best lenin biographies

Vladimir Lenin

(1870-1924)

Who Was Vladimir Lenin?

Vladimir Lenin founded the Russian Communist Party, led the Bolshevik Revolution and was the architect of the Soviet state. He was the posthumous source of "Leninism," the doctrine codified and conjoined with Marx's works by Lenin’s successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview. He has been regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader and thinker since Marx.

Early Years

Widely considered one of the most influential and controversial political figures of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin engineered the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 and later took over as the first leader of the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

He was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia, which was later renamed Ulyanovsk in his honor. In 1901, he adopted the last name Lenin while doing underground party work. His family was well-educated, and Lenin, the third of six children, was close to his parents and siblings.

School was a central part of Lenin’s childhood. His parents, both educated and highly cultured, invoked a passion for learning in their children, especially Vladimir. A voracious reader, Lenin went on to finish first in his high school class, showing a particular gift for Latin and Greek.

But not all of life was easy for Lenin and his family. Two situations, in particular, shaped his life. The first came when Lenin was a boy and his father, an inspector of schools, was threatened with early retirement by a suspicious government nervous about the influence public school had on Russian society.

The more significant and more tragic situation came in 1887, when Lenin’s older brother, Aleksandr, a university student at the time, was arrested and executed for being a part of a group planning to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. With his father already dead, Lenin now became the man of the family.

Aleksandr’s involvement in oppositional politics was not an isolated incident in Lenin’s family. In fact, all of Lenin’s siblings would take part to some degree in revolutionary activities.

Young Revolutionary

The year of his brother’s execution, Lenin enrolled at Kazan University to study law. His time there was cut short, however, when, during his first term, he was expelled for taking part in a student demonstration.

Exiled to his grandfather’s estate in the village of Kokushkino, Lenin took up residence with his sister Anna, whom police had ordered to live there as a result of her own suspicious activities.

There, Lenin immersed himself in a host of radical literature, including the novel What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, which tells the tale of a character named Rakhmetov, who carries a single-minded devotion to revolutionary politics. Lenin also soaked up the writing of Karl Marx, the German philosopher whose famous book Das Kapital would have a huge impact on Lenin’s thinking. In January 1889, Lenin declared himself a Marxist.

Eventually, Lenin received his law degree, finishing his schoolwork in 1892. He moved to the city of Samara, where his client base was largely composed of Russian peasants. Their struggles against what Lenin saw as a class-biased legal system only reinforced his Marxist beliefs.

In time, Lenin focused more of his energy on revolutionary politics. He left Samara in the mid-1890s for a new life in St. Petersburg, the Russian capital at the time. There, Lenin connected with other like-minded Marxists and began to take an increasingly active role in their activities.

The work did not go unnoticed, and in December 1895 Lenin and several other Marxist leaders were arrested. Lenin was exiled to Siberia for three years. His fiancée and future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, joined him.

Following his release from exile and then a stint in Munich, where Lenin and others co-founded a newspaper, Iskra, to unify Russian and European Marxists, he returned to St. Petersburg and stepped up his leadership role in the revolutionary movement.

At the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, a forceful Lenin argued for a streamlined party leadership community, one that would lead a network of lower party organizations and their workers. “Give us an organization of revolutionaries,” Lenin said, “and we will overturn Russia!”

The Revolution of 1905 and WWI

Lenin’s call was soon supported by events on the ground. In 1904 Russia went to war with Japan. The conflict had a profound impact on Russian society. After a number of defeats put a strain on the country’s domestic budget, citizens from all walks of life began to vocalize their discontent over the country’s political structure and called for reform.

The situation was heightened on January 9, 1905, when a group of unarmed workers in St. Petersburg took their concerns directly to the city’s palace to submit a petition to Emperor Nicholas II. They were met by security forces, who fired on the group, killing and wounding hundreds. The crisis set the stage for what would be called the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Hoping to placate his citizens, the emperor issued his October Manifesto, offering up several political concessions, most notably the creation of an elected legislative assembly known as the Duma.

