The historical significance of Lenin. VIP survey: what role did Lenin play in the history of Russia

Lenin - the brilliant leader of the Russian proletariat

Comrades, seven years ago, in this square, for the first time in revolutionary Russia, the word of that man was heard, whose name is now on the lips of the working people of the whole world. Seven years of hard struggle lie behind us. Many of the leaders of our great revolution feel as if they had taken 70 years on their shoulders. Many of the leaders of the revolution, who entered the broad road of revolutionary struggle together with the late Vladimir Ilyich, just like him, fell asleep forever. But our country has not grown old in these seven years, it has become younger, it has thrown off the tsarist yoke that had oppressed our country for three centuries, it has thrown off the yoke of bourgeois rule that has oppressed our country for decades. And when Vladimir Ilyich made his first speech late in the evening of April 3, old style, in 1917 on this square, his name was known only to the leaders of the working class, the most conscious workers of the most advanced city of the revolution, then Petrograd. Tens of thousands of workers with delight and boundless faith saw in Vladimir Ilyich their leader and teacher. But this recognition was far from universal at that time. In the same Petrograd, from the very first minute when Vladimir Ilyich set foot on its soil, a campaign of unheard-of slander against him began. Recognition was not universal even among workers. The majority of Petrograd workers, the majority of the then Petrograd Soviet, followed not Lenin, but those who dragged the Russian workers to support the bourgeoisie, to support the imperialist war. But this group of advanced workers, then numbering only tens of thousands, was the brains of the working class of our country; these were the most advanced workers of the most advanced city. When the genius of the best of the leaders of the international proletariat was added to these tens of thousands of leading workers of the working class, we all felt immediately overnight, during those hours during which Vladimir Ilyich arrived here, that the strength of the working class had increased tenfold. And the more persecution there was against the Bolshevik Party, the more slander was spread specifically about our leader and teacher, the deeper we penetrated into the hearts and thoughts of the working class of our country. And when Vladimir Ilyich closed his eyes forever, after seven years of a difficult struggle that turned all of Russia upside down, shaking millions and tens of millions of people to the bottom, not only friends, but also many of their former enemies with the greatest respect bare their heads in front of Vladimir Ilyich’s grave. We have all heard recognition not only from the entire working class, not only from all the peasants of our country, but also from the people of the whole world.

The monument erected to Vladimir Ilyich is outwardly modest. As far as I know, today the first attempt is being made to create such a monument in our country. I recently read in the newspapers a report about how the American bourgeois democracy is going to erect a monument to one of its generals, a certain General Lee. His name probably means little to you and even to those who systematically follow American life. This general has some merit in the liberation of one of the states of America. The monument is supposed to be of immense size. They say that the Egyptian pyramid is only slightly larger than the hoof of the horse on which this notorious General Lee will sit. Compared to the hat he is wearing, the person standing next to him seems like a small toy.

We do not and do not intend to erect such monuments to the world leader of the working class. Yes, he doesn’t need them. Comrade's name Lenin, we can safely vouch for this, is known to every person in America. You will not find a single person there, not only white, but also black (there are about 15 million blacks in America), who would not know who Comrade is. Lenin. And the monuments erected to him are much more modest in appearance.

Comrade Lenin led the Russian working class through three revolutions. He was the recognized leader of the advanced part of the working class of our country already in 1905. He was the recognized leader of the wider working people at the beginning of the February Revolution of 1917. Traveling from distant exile, Vladimir Ilyich, like all of us, was convinced that the government of Prince Lvov, the adventurer Kerensky and the landowner Guchkov would put him in prison as soon as he appeared at the Finlyandsky Station. He was pleasantly disappointed, like all of us, when he became convinced that Prince Lvov, Kerensky and Guchkov could not arrest him, for tens of thousands of workers even then honored him as their greatest leader and teacher. Comrade Lenin was already the recognized leader of the working class and peasantry of our country. When the great hour of the October Revolution struck, which set itself the task of ending not only the power of the tsars, but also the power of the capitalists, the working masses, everything that was honest and conscious in the working class and peasantry, went entirely for Comrade. Lenin. In the July days of 1917, Vladimir Ilyich was again driven underground by the Menshevik-SR socialist ministers, who then thundered throughout Russia, declaring Comrade. Lenin as a German spy.

