“Lenin was the first representative of a new breed of professional organizers of totalitarian politics. Probably, neither in his early youth nor later did it occur to him that there were other types of human activity that would be worth pursuing. Like an anchorite, he turned his back on the ordinary world.

Lenin rejected his mother's proposal to take up farming with contempt.

He worked as a lawyer for several weeks and hated the job. After this he never had another type of work or occupation, since his journalism was simply a function of his political life.

But his policy was a priestly policy, not a popular one. Lenin surrounded himself with official publications, historical and economic works. He made no attempt to directly inquire into the views and living conditions of the masses. The idea of ​​studying voters' opinions was anathema to him - "unscientific." He never visited factories or came close to agriculture. He had no interest in the ways in which wealth is created. He was never seen in the working-class neighborhoods of the cities in which he lived. His entire life was spent among members of his own subclass - the bourgeois intelligentsia, in whom he saw a unique, privileged clergy, gifted with special knowledge and chosen by history itself for a decisive role. Socialism, he wrote, quoting Karl Kautsky, is a product of “deep scientific knowledge... The bearer of [this] science is not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: modern socialism is born in the minds of individual members of this class.”

Individual members - or one individual member? In practice it turned out to be the latter. Twenty years before his revolution, Lenin created his own faction among the Social Democrats - the Bolshevik faction, separated it from the Mensheviks (or minority) and after that became its absolute master. This process, the will to power in action, was well documented by his critical comrades.

Plekhanov, the actual creator of Russian Marxism, through whose organization Iskra Lenin first became famous, accused him of “supporting a sectarian spirit of exclusivity.” He “mixed the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship over the proletariat” and tried to create “Bonapartism, if not absolute monarchy, in the old pre-revolutionary style." Vera Zasulich said that soon after Lenin came to Iskra, the newspaper turned from a friendly family into a personal dictatorship. Lenin's idea of ​​the party, she wrote, is Louis XIV's idea of ​​the state - moi.

Also in 1904 Trotsky named Lenin Robespierre and a terrorist dictator who is trying to turn the party leadership into a committee of public safety. Lenin's methods, he wrote in his article “Our Political Tasks,” are “a gloomy picture of the tragic intransigence of the Jacobins... the party is replaced by the party organization, the organization by the Central Committee and, finally, the Central Committee by the dictator.”

Six years later, in 1910, Madame Krzhizhanovskaya wrote: “This is a man who stood up against the entire party. He is destroying the party." In 1914, Charles Rappaport, praising Lenin as an “incomparable organizer,” added: “But he considers only himself a socialist... War is declared on everyone who is different from him. Instead of fighting their opponents in the Social Democratic Party using socialist methods, i.e. arguments, Lenin uses only surgical methods such as “letting blood.” No party can exist under the regime of this Social Democratic Tsar, who considers himself a super-Marxist, but in reality is only an adventurer of high rank.”

The verdict was as follows: “Lenin’s victory would be the greatest danger to the Russian revolution... He will strangle it.” Two years later, on the eve of the revolution, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky described him as “a political Jesuit,... the illegitimate child of Russian absolutism,... the natural heir to the Russian throne.”

The impressive unanimity of this critical analysis of Lenin over a twenty-year period, given by people who closely shared his goals, testifies to one terrifying consistency in Lenin's character. He brushed aside attacks that, apparently, never made him stop or think for even a second. There was not a single crack in his armor. Authoritarian? Of course. “The classes are led by the party, and the party is led by individuals who are called leaders... This is an elementary truth. The will of the class is sometimes carried out by the dictator.”

All that mattered was that the anointed individual, the man, chosen by history possess the necessary knowledge, at the appointed time was able to understand and thus be able to interpret the sacred texts. Lenin always insisted that Marxism was identical with objective truth. “In the philosophy of Marxism,” he wrote, “cast from one piece of steel, it is impossible to remove a single basic premise, not a single essential part, without departing from the objective truth.” He told Valentinov: “Orthodox Marxism does not need any revision either in the field of philosophy, or in the theory of political economy, or in the theory of historical development.”

Having believed this, and also that he himself was a divinely appointed interpreter, just like Calvin interpreted the Holy Scriptures in his Institutes ( Treatises Calvin, where the persecution of dissidents was justified - Approx. I.L. Vikentyev). Lenin was obliged to look at heresy even with greater bitterness than at infidels. Hence the amazing viciousness in the abuse with which he constantly showered his opponents in the party, attributing to them the basest motives and trying to destroy them morally, even if it was about insignificant aspects of his doctrine. The kind of language Lenin used, with its metaphors emanating from the jungle and the farmyard, and his blatant refusal to make even the slightest effort towards human understanding, was reminiscent of the odium theologicum (theological hatred) that poisoned Christian debates about the Trinity in the sixth and seventh centuries, or on the Eucharist in the sixteenth century.

And, of course, after verbal hatred was heated up to limit point, in the end, blood was sure to be shed. As sadly noted Erasmus about Lutherans and Papists: “The long war in words and scriptures will end with blows,” and so it happened for a whole century. Lenin was not at all afraid of such a prospect. Just as militant theologians, dealing with issues quite trivial to the uninitiated eye, felt that they were, in essence, deciding whether countless millions of souls would burn in hell for all eternity, so Lenin knew that a fatal turning point in civilization was approaching, in which the future fate of humanity would be decided by history, and he himself will be its prophet. Bo-name of this is worth shedding a little blood, and maybe more.

Yet it is curious that for all his apparent orthodoxy, Lenin was very far from an orthodox Marxist. In essential elements he was not even a Marxist at all. He often used Marx's methodology and used dialectics to justify his conclusions, which he arrived at intuitively . But he completely neglected the very core of Marxist ideology - the historical determinacy of the revolution. In the depths of his soul, Lenin was not a determinist, but a voluntarist: the decisive role is played by the human will, and, specifically, his.”

Paul Johnson, Modernity: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, Part I, M., “Anubis”, p. 66-68.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin)
Predecessor:	Position established
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov
Predecessor:	The position has been created; Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky as Minister-Chairman of the Provisional Government
Successor:	Alexey Ivanovich Rykov
	RSDLP, later RCP(b)
Education:	Kazan University, St. Petersburg University
Profession:
Religion:
Birth:
Buried:	Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow
	Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov
	Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova
	Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya
	None
Autograph:

Biography

First emigration 1900-1905

Return to Russia

Press reaction

July - October 1917

Role in the Red Terror

Foreign policy

Last years (1921-1924)

Lenin's main ideas

About class morality

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

Lenin Awards

Titles and awards

Posthumous "awards"

Lenin's personality

Lenin's pseudonyms

Works of Lenin

Works of Lenin

Interesting Facts

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (real name Ulyanov; April 10 (22), 1870, Simbirsk - January 21, 1924, Gorki estate, Moscow province) - Russian and Soviet political and statesman, revolutionary, founder of the Bolshevik Party, one of the organizers and leaders of the October Revolution of 1917, chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government ) RSFSR and USSR. Philosopher, Marxist, publicist, founder of Marxism-Leninism, ideologist and creator of the Third (Communist) International, founder of the Soviet state. Scope of main scientific works- philosophy and economics.

Biography

Childhood, education and upbringing

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk), in the family of an inspector and director of public schools in the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831-1886), the son of a former serf. Nizhny Novgorod province Nikolai Ulyanov (variant spelling of the surname: Ulyanina), married to Anna Smirnova, the daughter of an Astrakhan tradesman (according to the Soviet writer M.E. Shaginyan, who came from a family of baptized Chuvash). Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (née Blank, 1835-1916), of Swedish-German origin on her mother’s side, and Jewish origin on her father’s side. I. N. Ulyanov rose to the rank of full state councilor.

In 1879-1887, Vladimir Ulyanov studied at the Simbirsk gymnasium, headed by F. M. Kerensky, the father of A. F. Kerensky, the future head of the Provisional Government (1917). In 1887 he graduated from high school with a gold medal and entered the law faculty of Kazan University. F. M. Kerensky was very disappointed with the choice of Volodya Ulyanov, as he advised him to enter the history and literature department of the university due to the younger Ulyanov’s great success in Latin and literature.

In the same year, 1887, on May 8 (20), Vladimir Ilyich’s elder brother, Alexander, was executed as a participant in a Narodnaya Volya conspiracy to assassinate Emperor Alexander III. Three months after admission, Vladimir Ilyich was expelled for participating in student unrest caused by the new university charter, the introduction of police surveillance of students and a campaign to combat “unreliable” students. According to the student inspector, who suffered from student unrest, Vladimir Ilyich was in the forefront of the raging students, almost with clenched fists. As a result of the unrest, Vladimir Ilyich, along with 40 other students, was arrested the next night and sent to the police station. All those arrested were expelled from the university and sent to their “homeland.” Later, another group of students left Kazan University in protest against the repression. Among those who voluntarily left the university was Lenin’s cousin, Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ardashev. After petitions from Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, Vladimir Ilyich’s aunt, he was exiled to the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province, where he lived in the Ardashevs’ house until the winter of 1888-1889.