But Lenin was far from satisfied. His frustrations extended to his fellow Marxists, in particular, the group calling itself the Mensheviks, led by Julius Martov. The issues centered around party structure and the driving forces of a revolution to fully seize control of Russia. While his comrades believed that the power must reside with the bourgeoisie, Lenin passionately distrusted that segment of the population. Instead, he argued, a real and complete revolution, one that could lead to the Socialist Revolution that could spread outside of Russia, must be led by the workers, the country’s proletariat.

From the Mensheviks’ point of view, however, Lenin’s ideas really paved the way for a one-man dictatorship over the people he claimed he wanted to empower. The two groups had sparred since party’s Second Congress, which had handed Lenin’s group, known as the Bolsheviks, a slim majority. The fighting would continue until a 1912 party conference in Prague, when Lenin formally split to create a new, separate entity.

During World War I Lenin went into exile again, this time taking up residence in Switzerland. As always, his mind stayed focus on revolutionary politics. During this period he wrote and published Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), a defining work for the future leader, in which he argued that war was the natural result of international capitalism.

Russian Leader

In 1917, a tired, hungry and war-weary Russia deposed the tsars. Lenin quickly returned home and, perhaps sensing his own path to power, quickly denounced the country’s newly formed Provisional Government, which had been assembled by a group of leaders of the bourgeois liberal parties. Lenin instead called for a Soviet government, one that would be ruled directly by soldiers, peasants and workers.

In late 1917 Lenin led what was soon to be known as the October Revolution, but was essentially a coup d’état. Three years of civil war followed. The Lenin-led Soviet government faced incredible odds. The anti-Soviet forces headed mainly by former tsarist generals and admirals, fought desperately to overthrow Lenin’s Red regime. They were aided by World War I Allies, who supplied the group with money and troops.

Determined to win at any cost, Lenin showed himself to be ruthless in his push to secure power. He launched what came to be known as the Red Terror, a vicious campaign Lenin used to eliminate the opposition within the civilian population.

In August 1918 Lenin narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, when he was severely wounded with a pair of bullets from a political opponent. His recovery only reinforced his larger-than-life presence among his countrymen, though his health was never truly the same.

Despite the breadth of the opposition, Lenin came out victorious. But the kind of country he hoped to lead never came to fruition. His defeat of an opposition that wished to keep Russia tethered to Europe’s capitalist system, ushered in an era of international retreat for the Lenin-led government. Russia, as he saw it, would be void of class conflict and the international wars it fostered.

But the Russia he presided over was reeling from the bloody civil war he’d helped instigate. Famine and poverty shaped much of society. In 1921, Lenin now faced the same kind of peasant uprising he’d ridden to power. Widespread strikes in cities and in rural sections of the country broke out, threatening the stability of Lenin’s government.

To ease the tension, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, which allowed workers to sell their grain on the open market.

Later Years and Death

Lenin suffered a stroke in May 1922, and then a second one in December of that year. With his health in obvious decline, Lenin turned his thoughts to how the newly formed USSR would be governed after he was gone.

Increasingly, he saw a party and government that had strayed far from its revolutionary goals. In early 1923 he issued what came to be called as his Testament, in which a regretful Lenin expressed remorse over the dictatorial power that dominated Soviet government. He was particularly disappointed with Joseph Stalin, the general secretary of the Communist Party, who had begun to amass great power.

