What is the name of Lenin and who is he. Participation in the work of the II Congress of the RSDRP

Lenin (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich, the greatest proletarian revolutionary and thinker, successor to the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, organizer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, founder of the Soviet socialist state, teacher and leader of the working people of the whole world.

Lenin's grandfather, Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanov, a serf from the Nizhny Novgorod province, later lived in the city of Astrakhan, was a tailor-craftsman. Father - Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, after graduating from Kazan University, taught in secondary schools in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod, and then was an inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province. Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (nee Blank), the daughter of a doctor, having received a home education, passed the exams for the title of teacher externally; devoted herself entirely to the upbringing of her children. The elder brother, Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov, was executed in 1887 for participating in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. Sisters - Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova and younger brother - Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov became prominent figures in the Communist Party.

In 1879-87 L. (Lenin) studied at the Simbirsk Gymnasium. The spirit of protest against the tsarist system, social and national oppression, awakened early in him. Advanced Russian literature, the works of V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev and especially N. G. Chernyshevsky contributed to the formation of his revolutionary views. From his older brother L. learned about Marxist literature. After graduating from high school with a gold medal, L. entered Kazan University, but in December 1887 he was arrested for active participation in a revolutionary gathering of students, expelled from the university, and exiled to the village of Kokushkino in the Kazan province. From that time on, L. devoted his entire life to the struggle against autocracy and capitalism, to the cause of the liberation of the working people from oppression and exploitation. In October 1888 L. returned to Kazan. Here he joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, in which the works of K. Marx, F. Engels, G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. The works of Marx and Engels played a decisive role in shaping L.'s worldview—he became a staunch Marxist.

In 1891, L. passed the exams externally for the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University and began working as an assistant to a barrister in Samara, where the Ulyanov family moved in 1889. Here he organized a circle of Marxists, established contacts with the revolutionary youth of other cities of the Volga region, and delivered essays directed against populism. The first of the surviving works of L. belongs to the Samara period - the article "New Economic Movements in Peasant Life."

At the end of August 1893, L. moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined a Marxist circle, whose members were S. I. Radchenko, P. K. Zaporozhets, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, and others. . Unshakable faith in the victory of the working class, extensive knowledge, a deep understanding of Marxism and the ability to apply it to the resolution of vital issues that worried the masses, earned L. the respect of the St. Petersburg Marxists and made L. their recognized leader. He establishes contacts with advanced workers (I. V. Babushkin, V. A. Shelgunov, and others), directs workers' circles, explains the need for a transition from circle propaganda of Marxism to revolutionary agitation among the broad proletarian masses.

L. was the first of the Russian Marxists to set the task of creating a party of the working class in Russia as an urgent practical task and led the struggle of the revolutionary Social Democrats for its implementation. L. believed that it should be a proletarian party of a new type, in terms of its principles, forms and methods of activity meeting the requirements of a new era - the era of imperialism and socialist revolution.

Having accepted the central idea of ​​Marxism about the historical mission of the working class as the grave-digger of capitalism and the builder of communist society, L. gives all the strength of his creative genius, all-encompassing erudition, colossal energy, and rare capacity for work to selfless service to the cause of the proletariat, becomes a professional revolutionary, and takes shape as the leader of the working class.

In 1894, L. wrote the work “What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?”, At the end of 1894 - early 1895 - the work “The economic content of populism and criticism of it in the book of Mr. Struve (Reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature )". Already these first major works of L. were distinguished by a creative approach to the theory and practice of the labor movement. In them, L. subjected the subjectivism of the Narodniks and the objectivism of the “legal Marxists” to devastating criticism, and showed a consistently Marxist approach to the analysis of Russian. In reality, he characterized the tasks of the proletariat of Russia, developed the idea of ​​an alliance between the working class and the peasantry, substantiated the need to create a truly revolutionary party in Russia. In April 1895, L. went abroad to establish contact with the Emancipation of Labor group. In Switzerland he met Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue and other leaders of the international working-class movement. In September 1895, returning from abroad, L. visited Vilnius, Moscow and Orekhovo-Zuevo, where he established contacts with local Social Democrats. In the autumn of 1895, on the initiative and under the leadership of L., the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single organization—the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which was the germ of a revolutionary proletarian party and, for the first time in Russia, began to unite scientific socialism with the mass working-class movement.

On the night of December 8 (20) to December 9 (21), 1895, L., together with his associates in the Union of Struggle, was arrested and imprisoned, from where he continued to lead the Union. In prison, L. wrote "Project and explanation of the program of the Social Democratic Party", a number of articles and leaflets, prepared materials for his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." In February 1897, L. was exiled for 3 years to the village. Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province. For active revolutionary work, N. K. Krupskaya was also sentenced to exile. As the bride of L., she was also sent to Shushenskoye, where she became his wife. Here, L. established and maintained contact with the Social Democrats of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, and other cities, with the Emancipation of Labor group, corresponded with the Social Democrats who were in exile in the North and Siberia, rallied around him exiled social democrats of the Minusinsk district. In exile, L. wrote over 30 works, including the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" and the pamphlet "The Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats", which were of great importance for the development of the program, strategy and tactics of the party. In 1898, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held in Minsk, proclaiming the formation of a Social Democratic Party in Russia and publishing the Manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. With the main provisions of the "Manifesto" L. solidarized. However, the party has not actually been created yet. The congress, which took place without the participation of L. and other prominent Marxists, was unable to work out a program and party rules and overcome the disunity of the Social Democratic movement. L. developed a practical plan for the creation of a Marxist party in Russia; The most important means of achieving this goal was to become, as L. believed, an all-Russian illegal political newspaper. Fighting for the creation of a proletarian party of a new type, irreconcilable to opportunism, L. opposed the revisionists in international social democracy (E. Bernstein and others) and their supporters in Russia (the Economists). In 1899 he composed the "Protest of the Russian Social Democrats" directed against "Economism". The "Protest" was discussed and signed by 17 exiled Marxists.

After the end of his exile, L. on January 29 (February 10), 1900, left Shushenskoye. Following to a new place of residence, L. stopped in Ufa, Moscow, etc., illegally visited St. Petersburg, everywhere establishing ties with the Social Democrats. Having settled in Pskov in February 1900, L. did a great deal of work in organizing the newspaper, and in a number of cities he created strongholds for it. In July 1900, L. went abroad, where he set up the publication of the Iskra newspaper. L. was the direct head of the newspaper. Iskra played an exceptional role in the ideological and organizational preparation of the revolutionary proletarian party, in demarcation with the opportunists. It became the center of association of parties. forces, education desks. frames. Subsequently, L. noted that “the entire flower of the class-conscious proletariat took the side of the Iskra” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 26, p. 344).

From 1900 to 1905, L. lived in Munich, London, and Geneva. In December 1901, L. for the first time signed one of his articles published in Iskra with the pseudonym Lenin (he also had pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, and others).

In the struggle to create a new type of party, Lenin's work What Is To Be Done? Painful questions of our movement” (1902). In it L. criticized "economism" and highlighted the main problems of building the party, its ideology and politics. L. outlined the most important theoretical questions in the articles The Agrarian Program of Russian Social Democracy (1902) and The National Question in Our Program (1903). With the leading participation of L., the editors of Iskra developed a draft Party Program, which formulated the demand for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the socialist transformation of society, which is absent in the programs of Western European Social Democratic parties. L. wrote the draft Charter of the RSDLP, drew up a work plan and drafts of almost all the resolutions of the upcoming party congress. In 1903, the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP was held. At this congress, the process of unification of revolutionary Marxist organizations was completed and the party of the working class of Russia was formed on the ideological, political and organizational principles developed by L. A proletarian party of a new type, the Bolshevik Party, was created. “Bolshevism has existed as a current of political thought and as a political party since 1903,” L. wrote in 1920 (ibid., vol. 41, p. 6). After the congress, L. launched a struggle against Menshevism. In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904), he exposed the anti-party activities of the Mensheviks and substantiated the organizational principles of a new type of proletarian party.

During the Revolution of 1905–07, L. directed the work of the Bolshevik Party in leading the masses. At the 3rd (1905), 4th (1906), 5th (1907) congresses of the RSDLP, in the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” (1905) and numerous articles, L. developed and substantiated a strategic plan and the tactics of the Bolshevik Party in the revolution, criticized the opportunist line of the Mensheviks, on November 8 (21), 1905, L. arrived in St. Petersburg, where he directed the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks, and the preparation of an armed uprising. L. headed the work of the Bolshevik newspapers Vperyod, Proletary, and Novaya Zhizn. In the summer of 1906, due to police persecution, L. moved to Kuokkala (Finland), in December 1907 he was again forced to emigrate to Switzerland, and at the end of 1908 to France (Paris).

During the reaction years of 1908–10, Leningrad waged a struggle for the preservation of the illegal Bolshevik Party against the Menshevik liquidators and Otzovists, against the splitting actions of the Trotskyists (see Trotskyism), and against conciliation to opportunism. He deeply analyzed the experience of the Revolution of 1905–07. At the same time, L. rebuffed the offensive of the reaction against the ideological foundations of the party. In his work Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (published in 1909), L. exposed the sophisticated methods of defending idealism by bourgeois philosophers, the attempts of the revisionists to distort the philosophy of Marxism, and developed dialectical materialism.

From the end of 1910, a new upsurge of the revolutionary movement began in Russia. In December 1910, on the initiative of L., the newspaper Zvezda began to be published in St. Petersburg; on April 22 (May 5), 1912, the first issue of the daily legal Bolshevik workers' newspaper Pravda was published. To train cadres of party workers, L. in 1911 organized a party school in Longjumeau (near Paris), in which he gave 29 lectures. In January 1912, under the leadership of L., the Sixth (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP was held in Prague. In order to be closer to Russia, L. moved to Krakow in June 1912. From there, he directs the work of the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Russia, the editorial office of the Pravda newspaper, and directs the activities of the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma. In December 1912 in Krakow and in September 1913 in Poronin, under the leadership of L., meetings of the Central Committee of the RSDLP with party workers were held on the most important issues of the revolutionary movement. L. paid great attention to the development of the theory of the national question, the education of party members and the broad masses of working people in the spirit of proletarian internationalism. He wrote program works: "Critical Notes on the National Question" (1913), "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (1914).

From October 1905 to 1912 L. was the representative of the RSDLP in the International Socialist Bureau of the 2nd International. Heading a Bolshevik delegation, he took an active part in the work of the Stuttgart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) International Socialist Congresses. L. waged a resolute struggle against opportunism in the international working-class movement, rallying leftist revolutionary elements, and paid much attention to exposing militarism and developing the tactics of the Bolshevik Party in relation to imperialist wars.

