Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April 1870-21 January 1924), better known by his alias of Lenin, was the father of the Russian Bolshevik movement and modern communism, leading the successful Russian Revolution of 1917 and creating the Soviet Union. From 30 December 1922 to 21 January 1924, he served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, preceding Alexei Rykov, making him the first Soviet head of state. His ideas, Leninism, would often be compared to Marxism as a fundamental belief of communism.
Biography[]
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born on 22 April 1870 in Simbirsk, Russian Empire to a father of Chuvash and Kalmyk descent and a mother of German, Swedish, and Jewish descent. Both of his parents were liberal conservatives, and Ulyanov entered Kazan University in 1887. He was arrested for being a member of a student society, and Ulyanov would develop Marxist political views. He took on the alias of "Lenin" and became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, becoming a key leader of its radical Bolshevik faction.
In the aftermath of the failed 1905 popular uprisings against Czar Nicholas II of Russia, Lenin was forced into exile in the West. In 1917, he returned to Russia to lead a revolution against the incapable monarch, seizing power in Petrograd and founding the Russian SFSR. From 1917 to 1923, Lenin's Bolsheviks would fight against the monarchist White Army, Poland, and the Triple Entente with the goal of defending the revolution, and Russia would take over many neighbouring lands.
Lenin died in 1924 shortly after the rise of the Soviet Union, and his pupils Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin would fight over the succession.