They drove him underground. In “free” Russia, in Russia, which they called free, where the Black Hundred General Kornilov ruled freely, where Kronstadt sailors and Vyborg proletarians were freely shot on the streets of the capital, in free, in their opinion, Russia, where priests and bishops were buried with the greatest triumph several white officers killed in the July days, at a time when we had to secretly bury our dead - tortured and shot sailors and workers, in this so-called free Russia there was no place for Vladimir Ilyich, he was driven underground, he had to to live in a haystack for three weeks, wander around Sestroretsk, had to escape to Finland, and he crossed the border, disguised as a conductor, on a locomotive.

Lenin in anticipation of the October Revolution

During the reign of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, he was supposed to illegally prepare the great October uprising, first of all rousing the Leningrad workers against it. From a distant exile (from a distant exile, not geographically, for Finland is close) Vladimir Ilyich wrote the following great words on the eve of the October Revolution. In an article that had never seen the light of day and has now been found, dated September 22, 1917, Vladimir Ilyich wrote:

“A new revolution is clearly growing in the country, a revolution of other classes (compared to those who carried out the revolution against tsarism). Then there was a revolution of the proletariat, peasantry and bourgeoisie in alliance with Anglo-French finance capital against tsarism.

Now the revolution of the proletariat and the majority of the peasants, namely the poor peasantry, is growing against the bourgeoisie, against its ally, Anglo-French finance capital, against its government apparatus, headed by the Bonapartist Kerensky.”

Comrades, now these words seem to be something self-evident. Now it is clear to us all: the February Revolution was a revolution made by the hands of workers and soldiers, but the fruits of which were reaped by the bourgeoisie, acting in alliance with the British capitalists, in particular with the British Ambassador Buchanan, who was here in Leningrad and led Miliukov. This has always happened in many, many revolutions before the October Revolution. Everywhere and everywhere on the fronts workers, artisans, and working people fought with the police, but the bourgeoisie reaped the fruits of the victories. Our October Revolution, which was inspired by Vladimir Ilyich with his genius, differs from all the others in that the workers not only fought the bourgeoisie, not only freed their prisoners from prisons, not only took upon themselves the menial hard work of physical battle with the oppressors, the greatness of the October Revolution lies in the fact that its results went not to an alien class, not to the bourgeoisie, but to those who made this revolution, who carried out the whole struggle with their hump, who took to the road first, who shed their blood, who took upon themselves the determination to raise the banner of the great uprising . And, comrades, if there was a man who illuminated the way for the working class with a mighty spotlight for a long time to come; if there was a person who skillfully foresaw the difficulties of the struggle and timely anticipated the treachery of the enemy, who was able to process in his remarkable brain all the experience of numerous previous revolutions throughout the world; if there was a person who weighed all the pros and cons in the palm of his hand; If there was a man who raised the entire working class to the bottom and moved it to a difficult struggle unprecedented in history, then this man was Comrade. Lenin. Under his leadership, our party, which includes everything that is best in the working class and the peasantry, which picked up, grain by grain, everything that is most conscious, literate, and most courageous in the working class, under his leadership our party only became more powerful from the blows of its enemies. united, steely, only more seasoned and only more organized in preparing for the upcoming battles. If you want to express the importance of Vladimir Ilyich in a nutshell, it must be said that his greatness lay in the fact that he was able to accurately foresee the transition from the bourgeois revolution to the proletarian one. He managed to accelerate this moment, to become the standard bearer of the great proletarian revolution. He managed to help his class - the working class - to ensure that the fruits of victories went to him and not to any other class. Vladimir Ilyich became a beacon for workers all over the world. There is no corner in the whole world where the death of Vladimir Ilyich is not mourned. I heard the other day the story of an old leader of the English working class, Tom Man. He told how tens of thousands of non-party workers and Menshevik workers in England (there are still many of them there), with what emotional trepidation they hang on every word about Vladimir Ilyich. Every meeting of English workers now rises and stands silently for several minutes in honor and memory of Comrade. Lenin. And, comrades, if you think about what the ordinary Menshevik worker in England experiences during these few minutes, when he stands silently in deep thought, honoring the memory of Comrade. Lenin, then we will not be mistaken if we say that he is thinking through precisely the transition from bourgeois views to proletarian ones. He, perhaps gropingly, perhaps not quite clearly, instinctively, is thinking through precisely this transition from February to October - the path that, due to a happy coincidence of circumstances, the workers of our country traversed over the course of several months, the path that the workers of others countries are now undergoing many years of bloody, cruel, merciless war. The Russian working class has the right to be proud that such a genius has emerged from its ranks, that our country, our party, our class, our people have put forward a man who has become a standard-bearer for the working people of the whole world.