During World War I (1914–18), the Bolshevik Party, led by L., raised high the banner of proletarian internationalism, exposed the social-chauvinism of the leaders of the Second International, and put forward the slogan of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. The war found L. in Poronin. On July 26 (August 8), 1914, on a false denunciation, L. was arrested by the Austrian authorities and imprisoned in Novy Targ. Thanks to the assistance of the Polish and Austrian Social Democrats, L. was released from prison on August 6 (19). On August 23 (September 5) he left for Switzerland (Bern); in February 1916 he moved to Zurich, where he lived until March (April) 1917. In the manifesto of the Central Committee of the RSDLP "War and Russian Social Democracy", in the works "On the National Pride of the Great Russians", "The Collapse of the Second International", "Socialism and War", "On the slogan of the United States of Europe", "The military program of the proletarian revolution", "The results of the discussion on self-determination", "On the caricature of Marxism and "imperialist economism"", etc. L. further developed the most important provisions of Marxist theory, developed a strategy and the tactics of the Bolsheviks during the war. L.'s work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) provided a profound foundation for the Party's theory and policy on questions of war, peace, and revolution. During the war, L. worked a lot on questions of philosophy (see "Philosophical Notebooks"). Despite the difficulties of wartime, L. established a regular publication of the Central Organ of the party of the newspaper "Social Democrat", established links with the party organizations of Russia, directed their work. At international socialist conferences in Zimmerwald (August (September) 1915) and Kienthal (April 1916), L. defended revolutionary Marxist principles and fought against opportunism and centrism (Kautskyism). By rallying the revolutionary forces in the international working-class movement, L. laid the foundation for the formation of the Third, Communist International.

Having received in Zurich on March 2 (15), 1917, the first reliable news of the February bourgeois-democratic revolution that had begun in Russia, L. determined the new tasks of the proletariat and the Bolshevik Party. In "Letters from afar" he formulated the party's political course for the transition from the first, democratic, stage to the second, socialist, stage of the revolution, warned against supporting the bourgeois Provisional Government, put forward the position on the need to transfer all power into the hands of the Soviets. On April 3 (16), 1917, L. returned from exile to Petrograd. Solemnly greeted by thousands of workers and soldiers, he made a short speech, ending it with the words: "Long live the socialist revolution!" On April 4 (17), at a meeting of the Bolsheviks, L. delivered a document that went down in history under the title of V. I. Lenin’s April Theses (“On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution”). In these theses, in "Letters on tactics", in reports and speeches at the 7th (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b), L. developed a plan for the party's struggle for the transition from a bourgeois-democratic revolution to a socialist revolution, the tactics of the party in conditions of dual power - installation on the peaceful development of the revolution, put forward and justified the slogan "All power to the Soviets!". Under the leadership of L., the party launched political and organizational work among the masses of workers, peasants, and soldiers. L. directed the activities of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) and the central printed organ of the party - the newspaper Pravda, spoke at meetings and rallies. From April to July 1917, L. wrote over 170 articles, pamphlets, draft resolutions of the Bolshevik conferences and the Central Committee of the Party, appeals. At the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets (June 1917), L. delivered speeches on the question of the war, on the attitude towards the bourgeois Provisional Government, exposing its imperialist, anti-people policy and the conciliation of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. In July 1917, after the liquidation of dual power and the concentration of power in the hands of the counter-revolution, the peaceful period of the development of the revolution ended. On July 7 (20) the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of L. He was forced to go underground. Until August 8 (21), 1917, L. was hiding in a hut behind the lake. Spill, near Petrograd, then until the beginning of October - in Finland (Jalkala, Helsingfors, Vyborg). And in the underground, he continued to direct the activities of the party. In the theses "Political Situation" and in the pamphlet "To the Slogans" L. defined and substantiated the tactics of the party in the new conditions. Based on Lenin's guidelines, the 6th Congress of the RSDLP (b) (1917) decided on the need for the working class to take power in alliance with the poorest peasantry through an armed uprising. In the underground, L. wrote the book The State and Revolution, the pamphlet The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It, and Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? and other works. On September 12-14 (25-27), 1917, L. wrote a letter to the Central, Petrograd and Moscow committees of the RSDLP (b) “The Bolsheviks must take power” and a letter to the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) “Marxism and the uprising”, and then on September 29 (12 October) article "Crisis is ripe". In them, on the basis of a deep analysis of the alignment and correlation of class forces in the country and in the international arena, L. concluded that the moment had come for a victorious socialist revolution, and developed a plan for an armed uprising. In early October, L. returned illegally from Vyborg to Petrograd. In the article “Advice from an outsider” on October 8 (21), he outlined the tactics of carrying out an armed uprising. October 10 (23) at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) L. made a report on the current situation; at his suggestion, the Central Committee adopted a resolution on an armed uprising. On October 16 (29) at the enlarged meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b) L. in his report defended the course of the uprising, sharply criticized the position of the opponents of the uprising L. B. Kamenev and G. E. Zinoviev. L. Trotsky considered the position of postponing the uprising until the convocation of the Second Congress of Soviets to be extremely dangerous for the fate of the revolution. The meeting of the Central Committee confirmed Lenin's resolution on an armed uprising. During the preparation of the uprising, L. directed the activities of the Military Revolutionary Center, created by the Central Committee of the Party, and the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC), formed at the suggestion of the Central Committee under the Petrograd Soviet. On October 24 (November 6), in a letter to the Central Committee, L. demanded to immediately go on the offensive, arrest the Provisional Government and seize power, emphasizing that “delay in speaking out is like death” (ibid., vol. 34 p. 436).

On the evening of October 24 (November 6), L. illegally arrived at Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. At the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which opened on October 25 (November 7), which proclaimed the transfer of all power in the center and localities into the hands of the Soviets, L. made presentations on peace and land. The congress adopted Lenin's decrees on peace and land and formed a workers' and peasants' government - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by L. The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, won under the leadership of the Communist Party, opened a new era in the history of mankind - the era of transition from capitalism to socialism.

L. led the struggle of the Communist Party and the masses of Russia for the solution of the problems of the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the building of socialism. Under the leadership of L., the party and the government created a new, Soviet state apparatus. The confiscation of landed estates was carried out and the nationalization of all land, banks, transport, large-scale industry, a monopoly of foreign trade was introduced. The Red Army was created. The national oppression has been destroyed. The party enlisted the broad masses of the people in the grandiose work of building the Soviet state and carrying out fundamental socio-economic transformations. In December 1917, L. in the article "How to organize a competition?" put forward the idea of ​​socialist competition of the masses as an effective method of building socialism. In early January 1918, L. prepared the Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People, which became the basis of the first Soviet Constitution of 1918. Thanks to L.’s principles and perseverance, as a result of his struggle against the “Left Communists” and Trotskyists, the Brest Peace of 1918 was concluded with Germany, which gave The Soviet government needed a peaceful respite.

From March 11, 1918, L. lived and worked in Moscow, after the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved here from Petrograd.

In his work The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power, in his work On "Left" Childishness and Petty-Bourgeoisness (1918), and others, L. outlined a plan for laying the foundations of a socialist economy. In May 1918, on the initiative and with the participation of L., decrees on the food question were drafted and adopted. At L.'s suggestion, food detachments of workers were created and sent to the countryside to raise the poor (see Committees of the Poor Peasants) to fight against the kulaks, to fight for bread. The socialist measures of the Soviet government met with fierce resistance from the overthrown exploiting classes. They launched an armed struggle against Soviet power and resorted to terror. On August 30, 1918, L. was seriously wounded by a terrorist Social Revolutionary F. E. Kaplan.

During the years of the Civil War and the military intervention of 1918–20, L. was chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Defense Council, which was set up on November 30, 1918, to mobilize all forces and resources to defeat the enemy. L. put forward the slogan "Everything for the front!" At his suggestion, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee declared the Soviet Republic a military camp. Under the leadership of L., the party and the Soviet government in a short time were able to rebuild the country's economy on a war footing, developed and put into practice a system of emergency measures, called "war communism." Lenin wrote the most important party documents, which were a combat program for mobilizing the forces of the party and the people to defeat the enemy: "Theses of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) in connection with the situation on the Eastern Front" (April 1919), letter of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to all organizations of the party " Everyone to fight Denikin!” (July 1919) and others. L. directly supervised the development of plans for the most important strategic operations of the Red Army to defeat the White Guard armies and the troops of foreign interventionists.

At the same time, L. continued to conduct theoretical work. In the autumn of 1918 he wrote the book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, in which he exposed Kautsky's opportunism and showed the radical opposition between bourgeois and proletarian democracy, Soviet democracy. L. pointed to the international significance of the strategy and tactics of the Russian Communists. “... Bolshevism,” L. wrote, “is suitable as a model of tactics for everyone” (ibid., vol. 37, p. 305). L. basically drafted the second Party Program, which determined the tasks of building socialism, adopted by the 8th Congress of the RCP (b) (March 1919). The focus of L. was then the question of the transition period from capitalism to socialism. In June 1919, he wrote the article "The Great Initiative", dedicated to communist subbotniks, in the fall - the article "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", in the spring of 1920 - the article "From the destruction of the age-old way of life to the creation of a new one." In these and many other works, L., generalizing the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, deepened the Marxist doctrine of the transitional period, shed light on the most important questions of communist construction in the conditions of the struggle between two systems: socialism and capitalism. After the victorious end of the Civil War, L. led the struggle of the party and all the working people of the Soviet Republic for the restoration and further development of the economy, and directed cultural construction. In the Report of the Central Committee to the Ninth Congress of the Party, L. defined the tasks of economic development and emphasized the exceptional importance of a single economic plan, the basis of which should be the electrification of the country. Under the leadership of L., the GOELRO plan was developed - a plan for the electrification of Russia (for 10-15 years), the first long-term plan for the development of the national economy of the Soviet country, which L. called "the second program of the party" (see ibid., vol. 42, p. 157).

In late 1920 and early 1921, a discussion unfolded in the party about the role and tasks of the trade unions, in which questions were actually decided about the methods of approaching the masses, the role of the party, and the fate of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in Russia. L. spoke out against the erroneous platforms and factional activities of Trotsky, N. I. Bukharin, the “workers’ opposition,” and the group of “democratic centralism.” He pointed out that, being the school of communism in general, the trade unions should be for the working people, in particular, the school of economic management.

