Włodzimierz Lenin in the photo from March 1919.

Włodzimierz Lenin (1870-1924)

Russian politician, communist activist and then the first leader of the Bolshevik party. He was born on April 22, 1870 in Symbirsk on the Volga as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. From 1893 he was active in Marxist organizations. While abroad, he contacted communists in Switzerland, Germany and France.

In 1895 he founded the Union for the Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. At the end of that year, he was arrested and then exiled to Siberia. At that time, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. In 1897 his brother was hanged for participating in a plot to kill Tsar Alexander III. From 1900, Vladimir Ulyanov was in exile again. In a letter from 1901, he used the pseudonym Lenin for the first time in the 20th century.

In 1903, Lenin Włodzimierz led at the Second Congress to break up the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Russia (RSDLP) and to create the Bolshevik party. During the revolution of 1905 he stayed in St. Petersburg; after the fall of the rebellion, he left Russia again. In April 1917, still during World War I, the organizer and leader of the October Revolution. He later headed the Council of People's Commissars and became the de facto leader of Soviet Russia.

In 1919 he was instrumental in establishing the Communist International (Comintern), which set itself the goal of bringing about a world revolution. He started a reign of terror and brutally eliminated his political opponents during the Civil War. In 1922 he founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

At the same time, from 1918, when he fell victim to an unsuccessful attempt on his life, his health deteriorated. In 1922, he suffered a stroke and then two more. He was gradually removed from power. Włodzimierz Lenin died in Gorki in 1924.