Lenin and Leningrad workers

Comrades, I would like to say two words specifically about what Vladimir Ilyich was for us, for Leningrad, for the Leningrad workers. Leningrad is only a small corner of the world, but an important one. It so happened that our city became a leading outpost of the international proletarian revolution. You know everything that V.I. began his activities in our city. You know, he stated this to us more than once, that many of his thoughts were inspired by the best workers of St. Petersburg, whom he taught, but from whom he learned, to whom he told a lot, but to whom he knew how to listen. You all know that the greatest historical work accomplished by V.I. is most associated with the Leningrad workers, who met him seven years ago on April 3 among tens of thousands and a few months later, in October 1917, followed him among several hundred thousand. V.I. believed in the Leningrad workers as the most powerful revolutionary force in our country. I will read you one passage on this matter. On July 12, 1918, when the difficulties of the revolution were especially difficult, when we were surrounded on all sides, V.I. addressed a letter to the Petrograd workers, which was then circulating in workers’ circles and, again, only the other day published. In this letter he said:

“...The kulaks hate Soviet power, the power of the workers, and will inevitably overthrow it if the workers do not immediately strain all their strength to prevent the campaign of the kulaks against the Soviets, in order to completely defeat the kulaks before they have time to unite.

Conscious workers can carry out this task at this moment, they can unite the rural poor around themselves, they can defeat the kulaks and utterly defeat them if the advanced detachments of workers understand their duty, exert all their strength, and organize a mass march into the villages.

There is no one to do this except the St. Petersburg workers, because there are no others in Russia as conscious as the St. Petersburg workers. Sitting in St. Petersburg, starving, hanging around empty factories, toying with the absurd dream of restoring St. Petersburg industry or defending St. Petersburg, this is stupid and criminal. This is the death of our entire revolution. St. Petersburg workers must break with this stupidity, drive out the fools defending it, and move in tens of thousands to the Urals, the Volga, the South, where there is plenty of grain, where they can feed themselves and their families, where it should help organize the poor, where St. Petersburg workers are needed , as an organizer, leader, leader."

