Lenin, Vladimir Il'ich(1870–1924)
Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary, Russian Communist political leader, and major contributor to the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Although his mentor Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov is considered the father of Russian Marxism, Lenin's distinctive version of the doctrine (later dubbed Marxism-Leninism) was considered authoritative by the Soviet Communist leadership and had an immense impact on Russia and the world through most of the twentieth century.
Life
Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov into the family of a well-to-do school official in Simbirsk, Russia. He enrolled in the University of Kazan in 1887, the same year his elder brother Alexander was executed for involvement in a plot to kill Tsar Alexander III. Lenin was soon expelled from the university for taking part in student disturbances, but he gained admission to the University of St. Petersburg as an external student and in 1892 graduated with a degree in law. His activity in Marxist and other radical circles, beginning in 1888 in Kazan and Samara and continuing in St. Petersburg from 1893, led to his imprisonment in 1895, followed by banishment to eastern Siberia in 1897. Allowed to leave Siberia in 1900, he promptly fled to western Europe. For most of the next seventeen years he worked in various locations outside Russia, writing and conspiring with fellow Russian Marxists to promote the overthrow of the tsarist regime in their homeland.
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