On March 10, 1923, Lenin’s health was dealt another severe blow when he suffered an additional stroke, this one taking away his ability to speak and concluding his political work. Nearly 10 months later, on January 21, 1924, he passed away in the village now known as Gorki Leninskiye. In a testament to his standing in Russian society, his corpse was embalmed and placed in a mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Vladimir Lenin
• Birth Year: 1870
• Birth date: April 22, 1870
• Birth City: Simbirsk
• Birth Country: Russia
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Vladimir Lenin was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state.
• World Politics
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• Kazan University
• Death Year: 1924
• Death date: January 21, 1924
• Death City: Gorki
• Death Country: Russia

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Vladimir Lenin Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/vladimir-lenin
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 7, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014

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Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror Hardcover – November 7, 2017

• Print length 592 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Pantheon
• Publication date November 7, 2017
• Dimensions 6.49 x 1.76 x 9.54 inches
• ISBN-10 1101871636
• ISBN-13 978-1101871638
• See all details

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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; Illustrated edition (November 7, 2017)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 592 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101871636
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101871638
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.97 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.49 x 1.76 x 9.54 inches
• #108 in Historical Russia Biographies
• #529 in Russian History (Books)
• #674 in Women in History

About the author

Victor sebestyen.

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Customers find the book's content excellent, brisk, and sharp. They also describe the author as a great storyteller, historian, and surprisingly amusing. Readers also say the book is very readable and informative.

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Customers find the book's content excellent, providing a good introduction to Lenin. They also appreciate the sharp observations and brisk writing.

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Helen Rappaport's top 10 books on Lenin

H elen Rappaport is an historian and Russianist with a specialism in the Victorians and revolutionary Russia. Her books include Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs and No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War. She lives in Oxford. She has a website at www.helenrappaport.com.

Her latest book, Conspirator, reconstructs Lenin's years in exile, moving from city to city across Europe fomenting revolution, and is published by Hutchinson this week.

Buy Helen Rappaport books at the Guardian bookshop

"Finding 10 readable and – more importantly – revealing monographs on Lenin is quite a tough call. Not very many exist. That's because the Soviet hagiographers for decades so carefully controlled the documentary record on him that they ensured a boring, sanitised view of the Great Leader that has virtually nothing honest to say – in Russian at least, and certainly not until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Books in English published in the west have been similarly frustrated by a lack of penetrating primary source material except amongst Russian exiles who had the freedom to say what they thought. Lenin's voluminous letters are at times revealing but with their relentlessly hectoring tone are not an easy read. There are no candid diaries by him and – worst of all – from a populist point of view, absolutely no kiss and tell memoirs that dish up the dirt. Here, in no particular order, are my 10 best in English:"

1. Encounters with Lenin by Nikolay Valentinov

Valentinov escaped exile in Russia to join Lenin in exile in Geneva in 1904 as an eager young underground activist. He was for an all too brief time a loyal and admiring acolyte until he saw the darker side of Lenin and became disenchanted by his inflexible political thinking and his ruthlessly domineering behaviour. A wonderful, illuminating source.

2. Lenin: Life and Legacy by Dmitri Volkogonov

The best post-Soviet book by a Russian available in English. Volkogonov is as unequivocally critical of Lenin as he is of Stalin in his companion biography. Contains some interesting revelations from the newly opened Soviet archives to which Volkogonov had exclusive access, particularly about German financial support for the Bolsheviks in 1917, and clearly shows the roots of Stalinism in Lenin's policies.

3. Memories of Lenin by Nadezhda Krupskaya

This, like it or not and despite its limitations, is the holy grail. Krupskaya, who as a young revolutionary married Lenin in 1898, was the only person who remained consistently close to Lenin throughout the last 27 years of his life. She went on to be the dogged keeper of the flame after his death in 1924. Unfortunately she never said a single controversial word about him, his behaviour, or their life together, but nevertheless this is a valuable and sometimes fascinating source.

4. Days With Lenin by Maxim Gorky

The best literary memoir of Lenin by the great socialist writer; at first a friend and admirer of Lenin and later an outspoken critic of the Bolshevik takeover. Brief but telling in its detail, especially of Lenin at the London Congress of the RSDLP in 1907 and during his visits to Gorky on Capri in 1908 and 1910. Essential reading.