At the 10th Congress of the RCP(b) in 1921, L. summed up the results of the trade union discussion in the party and put forward the task of transitioning from the policy of "war communism" to the New Economic Policy (NEP). The congress approved the transition to the New Economic Policy, which ensured the strengthening of the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, the creation of the production base of a socialist society; adopted written L. resolution "On the unity of the party." In the pamphlet On the Food Tax (The Significance of the New Policy and Its Conditions) (1921) and the article On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution (1921), L. revealed the essence of the New Economic Policy as the economic policy of the proletariat in the transitional period and outlined the ways of implementing it.

In his speech “The Tasks of Youth Unions” at the 3rd Congress of the RKSM (1920), in the draft and draft resolution “On Proletarian Culture” (1920), in the article “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (1922), and in other works, L. elucidated the problems the creation of a socialist culture, the tasks of the party's ideological work; L. showed great concern for the development of science.

L. identified ways to solve the national question. The problems of nation-building and socialist transformations in national regions are covered by L. in the report on the party program at the 8th Congress of the RCP (b), in the “Initial Outline of Theses on National and Colonial Questions” (1920) for the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, In his letter “On the Formation of the USSR” (1922) and others, L. developed the principles for uniting the Soviet republics into a single multinational state on the basis of voluntariness and equality—the Union of the SSR, which was created in December 1922.

The Soviet government, headed by L., consistently fought for the preservation of peace, for the prevention of a new world war, and sought to improve the economy and diplomatic relations with other countries. At the same time, the Soviet people supported the revolutionary and national liberation movements.

In March 1922, L. led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. Hard work, the consequences of being wounded in 1918 undermined L.'s health. In May 1922, he fell seriously ill. In early October 1922, L. returned to work. His last public speech was November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow City Council. On December 16, 1922, L.'s health deteriorated sharply again. In late December 1922 and early 1923, L. dictated letters on internal party and state issues: “Letter to the Congress”, “On the Attribution of Legislative Functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the Question of Nationalities or “Autonomization”” ”and a number of articles -“ Pages from a diary”, “On cooperation”, “On our revolution”, “How do we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Better less, but better”. These letters and articles are rightly called L.'s political testament. They were the final stage in L.'s development of a plan for building socialism in the USSR. In them, L. outlined in a generalized form the program for the socialist transformation of the country and the prospects for the world revolutionary process, and the fundamentals of the party's policy, strategy, and tactics. He substantiated the possibility of building a socialist society in the USSR, developed the provisions on the industrialization of the country, on the transition of the peasants to large-scale social production through cooperation (see V. I. Lenin’s Cooperative Plan), on the cultural revolution, emphasized the need to strengthen the alliance between the working class and the peasantry, to strengthen friendship of the peoples of the USSR, improvement of the state apparatus, ensuring the leading role of the Communist Party, the unity of its ranks.

L. consistently pursued the principle of collective leadership. He put all the most important questions for discussion at regular party congresses and conferences, plenums of the Central Committee and the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party, All-Russian Congresses of Soviets, sessions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and meetings of the Council of People's Commissars. Such prominent figures of the party and the Soviet state as V. V. Borovsky, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, M. I. Kalinin, L. B. Krasin, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, V. V. Kuibyshev, A. V. Lunacharsky, G. K. Ordzhonikidze, G. I. Petrovsky, Ya. M. Sverdlov, I. V. Stalin, P. I. Stuchka, M. V. Frunze, G. V. Chicherin, S. G. Shaumyan and others.

L. was the leader not only of the Russian, but also of the international labor and communist movement. In letters to the working people of Western Europe, America, and Asia, L. explained the essence and international significance of the October Socialist Revolution and the most important tasks of the world revolutionary movement. On the initiative of L. in 1919, the 3rd, Communist International was created. Under the leadership of L. passed the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th congresses of the Comintern. He drafted many resolutions and congress documents. In the works of L., primarily in the work “Children's disease of “leftism” in communism” (1920), the program foundations, strategy and principles of tactics of the international communist movement were developed.

In May 1923 L. moved to Gorki due to illness. In January 1924, his health suddenly deteriorated sharply. January 21, 1924 at 6 o'clock. 50 min. L. died in the evening. On January 23, the coffin with the body of L. was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns. For five days and nights, the people said goodbye to their leader. On January 27, the funeral took place on Red Square; the coffin with the embalmed body of L. was placed in a specially built Mausoleum (see Mausoleum of V. I. Lenin).

Never since Marx has the history of the emancipation movement of the proletariat provided the world with a thinker and leader of the working class, of all working people, on such a gigantic scale as Lenin. The genius of a scientist, political wisdom and foresight were combined in him with the talent of the greatest organizer, with an iron will, courage and courage. L. boundlessly believed in the creative forces of the masses, was closely associated with them, enjoyed their boundless trust, love and support. All the activity of L. is the embodiment of the organic unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. Selfless devotion to communist ideals, the cause of the party, the working class, the greatest conviction in the rightness and justice of this cause, the subordination of his whole life to the struggle for the liberation of the working people from social and national oppression, love for the Motherland and consistent internationalism, implacability towards class enemies and touching attention to comrades , demanding of oneself and others, moral purity, simplicity and modesty are the characteristic features of Lenin - a leader and a man.

L. built the leadership of the party and the Soviet state on the basis of creative Marxism. He tirelessly fought against attempts to turn the teachings of Marx and Engels into a dead dogma.

“We do not at all look at Marx’s theory as something complete and inviolable,” wrote L., “we are convinced, on the contrary, that she laid only the cornerstones of the science that socialists must move forward in all directions if they do not want to lag behind life” (ibid., vol. 4, p. 184).

L. raised revolutionary theory to a new, higher level, enriched Marxism with scientific discoveries of world-historical significance.

“Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the era of the collapse of colonialism and the victory of national liberation movements, the era of the transition of mankind from capitalism to socialism and the building of a communist society” (“On the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin”, Theses Central Committee of the CPSU, 1970, p. 5).

L. developed all the constituent parts of Marxism—philosophy, political economy, and scientific communism (see Marxism-Leninism).

Generalizing from the standpoint of Marxist philosophy the achievements of science, especially physics, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, L. further developed the doctrine of dialectical materialism. He deepened the concept of matter, defining it as an objective reality that exists outside of human consciousness, developed the fundamental problems of the theory of human reflection of objective reality and the theory of knowledge. L.'s great merit is the comprehensive development of materialist dialectics, in particular the law of unity and struggle of opposites.

“Lenin was the first thinker of the century who saw the beginning of a grandiose scientific revolution in the achievements of contemporary natural science, who managed to reveal and philosophically generalize the revolutionary meaning of the fundamental discoveries of the great researchers of nature ... The idea he expressed about the inexhaustibility of matter became the principle of natural science knowledge” (ibid., p. . 14).

L. made a major contribution to Marxist sociology. He concretized, substantiated and developed the most important problems, categories and provisions of historical materialism about socio-economic formations, about the patterns of development of society, about the development of productive forces and production relations, about the relationship between the base and superstructure, about classes and class struggle, about the state, about social revolution, the nation and national liberation movements, the relationship between objective and subjective factors in public life, public consciousness and the role of ideas in the development of society, the role of the masses and the individual in history.

L. significantly supplemented the Marxist analysis of capitalism by posing such problems as the formation and development of the capitalist mode of production, in particular in relatively backward countries with strong feudal remnants, agrarian relations under capitalism, as well as an analysis of bourgeois and bourgeois-democratic revolutions, the social structure of the capitalist society, the essence and forms of the bourgeois state, the historical mission and forms of the class struggle of the proletariat. Of great importance is the conclusion of L. that the strength of the proletariat in historical development is immeasurably greater than its share in the total mass of the population.

L. created the doctrine of imperialism as the highest and last stage in the development of capitalism. Having revealed the essence of imperialism as monopoly and state-monopoly capitalism, characterizing its main features, showing the extreme aggravation of all its contradictions, the objective acceleration of the creation of the material and sociopolitical prerequisites for socialism, L. concluded that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution.

L. comprehensively developed the Marxist theory of socialist revolution in relation to the new historical epoch. He deeply developed the idea of ​​the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution, the need for an alliance between the working class and the working peasantry, he determined the attitude of the proletariat towards the various sections of the peasantry at different stages of the revolution; created the theory of the development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution, shed light on the question of the relationship between the struggle for democracy and for socialism. Having revealed the mechanism of operation of the law of uneven development of capitalism in the era of imperialism, L. made the most important conclusion, which is of great theoretical and political significance, about the possibility and inevitability of the victory of socialism initially in a few or even in one single capitalist country; This conclusion of L., confirmed by the course of historical development, formed the basis for the development of important problems of the world revolutionary process, the building of socialism in countries where the proletarian revolution has triumphed. L. developed propositions about a revolutionary situation, about an armed uprising, about the possibility, under certain conditions, of the peaceful development of the revolution; substantiated the idea of ​​the world revolution as a single process, as an epoch connecting the struggle of the proletariat and its allies for socialism with democratic, including national liberation, movements.

L. deeply developed the national question, pointing out the need to consider it from the standpoint of the class struggle of the proletariat, revealed the thesis about the two tendencies of capitalism in the national question, substantiated the position on the complete equality of nations, on the right of the oppressed, colonial and dependent peoples to self-determination and at the same time the principle internationalism of the labor movement and proletarian organizations, the idea of ​​the joint struggle of the working people of all nationalities in the name of social and national liberation, the creation of a voluntary union of peoples.

L. revealed the essence and characterized the driving forces of the national liberation movements. He came up with the idea of ​​organizing a united front of the revolutionary movement of the international proletariat and of national liberation movements against the common enemy—imperialism. He formulated a proposition on the possibility and conditions for the transition of backward countries to socialism, bypassing the capitalist stage of development. L. developed the principles of the national policy of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which ensures the flourishing of nations, nationalities, their close rallying and rapprochement.

L. defined the main content of the modern era as the transition of mankind from capitalism to socialism, characterized the driving forces and prospects for the world revolutionary process after the split of the world into two systems. The main contradiction of this era is the contradiction between socialism and capitalism. L. considered the socialist system and the international working class to be the leading force in the struggle against imperialism. L. foresaw the formation of a world system of socialist states, which would have a decisive influence on all world politics.

