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LENIN - LENIN (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich. Born: 10th April 1870 in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk). Organizer of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and founder of the Soviet state, he continued the revolutionary teaching of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
His elder brother Alexander, a member of the "People's Freedom" movement, was sentenced to death in 1887 for participation in preparations for an assassination attempt on the Tsar.
During the revolution of 1905 -1907 Lenin developed the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois democratic revolution, and worked out the theory of the expansion of the bourgeois democratic revolution into socialist revolution. At the beginning of November 1905 Lenin came to St Petersburg to take control of the revolutionary struggle. In December 1905 he directed the 1st conference of the Bolsheviks at Tammerfors. From December 1907 onwards, as an emigrant, he continued the fight for the survival and consolidation of the illegal party. In June 1912 he moved from Paris to Krakow. During this time he developed a Marxist programme on the nationalities question. At the end of July 1914 he was arrested by the Austrian police, but was soon released and left for Switzerland.
During the 1st World War he promoted the slogan of converting imperialist into civil [revolutionary] war. Following the bourgeois-democratic revolution of April 1917, he moved to Petrograd and pointed the socialist revolution towards victory, whilst hiding from the persecution of the bourgeois provisional government. During this time he developed a plan for the proletariat to seize power by means of an armed uprising.
On 10th October at a session of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party a resolution put forward by Lenin regarding armed uprising was passed. On 24th October Lenin arrived at Smolny and took charge of the October Uprising. He was elected head of the Soviet Government. On 11th March 1918, together with the Party Central Committee and the Soviet Government, Lenin moved to Moscow, which then became the capital of the Soviet state. During this time Lenin worked out a plan for the construction of socialism and put forward principles for a new economic policy. In 1922 he fell seriously ill. In December 1922 - March 1923 he dictated a book which formed his legacy to the Party and the Soviet people in their struggle for socialism and communism.
V.I. Lenin died on 21st January 1924.