5. On Lenin: Notes Towards a Biography by Leon Trotsky

Episodic and frustratingly incomplete, these notes were to form the basis of a biography that Trotsky sadly never wrote. It is nevertheless a fascinating source, full of insight and a perceptive portrait of Lenin's single-mindedness and his relentless, all-consuming drive towards revolution in Russia.

6. Lenin by Marc Landau-Aldanov

An interesting curiosity, written by a Russian émigré and translated from French. This early (1922) western take on Lenin during his lifetime is a fascinating read for its analysis of the communist experiment in the making. It pinpoints the most disturbing aspects of Lenin's despotism in a brilliant chapter on Lenin's personality, likening him to a moral and intellectual cross between Savonarola and Tartuffe, "a madman with the lunatic's cunning … a man who knows the masses without knowing anything of men".

7. Impressions of Lenin by Angelica Balabanoff

Balabanoff, like many, was at first impressed by Lenin's tremendous dynamism, but after breaking with the Bolsheviks she left Russia and joined the Italian socialists, taking an increasingly jaundiced view of him from the distance of exile. Like Gorky's, this brief memoir is the most human portrait of the man and contains some brilliant and disturbing flashes of insight into Lenin's ruthlessness and amorality.

8. Lenin: A Biography by Robert Service

If you need a quick fix on Lenin, his life and political career, then this is the best standard popular biography to date. It has benefited from access to the archives after the fall of communism and is particularly revealing about Lenin's family background, his relationship with his mother and sisters Anna and Mariya, as well as charting the difficulties Krupskaya had in getting on with them.

9. Three Who Made a Revolution by Bertram D Wolfe

One of the great, authoritative and insightful studies of the rise and development of Russian Marxism, closely interweaving the political careers of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. Long but highly readable, it is still a valuable standard 45 years after publication.

10. The Life of Lenin by Louis Fischer

One of three major Lenin biographies published in the mid-60s, this perceptive account is by a Jewish-American journalist who was based in Moscow from 1922, where he actually knew Lenin and became an expert on the Soviet system. Not particularly strong on Lenin's years in exile, it is extremely good on his years in power from 1917.

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The making of a revolutionary

• Formation of a revolutionary party
• Challenges of the Revolution of 1905 and World War I
• First return to Petrograd
• Decision to seize power
• Saving the Revolution
• Formation of the Third International
• Illness and death

• What caused the Russian Revolution of 1917?
• Why is it called the October Revolution if it took place in November?
• How did the revolution lead to the Russian Civil War?
• What happened to the tsar and his family?
• What is communism?

Vladimir Lenin

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• The History Learning Site - Biography of Vladimir Lenin
• Encyclopedia of Ukraine - Biography of Vladimir Lenin
• PBS - Commanding Heights - Vladimir Lenin
• GlobalSecurity.org - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
• Spartacus Educational - Biography of Lenin
• Alpha History - Biography of Vladimir Lenin
• Vladimir Ilich Lenin - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Vladimir Ilich Lenin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Where was Vladimir Lenin born?

Vladimir Lenin was born in Simbirsk, Russia.

Where was Vladimir Lenin educated?

Lenin studied law at Kazan University but was expelled after just three months. In spite of this, he achieved top ranking in law examinations and was awarded a law degree in 1891.

When was Vladimir Lenin married?

Lenin married Nadezhda Krupskaya on July 22, 1898. Krupskaya served as Lenin’s personal secretary and played a key organizational role in the socialist revolutionary group that became the Russian Communist Party.

How did Vladimir Lenin change the world?

As founder of the All-Russian Communist Party ( Bolsheviks ) and leader of the Bolshevik coup d'état (1917), Vladimir Lenin created the Soviet Union . Along with Karl Marx , Lenin created the communist worldview.

When did Vladimir Lenin die?

Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924, in Gorki, Russia.

Recent News

Vladimir Lenin (born April 10 [April 22, New Style], 1870, Simbirsk , Russia—died January 21, 1924, Gorki [later Gorki Leninskiye], near Moscow) was the founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), inspirer and leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and the architect, builder, and first head (1917–24) of the Soviet state . He was the founder of the organization known as Comintern (Communist International) and the posthumous source of “ Leninism ,” the doctrine codified and conjoined with Karl Marx ’s works by Lenin’s successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist worldview.

