Mr Lenin - awaken the boy - Revol

LENIN
(1870-1924). The revolution that brought the Communist party to power in Russia in 1917 has been called the most important political event of the 20th century. Its leader was Lenin, a Marxian socialist. Lenin spent years studying the technique of revolution and building up a following. At the right moment he carried out his plan with great skill.

Lenin's real name was Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. He was born on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russia, a town on the Volga River. His father, a teacher, rose to be a provincial director of schools. Vladimir was 16 when his father died. The next year his older brother, Alexander, was executed for taking part in a plot to assassinate Czar Alexander III. Lenin's hatred of the ruling and propertied classes began at this time.

A few months after his brother's execution Lenin was expelled from school for taking part in a political demonstration. For several years he lived with relatives, studying law, languages, and the writings of Karl Marx. In 1891 he passed his law examinations. He soon gave up his law practice to spend full time in the revolutionary underground movement in St. Petersburg, then the Russian capital.

Lenin was arrested in 1895, sent to jail, and later exiled to Siberia. There he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he had known in the St. Petersburg underground.

It was in Siberia that he first used the pen name N. Lenin. It has been assumed that the "N" stood for Nikolai, but he is not known ever to have signed the full name. Today the initials of his given names are usually attached to his pen name and he is called V.I. Lenin. When his jail term ended in 1900 Lenin went abroad. The next year his wife joined him. Most of the time until 1917 the couple lived as exiles, traveling from country to country, often with forged passports. With other Russian Marxists they published a newspaper, (The Spark), which was smuggled into Russia.

In 1903 some 60 Russian revolutionaries opened a congress in Brussels. The Belgian police ordered them to leave, and the congress was continued in London. Lenin's fanaticism made him unpopular with the more moderate old-guard socialists; he advocated a small, secret party, or vanguard, of full-time revolutionaries who would lead ordinary workers to revolution. His ideas split the Russian Social Democratic party in two: Lenin's radical group, the Bolsheviks (Majority), and the more moderate group, the Mensheviks (Minority).

The party also split in Russia. The Bolsheviks, which were actually the smaller group, followed Lenin's instructions implicitly in carrying out acts of terrorism. He told them how to break into banks, how to obtain and use bombs, how to set fires, and how to sabotage trucks. The party organized cells in trade unions, among transportation workers, and in the army and navy.

The Lenins were in Switzerland during World War I. Most socialists supported their governments in the war. Lenin called on the workers of all countries to revolt and end the war. This interested the German government, which wanted peace with Russia.

Russia's losses in the war were appalling. Revolution broke out in March 1917. The czar was dethroned by the new provisional government, but the war went on. The German government, hoping to change the course of the revolution, agreed to allow the Lenins and 30 other revolutionaries to return to Russia. The group arrived at Finland Station, in the Russian capital, on April 16. The next day Leon Trotsky arrived from New York City. Lenin and Trotsky made a formidable team. In July the Bolsheviks took part in an unsuccessful uprising. The provisional government accused Lenin of being a German agent, and he fled to Finland. On October 22 he returned secretly. After instructing the Bolsheviks, he again went into hiding.

On November 6 Lenin reappeared to direct the revolution. Before daybreak on November 7 (October 25 in the old Russian calendar) the Bolsheviks seized the railway station, state bank, power stations, and telephone exchange. In the evening they arrested cabinet members meeting in the Winter Palace. On November 9 Lenin formed the world's first Communist government.

Lenin suffered two strokes in 1922 and a third in 1923. After a fatal stroke, on Jan. 21, 1924, Joseph Stalin succeeded him. The Soviets long regarded Lenin as their greatest national hero. His writings - particularly his directives for the Communist party - ranked with those of Marx. Lenin's tomb, on Red Square in Moscow, was a national shrine. In 1924 St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in his honor. After the demise of Communism and breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the Russian people began to turn against Lenin and all he stood for. The citizens of Leningrad in 1991 voted to restore the city's name to St. Petersburg.