Think about these words. At the very first difficulties of the revolution, V.I. first of all turns his attention to the Leningrad workers. He addresses them as proletarian freemen, as proletarian free Cossacks. He tells them: you are the most educated, the most revolutionary, the most far-sighted workers, there is no need for you to sit and watch how your industry slowly dies; rise in tens of thousands and go to the South, to the Urals, beat the whites, build Soviet power, take on the role of collective organizers, teachers of the Russian people. You remember, I think many of you remember these difficult years when the fate of the revolution was being decided. They were resolved not only in October 1917, but also after, when the main difficulties began. V.I.’s voice was heard by the proletarian freemen. Leningrad has risen. The best that was in the working class of our city said goodbye to their families, to their homes and rushed to where the pointing finger of the great teacher called. Many, many tens of thousands of our workers joined the first detachments of the Red Army, became organizers of volost and district Soviet bodies, and created the foundations of the apparatus of the proletarian state. Many, many thousands of these comrades of ours died at the fronts. And wherever the rains wash the bones of those who fell in the struggle for the October Revolution, everywhere there will be not one, not two, but many dozens of Leningrad workers who died for our cause. As soon as it became a little easier, as soon as it became clear that we had won the main struggle, V.I. must help our impoverished industry get back on its feet. Now our proletarian Leningrad freemen are gradually being pulled back, gradually gathering from all over the republic, and part of it, as far as can be judged, has now returned to our factories and factories. On the initiative of V.I., the republic, despite all our poverty, gave 10 million rubles in gold to create a powerful power plant, which should serve as a lever for raising our industry. It is possible quite convincingly and expressively in the words of Comrade. Lenin to give an answer to all those who tell us that the Leningrad industry cannot be raised, that it needs to be transferred somewhere else, that Leningrad is poorly located due to its proximity to the borders, etc.: we will drive such fools to the neck . There was a time when tens of thousands of proletarian freemen of Leningrad gave the blood of their hearts and everything they had in order to defend the gains of the proletarian revolution in those places where the matter was then being decided. Yes, in 1918, 1919, 1920. the matter was decided on the battlefields against Kolchak, Denikin, etc., the matter was decided in the struggle against the village kulaks, who did not give bread and dreamed of taking the revolution by famine. It's a different time now. Now the fate of the revolution is being decided by what?

Now the question is: will we raise our economy, will we hold on to the mighty center of the proletarian revolution? But there are not many such centers in our country. And Leningrad is one of the first such centers. No wonder Comrade Lenin said: nowhere else are there such workers as in Leningrad. The time has come when, with the same heroism as the Leningrad workers in 1918-1919. fought against the whites, with the same heroism, perseverance, tenacity they will work to raise the Leningrad industry. Leningrad workers were loved by Comrade. Lenin as his brothers. I think, comrades, that we have no better way to pay a real tribute of respect and love to our teacher and leader, Vladimir Ilyich, than to work now to raise the industry of our city, to strengthen the power of the working class of our country. The broad non-party working masses understood this. This was understood by those hundreds of thousands of workers joining our ranks following Lenin’s call. And, of course, the flower of the Leningrad proletariat will never forget this basic task. Year after year passes, the heroic period of direct battles for the victory of workers' power is pushed back.

Our monument to Ilyich

But this does not mean that we are not still faced with the great tasks of the socialist revolution. No, for the first time they now stood before us in their full height, in their full size. They will appear before us on an international scale. You remember that Vladimir Ilyich’s program is not only about helping the working class win in our country. His program is to help the working class throughout the world win. Its program is the activities of the Communist International. His program is an international proletarian revolution. And many, many of us will still have the opportunity to work on this big program of Vladimir Ilyich after the initial small program has been roughly completed. Here, comrades, everyone must work in his place, at his post, on the great work that V.I. bequeathed to us. His ideas are great and simple, just as he himself was great and simple. His idea - the union of workers and peasants - has now become so clear and popular that every pioneer, every child of the working class knows it. But this idea has not yet become sufficiently flesh and blood. Let us work, first of all, to ensure that the alliance of the working class and the peasantry goes deep into the depths of the Russian countryside, so that every Red Army soldier, every non-party worker, every peasant woman, every cook, as V.I. liked to say, understands the greatest and wonderful idea that served as a lever in the hands of Vladimir Ilyich and the working class led by him. Let us each at our post work to ensure that the cause for which V.I. laid down his bones wins not only in our country, but throughout the world. Let Leningrad and the Leningrad workers, the Leningrad proletarian great freemen, which played such a colossal role in the great work begun by V.I., let this freemen prepare its younger generation for the times when the Leningrad freemen will rush to fight not only against the Russian Kolchaks, but and worldwide. Rest assured, when the time comes, your freemen will go to work for the world proletarian revolution. Let us raise the children of the Russian working class to fight for Ilyich’s behests. Let us instill in them what a great deed was done by the man whom we honor, and with us the working people of the whole world honor. Our party, Soviet organizations and workers of all Leningrad, together with trade unions, will do everything possible to erect the first one on this square; a modest monument to V.I. But, comrades, the most important thing is to work in the spirit of V.I., to educate the younger generation in the spirit of V.I.’s covenants. I. The most important thing is to understand the depth of thought, the greatness: the deeds of the greatest of men, the greatest of revolutionaries, of friends of the people that the world has known so far. Let's work like this. V.I. Lenin taught us. From generation to generation, let us instill in the minds of the Leningrad workers, and through them the workers of the rest of Russia, that there is no higher title than that of the proletarian worker who helped Lenin carry out his work and was his contemporaries. You know about the commendable reviews given by Comrade Lenin to the Leningrad workers. In general, Comrade Lenin was stingy with words of praise even towards his best friends. But I don’t know who else he praised as much as the Leningrad workers. This places the greatest responsibility on us. This is the greatest honor for the Leningrad workers. They went where the flame of thought and the revolutionary genius of V.I. called. They would follow him even when Lenin fell asleep forever. They will follow the path of V.I. even when he himself, a great builder, a great friend of the people and a great revolutionary, when he himself, having given everything he had, to the last drop for the cause of the working class and peasantry, died.

