On April 22, 1870, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) was born in Simbirsk, Russia. His work and contributions to Marxism place him as an essential paradigm for understanding the evolution of society and paving the way for revolution and the construction of socialism.
Lenin, as he is universally known, began his law studies in 1892 at Kazan University and graduated from St. Petersburg University, where he took his exams independently due to his dedication to the revolutionary struggle against Tsarism. He was imprisoned, and from prison, he smuggled out the manuscripts of his first book, "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," published in 1889, through his sister and his fiancée, Nadeszhda Krupskaya. Exiled to Siberia in 1897, he married his fiancée there in 1898 and wrote some of his works. At the beginning of 1900, at 30 years old and almost bald, he began his first exile in Switzerland, where he launched his long-held project of publishing a national newspaper for Russia, which he called Iskra (The Spark). It was first published on December 21 of that year with an editorial by him. Starting with another article published in the magazine Zaria in December 1901, he began signing his work as “Lenin.”
The publication of the book What Is to Be Done? In March 1902, one of his most important works identified him as the leader of the Russian Marxists. This work sparked controversy surrounding the party's structure at the Second Congress of Russian Social Democrats, where the split between Lenin's followers, the Bolsheviks, who were the majority, and the Mensheviks, reduced to a minority, was finalized.
Lenin returned to Russia in 1905 to join the spontaneous revolution that had erupted, and after its defeat, he was forced into exile again, a period he used to forge a revolutionary Marxist party. In 1916, he published "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism," where he argued, contrary to other theses, that socialist revolution was also possible in backward countries with feudal vestiges, such as Russia. He returned to his homeland in April 1917, in hiding due to an arrest warrant issued against him, and on October 23 (According to the Russian calendar) the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party accepted their proposal for insurrection.
Once in power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks issued three decrees: the Land Decree, which abolished land ownership and distributed the land to the peasants; the Peace Decree, by which Russia withdrew from the imperialist war that had begun in 1914; and the Nationalities Decree, which granted the former nations subjugated by Tsarism the option of independence or joining the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
For years, with greater intensity between 1918 and 1920, counter-revolutionary forces commanded by former Tsarist generals attempted to overthrow the Soviet state with the support of France and the United States, but they were defeated by the Red Army, composed of peasants and workers.
The country was devastated after the war, and famine reigned in large regions, which Lenin set out to address immediately with the economic reconstruction of Russia, beginning with to build the superpower it became in just a few years.
On August 30, 1918, Lenin was the target of an assassination attempt by a moderate socialist. He was wounded but survived, and afterward, a purge of the revolutionary ranks began. On March 2, 1919, despite the difficulties of the civil war and based on his internationalist principles, he inaugurated the First Congress of the Third International in Moscow, bringing together workers' and communist movements from around the world, as well as national liberation movements of peoples subjected to colonialism and neocolonialism in Asia.
In March 1922, Lenin attended a Party congress for the last time. A month later, he underwent surgery to remove the bullets that remained lodged in his body from the 1918 assassination attempt. Despite his fragile health, on December 30, 1922, Lenin proclaimed the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and dictated the Charter. Considered his testament, it expresses his fear of the power struggle between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin within the Party.
On January 21, 1924, a cerebral hemorrhage caused his death at the age of 54, leaving behind the legacy of his life and work, in which he made his phrase, "There is no revolutionary theory without revolutionary practice and vice versa," a reality.