Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech to Vsevobuch servicemen on the first anniversary of the foundation of the Soviet armed forces, Red Square, Moscow, 25th May 1919.
Russian revolutionaries and leaders Joseph Stalin (1878 - 1953), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), and Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875 - 1946) at the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in Moscow, 23rd March 1919.
Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech to Vsevobuch servicemen on the first anniversary of the foundation of the Soviet armed forces, Red Square, Moscow, 25th May 1919.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya (in the middle) with residents of the village Kashino during the opening ceremony of the powerplant in Kashino, Soviet Union, on 14th November 1920.
Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech into men of the Red Army leaving for the front, during the Polish-Soviet War, Sverdlov Square (now Theatre Square), Moscow, 5th May 1920.
Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech into men of the Red Army leaving for the front, during the Polish-Soviet War, Sverdlov Square (now Theatre Square), Moscow, 5th May 1920.
Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech into men of the Red Army leaving for the front, during the Polish-Soviet War, Sverdlov Square (now Theatre Square), Moscow, 5th May 1920.
Russian communist revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin (1879 - 1924), giving a speech into men of the Red Army leaving for the front, during the Polish-Soviet War, Sverdlov Square (now Theatre Square), Moscow, 5th May 1920.
Vladimir Lenin, his younger sister Maria Ulyanovna and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
Vladimir Lenin and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
Vladimir Lenin and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
Vladimir Lenin, his younger sister Maria Ulyanovna and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
Vladimir Lenin and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
Vladimir Lenin and delegates to the second Comintern congress at the Square of the Victims of the Revolution (Field of Mars), Petrograd, Russia, on 19th July 1920.
A White Russian anti-Bolshevik propaganda poster, in which Lenin is depicted in a red robe, aiding other Bolsheviks in sacrificing Russia to a statue of Marx (c. 1918-1919).
Lenin (1870-1924) and Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939). Krupskaya married Lenin in 1898 and was active in Bolshevik circles up to the October Revolution of 1917. She later served as deputy Commissar of Education in the Soviet Union from 1929-1939.
Russian revolutionaries and leaders Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), and Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin (1875 - 1946), at the Congress of the Russian Communist Party.
Russian revolutionaries Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), and Leon Trotsky (1879 - 1940), alias Lev Davidovich Bronstein, during the Bolshevik Revolution.
Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924), far left, is joined in the car by his wife Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya and his sister Maria Ulyanova, ready to leave for Khodinsoye Polya after a military parade.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenin, head of government of the Soviet Union, with his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya in Gorki, in September 1922. A photograph supposedly was taken by Vladimir Lenin's sister Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova.
The State and Revolution (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
(In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a wa...)
In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Revolution at the Gates: Zizek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings
(The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an out...)
The idea of a Lenin renaissance might well provoke an outburst of sarcastic laughter. Marx is OK, but Lenin? Doesnt he stand for the big catastrophe which left its mark on the entire twentieth-century?
Lenin, however, deserves wider consideration than this, and his writings of 1917 are testament to a formidable political figure. They reveal his ability to grasp the significance of an extraordinary moment in history. Everything is here, from Lenin-the-ingenious-revolutionary-strategist to Lenin-of-the-enacted-utopia. To use Kierkegaards phrase, what we can glimpse in these writings is Lenin-in-becoming: not yet Lenin-the-Soviet-institution, but Lenin thrown into an open, contingent situation.
In Revolution at the Gates, Slavoj ?i?ek locates the 1917 writings in their historical context, while his afterword tackles the key question of whether Lenin can be reinvented in our era of cultural capitalism. ?i?ek is convinced that, whatever the discussionthe forthcoming crisis of capitalism, the possibility of a redemptive violence, the falsity of liberal toleranceLenins time has come again.
Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and Other Writings
(
Among the most influential political and social forces ...)
Among the most influential political and social forces of the twentieth century, modern communism rests firmly on philosophical, political, and economic underpinnings developed by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin. In this volume, comprising the four works generally considered his most important publications, Lenin presents the goals and tactics of Communism with remarkable directness and forcefulness.