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

If the Bolshevik Revolution is—as some people have called it—the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be regarded as the century’s most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as both the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.

It is difficult to identify any particular events in his childhood that might prefigure his turn onto the path of a professional revolutionary. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk, which was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour. (He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901 during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia.) He was the third of six children born into a close-knit, happy family of highly educated and cultured parents. His mother was the daughter of a physician, while his father, though the son of a serf, became a schoolteacher and rose to the position of inspector of schools. Lenin, intellectually gifted, physically strong, and reared in a warm, loving home, early displayed a voracious passion for learning. He graduated from high school ranking first in his class. He distinguished himself in Latin and Greek and seemed destined for the life of a classical scholar . When he was 16, nothing in Lenin indicated a future rebel, still less a professional revolutionary—except, perhaps, his turn to atheism . But, despite the comfortable circumstances of their upbringing, all five of the Ulyanov children who reached maturity joined the revolutionary movement. This was not an uncommon phenomenon in tsarist Russia , where even the highly educated and cultured intelligentsia were denied elementary civil and political rights.

As an adolescent Lenin suffered two blows that unquestionably influenced his subsequent decision to take the path of revolution. First, his father was threatened shortly before his untimely death with premature retirement by a reactionary government that had grown fearful of the spread of public education. Second, in 1887 his beloved eldest brother, Aleksandr, a student at the University of St. Petersburg (later renamed Leningrad State University), was hanged for conspiring with a revolutionary terrorist group that plotted to assassinate Emperor Alexander III . Suddenly, at age 17, Lenin became the male head of the family, which was now stigmatized as having reared a “state criminal.”

Fortunately the income from his mother’s pension and inheritance kept the family in comfortable circumstances, although it could not prevent the frequent imprisonment or exile of her children. Moreover, Lenin’s high school principal (the father of Aleksandr Kerensky , who was later to lead the Provisional government deposed by Lenin’s Bolsheviks in November [October, O.S.] 1917) did not turn his back on the “criminal’s” family. He courageously wrote a character reference that smoothed Lenin’s admission to a university.

In autumn 1887 Lenin enrolled in the faculty of law of the imperial Kazan University (later renamed Kazan [V.I. Lenin] State University), but within three months he was expelled from the school, having been accused of participating in an illegal student assembly. He was arrested and banished from Kazan to his grandfather’s estate in the village of Kokushkino, where his older sister Anna had already been ordered by the police to reside. In the autumn of 1888, the authorities permitted him to return to Kazan but denied him readmission to the university. During this period of enforced idleness, he met exiled revolutionaries of the older generation and avidly read revolutionary political literature, especially Marx’s Das Kapital . He became a Marxist in January 1889.

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Lenin Biography

“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.”

Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol 6, p.366

Early Life – Lenin

Lenin was an able student, learning Latin and Greek. In 1887, he was thrown out of Kazan State University because he protested against the Tsar who was the king of the Russian Empire. He continued to read books and study ideas by himself, and in 1891 he got a license to become a lawyer.

In the same year that Lenin was expelled from University, his brother Alexander was hanged for his part in a bomb plot to kill Tsar Alexander III, and their sister Anna was sent to Tatarstan. This made Lenin furious, and he promised to get revenge for his brother’s death.

Lenin before the Revolution

Whilst studying law in St. Petersburg he learned about the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both radical Marxist philosophers from Germany. Lenin developed a lifelong philosophy of seeking to overthrow Capitalist society and replace it with a fairer Communist society. He saw existing Capitalist society as inherently unjust.

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.”

– Lenin

For becoming involved and writing about Marxism, Lenin was arrested and sent to prison in Siberia.