The beginning of revolutionary activity

In the fall of 1888, Ulyanov was allowed to return to Kazan. Here he joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, where the works of K. Marx, F. Engels and G. V. Plekhanov were studied and discussed. In 1924, N.K. Krupskaya wrote in Pravda: “Vladimir Ilyich loved Plekhanov passionately. Plekhanov played a major role in the development of Vladimir Ilyich, helped him find the right revolutionary path, and therefore Plekhanov was for a long time surrounded by a halo for him: he experienced every slightest disagreement with Plekhanov extremely painfully.”

For some time, Lenin tried to engage in agriculture on the estate bought by his mother in Alakaevka (83.5 dessiatines) in the Samara province. During Soviet times, a house-museum of Lenin was created in this village.

In the fall of 1889, the Ulyanov family moved to Samara, where Lenin also maintained contact with local revolutionaries.

In 1891, Vladimir Ulyanov passed the exams as an external student for a course at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University.

In 1892-1893, Vladimir Ulyanov worked as an assistant to the Samara attorney (lawyer) N.A. Hardin, conducting most criminal cases and conducting “state defenses.”

In 1893, Lenin came to St. Petersburg, where he got a job as an assistant to the sworn attorney (lawyer) M. F. Volkenshtein. In St. Petersburg, he wrote works on the problems of Marxist political economy, the history of the Russian liberation movement, and the history of the capitalist evolution of the post-reform Russian village and industry. Some of them were published legally. At this time he also developed the program of the Social Democratic Party. The activities of V. I. Lenin as a publicist and researcher of the development of capitalism in Russia based on extensive statistical materials makes him famous among Social Democrats and opposition-minded liberal figures, as well as in many other circles of Russian society.

In May 1895, Ulyanov went abroad. Meets in Switzerland with Plekhanov, in Germany - with W. Liebknecht, in France - with P. Lafargue and other figures of the international labor movement, and upon returning to the capital in 1895, together with Yu. O. Martov and other young revolutionaries, unites disparate Marxist circles in the “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

The “Union of Struggle” carried out active propaganda activities among workers; they issued more than 70 leaflets. In December 1895, like many other members of the “Union,” Ulyanov was arrested and, after a long period in prison, in 1897 he was exiled for 3 years to the village of Shushenskoye, Yenisei province, where in July 1898 he married N.K. Krupskaya. In exile, he wrote a book, “The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” based on the collected material, directed against “legal Marxism” and populist theories. During his exile, over 30 works were written, contacts were established with Social Democrats in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh and other cities. By the end of the 90s, under the pseudonym “K. Tulin” V.I. Ulyanov gains fame in Marxist circles. While in exile, Ulyanov advised local peasants on legal issues and drafted legal documents for them.

First emigration 1900-1905

In 1898, in Minsk, in the absence of the leaders of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle, the First Congress of the RSDLP was held, which “founded” the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party by adopting the Manifesto; all members of the Central Committee elected by the congress and most of the delegates were immediately arrested; Many organizations represented at the congress were destroyed by the police. The leaders of the Union of Struggle, who were in exile in Siberia, decided to unite the numerous Social Democratic organizations and Marxist circles scattered throughout the country with the help of the newspaper.

After the end of their exile in February 1900, Lenin, Martov and A.N. Potresov traveled around Russian cities, establishing connections with local organizations; On July 29, 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland, where he negotiated with Plekhanov on the publication of a newspaper and theoretical journal. The editorial board of the newspaper, which received the name “Iskra” (later the magazine “Zarya” appeared), included three representatives of the emigrant group “Emancipation of Labor” - Plekhanov, P. B. Axelrod and V. I. Zasulich and three representatives of the “Union of Struggle” - Lenin, Martov and Potresov. The average circulation of the newspaper was 8,000 copies, and some issues were up to 10,000 copies. The spread of the newspaper contributed to the creation of a network of underground organizations on the territory of the Russian Empire.

In December 1901, Lenin first signed one of his articles published in Iskra with the pseudonym “Lenin”. In 1902, in the work “What to do? “Very pressing issues of our movement” Lenin came up with his own concept of the party, which he saw as a centralized militant organization. In this article he writes: “Give us an organization of revolutionaries, and we will turn Russia over!”

Participation in the work of the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903)

From July 17 to August 10, 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP was held in London. Lenin took an active part in the preparations for the congress not only with his articles in Iskra and Zarya; Since the summer of 1901, together with Plekhanov, he worked on a draft party program and prepared a draft charter. The program consisted of two parts - a minimum program and a maximum program; the first involved the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of a democratic republic, the destruction of the remnants of serfdom in the countryside, in particular the return to the peasants of lands cut off from them by landowners during the abolition of serfdom (the so-called “cuts”), the introduction of an eight-hour working day, recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and the establishment of equal rights nations; the maximum program determined the ultimate goal of the party - the construction of a socialist society and the conditions for achieving this goal - the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

At the congress itself, Lenin was elected to the bureau, worked on the program, organizational and credentials commissions, chaired a number of meetings and spoke on almost all issues on the agenda.

Both organizations that were in solidarity with Iskra (and were called “Iskra”) and those that did not share its position were invited to participate in the congress. During the discussion of the program, a polemic arose between supporters of Iskra, on the one hand, and the Economists (for whom the position of the dictatorship of the proletariat turned out to be unacceptable) and the Bund (on the national question) on the other; as a result, 2 “economists”, and later 5 Bundists left the congress.

But the discussion of the party charter, paragraph 1, which defined the concept of a party member, revealed disagreements among the Iskraists themselves, who were divided into “hard” supporters of Lenin and “soft” supporters of Martov. “In my project,” Lenin wrote after the congress, “this definition was as follows: “Anyone who recognizes its program and supports the party both materially and personally is considered a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.” participation in one of the party organizations“. Martov, instead of underlined words, suggested saying: work under the control and leadership of one of the party organizations... We argued that it is necessary to narrow the concept of a party member in order to separate those who work from those who talk, to eliminate organizational chaos, to eliminate such ugliness and such absurdity so that there can be organizations , consisting of party members, but not party organizations, etc. Martov stood for the expansion of the party and spoke of a broad class movement requiring a broad - vague organization, etc. ... “Under control and leadership,” I said, - in fact mean no more and no less than: without any control and without any guidance.” Lenin's opponents saw in his formulation an attempt to create not a party of the working class, but a sect of conspirators; the wording of paragraph 1 proposed by Martov was supported by 28 votes against 22 with 1 abstention; but after the departure of the Bundists and economists, Lenin’s group received a majority in the elections to the Party Central Committee; This accidental circumstance, as subsequent events showed, forever divided the party into “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks.”

Member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP Rafail Abramovich (in the party since 1899) recalled in January 1958: “Of course, I was still a very young man then, but four years later I was already a member of the Central Committee, and then in this Central Committee, not only with Lenin and with other old Bolsheviks, but also with Trotsky, with all of them we were in the same Central Committee. Plekhanov, Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, Lev Deitch and a number of other old revolutionaries were still alive then. So we all worked together until 1903. In 1903, at the Second Congress, our lines diverged. Lenin and some of his friends insisted that it was necessary to act using dictatorial methods within the party and outside the party. Lenin always supported the fiction of collective leadership, but even then he was the master in the party. He was its actual owner, that’s what they called him - “master.”

Split

But it was not disputes about the charter that split the Iskraists, but the elections of the Iskra editorial board. From the very beginning, there was no mutual understanding on the editorial board between the representatives of the “Emancipation of Labor” group, who had long been cut off from Russia and the labor movement, and the young St. Petersburg residents; controversial issues were not resolved because the editorial board was split into two equal parts. Long before the congress, Lenin tried to solve the problem by proposing to introduce L. D. Trotsky to the editorial board as the seventh member; but the proposal, supported even by Axelrod and Zasulich, was decisively rejected by Plekhanov. Plekhanov's intransigence prompted Lenin to choose a different path: to reduce the editorial board to three people. The congress - at a time when Lenin's supporters already constituted the majority - was offered an editorial board consisting of Plekhanov, Martov and Lenin. “The political leader of Iskra,” Trotsky testifies, “was Lenin. The main journalistic force of the newspaper was Martov.” And yet, the removal from the editorial board of albeit few working, but respected and honored “old men” seemed to both Martov and Trotsky himself to be unjustified cruelty. The congress supported Lenin's proposal by a small majority, but Martov refused to serve on the editorial board; his supporters, among whom Trotsky now found himself, declared a boycott of the “Leninist” Central Committee and refused to cooperate in Iskra. Lenin had no choice but to leave the editorial office; Plekhanov, left alone, restored the previous editorial board, but without Lenin - Iskra became the printed organ of the Menshevik faction.

After the congress, both factions had to create their own structures; at the same time, it turned out that the congress minority had the support of the majority of party members. The Bolsheviks were left without a printed organ, which prevented them not only from promoting their views, but also from responding to harsh criticism from their opponents. Only in December 1904 was the newspaper “Forward” created, which briefly became the printed organ of the Leninists.