146 years ago, Vladimir Lenin, a revolutionary, politician, one of the founders of the Bolshevik movement and organizer of the October Revolution of 1917, was born. Lenin turned the Russian Empire on its head, and his role remains controversial for many. What role did Vladimir Lenin play in the history of Russia?

Evgeny Pchelov, historian

Objectively speaking, it was a colossal role, because another country was created. If we consider Russian history as a whole, then such people who so turned the path of the country upside down can be counted on one hand: Prince Vladimir, Peter I... Lenin, in fact, is one of such people. A completely different country was created, this is an activity on a global scale. But the assessment of this may depend on various circumstances. It seems to me that this role had disastrous consequences. For me, Lenin’s role is a negative role; all this upheaval had dire consequences. But for some it is a great man, the Soviet system, and the Soviet Union is a happy life. For me, everything that happened in 1917 was a tragic turn, after which the centuries-old old Russian civilization was destroyed.

Andrey Kuraev, deacon

I believe that it is quite destructive. You see, Lenin is indeed a very talented politician and analyst, but at the same time he is reckless enough to take risks and win. But still, he did a rather terrible thing: he gave people the right to meanness and disgust. That's actually why he won.

Sergei Obukhov, State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation

Every nation has such a concept as a “founding father.” The founding father of the Russian Federation is Lenin. Our own country is the successor to the era that Lenin created. We should be grateful to him for founding a state that has become the world's second superpower. When they talk about the role of Lenin, it is worth saying first of all that he is a creative politician. I definitely have a positive attitude towards Lenin, I urge everyone to respect this historical figure, no matter what position people take. In Europe and the United States, they honor and respect their founding fathers, therefore, if we want to be a civilized state, we must also respect the memory of Lenin.

Nikolai Tretyakov, director of the Smolny Historical and Memorial Center

Huge. Lenin breathed new life into Russian society, he is undoubtedly a great man. He's a scoundrel, of course, but that's the second question. Are we talking about Peter the Great well? Peter I, in no less decisive ways, forced Russia to turn its face to the West. Lenin forced Russia and the whole world to turn their faces to those who work. If there had not been an experiment with socialist Russia, the whole world would have lived in the initial stage of capitalism. Lenin's experiment - bloody, not always thought out - led to the fact that people began to think about the working man. A worker, not in the sense of a proletarian who turns the wheel of a screw-cutting machine with his own hands, but about any worker: a professor, a teacher, a doctor, that is, about people who were not thought of before while the world was in the hands of the rich, who neglected such people. Lenin showed that, guys, if you do not treat the proletariat well, the working elements, the poor people, then the same thing will happen as in Russia. And he demonstrated this in Germany and Austria. In China, by the way, too. So Lenin is a great man. God forbid, of course, if the experiment had taken root, but what he did, another person, of course, could not have done; no other October leaders stood close to him.

