The Early Life of Nikolai (V.I.) Lenin
Marx would hardly have guessed that the first Communist dictator would be a man like Lenin, who was born on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, on the Volga. His father was a Councilor of State with a hereditary title of nobility while his mother was a German of the Lutheran faith. Lenin had red hair, high cheek bones, and the slanting eyes of his Tartar ancestors from Astrakhan.
Originally, Lenin was named Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, but “Nikolai Lenin” is the revolutionary pseudonym under which he became famous. As a boy he had strict training under a father who was called a “liberal” even though he was a Councilor of State. His father was a man of humanitarian ideals who worked himself to death setting up four-hundred and fifty primary schools during a period of seventeen years. Lenin was fifteen when his father died, and soon afterwards an even greater tragedy struck the family—his older brother was hanged.
This brother, named Alexander, was nearing twenty-one. He had lost his religious faith some time before and had become deeply impressed with the philosophy of materialism. He had also come to feel the need for direct and decisive action in getting social reforms in Russia.
While attending the University at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), Alexander agreed with several associates to construct a bomb which could be used to kill Tsar Alexander III. The bomb was built inside a bogus medical dictionary and consisted of dynamite and strychnine-treated bullets. The police discovered the assassination plot just before it was to have been executed and the entire group was summarily arrested. Trials and convictions soon followed, and in May, 1887, the St. Petersburg papers announced that Lenin’s older brother had gone to the gallows.
When the excitement subsided, Lenin, who had just turned 17, went back to reading Marx and other revolutionary writers in deadly earnest. Like his brother, Lenin had lost his religious faith two or three years before and was becoming reconciled to the cynicism of the Marxist interpretation of life. Furthermore, the death of his brother accelerated his determination to become an active revolutionist as soon as possible.
To give himself some kind of professional status, Lenin made an intensive study of law. Through the intercession of his mother, he was allowed to take his final examinations at the Univerity in St. Petersburg and came out first among one hundred and twenty-four students. Lenin then attempted to practice law, but for some reason lost nearly all his cases and, therefore, abandoned the law and never returned to it.
In 1891-92 the Russian famine and cholera epidemic broke out. Lenin was living in a region where Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer and philanthropist, was trying to sustain the courage of the people by organizing hundreds of soup kitchens and distributing seed-grain and horses to the impoverished peasants. But Lenin would have none of it. He would not help set up soup-kitchens nor join a relief committee. Later he was accused of welcoming the famine as a means of accentuating the suffering of the people and firing up their revolutionary will to act. There is no doubt that during these years the Marxist program was ram-rodding Lenin’s thinking into that of an uncompromising revolutionist.
Shortly after this, Lenin took up residence in St. Petersburg. He was now twenty-three and anxious to begin active revolutionary work. He therefore joined the “Fighting Union for the Liberation of the Working Class.” However, in 1895 Lenin learned that he had tuberculosis of the stomach. This made it necessary for him to go to Switzerland and undergo a cure at a special sanitarium. While in Western Europe, he made contact with George Plekhanov, the leader of the exiled Russian Marxists.
Lenin spent long hours with Plekhanov and felt highly flattered that the big man among the exiled Russian radicals would share with a newcomer his plans for a violent revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar. Plekhanov was equally impressed with Lenin. He felt the heat of Lenin’s glowing hatred for everything tainted by the Tsar’s regime, and therefore decided that Lenin should return to Russia, rally the Marxists, and organize a national Communist political party patterned after the highly successful Social Democrats in Germany. Lenin was also asked to begin publishing a revolutionary periodical.
This assignment was accepted by Lenin as a heroic mission for which fate had predestined him. Upon returning to Russia, he organized strikes, trained recruits, formulated political strategy and wrote inflammatory articles. But in the midst of this promising campaign, a police agent betrayed the group and Lenin found himself sentenced to exile in faraway Siberia. Lenin accepted this interruption of his revolutionary career with bitter resignation.
Soon after his arrival in Siberia Lenin was joined by a Marxist girl, whom he had met in 1894, named Nadezhda Krupskaya. She was allowed to come, at Lenin’s request, on condition that she and Lenin legalize their union with a marriage ceremony. This violated their Marxist principle of “abolition of the family,” but they consented in order to remain together. Lenin now had a companion as dedicated to the revolution as himself. They had no children, and close associates stated that they intentionally planned against children because they both felt their missions in life would not permit them to be thus encumbered.
Lenin spent his time in Siberia studying, writing reams of letters in secret ink, solidifying the program of the new Social-Democratic Party of Russia and completing his book called, Capitalism in Russia.
When he was released in 1900, Lenin had become a cautious, calculating, full-fledged, conspiratorial revolutionist. He immediately headed for Munich, Germany, where he started printing a paper called The Spark, which could be smuggled into Russia. Thus began seventeen years of almost continuous exile in Western Europe for Lenin and his wife. Only on rare occasions did they secretly visit Russia. They lived modestly and traveled light. It was as though they were waiting for the voice of history to assign them to their revolutionary roles.
Origin of the Bolsheviks
By 1903 Lenin and his wife had set up headquarters in London. They had the feeling they were carrying on where Marx had left off. Marx had been dead seventeen years and often they made pilgrimages to the cemetery where the grave of Marx is located.
In July of that year a Russian-Social-Democratic congress convened in London. Forty-three delegates came from Russia as well as from various groups of Russian exiles in Western Europe. As chairman of the congress, Lenin started off with a moderate and impartial attitude, but as the discussions continued he was horrified to discover that the congress was moving toward pacifistic socialism rather than militant revolution. Lenin immediately gathered his friends and followers around him. He split the congress wide open on the issue of whether party membership should be limited to hard-core revolutionists (as advocated by Lenin) or broadened to include anyone who felt sympathy for the movement.
In this dispute Lenin temporarily rallied around him a majority of the congress and thereafter used this as a basis for calling those who supported him “Bolsheviks” (which comes from a Russian word meaning “majority”), while those who opposed him were called “Mensheviks” (which is taken from the Russian word meaning “minority”). The propaganda value of a party title meaning “majority” will be quickly recognized. It was another illustration of Lenin’s absolute determination to exploit every situation so as to make it a tool to further his over-all political strategy.