The abnormal situation that had developed in the party prompted Lenin, in letters to the Central Committee (in November 1903) and the Party Council (in January 1904), to insist on convening a party congress; Finding no support from the opposition, the Bolshevik faction eventually took the initiative. All organizations were invited to the Third Congress of the RSDLP, which opened in London on April 12 (25), 1905, but the Mensheviks refused to participate in it, declared the congress illegal and convened their own conference in Geneva - the split of the party was thus formalized.

First Russian Revolution (1905-1907)

Already at the end of 1904, against the backdrop of a growing strike movement, differences on political issues emerged between the “majority” and “minority” factions, in addition to organizational ones.

The revolution of 1905-1907 found Lenin abroad, in Switzerland.

At the Third Congress of the RSDLP, held in London in April 1905, Lenin emphasized that the main task of the ongoing revolution was to put an end to autocracy and the remnants of serfdom in Russia. Despite the bourgeois nature of the revolution, according to Lenin, its main driving force the working class was supposed to become the most interested in its victory, and its natural ally was the peasantry. Having approved Lenin's point of view, the congress determined the party's tactics: organizing strikes, demonstrations, preparing an armed uprising.

At the first opportunity, in early November 1905, Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg illegally, under a false name, and headed the work of the Central and St. Petersburg Bolshevik Committees elected by the congress; paid great attention to the management of the newspaper " New life" Under the leadership of Lenin, the party was preparing an armed uprising. At the same time, Lenin wrote the book “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in democratic revolution”, which points out the need for the hegemony of the proletariat and armed uprising. In the struggle to win over the peasantry (which was actively waged with the Socialist Revolutionaries), Lenin wrote the pamphlet “To the Village Poor.”

In 1906, Lenin moved to Finland, and in the fall of 1907 he emigrated again.

According to Lenin, despite the defeat of the December armed uprising, the Bolsheviks used all revolutionary opportunities, they were the first to take the path of uprising and the last to leave it when this path became impossible.

Role in the Revolutionary Terror of the early 20th century

During the revolution of 1905-1907, Russia experienced the peak of revolutionary terrorism; the country was overwhelmed by a wave of violence: political and criminal murders, robberies, expropriations and extortion. Like the Socialist Revolutionaries, who widely practiced terror, the Bolsheviks had their own military organization (known as the “Combat Technical Group”, “Technical Group under the Central Committee”, “Military Technical Group”). In conditions of competition in extremist revolutionary activities with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, “famous” for the activities of their Combat Organization, after some hesitation (his vision of the issue changed many times depending on the current situation), the Bolshevik leader Lenin developed his position on terror. As historian Professor Anna Geifman, a researcher on the problem of revolutionary terrorism, notes, Lenin’s protests against terrorism, formulated before 1905 and directed against the Socialist Revolutionaries, are in sharp contradiction with Lenin’s practical policy, developed by him after the outbreak of the Russian revolution “in the light of the new tasks of the day” in the interests of of his party. Lenin called for “the most radical means and measures as the most expedient,” for which, Anna Geifman quotes documents, the Bolshevik leader proposed creating “detachments of a revolutionary army ... of all sizes, starting with two or three people, [who] should arm themselves, who than he can (a gun, a revolver, a bomb, a knife, brass knuckles, a stick, a rag with kerosene for arson...),” and concludes that these Bolshevik detachments were essentially no different from the terrorist “combat brigades” of the militant Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin, in the changed conditions, was already ready to go even further than the Socialist Revolutionaries and, as Anna Geifman notes, even went into obvious contradiction with the scientific teachings of Marx in order to promote the terrorist activities of his supporters, arguing that combat units should use every opportunity for active work, not postponing their actions until the outbreak of a general uprising.

Lenin essentially gave orders for the preparation of terrorist acts, which he himself had previously condemned, calling on his supporters to carry out attacks on city officials and other government officials; in the fall of 1905 he openly called for the murder of policemen and gendarmes, Black Hundreds and Cossacks, to blow up police stations, to pour soldiers with boiling water, and police with sulfuric acid.

Later, dissatisfied with the insufficient level of terrorist activity of his party, in his opinion, Lenin complained to the St. Petersburg Committee:

Seeking immediate terrorist action, Lenin even had to defend the methods of terror in the face of his fellow Social Democrats:

The followers of the Bolshevik leader were not forced to wait long; in Yekaterinburg, according to some evidence, members of the Bolshevik combat detachment under the leadership of Ya. Sverdlov “constantly terrorized the supporters of the Black Hundred, killing them at every opportunity.”

As one of Lenin's closest colleagues, Elena Stasova, testifies, the Bolshevik leader, having formulated his new tactics, began to insist on its immediate implementation and turned into an “ardent supporter of terror.” The greatest concern with terror during this period was shown by the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin wrote on October 25, 1916 that the Bolsheviks were not at all opposed to political assassinations, only individual terror should be combined with mass movements.

Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks during the years of the first Russian revolution, historian and researcher Anna Geifman comes to the conclusion that for the Bolsheviks, terror turned out to be an effective and often used tool at different levels of the revolutionary hierarchy.

In addition to people specializing in political murders in the name of revolution, in each of the social democratic organizations there were people involved in armed robbery, extortion and confiscation of private and state property. Officially, such actions were never encouraged by the leaders of social democratic organizations, with the exception of the Bolsheviks, whose leader Lenin publicly declared robbery an acceptable means of revolutionary struggle. The Bolsheviks were the only social democratic organization in Russia that resorted to expropriations (the so-called “exs”) in an organized and systematic manner.

Lenin did not limit himself to slogans or simply recognizing the participation of the Bolsheviks in military activities. Already in October 1905, he announced the need to confiscate public funds and soon began to resort to “ex” in practice. Together with two of his then closest associates, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov (Malinovsky), he secretly organized within the Central Committee of the RSDLP (which was dominated by the Mensheviks) a small group that became known as the “Bolshevik Center”, specifically to raise money for the Leninist faction. The existence of this group "was hidden not only from the eyes of the tsarist police, but also from other party members." In practice, this meant that the Bolshevik Center was an underground body within the party, organizing and controlling expropriations and various shapes extortion.

The actions of the Bolshevik militants did not go unnoticed by the leadership of the RSDLP. Martov proposed expelling the Bolsheviks from the party for the illegal expropriations they committed. Plekhanov called for a fight against “Bolshevik Bakuninism,” many party members considered Lenin and Co. to be ordinary swindlers, and Fyodor Dan called the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee of the RSDLP a company of criminals. Lenin’s main goal was to strengthen the position of his supporters within the RSDLP with the help of money, and to bring certain people and even entire organizations to financial dependence on the “Bolshevik Center”. The leaders of the Menshevik faction understood that Lenin was operating with huge expropriated sums, subsidizing the Bolshevik-controlled St. Petersburg and Moscow committees, giving the first a thousand rubles a month and the second five hundred. At the same time, relatively little of the proceeds from Bolshevik plunder went into the general party treasury, and the Mensheviks were outraged that they could not force the Bolshevik Center to share with the Central Committee of the RSDLP.

The V Congress of the RSDLP provided the Mensheviks with the opportunity to fiercely criticize the Bolsheviks for their “gangster practices.” At the congress it was decided to put an end to any participation of Social Democrats in terrorist activities and expropriations. Martov’s calls for the revival of the purity of revolutionary consciousness did not make any impression on Lenin; the Bolshevik leader listened to them with open irony, and, while reading a financial report, when the speaker mentioned a large donation from an anonymous benefactor, X, Lenin sarcastically remarked: “Not from X, and from ex"

Continuing the practice of expropriation, Lenin and his associates in the Bolshevik Center also received money from such dubious sources as fictitious marriages and forced indemnities. Finally, Lenin's habit of not honoring his faction's financial obligations angered even his supporters.

At the end of 1916, even when the wave of revolutionary extremism had almost died out, the Bolshevik leader Lenin asserted in his letter of October 25, 1916 that the Bolsheviks were by no means against political assassinations. Lenin, historian Anna Geifman points out, was ready to Once again change his theoretical principles, which he did in December 1916: in response to a request from the Bolsheviks from Petrograd about the official position of the party on the issue of terror, Lenin expressed his own: “at this historical moment, terrorist actions are permitted.” Lenin's only condition was that in the eyes of the public the initiative for terrorist attacks should not come from the party, but from individual members or small Bolshevik groups in Russia. Lenin also added that he hoped to convince the entire Central Committee of the advisability of his position

A large number of terrorists remained in Russia after the Bolsheviks came to power and participated in Lenin's "Red Terror" policy. A number of founders and major figures of the Soviet state, who had previously participated in extremist actions, continued their activities in a modified form after 1917.

Second emigration (1908 - April 1917)

In early January 1908, Lenin returned to Geneva. The defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907 did not force him to fold his arms; he considered a repetition of the revolutionary upsurge inevitable. “Defeated armies learn well,” Lenin later wrote about this period.

At the end of 1908, Lenin, together with Zinoviev and Kamenev, moved to Paris. Here his first meeting and close acquaintance with Inessa Armand took place, who became his mistress until her death in 1920.

In 1909 he published his main philosophical work, “Materialism and Empirio-criticism.” The work was written after Lenin realized how widely popular Machism and empirio-criticism had become among Social Democrats.