His first major work was The Development of Capitalism in Russia, written in prison after Lenin had been arrested for anti-government activities in 1895. Represented here by key sections, the book developed a number of crucial concepts, including the significance of the industrial proletariat as a revolutionary base. What Is to Be Done?, long regarded as the key manual of Communist action, is presented complete, containing Lenin's famous dissection of the Western idea of the political party along with his own concept of a monolithic party organization devoted to achieving the goal of dictatorship of the proletariat. Also presented complete is Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which Lenin examines the final "parasitic" stage of capitalism. Finally, this volume includes the complete text of The State and Revolution, Lenin's most significant work, in which he totally rejects the institutions of Western democracy and presents his vision of the final perfection of Communism.
For anyone who seeks to understand the twentieth century, capitalism, the Russian revolution, and the role of Communism in the tumultuous political and social movements that have shaped the modern world, the essential works of Lenin offer unparalleled insight and understanding. Taken together, they represent a balanced cross-section of this revolutionary theories of history, politics, and economics; his tactics for securing and retaining power; and his vision of a new social and economic order.
(
Lenin's State and Revolution is a broad assault on revi...)
Lenin's State and Revolution is a broad assault on revisionism. Its impulse lies in Lenin's boundless political ambition, namely his craving to acquire absolute power in Russia in order to instigate a worldwide revolution...If his ambition was to be realized, Lenin had to insist on violent revolution and the abolition of the existing state.
...What Lenin was obliquely arguing was that a clean sweep must be made of the existing political mechanism in order for the Communist party, of which he was undisputed leader, to take power. And that power was to be unrestrained.
(This special facsimile edition marking the 80th anniversa...)
This special facsimile edition marking the 80th anniversary of the Russian Revolution reveals Lenin's mind on the eve of the Revolution. Completed by Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, on October 1, 1917, this historic work was first published in English by the Labour Publishing Company to launch its The Workers' Library series.
What Is to Be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement
(Lenins work What Is To Be Done? Was written at the end o...)
Lenins work What Is To Be Done? Was written at the end of 1901 and early in 1902. In Where To Begin, published in Iskra, No. 4 (May 1901), Lenin said that the article represented a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print. Lenin began the actual writing of the book in the autumn of 1901. In his Preface to the Pamphlet Documents of the Unity Conference, written in November 1901, Lenin said that the book was in preparation to be published in the near future. In December Lenin published (in Iskra, No. 12) his article A Talk with Defenders of Economism, which he later called a conspectus of What Is To Be Done? He wrote the Preface to the book in February 1902 and early in March the book was published by Dietz in Stuttgart. An announcement of its publication was printed in Iskra, No. 18, March 10, 1902. In republishing the book in 1907 as part of the collection Twelve Years, Lenin omitted Section A of Chapter V, Who Was Offended by the Article Where To Begin, stating in the Preface that the book was being published with slight abridgements, representing the omission solely of details of the organisational relationships and minor polemical remarks. Lenin added five footnotes to the new edition. The text of this volume is that of the 1902 edition, verified with the 1907 edition.
Lenin's Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23
(The record of Lenin's last and most concentrated politica...)
The record of Lenin's last and most concentrated political battle against a growing privileged layer, as he sought to set the Communist Party on course to strengthen the alliance of workers and peasants and the voluntary union of soviet Republics.
Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People
(Contents: 1. Report on Peace at the Second All-Russia Con...)
Contents: 1. Report on Peace at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, October 26 (November 8), 1917; 2. Report on Land at the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, October 26 (November 8), 1917; 3. Draft Regulations on Workers' Control; 4. Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People.
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline
(The concept of imperialism lies at the heart of Marxist a...)
The concept of imperialism lies at the heart of Marxist analysis and debate. This text offers a prescient analysis of a world shaken by competitive instability, war and crisis, dominated by monopolies, the merging of finance and industrial capital and fierce territorial competition. Originally published in 1916, it explains how colonialism and World War I were inherent features of the global development of the capitalist economy. The introduction to this edition contrasts Lenin's approach with that adopted by contemporary theories of globalization. It argues that, while much has changed since Lenin wrote, his theoretical framework remains the best method for understanding recent global developments.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He was founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution and architect and first head of the Soviet state.
