. In addition, since Simbirsk was located on the large navigable Volga River, a waterway connected it with other large cities. In this regard, trade was also developed. Thus, the city where Vladimir Lenin was born justified the title of “nest of nobility.”
Also, five years before the Ulyanovs moved, Simbirsk experienced a big fire. But this even served to the benefit of the city, because it was rebuilt according to a new plan, wide streets and beautiful gardens appeared.
Nomadic life in rented apartments
As an inspector of public schools, the official Ulyanov was not entitled to government housing, so the growing family had to be content with rented housing. That is why during the 18 years that they lived in Simbirsk, they had to change seven houses.
The first housing was the outbuilding of a house on Streletskaya Street, which belonged to Pribylovskaya. Ilya Nikolaevich moved there in the fall of 1869 with his wife and two children, Anna and Alexander. The third child, Vladimir, the future builder of communism, was born right there in 1970.
Six months later, the family moved from the outbuilding to one of the apartments in the same building. Here the daughter Olga was born. But they did not live long in the house where Lenin was born. They had to move to the next one on the same street, which belonged to Zharkova. Then there were three more rented apartments, until Ilya Nikolaevich purchased his own house on Moskovskaya Street in 1878. But the family also lived there for a relatively short time. The breadwinner and head of the family passed away early, and the eldest son Alexander was executed on charges of conspiracy against the emperor. Therefore, in 1887 they decided to sell the house. Soon after this, the Ulyanovs left Simbirsk and
Lenin Memorial in Ulyanovsk
Lenin's hometown was renamed Ulyanovsk in 1924. And in 1970, on the centenary of his birth, a memorial memorial was opened in the city where Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born. It includes the houses of Pribylovskaya and Zharkova, where the Ulyanovs lived, their own house on Moskovskaya, as well as the Large Universal Cinema and Concert Hall and the House of Political Education. In the apartments where the Ulyanov family lived, everything was kept almost unchanged. You can also see a diorama depicting Simbirsk in the 1880s.
Lenin's hometown today
Now Ulyanovsk is a large regional center with a population of over 600 thousand. It is divided into four districts: Leninsky, Zheleznodorozhny, Zasviyazhsky and Zavolzhsky. The latter is located on the opposite bank and is connected to two other bridges - the Imperial and the Presidential. But the Leninsky district has always been considered the most prestigious. Even before the Ulyanovs arrived, only merchants and nobles lived here. Many buildings from those times have been preserved in their original form. And the street where Lenin was born is considered a historical monument and is pedestrian.
Many Russians and foreigners come to Ulyanovsk every year. They want to visit this street and the house where Lenin was born. The city is also of considerable interest. Every year it receives thousands of tourists who want to visit the homeland of the torch of the October Revolution.
Professional revolutionaries led a secret life, and often forgot their real names for a long time. Stalin, Kamo, Sverdlov, Trotsky and other ardent fighters for people's happiness, even when communicating in private, used party pseudonyms. The same fully applies to the leader of the world proletariat, the creator of the world's first state of workers and peasants. Nikolai Lenin (Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich) appeared on the political scene almost simultaneously with the fateful 20th century for humanity. At that time he was thirty years old.
Ilyich's pseudonyms
Indeed, Ronald Reagan, exposing the machinations of world communism in his next speech (this was in the early eighties), turned out to be right, although some Soviet publications accused him of ignorance. “Not Nikolai, but Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, that’s right!” Because everyone is accustomed to precisely this combination of sounds and letters, pronounced a thousand times from the stands, replicated on posters and propaganda brochures, badges, pennants and certificates of commendation. Nevertheless, those who knew history a little better than regular propagandists and familiarized themselves with the works of the classic of Marxism could not but agree with the American president, not on the essence of his speech, of course, but regarding the accuracy of the reproduction of the party nickname.