L. developed an integral theory of the transition period from capitalism to socialism, revealed its content and patterns. Generalizing the experience of the Paris Commune and the three Russian revolutions, L. developed and concretized the teachings of Marx and Engels on the dictatorship of the proletariat and comprehensively revealed the historical significance of the Republic of Soviets—a state of a new type, immeasurably more democratic than any bourgeois-parliamentary republic. The transition from capitalism to socialism, L. taught, cannot but give a variety of political forms, but the essence of all these forms will be the same - the dictatorship of the proletariat. He comprehensively developed the question of the functions and tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat, pointed out that the main thing in it is not violence, but the rallying of the non-proletarian strata of the working people around the working class, the building of socialism. The main condition for the implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, L. taught, is the leadership of the Communist Party. In the works of L. deeply illuminated the theoretical and practical problems of building socialism. The most important task after the victory of the revolution is the socialist transformation and planned development of the national economy, the achievement of higher labor productivity than under capitalism. Of decisive importance in building socialism are the creation of an appropriate material and technical base and the industrialization of the country. L. deeply worked out the question of the socialist reorganization of agriculture through the formation of state farms and the development of cooperation, the transition of the peasants to large-scale social production. L. put forward and substantiated the principle of democratic centralism as the basic principle of economic management in the conditions of building a socialist and communist society. He showed the need to preserve and use commodity-money relations, to implement the principle of material interest.

L. considered the implementation of a cultural revolution as one of the main conditions for building socialism: the rise of popular education, the familiarization of the broadest masses with knowledge and cultural values, the development of science, literature, and art, the provision of a profound revolution in the consciousness, ideology, and spiritual life of the working people, and their re-education in the spirit of socialism. . L. emphasized the need to use the culture of the past, its progressive, democratic elements in the interests of building a socialist society. He considered it necessary to enlist the old, bourgeois specialists to participate in socialist construction. At the same time, L. put forward the task of training numerous cadres of the new, popular intelligentsia. In articles about L. Tolstoy, in the article “Party Organization and Party Literature” (1905), as well as in letters to M. Gorky, I. Armand, and others, L. substantiated the principle of party spirit in literature and art, considered their role in the class struggle of the proletariat , formulated the principle of party leadership in literature and art.

In the works of L. developed the principles of socialist foreign policy as an important factor in building a new society, the development of the world revolutionary process. This is the policy of a close state, economic and military alliance of the socialist republics, solidarity with the peoples fighting for social and national liberation, peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems, international cooperation, and resolute opposition to imperialist aggression.

L. developed the Marxist doctrine of the two phases of communist society, the transition from the first to the higher phase, the essence and ways of creating the material and technical basis of communism, the development of statehood, the formation of communist social relations, and the communist education of the working people.

L. created the doctrine of a new type of proletarian party as the highest form of the revolutionary organization of the proletariat, as the vanguard and leader of the working class in the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the construction of socialism and communism. He developed the organizational foundations of the party, the international principle of its construction, the norms of party life, pointed out the need for democratic centralism in the party, unity and conscious iron discipline, the development of inner-party democracy, the activity of party members and the collective leadership, intolerance towards opportunism, and close ties between the party and the masses.

L. was firmly convinced of the inevitability of the victory of socialism throughout the world. He considered the indispensable conditions for this victory: the unity of the revolutionary forces of our time - the world system of socialism, the international working class, the national liberation movement; the correct strategy and tactics of the communist parties; resolute struggle against reformism, revisionism, right and left opportunism, nationalism; solidarity and unity of the international communist movement on the basis of Marxism and the principles of proletarian internationalism.

Theoretical and political activity of L. marked the beginning of a new, Leninist stage in the development of Marxism, in the international working-class movement. The name of Lenin and Leninism are associated with the greatest revolutionary accomplishments of the 20th century, which radically changed the social face of the world and marked the turn of mankind towards socialism and communism. The revolutionary transformation of society in the Soviet Union on the basis of Lenin's brilliant plans and plans, the victory of socialism and the building of a developed socialist society in the USSR are the triumph of Leninism. Marxism-Leninism, as the great and united international doctrine of the proletariat, is the property of all communist parties, all revolutionary workers of the world, all working people. All the fundamental social problems of our time can be correctly assessed and solved on the basis of the ideological heritage of L., guided by a reliable compass—the ever-living and creative Marxist-Leninist teaching. The Appeal of the International Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties (Moscow, 1969) "On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" states:

“The entire experience of world socialism, the workers' and national liberation movement, has confirmed the international significance of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The victory of the socialist revolution in a group of countries, the emergence of the world system of socialism, the conquest of the working-class movement in the capitalist countries, the entry into the arena of independent socio-political activity of the peoples of the former colonies and semi-colonies, the unprecedented upsurge in the anti-imperialist struggle—all this proves the historical correctness of Leninism, which expresses the fundamental needs of the modern era. "(" International Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties. Documents and Materials, M., 1969, p. 332).

The CPSU attaches great importance to the study, preservation, and publication of L.'s literary heritage, as well as documents related to his life and work. In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the V. I. Lenin Institute, which was entrusted with these functions. In 1932, as a result of the merger of the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels with the Institute of V. I. Lenin, a single Institute of Marx-Engels-Lenin was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (now the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). More than 30,000 Lenin's documents are stored in the Central Party Archive of this institute. Five editions of Lenin's works have been published in the USSR (see the Works of V. I. Lenin), and "Lenin Collections" are being published. Thematic collections of works by L. and his individual works are printed in millions of copies. Much attention is paid to the publication of memoirs and biographical works about L., as well as literature on various problems of Leninism.

The Soviet people sacredly honor the memory of Lenin. The All-Union Communist Youth Union and the Pioneer Organization in the USSR bear Lenin's name, and many cities, including Leningrad, the city where Leningrad proclaimed the power of the Soviets; Ulyanovsk, where L. spent his childhood and youth. In all cities, the central or most beautiful streets are named after L. Factories and collective farms, ships and mountain peaks bear his name. In honor of L. in 1930, the highest award in the USSR, the Order of Lenin, was established; the Lenin Prizes were established for outstanding services in the field of science and technology (1925), in the field of literature and art (1956); International Lenin Prizes "For strengthening peace among peoples" (1949). A unique memorial and historical monument is the Central Archive of V. I. Lenin and its branches in many cities of the USSR. There are also museums of V. I. Lenin in other socialist countries, in Finland and France.

In April 1970, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the entire Soviet people, the international communist movement, the working masses, the progressive forces of all countries solemnly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. The celebration of this significant date resulted in the greatest demonstration of the vitality of Leninism. Lenin's ideas arm and inspire communists and all working people in the struggle for the complete triumph of communism.

Compositions:

• Collected works, vols. 1-20, M. - L., 1920-1926;
• Soch., 2nd ed., vols. 1-30, Moscow-Leningrad, 1925-1932;
• Soch., 3rd ed., vols. 1-30, Moscow-Leningrad, 1925-1932;
• Soch., 4th ed., vols. 1-45, Moscow, 1941-67;
• Complete collection of works, 5th ed., vols. 1-55, M., 1958-65;
• Lenin collections, book. 1-37, M. - L., 1924-70.

Literature:

1. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin. Abstracts of the Central Committee of the CPSU, M., 1970;
2. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin, Collection of documents and materials, M., 1970.
3. V. I. Lenin. Biography, 5th ed., M., 1972;
4. V. I. Lenin. Biographical chronicle, 1870-1924, vol. 1-3, M., 1970-72;
5. Memories of V. I. Lenin, vol. 1-5, M., 1968-1969;
6. Krupskaya N. K., About Lenin. Sat. Art. and speeches. 2nd ed., M., 1965;
7. Leninian, Library of V. I. Lenin's works and literature about him 1956-1967, in 3 volumes, vols. 1-2, M., 1971-72;
8. Lenin is still more alive than all the living. Advisory index of memoirs and biographical literature about V. I. Lenin, M., 1968;
9. Memories of V. I. Lenin. Annotated index of books and journal articles 1954-1961, M., 1963;
10. Lenin. Historical and biographical atlas, M., 1970;
11. Lenin. Collection of photographs and film frames, vols. 1-2, Moscow, 1970-72.

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a famous Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician and statesman, founder of the Soviet Union, organizer of the CPSU. He has been involved in many areas. He is considered the most legendary leader and politician in history. Moreover, Lenin organized the first socialist state. This communist leader was interested in the policies of Mark Engels, and soon continued his work. Vladimir Ilyich changed the fate not only of the Soviet state, but of the whole world. Lenin is the founder of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. The main task of this statesman was to create a party of the working class. Such an innovation was supposed to positively affect the fate of the state in the future, according to Lenin.

Portrait of Vladimir Lenin

Biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

This person is considered the most important organizer and leader of the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. In addition, Vladimir Ilyich - First Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

Despite the huge period of time that has passed since the reign of the legendary personality, historians are paying more and more attention to the study of his policies, methods of activity and life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. He actively developed his policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, his form of government was not to everyone's liking. Someone condemned the politician, someone - admired. Despite everything, he still remains one of the most significant personalities in the field of politics.

Lenin was an ardent Marxist and always clearly defended his opinion. He is considered the founder of Marxism-Leninism. Vladimir Ilyich - the ideologist and creator of the Third Communist International. The state representative was also involved in the field of political and journalistic work. His pen includes works of various nature. For example, materialistic philosophy, the theory of Marxism, the construction of socialism and communism, and many others.

Vladimir Lenin and his sister Maria

Millions regard Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as one of the most famous political figures in the history of the world. This is due to the methods of his government and the nature of his activities. The staff of the popular Time magazine added Lenin to the top 100 revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. This Russian leader was included in the category "Leaders and Revolutionaries". It is also known that the works of Vladimir Ilyich annually lead the lists of translated literature. Printed works rank third in the world after the Bible and Mao Zedong.

Childhood and youth of Vladimir Ulyanov

The real name of the great Russian leader is Ulyanov. Vladimir Ilyich was born in 1870 in Ulyanovsk (today's Simbirsk) in the family of an inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province. Vladimir's father Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov was a state councillor. Previously, he taught at secondary schools in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod.

Vladimir Lenin in childhood

Mother of Vladimir Ulyanov Maria Alexandrovna, had a Swedish and German adventure through her mother and a European one through her father. Maria Ulyanova passed the external exams for the position of a teacher. However, she later ended her career and devoted all her free time to raising her children and housekeeping. In addition to Vladimir, the family had older children - son Alexander and daughter Anna. A few more children appeared in the family - Maria and Dmitry.

As a child, young Ulyanov received Orthodox baptism and was a member of the Simbirsk religious Society of St. Sergius of Radonezh. During the school period, the boy received high marks according to the law of God.