Background
Lenin was born on 22 April 1870 in Ulyanovsk, Russia and was the third of the six children born to Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Blank, both of whom were from affluent backgrounds. His father was a respected director of public schools.
His mother was the daughter of a physician and taught her children a love of reading and music. Lenin personally could usually depend on financial support from his mother, but her pension could not pay for his political activities.
Education
Vladimir received the conventional education given to the sons of the Russian upper class but turned into a radical dissenter.
Lenin graduated from secondary school with high honors, enrolled at Kazan University. A brilliant student, he had just entered, but his involvement in protest activities resulted in his immediate expulsion and banishment to a small village near Kazan, where he lived under police surveillance. In 1888 he was permitted to return to Kazan, but he was denied entry to any university and therefore embarked on his own rigorous course of study.
In 1891 he passed law examinations at the University of St. Petersburg.
In 1898, Lenin, Plekhanov, and others organized the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) to advance these goals. Lenin aimed many polemics against the SR's, but soon he also developed serious disagreements with others in the RSDLP.
The "Iskrists" won the day at the second congress of the RSDLP, held in Brussels and London in 1903, but then split into two organized factions - the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. This split was analyzed in Lenin's One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904).
He lived in Munich from 1900 to 1902, in London from 1902 to 1903, and in Geneva from 1903 to 1905.
In 1905 a revolution sparked by a spontaneous uprising among the workers and fueled by hundreds of strikes and peasant uprisings forced the tsarist regime to grant a number of important reforms, including greater political liberties and the creation of a weak parliamentary body called the Duma. Although Lenin at first rejected participation in the Duma, he supported participation in the soviets councils of workers' deputies, which had directed the revolutionary activities. He also strongly favored opening up the RSDLP, especially its Bolshevik wing, to a dramatic influx of radicalizing workers. The gap between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks narrowed, and the membership of the RSDLP soared.
Lenin was also sharply critical of "conciliators," such as Trotsky, who attempted to maintain RSDLP unity. In 1912 Lenin and those who agreed with him definitively split with all other currents in the RSDLP and established their own distinct Bolshevik party. The new Bolshevik RSDLP published the newspaper Pravda ("The Truth"). They had not only a coherent strategic orientation but, above all, a clear program: for an eight-hour work day, beneficial to the workers; for land reform, beneficial to the peasants; and for a democratic constituent assembly. These three demands were used to dramatize the need for a worker-peasant alliance in the democratic revolution.
Between 1912 and 1914 Lenin's Bolsheviks outstripped all other currents in the Russian revolutionary movement, enjoying predominance among the organized workers. This militant upswing was checked, however, by the eruption of World War I, which was used by the tsarist authorities to suppress all dissent. The socialist movement split into "patriotic" and antiwar fragments, not only in Russia but in all countries involved in the conflict. In Russia only the more moderate "patriotic" socialists were able to operate openly, thus managing to eclipse the now repressed Bolsheviks in the labor movement. World War I. Lenin had moved to Krakow, in Austrian Poland, in 1912.
After the outbreak of war in 1914 Len was deported to Switzerland. Lenin, like many Marxists, had expected the outbreak of war. He joined with various antiwar socialist currents at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in criticizing the failure of the Second International to remain true to its uncompromisingly antiwar statements, and he called for a new, revolutionary Third International. Lenin at this time also took issue with those non-Bolshevik revolutionaries, notably Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, whose policies were, in fact, closest to his own.
Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 to challenge this widespread orientation. Immediately after the overthrow of the tsarist regime, Lenin had desperately sought to find ways to return to Russia. He was refused permission to travel by way of Great Britain and France, since the governments of those countries saw him as a threat to Russia's continued participation in the war.
Lenin left Switzerland on April 9, 1917, and arrived in Petrograd on April 16. Upon his arrival in Petrograd, Lenin pointed out that the Provisional Government was unable to end Russian involvement in the war, could not guarantee that the workers in the cities had enough to eat, and would not break up the large estates to give land to the peasants. Therefore, he argued, workers and revolutionaries should give no support to the Provisional Government. Instead they should demand "all power to the soviets" and insist on "bread, peace, and land."