Before going illegal, the future leader was just a student Vladimir, and even earlier - a high school student Vova and a curly-haired boy Volodya. And having already become a revolutionary, Ulyanov changed many pseudonyms, having been Vladimir Ilyin, and Jordan K. Yordanov, and K. Tulin, and Kubyshkin, and Starik, and Fyodor Petrovich, and Frey, and even the mysterious Jacob Richter. But history has left a short inscription on the mausoleum: “V. I. Lenin”, causing hostility and rejection among some, hope among others and leaving others indifferent.
In honor of whom is “Lenin”?
The simplest explanation for this pseudonym is its morphological relationship with the female name “Lena”. That was the name of Ulyanov’s longtime acquaintance, Stasova (and also his classmate Rozmirovich, his fellow chorus girl Zaretskaya... is there not enough Len in the world? You can’t even count!), who, it seems (like others), was deeply attractive to him in his youth years. But this side of the leader’s life was not taught at school, but another version became widespread. On the Siberian Lena River in 1906, certain popular unrest arose among workers in the gold mines, which ended with their armed suppression. This version of the explanation is even less worthy of attention, despite its political consistency, since the shooting of demonstrators occurred five years later than the first newspaper articles signed by N. Lenin appeared. Prophecies were repeatedly attributed to the leader of the revolution, but he was still not a clairvoyant. Predicting the global victory of communism is one thing, but anticipating a riot five years before it is quite another.
To try to explain the origin of this pseudonym, one can turn to the history of another. L.D. Bronstein became Trotsky, borrowing the surname of the head of the Odessa central. Vladlen Loginov, a historian (his name alone is worth it!) suggests that Nikolai Lenin is a very real person who lived in the Yaroslavl province. This respected man, a state councilor, died, and his children gave the passport to their friend, Vladimir Ulyanov. This was supposedly in 1900, the year of birth had to be slightly corrected, but in all other respects the chronology agrees. Photo cards weren’t glued back then.
There is also a version that simply concerns Lena - not a beautiful woman, and not the place of the bloody execution of workers, but the river, but it does not seem interesting to historians and simply curious people. Indeed, there is little romance. And what the truth is, apparently, will never be known.
Childhood and adolescence
The centenary anniversary of the proletarian leader was celebrated magnificently in 1970; many films, paintings, literary works, poems, songs and cantatas were dedicated to him. A medal was also issued, which was awarded to leaders in production. During Soviet power, a whole art direction was created, called Leniniana, and a considerable part of it described the childhood and youth years of the life of the future Bolshevik leader. What Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was like in the first years of his life is known mainly from the stories of his family members. The fact of his excellent school performance (gold medal) was documented, which gave grounds for propagandists to urge schoolchildren throughout the vast country to study only “excellently.” The city of Simbirsk, where Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born, was renamed Ulyanovsk, and a memorial was erected there.
The father of the theorist and practitioner of the world revolution was Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, an official who held the post of inspector of public education. The boy studied at the gymnasium, then entered the university of Kazan. This was in 1887, and at the same time his older brother Alexander, a Narodnaya Volya member, was accused of participating in a conspiracy, arrested and executed. Volodya also suffered, but not for his relationship with one of the terrorists who attempted to assassinate the Tsar. He himself worked in an underground circle, was exposed, expelled from the university and expelled - no, not to Siberia yet, but home. The “arbitrariness of the authorities” did not last long; a year later Ulyanov was again in Kazan, and again among his Marxist friends. Meanwhile, my mother, having become a widow, bought a small estate (the village of Alakaevka, Samara province), and the young man helps her run the business. In 1889 the whole family moved to Samara.
From Narodnaya Volya to Marxists
The young man was allowed to receive higher education. He passed the bar exams as an external student in 1891 at the law faculty of the capital's university, without completing a course of study. The first place of work was the law office of N.A. Hardin in Samara, where the young specialist had to defend the parties to civil litigation. But it was not this boring activity that captivated him. Over the course of two years of legal practice, Vladimir Ilyich completely changed his worldview and political beliefs, moving away from Narodnaya Volya and becoming a Social Democrat. The influence of Plekhanov's works in this process was great, but they were not the only ones that occupied the mind of the young Marxist.