In 1912, he decisively broke with the Mensheviks, who insisted on the legalization of the RSDLP.

On May 5, 1912, the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Pravda was published in St. Petersburg. Extremely dissatisfied with the editing of the newspaper (Stalin was the editor-in-chief), Lenin sent L. B. Kamenev to St. Petersburg. He wrote articles to Pravda almost every day, sent letters in which he gave instructions, advice, and corrected the editors’ mistakes. Over the course of 2 years, Pravda published about 270 Leninist articles and notes. Also in exile, Lenin led the activities of the Bolsheviks in the IV State Duma, was a representative of the RSDLP in the II International, wrote articles on party and national issues, and studied philosophy.

When did the first one begin? World War Lenin lived on the territory of Austria-Hungary in the Galician town of Poronin, where he arrived at the end of 1912. Due to suspicion of spying for the Russian government, Lenin was arrested by Austrian gendarmes. For his release, the help of socialist deputy of the Austrian parliament V. Adler was required. On August 6, 1914, Lenin was released from prison.

17 days later in Switzerland, Lenin took part in a meeting of a group of Bolshevik emigrants, where he announced his theses on the war. In his opinion, the war that began was imperialist, unfair on both sides, and alien to the interests of the working people.

On international conferences in Zimmerwald (1915) and Kienthal (1916), Lenin, in accordance with the resolution of the Stuttgart Congress and the Basel Manifesto of the Second International, defends his thesis on the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war and comes out with the slogan of “revolutionary defeatism.”

In February 1916, Lenin moved from Bern to Zurich. Here he finishes his work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Popular Essay)”, actively collaborates with Swiss Social Democrats (among them the radical left Fritz Platten), and attends all their party meetings. Here he learns from the newspapers about February Revolution in Russia.

Lenin did not expect a revolution in 1917. Lenin’s public statement in January 1917 in Switzerland is known that he did not expect to live to see the coming revolution, but that young people would see it. Lenin, who knew the weakness of the underground revolutionary forces in the capital, regarded the revolution that soon took place as the result of a “conspiracy of Anglo-French imperialists.”

Return to Russia

In April 1917, the German authorities, with the assistance of Fritz Platten, allowed Lenin, along with 35 party comrades, to leave Switzerland by train through Germany. Among them were Krupskaya N.K., Zinoviev G.E., Lilina Z.I., Armand I.F., Sokolnikov G.Ya., Radek K.B. and others.

April - July 1917. “April Theses”

On April 3, 1917, Lenin arrived in Russia. The Petrograd Soviet, the majority of which were Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, organized a solemn meeting for him as a prominent fighter against autocracy. The next day, April 4, Lenin made a report to the Bolsheviks, the theses of which were published in Pravda only on April 7, when Lenin and Zinoviev joined the editorial board of Pravda, since, according to V. M. Molotov, the new The leader’s ideas seemed too radical even to his close associates. These were the famous “April Theses”. In this report, Lenin sharply opposed the sentiments that prevailed in Russia among Social Democrats in general and the Bolsheviks in particular, which boiled down to the idea of ​​​​expanding the bourgeois-democratic revolution, supporting the Provisional Government and defending the revolutionary fatherland in a war that changed its character with the fall of the autocracy. Lenin announced the slogans: “No support for the Provisional Government” and “all power to the Soviets”; he proclaimed a course for the development of the bourgeois revolution into a proletarian revolution, putting forward the goal of overthrowing the bourgeoisie and the transfer of power to the Soviets and the proletariat with the subsequent liquidation of the army, police and bureaucracy. Finally, he demanded widespread anti-war propaganda, since, according to his opinion, the war on the part of the Provisional Government continued to be imperialistic and “predatory” in nature. Having taken control of the RSDLP(b), Lenin implements this plan. From April to July 1917, he wrote more than 170 articles, brochures, draft resolutions of Bolshevik conferences and the Party Central Committee, and appeals.

Press reaction

Despite the fact that the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaya Gazeta, when writing about the arrival of the Bolshevik leader in Russia, assessed this visit as the emergence of “danger from the left flank”, the newspaper Rech - the official publication of the Minister of Foreign Affairs P. N. Milyukov - according to historian of the Russian revolution S.P. Melgunov, spoke positively about the arrival of Lenin, and that now not only Plekhanov will fight for the ideas of socialist parties.

July - October 1917

On July 5, during the uprising, the Provisional Government made public the information it had about the connections of the Bolsheviks with the Germans. July 20 (7) The Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin and a number of prominent Bolsheviks on charges of treason and organizing an armed uprising. Lenin goes underground again. In Petrograd, he had to change 17 safe houses, after which, until August 21 (8), 1917, he and Zinoviev hid not far from Petrograd - in a hut on Lake Razliv. In August, on the steam locomotive N-293, he moved to the Grand Duchy of Finland, where he lived until the beginning of October in Yalkala, Helsingfors and Vyborg.

October Revolution of 1917

Lenin arrived in Smolny and began to lead the uprising, the direct organizer of which was the chairman of the Petrograd Soviet L. D. Trotsky. It took 2 days to overthrow the government of A.F. Kerensky. On November 7 (October 25) Lenin wrote an appeal for the overthrow of the Provisional Government. On the same day, at the opening of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin's decrees on peace and land were adopted and a government was formed - the Council of People's Commissars, headed by Lenin. On January 5, 1918, the Constituent Assembly opened, the majority of which was won by the Socialist Revolutionaries, representing the interests of the peasants, who at that time made up 90% of the country's population. Lenin, with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, presented the Constituent Assembly with a choice: ratify the power of the Soviets and the decrees of the Bolshevik government or disperse. The Constituent Assembly, which did not agree with this formulation of the issue, was forcibly dissolved.

During the 124 days of the “Smolny period,” Lenin wrote over 110 articles, draft decrees and resolutions, delivered over 70 reports and speeches, wrote about 120 letters, telegrams and notes, and participated in the editing of more than 40 state and party documents. The working day of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars lasted 15-18 hours. During this period, Lenin chaired 77 meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, led 26 meetings and meetings of the Central Committee, participated in 17 meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and its Presidium, and in the preparation and conduct of 6 different All-Russian Congresses of Working People. After the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow, from March 11, 1918, Lenin lived and worked in Moscow. Lenin's personal apartment and office were located in the Kremlin, on the third floor of the former Senate building.

After the revolution and during the Civil War (1917-1921)

January 15 (28), 1918 Lenin signs the decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the creation of the Red Army. In accordance with the Peace Decree, it was necessary to withdraw from the world war. Despite the opposition of the left communists and L.D. Trotsky, Lenin achieved the conclusion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty with Germany on March 3, 1918, the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, in protest against the signing and ratification of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty, withdrew from the Soviet government. On March 10-11, fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops, at the suggestion of Lenin, the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) moved to Moscow, which became the new capital of Soviet Russia. On July 6, two left Socialist Revolutionaries, employees of the Cheka Yakov Blyumkin and Nikolai Andreev, presenting the mandates of the Cheka, went to the German embassy in Moscow and killed the ambassador Count Wilhelm von Mirbach. This is a provocation to cause an aggravation of relations with Germany, even to the point of war. And there was already a threat that German military units would be sent to Moscow. Immediately - the Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion. In short, everything is balancing on the edge. Lenin is making great efforts to somehow smooth out the imposed Soviet-German conflict and avoid a clash. On July 16, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his entire family, along with their servants, were shot in Yekaterinburg.

In his memoirs, Trotsky accuses Lenin of organizing the execution of the royal family:

My next visit to Moscow came after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:

The senior investigator for especially important cases of the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia, Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, discovered that in the minutes of the meeting of the Council of People's Commissars, at which Sverdlov announced the decision of the Urals Council regarding the execution of the royal family, Trotsky's name appears among those present. Therefore, he later composed that conversation “after arriving from the front” with Sverdlov about Lenin. Solovyov came to the conclusion that Lenin was against the execution of the royal family, and the execution itself was organized by the same left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had enormous influence in the Urals Soviet, with the aim of disrupting the Brest-Litovsk Treaty between Soviet Russia and Kaiser Germany. After the February Revolution, the Germans, despite the war with Russia, were worried about the fate of the Russian imperial family, because the wife of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, was German, and their daughters were both Russian princesses and German princesses. Spirit of the Great french revolution with the then execution of the king and queen, it hovered over the heads of the Ural Socialist Revolutionaries and the local Bolsheviks who joined them, the leaders of the Urals Council (Alexander Beloborodov, Yakov Yurovsky, Philip Goloshchekin). Lenin became, in a sense, a hostage to the radicalism and obsession of the leaders of the Urals Council. Make public the “feat” of the Urals - the murder of German princesses and find yourself between a rock and a hard place - between the White Guards and the Germans? Information about the death of the entire royal family and servants was hidden for years. Referring to Trotsky’s fake, the famous Russian director Gleb Panfilov made the film “The Romanovs. The Crowned Family,” where Lenin is presented as the organizer of the execution of the royal family, played by People’s Artist of Russia Alexander Filippenko.

On August 30, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin, according to the official version, by the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, which led to severe injury.

As Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, from November 1917 to December 1920, Lenin chaired 375 meetings of the Soviet government out of 406. From December 1918 to February 1920, out of 101 meetings of the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense, only two he did not preside over. In 1919, V.I. Lenin led the work of 14 plenums of the Central Committee and 40 meetings of the Politburo, at which military issues were discussed. From November 1917 to November 1920, V.I. Lenin wrote over 600 letters and telegrams on various issues of defense of the Soviet state, and spoke at rallies over 200 times.

Lenin paid significant attention to the development of the country's economy. Lenin believed that in order to restore the economy destroyed by the war, it was necessary to organize the state into a “national, state “syndicate”. Soon after the revolution, Lenin set the task for scientists to develop a plan for the reorganization of industry and the economic revival of Russia, and also contributed to the development of the country's science.

In 1919, on the initiative of Lenin, the Communist International was created.

Role in the Red Terror

During the Russian Civil War, Lenin was one of the main organizers of the Bolshevik policy of red terror, carried out directly on his instructions. These Leninist instructions prescribed the start of mass terror, organizing executions, isolating unreliable people in concentration camps and carrying out other emergency measures. On August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee, where he wrote: “It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful ones locked in concentration camp outside the city". On August 10, 1918, Lenin sent a telegram about the suppression of the kulak uprising in the Penza province, in which he called for hanging 100 kulaks, taking away all their bread and appointing hostages.

A description of the ways to implement the instructions of the Bolshevik leader on the mass Red Terror is presented in acts, investigations, certificates, reports and other materials of the Special Commission for the Investigation of Bolshevik Atrocities.

The KGB history textbook indicates that Lenin spoke to employees of the Cheka, received security officers, was interested in the progress of operational developments and investigations, and gave instructions on specific cases. When the Chekists fabricated the Whirlwind case in 1921, Lenin personally participated in the operation, certifying with his signature the forged mandate of the Cheka agent provocateur.

In mid-August 1920, in connection with receiving information that in Estonia and Latvia, with which Soviet Russia had concluded peace treaties, volunteers are being registered for anti-Bolshevik detachments, Lenin in a letter to E.M. Sklyansky called for “hanging kulaks, priests, landowners.” In another letter he wrote about the admissibility of “putting in prison several dozen or hundreds of instigators, guilty or innocent” in order to save the lives of “thousands of Red Army soldiers and workers.”

Even after the end of the Civil War, in 1922, V.I. Lenin declared the impossibility of ending terror and the need for its legislative regulation.

This problem was not raised in Soviet historiography, but at present it is being studied not only by foreign, but also by domestic historians.

Doctors of historical sciences Yu. G. Felshtinsky and G. I. Chernyavsky explain in their work why it is only today that the discrepancy between the reality of the image of the Bolshevik leader traditional for Soviet historiography is becoming obvious:

...Now, when the veil of secrecy has been lifted from the Lenin Archive Fund in the Russian state archive socio-political history (RGASPI) and the first collections of previously unpublished manuscripts and speeches of Lenin appeared, it becomes even more obvious that the textbook image of a wise state leader and thinker, who allegedly only thought about the good of the people, was a cover for the real appearance of a totalitarian dictator , who cared only about strengthening the power of his party and his own power, ready to commit any crimes in the name of this goal, tirelessly and hysterically repeating calls to shoot, hang, take hostages, etc. The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives

A 2007 textbook on Russian history says:

Foreign policy

Immediately after the October Revolution, Lenin recognized the independence of Finland.

During the Civil War, Lenin tried to reach an agreement with the Entente powers. In March 1919, Lenin negotiated with William Bullitt, who had arrived in Moscow. Lenin agreed to pay off pre-revolutionary Russian debts in exchange for an end to the intervention and the Entente's support for the Whites. A draft agreement was developed with the Entente powers.

After the end of the civil war foreign policy Lenin was unsuccessful. Of the great powers, only Germany established diplomatic relations with the USSR before Lenin’s death, having signed the Rappal Treaty (1922) with the RSFSR. Peace treaties were concluded and diplomatic relations were established with a number of border states: Finland (1920), Estonia (1920), Poland (1921), Turkey (1921), Iran (1921), Mongolia (1921).

In October 1920, Lenin met with a Mongolian delegation that had arrived in Moscow, hoping for support from the “Reds” who were victorious in the Civil War on the issue of Mongolian independence. As a condition for supporting Mongolian independence, Lenin pointed to the need to create a “united organization of forces, political and state,” preferably under the red banner.

Last years (1921-1924)

Economic and political situation demanded that the Bolsheviks change their previous policies. In this regard, at the insistence of Lenin, in 1921, at the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), “war communism” was abolished, food allocation was replaced by a food tax. The so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced, which allowed private free trade and gave the opportunity to large sections of the population to independently seek the means of subsistence that the state could not give them. At the same time, Lenin insisted on the development of state-owned enterprises, on electrification (with the participation of Lenin, a special commission was created to develop a project for the electrification of Russia - GOELRO), on the development of cooperation. Lenin believed that in anticipation of the world proletarian revolution, keeping all large industry in the hands of the state, it was necessary to gradually build socialism in one country. All this could, in his opinion, help put the backward Soviet country on the same level as the most developed European countries.

Lenin was one of the initiators of the campaign to confiscate church valuables, which caused resistance from representatives of the clergy and some parishioners. The shooting of parishioners in Shuya caused great resonance. In connection with these events, on March 19, 1922, Lenin composed a secret letter that qualified the events in Shuya as just one of the manifestations general plan resistance to the decree Soviet power from the “most influential group of the Black Hundred clergy.” On March 30, at a meeting of the Politburo, on the recommendations of Lenin, a plan was adopted to destroy the church organization.

Lenin contributed to the establishment of a one-party system in the country and the spread of atheistic views. In 1922, on his recommendations, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was created.

In 1923, shortly before his death, Lenin wrote his last works: “On Cooperation”, “How can we reorganize the workers’ krin”, “Better less is better”, in which he offers his vision economic policy The Soviet state and measures to improve the work of the state apparatus and the party. On January 4, 1923, V.I. Lenin dictates the so-called “Addition to the letter of December 24, 1922,” in which, in particular, the characteristics of individual Bolsheviks claiming to be the leader of the party (Stalin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Pyatakov) were given. Stalin was given an unflattering description in this letter.

Illness and death. Question about cause of death

The consequences of the injury and overload, according to the surgeon Yu. M. Lopukhin, led Lenin to a serious illness. In March 1922, Lenin led the work of the 11th Congress of the RCP (b) - the last party congress at which he spoke. In May 1922 he became seriously ill, but returned to work in early October. Leading German specialists in nervous diseases were called in for treatment. Lenin's chief physician from December 1922 until his death in 1924 was Otfried Förster. Lenin's last public speech took place on November 20, 1922 at the plenum of the Moscow Soviet. On December 16, 1922, his health condition again deteriorated sharply, and in May 1923, due to illness, he moved to the Gorki estate near Moscow. The last time Lenin was in Moscow was on October 18-19, 1923. During this period, he, however, dictated several notes: “Letter to the Congress”, “On giving legislative functions to the State Planning Committee”, “On the issue of nationalities or “autonomization””, “Pages from the diary”, “On cooperation”, “About our revolution (regarding N. Sukhanov’s notes)”, “How can we reorganize the Rabkrin (Proposal to the XII Party Congress)”, “Better less, but better.”

Lenin's "Letter to the Congress" (1922) is often viewed as Lenin's testament. Some believe that this letter contained Lenin's real will, which Stalin later deviated from. Supporters of this point of view believe that if the country had developed along a truly Leninist path, many problems would not have arisen.

In January 1924, Lenin's health suddenly deteriorated; On January 21, 1924 at 18:50 he died.

The widespread belief that Lenin had syphilis, which he allegedly contracted in Europe, has never been officially confirmed by Soviet or Russian authorities.

The official conclusion on the cause of death in the autopsy report read: “The basis of the deceased’s disease is widespread atherosclerosis of blood vessels due to their premature wear (Abnutzungssclerose). Due to the narrowing of the lumen of the arteries of the brain and disruption of its nutrition from insufficient blood flow, focal softening of the brain tissue occurred, explaining all the previous symptoms of the disease (paralysis, speech disorders). The immediate cause of death was: 1) increased circulatory disorders in the brain; 2) hemorrhage into the pia mater in the quadrigeminal region.”

According to Alexander Grudinkin, rumors about syphilis arose due to the fact that advanced syphilis was one of the preliminary diagnoses put forward by doctors at the onset of the disease; Lenin himself also did not exclude this possibility and took salvarsan, and in 1923, drugs based on mercury and bismuth.

Lenin's main ideas

Historiosophical analysis of contemporary capitalism

Communism, socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat

Before building communism, an intermediate stage is necessary - the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism is divided into two periods: socialism and communism proper. Under socialism there is no exploitation, but there is still no abundance of material goods to satisfy any needs of all members of society.

In 1920, in his speech “Tasks of Youth Unions,” Lenin argued that communism would be built in 1930-1950.