By July 1917 the Bolsheviks were in the lead of a militant mass demonstration against the Provisional Government, which was now headed by Alexander Kerensky, a moderate socialist. The demonstration erupted in violence, leading to repression by the Provisional Government. Many Bolsheviks were arrested, and Lenin fled across the border to Finland.
From hiding, Lenin urgently insisted to his comrades that the Bolsheviks launch an uprising to establish soviet power. A split in the SR's resulted in a substantial left-wing faction that supported the Bolshevik demands. The soviets themselves now adopted the position of "all power to the soviets" and organized a Military Revolutionary Committee under Trotsky, which prepared an insurrection to overthrow the Provisional Government. The October Revolution in Russia, which was actually carried out on November 7, 1917, was seen as a beacon of hope by the discontented throughout the world.
One of the crucial developments of the 20th century, it led to the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to the rise of modern Communism.
The new regime entered into peace negotiations with Germany to secure Russia's withdrawal from World War I. Trotsky advocated refusal either to sign the Germans' Brest-Litovsk diktat or to resume the war with a virtually nonexistent Russian army.
Pro-capitalist and pro-tsarist forces committed themselves to the overthrow of the new regime, as did a number of foreign governments, notably those of Great Britain, France, the United States, and Japan. In all, 14 foreign countries intervened with military forces and aided counterrevolutionary Russian forces in an escalating, brutal civil war.
Masses of workers and peasants joined the new Red Army to defend the gains of the revolution.
Their efforts were hampered by economic collapse - hastened by premature nationalizations - and also by the inexperience and inevitable mistakes of the new government. In 1918 some SR's carried out assassination attempts in which Lenin was badly wounded and other prominent Bolsheviks were killed.
By 1919, however, this democracy had largely evaporated. As a result of Communist repression of opposing left-wing parties and the relative disintegration of the working class as a political force, the soviets were transformed from vital democratic councils into hollow shells that would rubber-stamp the decisions of the Sovnarkom and the Communist Party. Lenin and the Russian Communists were convinced that the spread of socialist revolution to other countries was essential for the final victory of their own revolution. At the second and third congresses of the Communist International he argued in favor of the "united front" tactic, whereby Communists would join forces with more moderate Socialists to protect and advance workers' rights against capitalist and reactionary attacks.
Lenin never gave up on the belief that the future of the new Soviet republic could be secured only through the spread of working-class revolution to other countries, but he never lived to see his hopes realized. During the Russian Civil War (1918 - 1921), in Lenin's opinion, he and his comrades had made terrible mistakes.
In pushing back the foreign invaders, for example, the Red Army - with Lenin's support but over the objections of Red Army commander Trotsky - invaded Poland in hopes of generating a revolutionary uprising among the Polish workers and peasants.
Instead, a fierce counterattack drove the Russian forces from Polish soil.
By 1921 the experience of War Communism had generated peasant revolts and an uprising of workers and sailors at the previously pro-Bolshevik Kronstadt naval base. Lenin now led the way in adopting more realistic policies that had been urged by some Communists, including Trotsky. In 1921 the New Economic Policy (NEP) was established to allow small-scale capitalist production in the countryside and the reintroduction of market mechanisms into the economy as a whole.
Suffering from a stroke in May 1922, Lenin recovered sufficiently in the autumn to return to work, only to be felled by a second stroke in December. Throughout this period and into the early months of 1923 he focused attention on ways of overcoming the bureaucratic tyranny that was gripping the Communist Party and the Soviet government and of strengthening controls by workers and peasants over the state apparatus.
Lenin sought an alliance with Trotsky to fight for his positions in the party, and he broke decisively with Stalin, whom he identified as being in the forefront of the trends he was opposing.
In his last testament he urged that Stalin be removed from his positions of party leadership. But a third stroke in March 1923 completely incapacitated him. At his country home in the village of Gorki, outside Moscow, he suffered a last, fatal stroke on 21 January 1924. After an elaborate state funeral, Lenin's embalmed body was placed in a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square.