Having left Hardin, lawyer Ulyanov goes to St. Petersburg, where he finds a new job with M. F. Volkenshtein, also a lawyer. But he is not only involved in judicial matters: the first theoretical works concerning issues of political economy, the development of capitalist relations in Russia, reforms in the countryside, etc. date back to this period. These articles are sometimes published in periodicals. In addition, Ulyanov is writing the program of the party that he plans to create.
In 1885, a group of young revolutionaries assembled an underground union for the “liberation of the working class,” among them Martov and Vladimir Ilyich. The purpose of this organization is to gather disparate circles of Marxists and lead them. This attempt ended in arrest, a year in prison and exile to the Yenisei province (the village of Shushenskoye). The then “prisoners of conscience” could not complain about the difficult conditions of detention. The main burden that V.I. Lenin experienced in those three years was the need to be content with boring lamb. However, it was possible to hunt, diversifying the menu with game. The future leader also repaired skates for children when he wanted to take a break from thinking about the struggle of the proletariat.
Lenin in exile
In 1900 Nikolai Lenin appeared. Vladimir Ilyich, whose brief biography was studied in all educational institutions of the USSR, spent most of his life abroad, in Europe. Immediately after the end of his exile, he goes to Munich, then to London and Geneva. Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Vera Zasulich and other like-minded Marxists were already waiting for him there. They publish the newspaper Iskra. By the way, few people paid attention to the fact that decades later, when naming avenues and streets in part of this party printed organ, the executive committees of all cities necessarily added the word “Leninist”. The fact is that Iskra later became a Menshevik newspaper, so clarification was necessary from a political point of view.
The well-known question: “What to do?” became the title of an article that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote in 1902. It was this work that marked the choice of the direction of party development for the coming years. The main thesis was the need to transform the RSDLP into a military organization bound by strict discipline and hierarchy. Many members of the party, led by Martov, opposed this violation of democratic principles, for which, having lost the vote at the Third Congress (1903), they became “Mensheviks”.
The first revolution and again a foreign land
In 1905, Vladimir Lenin comes from Switzerland to St. Petersburg. Large-scale unrest began in Russia, which with a high degree of probability could lead to a change of government. He arrived under a false name, as a foreign spy, and became involved in the work of overthrowing tsarism. The positions of the Bolshevik wing of the RSDLP were quite strong; a congress of the Central and St. Petersburg party committees was held in the capital. An armed uprising practically took place, but ended in failure. Even in the conditions of an extremely unsuccessful war with Japan, the Russian Empire found the strength to suppress unrest and restore order. The Potemkin riot was declared by Vladimir Lenin to be “undefeated territory,” and in 1907 he fled abroad again.
This fiasco greatly upset the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, but did not lead to abandonment of the fight. Conclusions were drawn about the insufficient preparedness of party structures and the need to further strengthen the military wing of the organization.
Where does the money come from?
The modern reader, aware that life abroad is expensive, often wonders about the origin of the funds needed to publish subversive periodicals. In addition, even diehard Bolsheviks are living people, and human needs are not alien to them. There are several answers to this question. Firstly, money was taken by force from individuals and organizations. These operations were called expropriations (exs), and individual Bolshevik structures were involved in these robberies (for example, the “wonderful Georgian” Joseph Dzhugashvili-Stalin carried out a unique raid on a bank in Tiflis, which was included in criminology textbooks). Secondly, the RSDLP had sponsors among Russian business people who hoped to improve their situation after the overthrow of tsarism (the most famous was the millionaire Savva Morozov, but there were others). Thirdly, information is available today about foreign intelligence support for subversive organizations. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin effectively used all channels of material supply for the party.
Personal life
Everyone knows that the leader of the world proletariat was married. He was not a handsome man, small in stature, with a thin beard and an early bald spot, but history knows many examples of great success among the ladies of the class of people and more modest appearance - just remember Napoleon, Goebbels, Chaplin or Pushkin. It is not the cover of the book that is important, but its content, and the high intelligence of the leader of the Bolshevik Party was not questioned even by his irreconcilable opponents.