Attitude to the imperialist war and revolutionary defeatism

According to Lenin, the First World War was of an imperialist nature, was unfair for all parties involved, and alien to the interests of the working people. Lenin put forward the thesis about the need to transform the imperialist war into a civil war (in each country against its own government) and the need for workers to use war to overthrow “their” governments. At the same time, pointing out the need for Social Democrats to participate in the anti-war movement, which came up with pacifist slogans for peace, Lenin considered such slogans to be “a deception of the people” and emphasized the need for a civil war.

Lenin put forward the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, the essence of which was voting in parliament against war loans to the government, creating and strengthening revolutionary organizations among workers and soldiers, fighting government patriotic propaganda, and supporting the fraternization of soldiers at the front. At the same time, Lenin considered his position to be patriotic - national pride, in his opinion, was the basis of hatred towards the “slave past” and the “slave present.”

The possibility of an initial victory of the revolution in one country

In the article “On the Slogan of the United States of Europe” in 1915, Lenin wrote that the revolution would not necessarily occur simultaneously throughout the world, as Marx believed. It may first occur in one single country. This country will then help the revolution in other countries.

About class morality

There is no universal morality, but only class morality. Each class implements its own morality, its own moral values. The morality of the proletariat is moral that which meets the interests of the proletariat (“Our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat”).

As political scientist Alexander Tarasov notes, Lenin brought ethics from the realm of religious dogma to the realm of verifiability: ethics must be verified and proven whether a particular action serves the cause of the revolution, whether it is useful to the cause of the working class.

After death

The fate of Lenin's body

On January 23, the coffin with Lenin’s body was transported to Moscow and installed in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions. The official farewell took place over five days and nights. On January 27, the coffin with Lenin’s embalmed body was placed in a specially built Mausoleum on Red Square (architect A.V. Shchusev).

In 1923, the Central Committee of the RCP(b) created the V.I. Lenin Institute, and in 1932, as a result of its merger with the Institute of K. Marx and F. Engels, a single Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute was formed under the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) (later the Institute Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU). The Central Party Archive of this institute contains more than 30 thousand documents, the author of which is V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin).

During the Great Patriotic War Lenin's body was evacuated from the Moscow Mausoleum to Tyumen, where it was kept in the building of the current Tyumen State Agricultural Academy. The Mausoleum itself was disguised as a mansion.

After the breakup Soviet Union in 1991, some political parties expressed the opinion about the need to remove Lenin’s body and brain from the Mausoleum and bury it (the brain is stored separately, at the Brain Institute, including in the form of tens of thousands of histological preparations). Statements about the removal of Lenin’s body from the Mausoleum, as well as about the liquidation of memorial graves near Kremlin wall, are periodically heard to this day from various Russian statesmen, political parties and forces, representatives of religious organizations.

Attitude towards Lenin after death. Grade

The name and ideas of V. I. Lenin were glorified in the USSR along with the October Revolution and I. V. Stalin (before the 20th Congress of the CPSU). On January 26, 1924, after the death of Lenin, the 2nd All-Union Congress of Soviets granted the request of the Petrograd Soviet to rename Petrograd to Leningrad. A city delegation (about 1 thousand people) participated in Lenin’s funeral in Moscow. Cities, towns and collective farms were named after Lenin. In every city there was a monument to Lenin. Numerous stories about “Grandfather Lenin” were written for children, including Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Stories about Lenin, partly based on the memoirs of his sister Anna Ulyanova. Even his driver Gil wrote memoirs about Lenin.

The cult of Lenin began to take shape during his lifetime through party propaganda and the media. In 1918, the city of Taldom was renamed Leninsk, and in 1923, higher educational institutions in the USSR received the name of Lenin.

In the 1930s, villages, streets and squares of cities, premises educational institutions, assembly halls of factories began to be filled with tens of thousands of busts and monuments to Lenin, among which, along with works of Soviet art, there were also typical “objects of worship” devoid of artistic value. There were massive campaigns of renaming various objects and giving them, contrary to the wishes of N. Krupskaya, the name of Lenin. The highest state award was the Order of Lenin. Sometimes the opinion is expressed that such actions were coordinated by the Stalinist leadership in the context of the formation of Stalin’s personality cult with the aim of usurping power and declaring Stalin as Lenin’s successor and worthy disciple.

After the collapse of the USSR, the attitude towards Lenin among the population of the Russian Federation became differentiated; According to a FOM survey, in 1999, 65% of the Russian population considered Lenin’s role in Russian history to be positive, 23% - negative, 13% found it difficult to answer. Four years later, in April 2003, FOM conducted a similar survey - this time 58% assessed Lenin’s role positively, 17% negatively, and the number of those who found it difficult to answer grew to 24%, and therefore FOM noted a trend.

Lenin in culture, art and language

In the USSR, a lot of memoirs, poems, poems, short stories, stories and novels about Lenin were published. Many films about Lenin were also made. In Soviet times, the opportunity to play Lenin in a movie was considered a sign of high trust for the actor by the leadership of the CPSU.

Monuments to Lenin have become an integral part of the Soviet tradition of monumental art. After the collapse of the USSR, many monuments to Lenin were dismantled by the authorities or destroyed by various individuals.

Soon after the emergence of the USSR, a series of jokes about Lenin arose. These jokes are still in circulation to this day.

Lenin made many statements that have become catchphrases. Moreover, a number of statements attributed to Lenin do not belong to him, but first appeared in literary works and cinema. These statements became widespread in the political and everyday languages ​​of the USSR and post-Soviet Russia. Such phrases include, for example, the words “We will go a different way,” allegedly uttered by him in connection with the execution of his older brother, the phrase “There is such a party!”, uttered by him at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, or the characterization “Political prostitute.”

Lenin Awards

Official lifetime award

The only official state award that V.I. Lenin was awarded was the Order of Labor of the Khorezm People's Socialist Republic (1922).

Lenin had no other state awards, either from the RSFSR and the USSR, or from foreign countries.

Titles and awards

In 1917, Norway took the initiative to award Nobel Prize peace to Vladimir Lenin, with the wording “For the triumph of the ideas of peace”, as a response to the “Decree on Peace” issued in Soviet Russia, which separately led Russia out of the First World War. The Nobel Committee rejected this proposal due to the lateness of the application by the deadline - February 1, 1918, but made a decision that the committee would not object to awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to V. I. Lenin if the existing Russian government will establish peace and tranquility in the country (as is known, the path to establishing peace in Russia was blocked by Civil War, which began in 1918). Lenin’s idea about transforming the imperialist war into a civil war was formulated in his work “Socialism and War,” written back in July-August 1915.

In 1919, by order of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic, V.I. Lenin was accepted as an honorary Red Army soldier of the 1st squad of the 1st platoon of the 1st company of the 195th Yeisk Infantry Regiment.

Posthumous "awards"

On January 22, 1924, N.P. Gorbunov, Lenin’s secretary, took the Order of the Red Banner (No. 4274) from his jacket and pinned it to the jacket of the already deceased Lenin. This award was on Lenin’s body until 1943, and Gorbunov himself received a duplicate of the order in 1930. According to some reports, N.I. Podvoisky did the same, standing in the guard of honor at Lenin’s tomb. Another Order of the Red Banner was laid at Lenin’s coffin along with a wreath from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Currently, the orders of N.P. Gorbunov and the Military Academy are kept in the Lenin Museum in Moscow.

The fact of the presence of the order on the chest of the deceased Lenin during the funeral ceremony in the Hall of Columns of the House of Unions was captured in the poem by V. Inber “Five nights and days (On the death of Lenin).”

Lenin's personality

British historian Helen Rappaport, who wrote a book about Lenin, described him as “demanding”, “punctual”, “neat”, “brilliant” and “very clean” in everyday life. At the same time, Lenin is described as “very authoritarian”, “very inflexible”, he “did not tolerate disagreement with his opinion”, “ruthless”, “cruel”. It is indicated that friendship for Lenin was secondary to politics. Rappaport points out that Lenin "changed his party tactics depending on circumstances and political advantage."

Lenin's pseudonyms

At the end of 1901, Vladimir Ulyanov acquired the pseudonym “N. Lenin,” with which, in particular, he signed his printed works during this period. Abroad, the initial “N” is usually deciphered as “Nikolai,” although in reality this initial was not deciphered in any of Lenin’s lifetime publications. There were many versions about the origin of this pseudonym. For example, toponymic - along the Siberian Lena River.

According to historian Vladlen Loginov, the most plausible version seems to be related to the use of the passport of the real Nikolai Lenin.

The Lenin family can be traced back to the Cossack Posnik, who in the 17th century was granted nobility and the surname Lenin for his services associated with the conquest of Siberia and the creation of winter huts along the Lena River. His numerous descendants distinguished themselves more than once in both military and official service. One of them, Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin, having risen to the rank of state councilor, retired and in the 80s of the 19th century settled in the Yaroslavl province, where he died in 1902. His children, who sympathized with the emerging Social Democratic movement in Russia, were well acquainted with Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and after their father’s death they gave Vladimir Ulyanov his passport, albeit with the date of birth changed. There is a version that Vladimir Ilyich received the passport in the spring of 1900, when Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin himself was still alive.