Lenin`s father Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria—a Lutheran by upbringing—was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Later in life Lenin proclaimed that God does not exist.
Politics
Lenin believed that the representative democracy of capitalist countries gave the illusion of democracy while maintaining the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"; describing the representative democratic system of the United States, he referred to the "spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties", both of whom were led by "astute multimillionaires" that exploited the American proletariat. He opposed liberalism, exhibiting a general antipathy toward liberty as a value, and believing that liberalism's freedoms were fraudulent because it did not free labourers from capitalist exploitation.
He declared that "Soviet government is many millions of times more democratic than the most democratic-bourgeois republic", the latter of which was simply "a democracy for the rich". He regarded his "dictatorship of the proletariat" as democratic because, he claimed, it involved the election of representatives to the soviets, workers electing their own officials, and the regular rotation and involvement of all workers in the administration of the state. Lenin's belief as to what a proletariat state should look like nevertheless deviated from that adopted by the Marxist mainstream; European Marxists like Kautsky envisioned a democratically-elected parliamentary government in which the proletariat had a majority, whereas Lenin called for a strong, centralised state apparatus that excluded any input from the bourgeois.
Views
Lenin became an influential voice among Russian Marxists, through his study The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1897) and many other works.
He wrote a philosophical work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909), arguing against what he saw as serious philosophical revisions of Marxism being advanced by Bogdanov and others.
Lenin accepted violence and terror as legitimate tools of class war. He created the Soviet security police, the Cheka. He established the prototype of the totalitarian dictatorship, which tried to remake society and human nature and claimed the right to control all aspects of life. Lenin's ideological teachings and organizational methods paved the way for Joseph Stalin's brutal dictatorship.
Quotations:
"The uprising has begun. Force against Force. Street fighting is raging, barricades are being thrown up, rifles are cracking, guns are booming. Rivers of blood are flowing, the civil war for freedom is blazing up. Moscow and the South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: Death or Freedom!"
'The [First World] war is being waged for the division of colonies and the robbery of foreign territory; thieves have fallen out–and to refer to the defeats at a given moment of one of the thieves in order to identify the interests of all thieves with the interests of the nation or the fatherland is an unconscionable bourgeois lie."
"To All Workers, Soldiers and Peasants. The Soviet authority will at once propose a democratic peace to all nations and an immediate armistice on all fronts. It will safeguard the transfer without compensation of all land – landlord, imperial, and monastery – to the peasants' committees; it will defend the soldiers' rights, introducing a complete democratisation of the army; it will establish workers' control over industry; it will ensure the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the date set; it will supply the cities with bread and the villages with articles of first necessity; and it will secure to all nationalities inhabiting Russia the right of self-determination ... Long live the revolution!"
"[By prolonging the war] we unusually strengthen German imperialism, and the peace will have to be concluded anyway, but then the peace will be worse because it will be concluded by someone other than ourselves. No doubt the peace which we are now being forced to conclude is an indecent peace, but if war commences our government will be swept away and the peace will be concluded by another government."
"[The bourgeoisie] practised terror against the workers, soldiers and peasants in the interests of a small group of landowners and bankers, whereas the Soviet regime applies decisive measures against landowners, plunderers and their accomplices in the interests of the workers, soldiers and peasants."
"The existence of the Soviet Republic alongside the imperialist states over the long run is unthinkable. In the end, either the one or the other will triumph. And until that end will have arrived, a series of the most terrible conflicts between the Soviet Republic and the bourgeois governments is unavoidable. This means that the ruling class, the proletariat, if it only wishes to rule and is to rule, must demonstrate this also with its military organization."
'[Y]ou must attempt first to build small bridges which shall lead to a land of small peasant holdings through State Capitalism to Socialism. Otherwise you will never lead tens of millions of people to Communism. This is what the objective forces of the development of the Revolution have taught." —Lenin on the NEP, 1921.