Why did Nadezhda Konstantinovna captivate such an interesting man as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? Krupskaya's biography contains many interesting facts relating, for example, to her party nicknames. Party members called her Herring, openly mocking her thinness and the peculiar look of her bulging eyes. The reason for both was quite valid (Graves' disease). She was not offended by her nickname; moreover, her character obviously had a sense of humor, otherwise her wife would not have tolerated even more humiliating treatment from her husband, who called her lamprey. More important than appearance for Ulyanov, apparently, were excellent abilities for languages, amazing efficiency, desire for self-education and devotion to the communist idea.
There were other women in his life for whom he may have had romantic feelings, but politics, of course, remained the main object of passion. The affair with I. Armand ended only with her tragic death from the flu. The wife forgave everything. She probably loved her husband, considered him a great man and worshiped him. In addition, as an intelligent woman, she correctly assessed the degree of her external attractiveness, and as a real communist, she despised jealousy and a sense of ownership. She never gave birth to children.
Based on the popular image created by the powerful Soviet propaganda machine, for a long time it was impossible to understand what kind of person Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was in real life. Interesting facts, which his closest associates told in their memoirs, speak of his sometimes unusual behavior. He, unlike Stalin, did not like to joke and took any issue seriously. An interesting incident occurred during a trip in the notorious sealed German carriage. There was only one toilet, queues arose, and V.I. Lenin solved this problem in a Bolshevik way, giving each passenger a ticket indicating the time of his visit. It is also characterized by another point concerning the wedding with Krupskaya in Shushenskoye. Vladimir Ulyanov himself forged two wedding rings from copper nickels (the couple wore them until the end of their lives). But no matter what eccentricities historical characters display, they are judged primarily by the results of their activities.
The expression “Stalinist repressions” entered the political dictionary after the 20th Congress of the CPSU. In 1962, Lenin's mausoleum was freed from the remains of the dictator who ruined millions of destinies and lives. It should, however, be taken into account that in none of his articles or speeches did J.V. Stalin ever call for mass executions or percentage destruction of the population, or give orders for the extermination of entire estates and classes in the most literal sense. But Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whose reign coincided with the Civil War, gave such orders and demanded a report on their implementation on the ground. Millions of Russian citizens were destroyed and died involved in the fratricidal massacre, and yet they constituted the spiritual, intellectual, scientific, technical and military elite of the country. We still feel the consequences of this crime today.
Man, image and attributes of the cult
In the official mythology, instilled in place of the desecrated religion, citizens of the USSR from childhood were instilled with the idea of the great kindness that distinguished Lenin Vladimir Ilyich. The leader's death in Gorki (1924) was declared almost a self-sacrifice; it was explained by the consequences of his injury at the Mikhelson plant in 1918. However, according to a medical report published in the Soviet press, the brain of the main practitioner of Marxism was almost petrified due to calcification of the blood vessels. A person with such a disease cannot make adequate decisions, let alone lead the state.
Official propaganda created an image that was impossible not to worship. Everything human was completely emasculated from him, Lenin’s mausoleum became a place of pilgrimage for tens and hundreds of millions of people from all over the world, the leader’s works were published (with some cuts), but few people read them, and even fewer students thought about these texts. But multi-volume collections and separate collections of articles have become an indispensable attribute of government offices. Having taken away moral guidelines and faith from the citizens, the leaders who came after them gave them a new deity, which Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became after his death. Photos and paintings replaced icons, solemn chants replaced church chorales, and banners became an analogue of banners. A tomb was erected on Red Square, which over time became a necropolis of leaders of lower rank. In Soviet times, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s birthday was a holiday during which one should, at least a little, symbolically, partake of free labor. Somehow, in the understanding of almost the entire world, the communist idea began to be associated with Russia, although it was our country that suffered from it more than all others. Now those who would like to somehow show their anti-Russian orientation are destroying monuments to Lenin. In vain.