According to the Ulyanov family version, Vladimir Ilyich’s pseudonym comes from the name of the Lena River. Thus, Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova, the niece of V.I. Lenin and the daughter of his brother D.I. Ulyanova, who acts as an author studying the life of the Ulyanov family, writes in defense of this version based on the stories of her father:

After V.I. Lenin came to power, he signed official party and state documents “ V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin)».

He also had other pseudonyms: V. Ilyin, V. Frey, Iv. Petrov, K. Tulin, Karpov, Starik, etc.

Works of Lenin

Works of Lenin

• What are “friends of the people” and how do they fight against the Social Democrats? (1894);
• "On the Characteristics of Economic Romanticism", (1897)
• Development of capitalism in Russia (1899);
• What to do? (1902)
• One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904);
• Party organization and party literature (1905);
• Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1909);
• Three Sources and Three Components of Marxism (1913);
• On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914);
• Karl Marx (a short biographical sketch outlining Marxism) (1914);
• Socialism and War (1915);
• Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism (popular essay) (1916);
• State and Revolution (1917);
• On dual power (1917);
• How to Organize a Competition (1918);
• The Great Initiative (1919);
• The childhood disease of “leftism” in communism (1920);
• Tasks of youth unions (1920);
• About the food tax (1921);
• Pages from the diary, About cooperation (1923);
• About the pogrom persecution of Jews (1924);
• What is Soviet power?;
• On leftist childishness and petty-bourgeoisism (1918);
• About our revolution

Speeches recorded on gramophone records

In 1919-1921 V.I. Lenin recorded 16 speeches on gramophone records. Over three sessions in March 1919 (19, 23 and 31), 8 recordings were made, which became the most famous and were published in copies of ten thousand, including “The Third Communist International”, “Appeal to the Red Army” (2 parts recorded separately) and the especially popular “What is Soviet power?”, which was considered the most successful in technical terms.

During the next recording session on April 5, 1920, 3 speeches were recorded - “On work for transport,” part 1 and part 2, “On labor discipline” and “How to forever save workers from the oppression of landowners and capitalists.” Another record, most likely dedicated to the outbreak of the Polish war, was damaged and lost in the same 1920.

Five speeches recorded during the last session on April 25, 1921 turned out to be technically unsuitable for mass production - due to the departure of a foreign specialist, engineer A. Kibart, to Germany. These gramophone recordings remained unknown for a long time, four of them were found in 1970. Of these, only three were restored and released for the first time on long-playing discs - one of the two speeches “On the tax in kind”, “On consumer and trade cooperation” and “Non-party and Soviet power" (Company "Melodiya", M00 46623-24, 1986).

In addition to the second speech “On the Tax in Kind” that has not been found, the 1921 entry “On Concessions and the Development of Capitalism” has not yet been published. The first part of the speech, “On Work for Transport,” has not been reprinted since 1929, and the speech, “On the pogrom persecution of the Jews,” has not appeared on disk since the late 1930s.

Descendants

Lenin's niece (daughter of his younger brother Olga Dmitrievna Ulyanova), the last direct descendant of the Ulyanov family, died in Moscow at the age of 90.

• During his famous speech at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Lenin did not have a beard (conspiracy), although Vladimir Serov’s now textbook painting depicts him with a traditional beard.
• Nizhny Novgorod residents joke (and not without reason) that Lenin was conceived in Nizhny Novgorod, since Ilya Ulyanov was there as a teacher at the provincial boys' gymnasium until the end of 1869, and his son Vladimir was born in Simbirsk in the spring of 1870.
• On June 16, 1921, Bernard Shaw sent Lenin the book “Back to Methuselah.” On the title page he wrote: "To Nikolai Lenin, the only statesman in Europe who possesses the talent, character and knowledge corresponding to his responsible position". Lenin subsequently left numerous notes in the margins of the manuscript, indicating his keen interest in the work of Bernard Shaw.
• Albert Einstein wrote about Lenin: “I respect in Lenin a man who, with complete selflessness, devoted all his strength to the implementation of social justice. His method seems inappropriate to me. But one thing is certain: people like him preserve and renew the conscience of humanity.”.
• On January 19, 1919, the car in which Lenin and his sister were was attacked by a group of bandits led by the famous Moscow raider Yakov Koshelkov. The bandits got everyone out of the car and stole it. Subsequently, having learned who was in their hands, they tried to return and take Lenin hostage, but by that time the latter had already disappeared.

Man of the New World Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky

To characterize Lenin as a personality*

To characterize Lenin as a personality *

The more grandiose the movement is before us, and the more fully this or that leader embraces it, the stronger, of course, we must assume is his thought and his will. Vladimir Ilyich had a distinctively bright, facet-clear, deeply embracing every subject and therefore almost clairvoyant thought. We also know that even in such a steel apparatus as the Communist Party, forged by twenty years of struggle, Lenin and his will played the role of a kind of motor, which often gave the necessary impetus and turned out to be a decisive element in all party work. Not for a moment breaking away from the party majority, Lenin was, in the full sense of the word, the engine of the party.

Lenin himself, of course, knew well about this side of every major, and especially great, person. For example, he was very fond of talking about Plekhanov’s “physical strength of the brain.” I myself heard this phrase from him several times and at first I did not quite understand it. It is now clear to me that just as physically possible strong man, which can simply overcome you, overcome you undeniably, put you on both shoulder blades, there may also be a physically strong mind, when faced with which you feel the same irresistible power that subjugates you to itself. The physical strength of Lenin's brain still exceeded the enormous physical strength of Plekhanov's brain.

But, so to speak, the volume and scope of thought and will do not yet make a person. They make a person outstanding, influential, they define him as the largest figure in the social fabric, but they do not at all determine the very character of the individual.

It is often thought (and not without reason) that a person’s personal character does not play a big role in history. In fact, without at all denying the role of the individual in history within a certain framework, we cannot help but be inclined to the position that in this case it is the power of thought, the intensity of will, that plays the first role, because everything else comes from society... The fact that Marx or Lenin turned out to be revolutionaries, proletarian ideologists and leaders, it was predetermined by time. It can be said that in similar historical and social conditions others would have taken the same point of view, only they expressed this point of view infinitely more clearly, precisely because volume. Other features of the characteristics, although of a great face, can be extremely great importance for his biography, but from an analytical point of view social role these features seem to recede into the background.

However, Vladimir Ilyich had some traits that were most deeply inherent in him and only him, and which, nevertheless, have enormous social significance.

I want to dwell on two such features that are especially striking and which are especially significant. They are significant because they characterize Lenin as communist By this I do not want to say that they are inherent in every communist in general, no, but they must be inherent in a complete communist, such a person whom we are building simultaneously with the construction of a new society, a person like, perhaps, each of us I would like to be, but in a truly complete form was Vladimir Ilyich.

The first important feature that I am talking about here is the absence of any personalism in Lenin. This phenomenon is very profound and deserves careful development in communist literature. I think this will come with time, when questions art of living will finally fall into line.

We, of course, know many small people who are, in part, even precisely because of their smallness, extraordinary larvae. Leo Tolstoy said somewhere that the true value of a person is determined by the number that is obtained by dividing it good qualities on the degree of his conceit; that is, even comparatively talented person, if he has great conceit, he may thereby turn out to be ridiculous and even worse, unnecessary and harmful; and vice versa, a person of modest talents, with a modest opinion of himself, can be sweet and highly useful.

It would be simply ridiculous to assume that Ilyich’s modesty, which is so often talked about, bordered on his lack of understanding of his own mental and moral strength. But for a person, so to speak, of the bourgeois or, more precisely, pre-communist type, such a prominent position and such awareness of his enormous power are certainly accompanied by personalism. Even if this type is modest, then you will see his pose in his modesty. He certainly carries himself like some kind of precious vessel, he certainly draws attention to himself, he himself, playing his role in history, is a more or less admiring spectator.

This is something Vladimir Ilyich did not have at all, and this is where his extraordinary communistism lies. That extraordinary simplicity and naturalness that always accompanied him was by no means some kind of “gray field uniform” with which Vladimir Ilyich would like to differ from the golden embroidery of other great and many small people of history. No, Vladimir Ilyich was extremely natural in appearance, flying like a bird and swimming like a fish in water in all difficult conditions, because he never observed himself, never made his own assessment. He never compared his position with the position of others and was completely, endlessly, without edge, absorbed in the work he was doing.

Based on the tasks of this work, he understood well that he himself was a good worker and that he could do this or that work better than such and such a comrade, or that such and such comrades could do this work well only with his help and direction. But this was dictated, so to speak, by organizational tasks arising from the work itself.

IN of the highest degree, in some deep and wonderful sense, Vladimir Ilyich was a man of action. Of course, such devotion to the work, such an unconditional, devoid of any decoration, transformation of oneself into a worker of this work is great and solemn only because the work itself is enormous, or, rather, is the most enormous task that is generally conceivable in the world.

Vladimir Ilyich lived the life of humanity, first of all the life of the oppressed masses and even more directly - the life of the proletariat, especially the progressive and conscious proletariat. It was with such a chain that he was connected with humanity and he felt himself and his struggle in the bosom of this humanity to be a completely natural matter, completely filling his life.