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

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 of the October Revolution of 1917, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government ) RSFSR and USSR. Philosopher, Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the Soviet state. The scope of his main scientific work is 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 (surname spelling option: 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 Emperor Alexander 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 a 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 disagreement 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. During Soviet times, a house-museum of Lenin was created in this village.

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 the Russian liberation movement, and 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. 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 their exile in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A.N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities, 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 contributed to the creation of a network of 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, paragraph 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 were not resolved because the editorial board was split 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 the scientific teachings of Marx in order to promote the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that combat units should use every opportunity for active work, not 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.

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 financial dependence 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 about the official position of the party on the issue of terror, Lenin expressed his own: “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

A large number of 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 World War I began, 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.

At 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, defended his thesis on the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war and came 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 newspapers about the 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. Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded the revolution that soon took place 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. On 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 of 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 of the 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. The spirit of the Great French Revolution with the then execution of the king and queen 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 the official version, by the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, which led to severe 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 indicates 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:

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. Lenin's last public speech 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. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was 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 the 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 implements its own morality, 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 the 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

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 leftist 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 record, 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 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 boys' 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.

In the biography of Lenin by Vladimir Ilyich this time occupied a special place: at first the boy received a home education - the family spoke several languages ​​and attached great importance to discipline, which was monitored mother . The Ulyanovs lived in Simbirsk at that time, so he subsequently studied at the local gymnasium, where he entered in 1879 and whose director was the father of the future head of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, F.M. Kerensky. In 1887, Lenin graduated from the educational institution with honors and continued his studies at the University of Kazan. It was there that his passion for Marxism began, which led to joining a circle where the works of not only K. Marx and F. Engels, but also G. Plekhanov, who had a great influence on the young man, were discussed. A little later, this became the reason for his expulsion from the university. Subsequently, Lenin passed the law exams as an external student.

The beginning of the revolutionary path

Having left his native Simbirsk, where he lived parents , he studied political economy and was interested in social democracy. This period was also distinguished by the future leader’s trips to Europe, upon his return from which he founded the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

For this, the revolutionary was arrested and exiled to the Yenisei province, where he not only wrote most of his works, but also established a personal life with N. Krupskaya.

In 1900, his period of exile ended, and Lenin settled in Pskov, where Vladimir Ilyich published the Zarya magazine and the Iskra newspaper. In addition to him, S. I. Radchenko, as well as P. B. Struve and M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky were involved in the publication.

Years of the first emigration

There are many things connected with Lenin’s life during this period. interesting facts . In July of the same year, Vladimir Ulyanov left for Munich, where Iskra settled for two years, then moved first to London, where the first congress of the RSDLP was held, and then to Geneva.

Between 1905 and 1907 Lenin lived in Switzerland. After the failure of the first Russian revolution and the arrest of its instigators, he became the leader of the party.

Active political activity

Despite the constant moving, the decade from the first to the second revolution was very fruitful for V.I. Lenin: he published the newspaper “Pravda”, worked on his journalism and preparation for the February uprising, and after the October revolution, which ended in victory. Full the biography says that during these years his comrades-in-arms were Zinoviev and Kamenev, and then he first met I. Stalin.

The last years of life and the cult of personality

At the Congress of Soviets he headed a new government, called the Council of People's Commissars (SNK).

Brief biography of Lenin says that it was he who negotiated peace with Germany and softened domestic policy, creating conditions for private trade - since the state was not able to provide for citizens, it gave them the opportunity to feed themselves. Under his leadership, the Red Army was founded, and in 1922, a whole new state on the world map, called the USSR. It was also Lenin who introduced the initiative for widespread electrification and insisted on a legislative regulation of terror.

In the same year, the health of the leader of the proletariat deteriorated sharply. After a two-year illness, he died on January 21, 1924.