Little Vladimir was a very developed child. At the age of five, he already knew how to read and write perfectly. Soon he entered the Simbirsk gymnasium. There he was attentive, diligent and devoted a lot of time to the educational process. For hard work and efforts, he constantly received commendable letters and other awards. Some teachers often referred to him as a "walking encyclopedia".

Vladimir Lenin in his youth

Vladimir Ulyanov was very different from other students in the level of his development. All classmates respected him and treated him like an authoritative friend. During his school years, the future leader read a lot of advanced Russian literature, which soon influenced the boy's worldview. He preferred the works of V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, N. A. Dobrolyubov, D. I. Pisarev, and especially N. G. Chernyshevsky and others. In 1880, the schoolboy received a book with gold embossing on the cover: "For good manners and successes" and a commendation sheet.

In 1887 graduated from the Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, all his grades were at a high level. Then he entered the Faculty of Law of Kazan University. The leaders of the gymnasium, F. Kerensky, were extremely surprised and disappointed by the choice of Vladimir Ulyanov. He advised him to continue his studies at the Faculty of History and Literature. Kerensky argued this decision by the fact that his student was really successful in the field of Latin and literature.

In 1887, a terrible incident occurred in the Ulyanov family - Vladimir's older brother Alexander was executed for organizing an assassination attempt on the tsar Alexander III. From that moment Ulyanov's revolutionary activity began to develop. He started attending an illegal student circle "People's Will" headed by Lazar Bogoraz. In this regard, he was expelled from the university already in the first year. Ulyanov and several dozen other students were arrested and sent to the police station. The situation with his brother affected his outlook. Vladimir Ulyanov seriously protested against national oppression and tsarist policies. It was during that period that the guy began his revolutionary activities against capitalism.

Vladimir Lenin in his youth

After being expelled from Kazan University, he moved to a small village called Kukushkino, located in the Kazan province. There he lived for two years in the house of the Ardashevs. In connection with all the events, Vladimir Ulyanov was included in the list of suspicious individuals who must be carefully monitored. Moreover, the future leader was forbidden to restore education at the university.

Soon Vladimir Ilyich became a member of various Marxist organizations that Fedoseev created. Members of these groups studied the writings Karl Marx and Engels. In 1889, Vladimir's mother, Maria Ulyanova, acquired a huge plot of more than a hundred hectares in the Samara province. The whole family moved into this mansion. The mother persistently asked her son to manage such a large house, but this process was not successful.

Local peasants robbed the Ulyanovs and stole a horse and two cows from them. Further, Ulyanova could not stand it and decided to sell both the land and the house. Today, the house-museum of Vladimir Lenin is located in this village.

Lenin Abroad

In 1889 the Lenin family changed their place of residence. They moved to Samara. There, Vladimir's connections with the revolutionaries resumed again. However, after a while, the authorities changed their mind and allowed the previously arrested Vladimir to start preparing for the exams to study jurisprudence. In the process of studying, he actively studied economic textbooks, as well as Zemstvo statistical reports.

Participation of Vladimir Lenin in revolutionary activities

In 1891 Vladimir Lenin externally entered St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Law. There he worked as an assistant to a sworn advocate from Samara and defended prisoners. In 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg and devoted much of his time to writing works related to Marxist political economy. In the same period of time, he created the program of the Social Democratic Party. Among Lenin's popular and surviving works is New Economic Movements in Peasant Life.

Vladimir Lenin with newspaper

In 1895 Lenin went abroad and visited several countries at once. Among them are Switzerland, Germany and France. There Vladimir Ilyin met famous personalities like, Georgy Plekhanov, Wilhelm Liebknecht and Paul Lafargue. Later, the revolutionary leader returned to his homeland and began to develop various innovations. First of all, he united all Marxist circles in the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class". Lenin began to actively spread the idea of ​​fighting the autocracy.

For such actions, Lenin and his allies were again arrested. They were in custody for a year. Further, the prisoners were sent to the Shushenskoye village of the Elisei province. During this period, the statesman actively established relations with social democrats from various parts of the country, namely from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1900 he was free and visited all the cities of Russia. Lenin spent a lot of time visiting various organizations. In the same year, Lenin created a newspaper called "Spark". It was then that Vladimir Ilyich first began to sign with the surname "Lenin". A few months later he organized a congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In connection with this event, there was a split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Lenin became the head of the Bolshevik ideological and political party. He tried with all his might to fight the Mensheviks and took radical measures.

Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin

From 1905 Lenin lived in Switzerland for three years. There he carefully prepared for an armed uprising. Later, Vladimir Ilyich illegally returned to St. Petersburg. He tried to attract the peasants to him so that they would be one strong team to fight. Vladimir Lenin called on the peasants to actively fight and asked them to use everything that was at hand as a weapon. It was necessary to attack civil servants.

Role in the execution of the family of Emperor Nicholas II criticism and accusations

As it became known, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, the family of Nicholas II and all the servants were shot. This incident occurred by order of the Ural Regional Council in Yekaterinburg. The resolution was headed by the Bolsheviks. Lenin and Sverdlov had a certain number of sanctions that were used to execute Nicholas II. These data are officially confirmed. However, historical experts and other specialists are still actively discussing Lenin's sanctions for the execution of the family and servants of Nicholas II. Some historians acknowledge this fact, others categorically deny it.

Initially, the Soviet government decided that Nicholas II should be tried. This issue was discussed in 1918 at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, which took place at the end of January. The party board officially confirmed such actions and the need for a trial of Nicholas II. This idea, accordingly, was supported by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his allies.

Speech by Vladimir Lenin

As you know, at that time, Nicholas II, his family and servants were transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. Most likely, this move was associated with all the events that took place. M. Medvedev (Kudrin) provided confirmation that it was not possible to obtain sanctions for the execution of Nicholas II. Lenin also argued that the king must be transferred to a safer place to live. On July 13, a meeting was held at which issues related to the military review and careful protection of the king were discussed.

Wife of Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Krupskaya She told that on the night of the murder of the tsar and his family, the Russian leader was at work all night and returned only early in the morning.

Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky

Personal life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Krupskaya

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin tried to hide his personal life carefully, like other professional revolutionaries. His wife was Nadezhda Krupskaya. They met in 1894 during the active creation of an organization called "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class". At that time, a Marxist gathering took place, where they met. Nadezhda Krupskaya was admired by Lenin's leadership qualities and his serious character. She, in turn, interested Lenin in her analytical mindset and development in many areas. State activities brought the couple very close and after a few years they decided to tie the knot. The chosen one of Vladimir Ilyich was restrained and calm, extremely accommodating. She supported her lover in everything, no matter what. Moreover, the wife helped the Russian revolutionary in secret correspondence with various party members.

However, despite Nadezhda's excellent character and fidelity, she was a terrible hostess. It was almost never possible to notice Krupskaya in the process of cooking and cleaning. She did not do housework and rarely cooked. However, if such cases did occur, then Lenin did not complain and ate everything that was given to him. Note that once in 1916, on New Year's Eve, there was only curdled milk on their festive table.

Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya

Before Krupskaya, Lenin admired Apollinaria Yakubova however, she rejected it. Yakubova was a socialist.

After they met, they fell in love at first sight. Krupskaya followed her lover everywhere and participated in all the actions of Vladimir Ilyich. Soon they got married. Local peasants became best men. The rings were built by their ally from copper nickels. The wedding of Krupskaya and Lenin took place on July 22, 1898 in the village of Shushenskoye. After that, Nadezhda truly loved her husband. Moreover, Lenin got married, despite the fact that at that time he was an ardent atheist.

In her free time, Nadezhda went about her business, namely, theoretical and pedagogical work. She had her own opinion about many situations and did not completely obey her cruel spouse.

Vladimir was always cruel and callous towards his wife, but Nadezhda always bowed before him, truly loved and helped him in all areas. In addition to Nadezhda, there were many other women in Lenin's life even after his marriage. Krupskaya knew about this, but proudly held back the pain and endured a humiliating attitude towards herself. She forgot about the feeling of pride and jealousy.

Vladimir Lenin and Inessa Armand

There is still no reliable information about the children of Vladimir Lenin. Someone claims to have been barren and had no children at all. And other historians say that the famous Russian leader had many illegitimate children. There is also information that Lenin has a child named Alexander Steffen from his beloved Inessa Armand. Their romance lasted for five years. Inessa Armand was Lenin's mistress for a long time and Krupskaya knew about everything that was happening.

They met Inessa Armand in 1909 while in Paris. As you know, Inessa Armand is the daughter of a famous French opera singer and comic actress. At that time, Inessa was 35 years old. She was completely different from Nadezhda Krupskaya neither externally nor internally. She was distinguished by beautiful features and an unusual appearance. The girl had deep eyes, beautiful long hair, an excellent figure and a beautiful voice. Krupskaya, according to Anna Ulyanova, Vladimir's sister, was completely ugly, had eyes like those of a fish, and did not have beautiful expressive features.

Inessa Armand She had an ardent character and always expressed her emotions vividly. She liked to communicate with people, had good manners. Krupskaya, unlike the French chosen one of Lenin, was cold and did not like to express her emotions. They say that Vladimir most likely had just a physical attraction to this lady, he did not feel any feelings for her. However, Inessa herself loved this man very much. Moreover, she was radical in her views and categorically did not understand free relationships. Armand also cooked well and always did housework, unlike Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was almost never involved in these processes.

Vladimir Lenin

Information was also known that Nadezhda Krupskaya suffered from infertility. It was this fact that argued the absence of children from a married couple for many years. Later, doctors stated the fact that a terrible disease was found in a woman - Graves' disease. It was this disease that was the reason for the absence of children.

In the Soviet Union, they did not disseminate information about Lenin's betrayals and about the absence of children from a married couple. These facts were considered shameful.

Nadezhda's parents were very fond of Vladimir Ilyich. They were happy that she connected her life with an intelligent young man, very educated and reserved. However, Lenin's family was not very happy about the appearance of this girl. For example, Vladimir's sister - Anna, hated Nadezhda and considered her strange, unattractive.

Nadezhda knew everything about her husband's betrayals, but she behaved with restraint and never said anything to him, and even more so to Inessa. Everyone around knew about this love triangle, since the famous revolutionary did not hide anything and did it in front of everyone. Inessa Armand has always been present in the couple's life. Moreover, Inessa and Nadezhda tried to maintain friendly relations and communicate.