"Stalin is too crude, and this defect which is entirely acceptable in our milieu and in relationships among us as communists, becomes unacceptable in the position of General Secretary. I therefore propose to comrades that they should devise a means of removing him from this job and should appoint to this job someone else who is distinguished from comrade Stalin in all other respects only by the single superior aspect that he should be more tolerant, more polite and more attentive towards comrades, less capricious, etc." —Lenin, 4 January 1923.
"We do not pretend that Marx or Marxists know the road to socialism in all its concreteness. That is nonsense. We know the direction of the road, we know what class forces will lead it, but concretely, practically, this will be shown by the experience of the millions when they undertake the act." —Lenin, 11 September 1917.
Membership
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class
Personality
Lenin was impatient with any extraneous activities, including small talk and abstract theoretical discussions. The main secret, perhaps, of the significance of Lenin's personality lies in its rare combination of two qualities; absolute unwavering fanatical devotion to a set of theoretical principles, and extraordinary flexibility in choosing workable means for realizing those principles. Lenin was equally great as a revolutionary enthusiast and as a practical states-man. He knew not only when to advance but also when to retreat, a lesson which his heirs and successors might well keep fresh in memory. He could swing backward as well as for-ward with the movement of the revolutionary pendulum. That is why he was laid to rest in honor on the Red Square instead of being hurried off to some Russian equivalent for the guillotine which ended the career of Maximilien Robespierre, who, similar to Lenin in iron revolutionary will, lacked the latter's capacity for manoeuvre and compromise and for finding some exit from the most threatening impasse.
In private life Lenin was a typical old-fashioned idealistic revolutionary intellectual, with simple tastes and standards of living, no vices, predominantly classical tastes in literature and music, and a rather disapproving eye for the element of Bohemian dilettantism that sometimes made itself felt on the fringes of the Bolshevik movement. The vulgar fleshpots of power and office meant nothing to him. In his two rooms in the Kremlin he lived in much the same simple Spartan style which he had maintained during the years of poverty and exile. He was naturally, not ostentatiously, indifferent to dress, and the typical Russian workman's cap was his favorite headgear. This simplicity of life represented an additional element in his hold on the Russian masses; still another was his transparent sincerity in setting forth the difficulties and hardships through which the country was passing and had to pass, and in denouncing bureaucracy and other abuses.
Vladimir Lenin was a practical and down to earth person that can think through any situation or problem. His good health and physical stamina allowed him to work long and hard for anything that he believe in, and quite often for material rewards. Vladimir utilized his practical skills, strong physical dexterity, strength, and good health to work with his hands in either a practical or artistic way, such as being a sculptor or craftsman that possesses both physical and mental talents, and strives for high quality end results. He easy got along with, and he had natural ability to save money and pool up economic resources.
Quotes from others about the person
The socialist revolutionary leader Viktor Chernov wrote that “Lenin possesses an outstanding mind but it is a mind of a single dimension.”
"[Lenin] accepted truth as handed down by Marx and selected data and arguments to bolster that truth. He did not question old Marxist scripture, he merely commented, and the comments have become a new scripture." —Biographer Louis Fischer, 1964.
"The Lenin who seemed externally so gentle and good-natured, who enjoyed a laugh, who loved animals and was prone to sentimental reminiscences, was transformed when class or political questions arose. He at once became savagely sharp, uncompromising, remorseless and vengeful. Even in such a state he was capable of black humour." —Biographer Dmitri Volkogonov, 1994.
Interests
Writers
Lenin was deeply influenced by earlier 19th-century Russian revolutionaries, especially the writer Nikolai G. Chernyshevsky, as well as by the underground revolutionary-populist movement known as the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya), which had sought to organize a peasant-based revolution and to establish a socialist society based largely on traditional peasant communes.
Connections
Lenin began a romantic relationship with Nadezhda "Nadya" Krupskaya. They married in a church on 10 July 1898. Settling into a family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, in Shushenskoye the couple translated English socialist literature into Russian.
Throughout his adult life, he was in a relationship with Krupskaya. Lenin and Krupskaya both regretted that they never had children, and they enjoyed entertaining their friends' offspring.