Lenin's death gave rise to a phenomenon that later became known as the cult of personality. The leader's body was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum, monuments were erected throughout the country and numerous infrastructure facilities were renamed. Subsequently, many books and films were dedicated to the life of Vladimir Lenin for children and adults who painted him exclusively in a positive way. After the collapse of the USSR, controversial issues began to arise in the biography of the great politician, in particular, about his nationality.

Other biography options

Lenin's role in the history of Russia is enormous. He was the main ideologist of the revolution and the overthrow of the autocracy in Russia, organized the Bolshevik Party, which was able to come to power in a fairly short time and completely change Russia politically and economically. Thanks to Lenin, Russia transformed from an Empire into a socialist state, which was based on the ideas of communism and the supremacy of the working class.

The state created by Lenin lasted almost throughout the entire 20th century and became one of the strongest in the world. Lenin's personality is still controversial among historians, but everyone agrees that he is one of the greatest world leaders who has ever existed in world history.

February Revolution in Russia

The beginning of the revolution and the reasons for its occurrence

The February Revolution began as a spontaneous impulse of the masses, but its success was also facilitated by an acute political crisis at the top and the sharp dissatisfaction of liberal-bourgeois circles with the autocratic policies of the tsar. Bread riots, anti-war rallies, demonstrations, strikes at the city’s industrial enterprises superimposed on discontent and unrest among the capital’s garrison of thousands, who joined the revolutionary masses who took to the streets.

The reasons for the February Revolution of 1917 were anti-war sentiment, the plight of workers and peasants, political lack of rights, the decline in the authority of the autocratic government and its inability to carry out reforms.

The driving force in the struggle was the working class, led by the revolutionary Bolshevik Party. The allies of the workers were the peasants, demanding the redistribution of land. The Bolsheviks explained to the soldiers the goals and objectives of the struggle.

February 23, 1917 is considered the beginning of the February Revolution. At first the government did not attach much importance to these events. The day before, Nicholas II, having assumed the duties of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, left Petrograd for Headquarters in Mogilev. However, events escalated. On February 24, 214 thousand people were already on strike in Petrograd, and on the 25th - over 300 thousand (80% of workers). Demonstrations spread. The Cossacks sent to disperse them began to go over to the side of the demonstrators. Commander of the Petrograd Military District, General S.S. Hubble received an order from the king: “I command you to stop the riots in the capital tomorrow.” On February 26, Khabalov ordered fire on the demonstrators: 50 people were killed and hundreds were wounded.

The outcome of any revolution depends on whose side the army is on. Defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907. was largely due to the fact that in general the army remained faithful to tsarism. In February 1917, there were 180 thousand soldiers in Petrograd who were being prepared to be sent to the front. There were many recruits here from workers mobilized for participation in strikes. They did not want to go to the front and easily succumbed to revolutionary propaganda. The shooting of the demonstrators caused outrage among the garrison soldiers. Soldiers of the Pavlovsk regiment seized the arsenal and handed over the weapons to the workers. On March 1, there were already 170 thousand soldiers on the side of the rebels. The remnants of the garrison, together with Khabalov, surrendered. The transition of the garrison to the side of the revolution ensured its victory. Tsarist ministers were arrested, police stations were destroyed and burned, and political prisoners were released from prisons.

Creation of new authorities. Petrograd Soviet of Workers' Deputies (February 27, 1917). The Petrograd Soviet consisted of 250 members. Chairman - Menshevik N.S. Chkhidze, deputies - Menshevik M.I. Skobelev and Trudovik A.F. Kirensky (1881-1970). The Petrograd Soviet was dominated by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, at that time the most numerous left-wing parties. They put forward the slogan of “civil peace,” the consolidation of all classes and political freedoms. By decision of the Petrograd Soviet, the tsar's finances were confiscated.

“Order No. 1” was issued by the Petrograd Soviet on March 1, 1917. Elected soldiers’ committees were created in military units, and weapons were placed at their disposal. The titles of officers and the giving of honor to them were abolished. Although this order was intended only for the Petrograd garrison, it soon spread to the fronts. “Order No. 1” was destructive, undermined the principle of unity of command in the army, leading to its collapse and mass desertion.