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich

Lenin's French mistress helped him in everything, she went with him to party meetings throughout Europe. The woman also translated his books, articles and other works. Note that in her bedroom, Nadezhda kept a photograph of her husband's mistress and looked at her rival every day. Nearby were photographs of Vladimir and Nadezhda's mother.

Hope to the last endured the humiliation of her husband and betrayal, and, it would seem, had already come to terms with the presence of Vladimir's mistress. However, at some point she could not stand it and invited her husband to leave. He did not agree and left his mistress Inessa Armand. In 1920, Inessa died of a terrible disease - cholera. Nadezhda Krupskaya also came to the funeral of her rival. She held Vladimir's hand all the time.

The French chosen one of Lenin left two children from his first marriage, who became orphans. Their father also died earlier. Therefore, the couple decided to take care of these children and take care of them. Initially, the children lived in Gorki, later they were sent abroad.

Vladimir Lenin in the last years of his life

Death of Vladimir Lenin

After the death of Inessa Armand, Lenin's life went downhill. He also began to get sick often, the state of health of the Russian leader deteriorated significantly in connection with all the events taking place. He soon passed away on January 21, 1924 at the estate Gorki of Moscow province. There were many versions of the man's death. Some historians suggest that he died due to syphilis, which a French mistress may have passed on to him. As you know, he took a long time drugs for the treatment of such diseases.

However, according to official figures, Lenin died of atherosclerosis, which he suffered recently. The last request of Vladimir Ilyich was bring Inessa's children to him. At that time they were in France. Krupskaya complied with this request of her husband, but they were not allowed to see Lenin. In February 1924, Nadezhda offered to bury Vladimir next to the ashes of Inessa Armand, but Stalin categorically denied this proposal.

Funeral of Vladimir Lenin

A few days after the death of the world famous leader, his body was transported to Moscow. He was placed in the Hall of Columns in the House of the Unions. For five days, farewell to the Russian leader, political and statesman, the head of the Soviet people took place in this building.

January 27, 1924 Lenin's body was embalmed. For the body of this legendary personality, the Mausoleum was specially built, which to this day is located on Red Square. Every year, the issue of reburial of Vladimir Lenin is raised, but no one does this.

Lenin Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow

Creativity, writings and works of Lenin

Lenin was a famous successor Karl Marx. He often wrote works on this subject. Thus, hundreds of works belong to his pen. In Soviet times, more than forty "Lenin collections" were published, as well as collected works. Among Lenin's most popular works are The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899), What Is to Be Done? (1902), "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" (1909). Moreover, in 1919-1921, he recorded sixteen speeches on records, which testifies to the oratorical abilities of the people's leader.

Cult of Lenin

Around the personality of Vladimir Lenin, a real cult began during his reign. Petrograd was renamed to Leningrad, many streets and villages were named after this Russian revolutionary. In every city of the state, a monument to Vladimir Lenin was erected. In many scientific and journalistic works, the legendary man was quoted.

Revolutionary Lenin Vladimir Ilyich

A special survey was conducted among the population of Russia. More than 52% of respondents claim that the personality of Vladimir Lenin has become one of the most important and necessary in the history of their people.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a world-famous Russian revolutionary, the main leader of the Soviet people, a politician and statesman. He was involved in the field of journalism, hundreds of works belong to this legendary person. Over the past decades, many poems, ballads, poems have been released in his honor. In almost every city there is a monument to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, whose reign will be talked about for decades all over the world.

It would seem that everything is known about his personal life. But the main secret has not yet been revealed: did the genius of the world revolution still have descendants? There were no children in the marriage with Nadezhda Konstantinovna. But Ilyich had a close relationship with the most beautiful of the underground workers, Inessa Armand. Professor of the Russian Academy of Theater Arts Faina Khachaturyan is sure that she was friends with Lenin's grandson as a child. We found that same boy - Vladimir Armand.

One of the most vivid memories of my childhood is visiting Inessa Armand's relatives, - says Faina Nikolaevna Khachaturyan, professor at the Russian Academy of Theater Arts, a famous Russian choreographer. - My mother was friends with Hiena Armand, the wife of Inessa's youngest son - Andrey. These were the post-war years. Their family lived in a house on Manezhnaya Square. Later I learned that they were given the apartment on Lenin's orders. It was a huge community. They lived very modestly. The apartment was furnished with old government furniture. But there was a special atmosphere in it, bright representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia gathered here. For us, children, wonderful holidays were arranged in this hospitable house. Hiena raised two sons. The youngest was called Volodya. We became friends with him. He impressed with his intelligence and erudition. It always seemed to me that he reminded me of someone very much. Later, the older sister opened my eyes by saying, "Look in a history book and you'll understand everything." And indeed. Volodya Armand in childhood was almost a copy of the photograph, which depicts Volodya Ulyanov in a gymnasium uniform. The same bulging forehead, the same piercing gaze. When I grew up, my mother told me that his father, Andrei Armand, was the son of Lenin. Such is the legend.

- In the mid-70s of the last century, the country's leadership decided to free the house on Manezhnaya from residents. The descendants of the fiery revolutionary were given new apartments. Hiena and her sons received housing on Smolensky Boulevard in a prestigious house at that time.

Intrigued by the story of Faina Khachaturian, I began to look for the sons of Hiena and Andrey Armand. It turned out that the eldest, Andrei Andreevich, had died two years ago. He was a military man and until the end of his days he worked in the "mail box". But that same Volodya, who looks like a textbook photograph of little Ilyich, lives and lives in Moscow. He is 69 years old. He runs a small business of his own. The first thing that comes to mind when meeting with him: indeed, he looks a lot like Lenin! Especially when he gestures and smiles.

- A few years ago, all the newspapers went around a sensation: the grave of Lenin's son, Andrei Armand, was found in Lithuania. Is this your father?

- They also wrote that he was a colonel. In fact, he was a captain. Yes, he was seriously wounded in 1944 in battles with the Nazis near Vilkavishkis. He died in the hospital. Here he was buried. The family knew where he rested. We went to his grave long before the press trumpeted it. Before the war, dad worked as a mechanical engineer at the Gorky Automobile Plant. He was sent here, not allowing him to finish the fourth year of the institute. He even went to Sergo Ordzhonikidze with a request to let him finish his studies at the university. But he answered him: "We are well acquainted with you, but this is not a reason not to fulfill the instructions of the party." My father had a reservation from the army. But he volunteered for the front.

- It is known that after the death of Inessa Armand in 1920, Krupskaya took care of her children.

- When Inessa died, my father was in his seventeenth year. His upbringing was handled by a home teacher. He lived with us as a member of the family even after the death of his father. Krupskaya treated children with attention. Vladimir Ilyich also communicated with them, from time to time he clarified their ideological moods. There was no guardianship: just a normal relationship. Our last name meant nothing. Therefore, no benefits, no special conditions. True, Iosif Vissarionovich clearly responded to his mother's requests when she wrote: "Fix the roof." The roof often leaked: it was broken during the bombing. A day after the letter, the commandant of the Kremlin came running. Although the Armands still had one privilege: not a single member of the family fell under repression. The adopted children of Dmitry Ulyanov, the leader's younger brother, received the same indulgence.

- They wrote that one of the Armands kept Inessa's personal correspondence with Vladimir Ilyich for a long time. And in the early 50s, he burned it, fearing that it could become a reason for arrest.

- All personal correspondence with Lenin was confiscated immediately after the death of Inessa. So all the secrets of their personal relationships, if they were, are still kept in the archives of the NKVD. We have lost only my grandmother's memories of Vladimir Armand. They were stolen during the evacuation along with my diapers. It was from Vladimir that she gave birth to the fifth child - my father. She went to him, leaving the father of her previous four children - Alexander Armand, my grandfather's older brother. This is a famous family story.

- And how does the family feel about the legend that Andrei Armand is the son of Ilyich?

- These are all journalists-fictioners, - answered Vladimir Andreevich. Where the legend came from, I don't know. For some reason, no one says that Inessa Armand created the Rabotnitsa magazine, that she is the first chairman of the executive committee of Moscow and the Moscow region. This is no longer interesting to anyone. My father was born in 1903, and Inessa met Lenin in 1909.

- But the leader and his girlfriend could correct the biography. Maybe they met earlier, because Inessa wrote that she got acquainted with the works of Lenin in 1903, in the year of the birth of her youngest son...

Vladimir Andreevich just waved it away.

- Once Volodya spoke at some meeting. Someone took a picture of him. In the picture, he really was an exact copy of the leader, - Olga, the wife of Vladimir Andreevich, laughs.

- Vladimir Ilyich and Inessa, figuratively speaking, were standing next to the machine. He is an outstanding theorist. She is a very literate person in terms of culture, economics, jurisprudence and a talented organizer. And nothing more, - Vladimir Andreevich finished the conversation.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (real name - Ulyanov) is a great Russian political and public figure, revolutionary, founder of the RSDLP party (Bolsheviks), creator of the first socialist state in history.

The years of Lenin's life: 1870 - 1924.

Lenin is known primarily as one of the leaders of the great October Revolution of 1917, when the monarchy was overthrown and Russia turned into a socialist country. Lenin was the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) of the new Russia - the RSFSR, considered the founder of the USSR.

Vladimir Ilyich was not only one of the most prominent political leaders in the entire history of Russia, he was also known as the author of many theoretical works on politics and social sciences, the founder of the theory of Marxism-Leninism and the creator and main ideologist of the Third International (an alliance of communist parties from different countries) .

Brief biography of Lenin

Lenin was born on April 22 in the city of Simbirsk, where he lived until the end of the Simbirsk gymnasium in 1887. After graduating from the gymnasium, Lenin left for Kazan and entered the university there at the Faculty of Law. In the same year, Alexander, Lenin's brother, was executed for participating in the assassination attempt on Emperor Alexander 3 - this becomes a tragedy for the whole family, as it is about Alexander's revolutionary activities.

While studying at the university, Vladimir Ilyich is an active participant in the banned Narodnaya Volya circle, and also participates in all student riots, for which he is expelled from the university three months later. A police investigation carried out after the student riot revealed Lenin's connections with banned societies, as well as his brother's participation in the assassination attempt on the Emperor - this entailed a ban on Vladimir Ilyich to recover at the university and the installation of close supervision over him. Lenin was included in the list of "unreliable" persons.

In 1888, Lenin again came to Kazan and joined one of the local Marxist circles, where he began to actively study the works of Marx, Engels and Plekhanov, which in the future would have a tremendous impact on his political self-consciousness. Around this time, Lenin's revolutionary activity begins.