In July 1898, when he was still in Siberia, Lenin married Nadezhda Krupskaya. In 1899 he wrote a book called The Development of Capitalism in Russia” . In 1900, Lenin was set free from prison and allowed to go back home. He then travelled around Europe. He began to publish a Marxist newspaper called Iskra, the Russian word for “spark” or “lightning”. He also became an important member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party or RSDLP.

In 1903, Lenin had a major argument with another leader of the party, Julius Martov, which divided the party in two. Lenin wanted a strict system where power would only be given to the government. Martov disagreed, and wanted the government to give power to ordinary people. People who agreed with Martov were called Mensheviks (meaning “the minority”). The people who agreed with Lenin were called Bolsheviks. (“the majority”)

In 1907 he travelled around Europe and visited many socialist meetings and events. During World War I, he lived in big European cities like London, Paris and Geneva. At the beginning of the war, he represented the Bolsheviks at the Second International which was formed of left-wing parties. However, the meeting was shut down when the disparate factions disagreed about whether to support or oppose the First World War. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were one of only a few groups who were against the war because of their Marxist ideas.

1917 Revolution

In 1917, people started rumours that Lenin had received money from the Germans. That made him look bad because a lot of Russians had died fighting Germany in the war. The rumours were so bad he was afraid he could get arrested or even killed. He left Russia and went to Finland, a country right next to Russia, where he could hide and carry on with his work on Communism.

After Tsar Nicholas II gave up his throne during the February Revolution, Germany hoped that they could persuade Russia to leave the war. The German government helped Lenin to secretly return to Russia, in the hope that Lenin would help end Russia’s involvement in the war. Lenin was still considered to be a very important Bolshevik leader, and he saw the great discontent of the population giving a unique opportunity for revolution. He wrote that he wanted a revolution by ordinary workers to overthrow the government that had replaced Nicholas.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, headed the Petrograd Soviet and other Soviets all over Russia in a revolution against Kerensky’s government, which was known as the October Revolution. The revolution was successful as the army was unwilling to turn on the people. Lenin announced that Russia was now a Communist country and by November, Lenin was chosen as its leader.

Because Lenin wanted an end to World War One in Russia, he signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in February 1918. While the treaty ended the war with Germany, Russia paid a high price in terms of lost land. But to Lenin ending the war was critical.

“The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war on the terms indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities without exception.”

Report on Peace (8 November 1917), Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume 26

The Russian treaty with Germany made the Allied powers, e.g. Great Britain and France displeased. Also, the great powers feared that if a Communist revolution could happen in Russia, it could happen elsewhere in Europe.  Allied governments sent support to ‘White’ Russians – people loyal to the Tsar or Kerensky’s government. There was an on-going civil war, with the Bolsheviks having to fight across the country. Lenin made rules that as much food as possible was to be given to Communist soldiers in Russia’s new Red Army. This was a factor in winning the civil war, but, during this period, many ordinary many died of hunger or disease.

After the war, Lenin brought in the New Economic Policy to try and make things better for the country. Some private enterprise was allowed, but not much. Businessmen, known as nepmen, could only own small industries, not factories.

After a woman named Fanny Kaplan shot Lenin in 1918, he started having strokes. By May 1922, he was badly paralysed. After another stroke in March 1923, he could not speak or move. Lenin’s fourth stroke killed him in January 1924. Just before he died, Lenin had wanted to get rid of Stalin because he thought he was dangerous to the country and the government.

The city of St. Petersburg had been renamed Petrograd by the Tsar in 1914, but was renamed Leningrad in memory of Lenin in 1924.

Before Lenin died, he said he wished to be buried beside his mother. When he died, Stalin decided to let the people in Russia come and look at his body. Because so many people kept coming, they decided not to bury him and preserved his body instead. A building was built in Red Square, Moscow over the body so that people could see it. It is called the Lenin Mausoleum. Many Russians and tourists still go there to see his body today.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Lenin ”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net 23 August 2009. Updated 2 February 2018.

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