In 1889, Lenin moved to Samara and there he continued to look for supporters of a future coup d'état. In 1891, he externally took exams for the course of the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. At the same time, under the influence of Plekhanov, his views evolved from populist to social democratic, and Lenin developed his first doctrine, which laid the foundation for Leninism.

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg and got a job as an assistant lawyer, while continuing to conduct an active journalistic activity - he published many works in which he studied the process of capitalization of Russia.

In 1895, after a trip abroad, where Lenin met with Plekhanov and many other public figures, he organized the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class" in St. Petersburg and began an active struggle against the autocracy. For his activities, Lenin was arrested, spent a year in prison, and then sent into exile in 1897, where, however, he continued his activities, despite the prohibitions. During the exile, Lenin was officially married to his common-law wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya.

In 1898, the first secret congress of the Social Democratic Party (RSDLP) was held, headed by Lenin. Soon after the Congress, all its members (9 people) were arrested, but the beginning of the revolution was laid.

The next time, Lenin returned to Russia only in February 1917 and immediately became the head of another uprising. Despite being ordered to arrest him pretty soon, Lenin continues his activities illegally. In October 1917, after the coup d'etat and the overthrow of the autocracy, power in the country completely passes to Lenin and his party.

Lenin's reforms

From 1917 until his death, Lenin was engaged in the reformation of the country in accordance with social democratic ideals:

• Makes peace with Germany, creates the Red Army, which takes an active part in the civil war of 1917-1921;
• Creates the NEP - the new economic policy;
• Gives civil rights to peasants and workers (the working class becomes the main one in the new political system of Russia);
• Reforms the church, seeking to replace Christianity with a new "religion" - communism.

He dies in 1924 after a sharp deterioration in health. By order of Stalin, the body of the leader is placed in a mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.

The role of Lenin in the history of Russia

The role of Lenin 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 turned from an Empire into a socialist state based on the ideas of communism and the rule of the working class.

The state created by Lenin existed for almost 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 that ever existed in world history.

Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Biography

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (real name - Ulyanov) (1870 - 1924)
Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.
Biography
Russian politician and statesman, "continuer of the cause of K. Marx and F. Engels", organizer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), founder of the Soviet socialist state. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born on April 22 (April 10, according to the old style), 1870, in Simbirsk, in the family of an inspector of public schools, who became a hereditary nobleman. Grandfather of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov - N.V. Ulyanov; was a serf in the Nizhny Novgorod province, later - a tailor-craftsman in Astrakhan. Father - Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov; after graduating from Kazan University, he taught at secondary schools in Penza and Nizhny Novgorod, later he was appointed inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province. Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank); the doctor's daughter, having received a home education, passed the external exams for the title of teacher; buried in St. Petersburg at the Volkovo cemetery. Elder brother - Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov; in 1887 he was executed for participating in the preparation of the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. The younger brother is Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov. Sisters - Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova (Ulyanova-Elizarova) and Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova. All the children of the Ulyanov family connected their lives with the revolutionary movement.
In 1879-1887 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk Gymnasium, from which he graduated with a gold medal. He entered the Faculty of Law of Kazan University, but in December 1887 he was arrested for active participation in the revolutionary gathering of students, expelled from the university as a relative of the executed brother of the People's Will and exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province. In October 1888, Vladimir Ulyanov returned to Kazan, where he joined one of the Marxist circles. In the second half of August 1890 he visited Moscow for the first time. In 1891, at St. Petersburg University, he passed the exams as an external student in the program of the Faculty of Law, and on January 14, 1892, Vladimir Ulyanov received a diploma of the 1st degree. In 1889 the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov began working as an assistant barrister and organized a circle of Marxists. In August 1893 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he joined the Marxist circle of students of the Technological Institute. In 1895 he published under the pseudonym K. Tulin. In April 1895, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov went abroad to establish contact with the Emancipation of Labor group. In Switzerland, he met G.V. Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue. In September 1895, returning from abroad, he visited Vilnius, Moscow and Orekhovo-Zuevo. In the autumn of 1895, on the initiative and under the leadership of V.I. Ulyanov, the Marxist circles of St. Petersburg united into a single organization - the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. For participation in the organization of the Social Democratic Party in December 1895, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was arrested, and in February 1897 he was exiled for three years to Siberia - to the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, Yenisei province. Together with him, as a bride, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya was also sent, also sentenced to exile for active revolutionary work. In 1898, while in Shushenskoye, N.K. Krupskaya, with whom V.I. Ulyanov met in 1894, became his wife. In exile, Ulyanov wrote over 30 works. In 1898, the First Congress of the RSDLP took place in Minsk, proclaiming the formation of a Social Democratic Party in Russia and publishing the Manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In 1899 Ulyanov published under the pseudonym "V. Ilyin". Among his pseudonyms were V. Frei, Iv. Petrov, Karpov and others. On February 10 (January 29, according to the old style), 1900, after the exile, Ulyanov left Shushenskoye. In July 1900 he went abroad, where he set up the publication of the Iskra newspaper, becoming its editor. In 1900-1905 Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov lived in Munich, London, Geneva. In December 1901, one of his articles published in the Zarya magazine was first signed with the pseudonym "Lenin" (according to other sources, the pseudonym "Lenin" first appeared in January 1901 in a letter addressed to G.V. Plekhanov). In 1903, the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP was held, at which the Bolshevik Party was practically created, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who wrote the Rules of the RSDLP and the Party Program demanding the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the socialist transformation of society, headed the left (“Bolshevik”) wing of the party. In 1904 Yu.O. Martov first used the term "Leninism" ("Struggle against the "state of siege" in the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party"). On November 21 (November 8, according to the old style), 1905, Lenin illegally arrived in St. Petersburg, where he took charge of the activities of the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks, the preparation of an armed uprising, and the activities of the Bolshevik newspapers Vpered, Proletary, and Novaya Zhizn. In two years, he changed 21 safe houses. Avoiding arrest, in August 1906 Lenin moved to the dacha "Vaza" in the village of Kuokkala (Finland). In 1907 he was unsuccessfully a candidate for the 2nd State Duma in St. Petersburg, from where he periodically traveled to St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vyborg, Stockholm, London, Stuttgart. In December 1907 he again emigrated to Switzerland, and at the end of 1908 - to France (Paris). In December 1910, the newspaper Zvezda began to be published in St. Petersburg, and on May 5 (April 22, old style) 1912, the first issue of the daily legal Bolshevik workers' newspaper Pravda was published. To train cadres of party workers in 1911, Lenin organized a party school in Longjumeau (near Paris), in which he gave 29 lectures. In January 1912, the 6th (Prague) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP took place in Prague under his leadership. In June 1912, Lenin moved to Krakow, from where he directed the activities of the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma and directed the work of the bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP in Russia. From October 1905 to 1912, Lenin was the representative of the RSDLP in the International Socialist Bureau of the 2nd International, leading a delegation of Bolsheviks, and took part in the work of the Stuttgart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) international socialist congresses. August 8 (Old Style July 26), 1914 Lenin, who was in Poronin (the territory of Austria-Hungary), was arrested by the Austrian authorities on suspicion of spying for Russia and imprisoned in the city of Novy Targ, but on August 19 (Old Style 6 August), thanks to the assistance of the Polish and Austrian Social Democrats, was released. On September 5 (August 23, according to the old style), he left for Bern (Switzerland), and in February 1916 he moved to Zurich, where he lived until April (until March, according to the old style), 1917. Lenin learned about the victory of the February Revolution in Petrograd from Swiss newspapers from March 15 (Old Style March 2), 1917. April 16 (Old Style 3), 1917 Lenin returned from exile to Petrograd. A solemn meeting took place on the platform of the Finlyandsky railway station and he was presented with party card No. 600 of the Bolshevik organization of the Vyborg side. From April to July 1917 he wrote more than 170 articles, pamphlets, draft resolutions of the Bolshevik conferences and the Central Committee of the party, appeals. On July 20 (Old Style July 7) the Provisional Government ordered Lenin's arrest. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 safe houses, after which, until August 21 (August 8, according to the old style), 1917, he hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut across Lake Razliv, until early October - in Finland (Yalkala, Helsingfors, Vyborg). In early October 1917, Lenin illegally returned from Vyborg to Petrograd. On October 23 (October 10, according to the old style), at a meeting of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), at its proposal, the Central Committee adopted a resolution on an armed uprising. On November 6 (October 24, according to the old style), in a letter to the Central Committee, Lenin demanded to immediately go on the offensive, arrest the Provisional Government and take power. In the evening, he illegally arrived in Smolny to directly lead the armed uprising. On November 7 (October 25, according to the old style), 1917, at the opening of the 2nd All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin's decrees on peace and land were adopted and a workers' and peasants' government was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. For 124 days of the "Smolninsk period" he wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, participated in editing 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 presided over 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, in the preparation and holding of 6 various All-Russian Congresses of Workers. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, on 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. In July 1918, he led the suppression of the Armed Action of the Left SRs. On August 30, 1918, after the end of the rally at the Michelson plant, Lenin was seriously wounded by the Social Revolutionary F.E. Kaplan. In 1919, on the initiative of Lenin, the 3rd, Communist International was created. In 1921, at the 10th Congress of the RCP(b), Lenin put forward the task of transitioning from the policy of "war communism" to the New Economic Policy (NEP). In March 1922, Lenin directed the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP(b), the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he fell seriously ill, but returned to work in early October. Lenin's last public speech was on November 20, 1922, at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, Lenin's health deteriorated sharply again, and in May 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. The last time in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923. In January 1924, his health suddenly deteriorated sharply, and on January 21, 1924 at 6 o'clock. 50 min. In the evening Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) died.
On January 23, the coffin with the body of Lenin was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns. The official farewell took place over five days and nights. On January 27, the coffin with the embalmed body of Lenin was placed in the Mausoleum specially built on Red Square (architect A.V. Shchusev). 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. The delegation of the city (about 1 thousand people) participated in Lenin's funeral in Moscow. In 1923 the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the V.I. Lenin, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels, a single Institute of Marx - Engels - Lenin was formed under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (later the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). More than 30 thousand documents are stored in the Central Party Archive of this institute, the author of which is V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin).
Winston Churchill wrote about Lenin: "Not a single Asian conqueror, neither Tamerlane nor Genghis Khan, enjoyed such fame as he did. An implacable avenger, growing out of the peace of cold compassion, sanity, understanding of reality. His weapon is logic, his disposition of the soul - Opportunism His sympathies are cold and wide like the Arctic Ocean His hatred is tight like a hangman's noose His destiny is to save the world His method is to blow up this world Absolute adherence to principles, at the same time willingness to change principles... He subverted everything. He overthrew God, king, country, morality, court, debts, rents, interests, laws and customs of centuries, he overthrew the whole historical structure, such as human society.In the end, he overthrew himself... Lenin's intellect was overthrown at that moment when his destructive power was exhausted and the independent, self-healing functions of his quest began to manifest, he alone could lead Russia out of the quagmire... The Russian people were left to wallow in the swamp. Their greatest misfortune was his birth, but their next misfortune was his death" (Churchill W.S., The Aftermath; The World Crisis. 1918-1928; New York, 1929).
Lenin was one of the main organizers of the "Red Terror", which took on the most brutal and mass forms in 1919-1920, the liquidation of opposition parties and their press organs, which led to the emergence of a one-party system, repressions against "socially alien elements" - the nobility, entrepreneurs, clergy, intelligentsia, the expulsion from the country of its prominent representatives who disagreed with the policy of the new government, was the initiator and ideologist of the policy of "war communism" and "new economic policy". Author of the State Plan for the Electrification of the Country (GOELRO), in accordance with which several power plants were built. On Lenin's initiative, a plan for monumental propaganda was developed: in accordance with the decree "On the Monuments of the Republic" (April 12, 1918), with the personal participation of Lenin, the demolition of "old" monuments in the Kremlin and other places in Moscow began, as well as the destruction of churches; at the same time, monuments to revolutionary figures were erected.
"In 1919, law faculties were liquidated at universities, and in 1921 the People's Commissariat of Education (Narkompros) abolished the historical and philological sciences as obsolete and useless for the dictatorship of the proletariat. [...] By February 5, 1922, 143 private publishing houses were registered in Moscow. After reading about this in the newspaper Izvestia, Lenin demanded that the Chekists collect systematic information about all professors and writers. "All these obvious counter-revolutionaries are accomplices of the Entente, an organization of its servants and spies and molesters of student youth; almost all of them are the most legitimate candidates for deportation abroad. They must be caught constantly and systematically deported". [...] May 19 (1922) the leader sent to Moscow instructions "On the expulsion abroad of writers and professors who help the counter-revolution", inscribing on the envelope: "comrade Dzerzhinsky. Personally, secretly, sew up." Ten days later he suffered a stroke. By August 18, 1922, the seriously ill Ilyich was handed over the first list of those arrested, who were announced a decision on expulsion and a warning that unauthorized entry into the USSR was punishable by execution. Lenin then said to the attending physician: "Today is perhaps the first day that my head did not hurt at all." [...] The first group of exiles received in history the name "philosophical ship". [...] It was allowed to take with you per person: one winter and one summer coat, one suit, two shirts, one sheet. No jewelry, not even pectoral crosses, not a single book. Train Moscow - Petrograd. Then many hours of loading onto the German steamer "Oberburgomaster Haken": they call out a name from the ladder, enter one by one into the control booth, interrogation and search, by touch, through the dress ... " . "There were several ships and not one train. They left for several months [...] until the end of the year. [...] in addition to those expelled from Moscow and Petrograd, there was a group of people expelled from Kiev, from Odessa, from Novorossiysk University , and there were, according to Trotsky's later confession, about 60 people expelled from Georgia.
“From the famine of 1920-1922, according to official figures, more than five million people died. Unthinkable cannibalism flourished throughout the country. I came across absolutely amazing notes, though not in the Soviet press, that brutal starving people in the Volga region ate representatives of the ARA - an American relief organization headed by Hoover, the future president of the United States, it saved an unknown number of millions of people from starvation in the country.According to the assumptions of the same Bolsheviks, at least 20 million people should have died from starvation, only five died.The Bolsheviks believed that in In any case, the same Trotsky almost did not hide this, that the fewer eaters, the easier it will be for the country. (V. Topolyansky, "Leaders in Law. Essays on the Physiology of Russian Power")“Having created famine in the country by mass seizure of grain from the peasantry, the leader of the revolution wrote to Molotov: “It is now, and only now, when people are being eaten in hungry areas and hundreds, if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the seizure of church valuables with the most frenzied and merciless energy, not stopping at suppressing any kind of resistance. It is necessary now to teach this public a lesson in such a way that for several decades they will not even dare to think about any resistance. (E. Olshanskaya, broadcast "Lenin's List", July 21, 2002; Radio Liberty) “We must not forget that Lenin by that time was already just a delusional patient. In fact, he should have been considered in 1922 as an insane patient. In 1922, rumors spread throughout Moscow that Lenin was ill with syphilis, that he had progressive paralysis, that he delusional and, as even idle people said, he is persecuted by the Mother of God for all the troubles that he caused the country.In the same 1922, the foreign press actively discussed what Lenin was ill with, and came to the conclusion that those doctors who treated him, and those doctors who talked about the neurasthenic syndrome in the leader, in fact, concealed the fact that behind this neurasthenic syndrome there is a single disease - progressive paralysis ... Progressive paralysis has one feature, this is precisely the contingent of patients who, when - something overwhelmed the psychiatric departments of various clinics.As soon as the first signs of progressive paralysis appeared in the patient, this patient was immediately recognized as insane, even if he retained external signs of sanity and capacity. I cannot say from what time Vladimir Ilyich should be declared insane. In 1903, Krupskaya saw him have a rash, from which he suffered greatly, a lot indicates that this rash, most likely, was of syphilitic origin, but the appearance of a rash already means secondary syphilis. After 1903, he developed tertiary syphilis with gradual vascular damage. He did not undergo appropriate examination and treatment, including by psychiatrists. The psychiatrist Osipov was on duty with him continuously, that is, he simply lived in Gorki from 1923, and before that the Germans came to him, and one of the first to come was the famous Foerster, one of the largest specialists in neurosyphilis. It was Foerster who prescribed him anti-syphilitic therapy, which was described in detail in all medical diaries at that time. A long time ago, psychiatrists noticed one amazing thing, that progressive paralysis, before bringing a person to complete insanity, gives him the opportunity for incredible productivity and performance. Such excess energy can indeed be noted in Lenin in 1917-1918, even in 1919. But starting from 1920, headaches, some kind of dizziness, attacks of weakness and loss of consciousness, incomprehensible to doctors, were increasingly common. That is, in any case, 1922 is the time of Lenin's already very serious illness, with repeated strokes, impaired consciousness, with repeated episodes of hallucinations and simply delirium described by the same doctors. [...] French psychiatry once described a very curious syndrome, it was called "insanity together". If there was a madman in a family, then the spouse sooner or later became imbued with the ideas of this madman, and it was already difficult to distinguish which of them was more crazy. As a result, if the madman himself temporarily recovered, that is, if a remission occurred, then the person induced by this madman could still keep these ideas intact. I cannot rule out that this very curious syndrome can be extended to large masses of people. I do not rule out that Lenin simply induced his closest associates with his nonsense, and then with the help of Soviet propaganda, which, it must be said, worked perfectly, these ideas were introduced into the consciousness of the entire population. And thus, Soviet civilization took place." (V. Topolyansky, "Leaders in law. Essays on the physiology of Russian power"; broadcast "Lenin's List", July 21, 2002; Radio Liberty)
Among the works of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) are letters, articles, brochures, books: "What are the "friends of the people" and how do they fight against the Social Democrats?" (1894), "The economic content of populism and criticism of it in the book of Mr. Struve (Reflection of Marxism in bourgeois literature)" (1894-1895), "Materials on the question of the economic development of Russia" (1895; article in the collection under the pseudonym "Tulin" ), "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (1899; the book was published under the pseudonym "V. Ilyin"), "Economic studies and articles" (1899; the collection of articles was published under the pseudonym "V. Ilyin"), "Protest of Russian social Democrats" (1899), "What to do? Painful questions of our movement" (1902; pamphlet), "The Agrarian Program of Russian Social Democracy" (1902), "The National Question in Our Program" (1903), "One Step Forward, Two Steps back" (1904), "Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution" (August 1905), "Party Organization and Party Literature" (1905), "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" (1909), "Critical Notes on the National Question" (1913 ), "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (1914), "Imperialism, as the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), "Philosophical Notebooks", "War and Russian Social Democracy" (Manifesto of the Central Committee of the RSDLP), "On the National Pride of the Great Russians" , "The Collapse of the Second International", "Socialism and War", "On the Slogan of the United States of Europe", "The Military Program of the Proletarian Revolution", "The Results of the Discussion on Self-Determination", "On the Caricature of Marxism and on "Imperialist Economism", "Letters from afar "(1917)," On the tasks of the proletariat in this revolution "(" April Theses "; 1917), The Political Situation (1917; theses), Towards Slogans (1917), State and Revolution (1917), The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It (1917), Will the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? " (1917), "The Bolsheviks Must Take Power" (1917), "Marxism and Rebellion" (1917), "The Crisis Is Ripe" (1917), "Advice from an Outsider" (1917), "How to Organize a Competition?" (December 1917), "Declaration of the Rights of the Working and Exploited People" (January 1918; taken as the basis of the first Soviet Constitution of 1918), "Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power" (1918), "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky" (autumn 1918), "Theses Central Committee of the RCP(b) in connection with the situation on the Eastern Front" (April 1919), "The Great Initiative" (June 1919), "Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (autumn 1919), "From the Destruction of the Age-old Way of Life to the Creation of a New One" ( spring 1920), "The Childhood Disease of "Leftism" in Communism" (1920), "On Proletarian Culture" (1920), "On the Food Tax (The Meaning of the New Policy and Its Conditions)" (1921), "On the Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution" (1921), "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (1922), "On the Formation of the USSR" (1922), "Pages from a Diary" (December 1922), "On Cooperation" (December 1922), "On Our Revolution" (December 1922 ), "How do we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)" (December 1922), "Less is better" (December 1922)
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Information sources:
Encyclopedic resource www.rubricon.com (Great Soviet Encyclopedia, St. Petersburg Encyclopedic Guide, Moscow Encyclopedia, Biographical Dictionary "Political Figures of Russia 1917", Encyclopedia of Russian-American Relations, Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary, Encyclopedic Dictionary "History of the Fatherland" )
Elena Olshanskaya, Irina Lagutina: program "Lenin's List"; July 21, 2002; Radio Liberty, magazine "Krugozor" Viktor Topolyansky. “Leaders in law. Essays on the physiology of Russian power, M. 1996 "Russian Biographical Dictionary"
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