But precisely because Vladimir Ilyich had absolutely no desire to cultivate, water, decorate his personality, due to, I would say, complete negligence towards his personality, because he transferred this personality entirely to the communist forge, it remained not only powerful , but also unusually whole, unusually characteristic, unlike anyone else, but can be considered a model for everyone. Yeah, we couldn't say it all best wishes regarding our children and grandchildren, how to be in this regard as close as possible to the model given by Lenin.

And the second feature that cannot be ignored. Vladimir Ilyich was an unusually cheerful person. This does not mean, of course, that his heart did not shrink, and this was not imprinted with deep sadness on his face, the news or sight of some sorrow of the working masses he loved; he took everything earthly very close to his heart, very seriously; and yet he was an unusually cheerful man.

Why did such joy, such gaiety live in the heart of Vladimir Ilyich? I believe that it was explained by the fact that he was a practically, vitally Marxist to the end. A true Marxist sees all trends and the future of each given social formation. Vladimir Ilyich could admit that the communists could make mistakes, that in general circumstances would turn against them, but he could not allow the enemy to win, just as we in early spring, even splashing through puddles, under heavy rain and wind, cannot help but know that May will come and it will be warm, sun and flowers.

Vladimir Ilyich was playing the most difficult chess game in the world, but he knew in advance that he would checkmate his opponent, or, rather, he knew that the game in which he was a figure of enormous importance, led by the proletariat, would certainly be won.

This text is an introductory fragment. From the book Stalin: biography of a leader author Martirosyan Arsen Benikovich

Myth No. 110. The story of the “poisoning of Lenin.” The myth of Stalin's involvement in the killing of Lenin The author of this myth is Trotsky. Why he did this - there is probably no particular need to explain. As for the analysis of the essence of the myth, let me quote the book of the authoritative

author

The cult of personality and the cycle of personality In the spring of 1956, my twelve-year-old sister Faina asked me: “Vova, what is a cult of personality, a cycle of personality?” Well, I somehow answered the first half of the question, but as for the second, I didn’t immediately guess what Faina heard on the radio, except for messages about XX

From the book Unceremonious Portraits author Gamov Alexander

On the cult of personality - Don't you think there is excessive attention to the personality of the president? They already hold poetry competitions dedicated to the president in kindergartens. “It’s simply, as it’s fashionable to say now, a well-promoted brand on which you can make money.” That's all who are not too lazy and

From the book The Man Who Wasn't There by Montague Ewen

6. Creation of a personality For us, Major Martin had long ago become a real person, but this feeling, and as fully as possible, should have been shared with us by those who would have to examine the body and study the documents in the briefcase. The fewer doubts they have, the

author Voinovich Vladimir Nikolaevich

The cult of personality and the cycle of personality In the spring of 1956, my twelve-year-old sister asked me: “Vova, what is a cult of personality, a cycle of personality?” Well, I somehow answered the first half of the question, but as for the second, I didn’t immediately guess what Faina heard on the radio, except for the message about XX

From the book Life and extraordinary adventures writer Voinovich (told by himself) author Voinovich Vladimir Nikolaevich

The cult of personality and the cycle of personality In the spring of 1956, my twelve-year-old sister asked me: “Vova, what is a cult of personality, a cycle of personality?” Well, I somehow answered the first half of the question, but as for the second, I didn’t immediately guess what Faina heard on the radio, except for the message about XX

From the book Rising from the Ashes [How the Red Army of 1941 turned into the Victory Army] author Glanz David M

Personalities

From the book Apostles of the Atomic Age. Memories, reflections author Shchelkin Felix Kirillovich

Formation of personality Kira Shchelkin was born on May 17, 1911 in Tiflis. His father, land surveyor, provincial secretary Ivan Efimovich Shchelkin, was the son of the serf peasant Efim Shchelkin from the village of Dobroye, Krasnensky district, Smolensk province. Mother,

From the book I Survived Stalingrad. Disaster on the Volga by Wieder Joachim

On the characterization of the field marshal With the reservations stated above and abstracting from some techniques from the arsenal of journalism that are aimed at cheap effect, one should still recognize certain merits in the biography of Paulus, in which Görlitz characterizes the deceased

From the book Life. Movie author

Order of Lenin named after Lenin On Maly Gnezdnikovsky, at the Ministry of Cinematography, I was given a direction to Leningrad, to the studio of popular science films. The deputy minister (it was Baskakov, it seems) congratulated me on my appointment. “But I only took out my non-playing diploma, and

From the book Self-Portrait: The Novel of My Life author Voinovich Vladimir Nikolaevich

The cult of personality and the cycle of personality In the spring of 1956, twelve-year-old sister Faina asked me: “Vova, what is a cult of personality, a cycle of personality?” Well, I somehow answered the first half of the question, but as for the second, I didn’t immediately guess what Faina heard on the radio, except for messages about XX

From the book I'm Always Lucky! [Memoirs of a happy woman] author Lifshits Galina Markovna

Cult of personality In the summer we all live together in the country. Adults gather in the garden at a wooden table and talk and talk. All you can hear is: - Cult of personality, cult of personality! I’m interested in: what is a “cult of personality”. - And this is when a common person makes it so that they start

From the book Orthodox Elders. Ask and it will be given! author Karpukhina Victoria

About identity cards In the Holy Gospel there is the following answer of the Savior to the tempting question: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” A passport is a human thing, but God only needs our heart. So, if we live in a society among people, then we must obey

From the book Life. Movie author Melnikov Vitaly Vyacheslavovich

Order of Lenin named after Lenin On Maly Gnezdnikovsky, at the Ministry of Cinematography, I was given a direction to Leningrad, to the studio of popular science films. The deputy minister (it was Baskakov, I think) congratulated me on my appointment. “But I only took out my non-playing diploma, and

From the book of Arakcheev: Evidence from contemporaries author Biographies and memoirs Team of authors --

K. A. Izmailov Count Alexey Andreevich Arakcheev (Story about his characterization) The proposed story, preserved in my notes, was written down by me back in 1833, from the words of my then commander in the 8th reserve artillery company - Captain N. F. Demora, who

From the book Vladimir Putin. Who is Mister P? author Mukhin Alexey Alekseevich

Conclusion to the psychological characteristics We are forced to admit that Putin has changed a lot during his first presidential term. During his second presidential term and during his premiership, the process of changes in his personality practically stopped, and

April 29 is the day of remembrance of the communist, warrior of the Great Patriotic War, Defender of Marxism-Leninism, Fighter against opportunism, a wonderful person - Grigory Mikhailovich Sukhorukov.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin perfectly combined the qualities of a leader of the masses and a commander of a revolutionary army. M.I. Ulyanova, in a conversation with schoolchildren, said: “I think that our red youth should learn not only from Lenin’s great literary heritage, but we also need to get to know Lenin as a person and a communist. From the experience of our life we ​​should add: not only to communist youth, but also to mature men, especially employees of the state and party apparatuses.”

This truth is especially relevant in the conditions of a criminal-oligarchic state, where all vital relationships: state, public and personal are built on lies, deceit, and threat. Society is deteriorating. Bribery has penetrated into the spheres of culture and education. Honesty has become rare. Trade in ideological beliefs, the transformation of ideology into a commodity, takes place without remorse. Concerns about others disappeared both in personal and social relationships. Poverty and wealth live side by side. The rich are completely indifferent to the poverty of the poor. In this regard, our state turned to the Middle Ages, which is described by the historian as follows: “The unfortunate ones who were born here and died here, never having known earthly happiness. Disease and poverty. There is another world nearby - health, wealth, the joy of being. Two worlds lived next door, not really knowing anything about each other. One, content with power, jealously guarded the well-being that had been given for centuries.” Refined manners, beauty. Others are always in rags, hungry, barefoot, eternal fear, eternal need. And this is hundreds of years.

IN AND. Even in his youth, Lenin set himself the task of destroying these deeply unfair relations. Having become the head of the masses, he realized this dream for the first time in history across the vast country.

Lenin developed as an honest man, as a champion of justice, and became great.

Let us remember Lenin as a person, an honest, just, modest and brilliant man.

M.I. Ulyanova writes: “Simplicity and modesty, great democracy and accessibility distinguished Vladimir Ilyich, respect for the common man, for the peasant, for the worker. Vladimir Ilyich especially loved to talk to them; he greeted them warmly and apologized if they had to wait. In the reception room, the peasants were shy and worried, but when they entered the office, after a while they talked at ease, even laughed with Vladimir Ilyich.”

Attention and care for people distinguished Vladimir Ilyich. There are many such cases. Having somehow become interested in the peasant’s conversation, Lenin suggested writing an article for the newspaper. He motivated the refusal by saying that he had lost his glasses on the road. Vladimir Ilyich took up his pen and wrote to Health Commissioner Semashko: “Nikolai Alexandrovich! Comrade Ivan Afanasyevich Chekunov is sitting with me, a very interesting working peasant, who in his own way promotes the foundations of communism. He lost his glasses... Is it possible to help him?”

The X Congress of the RCP(b) finished its work. The delegates were leaving. The delegation from Azerbaijan was headed by G.N. Kalinsky. People were already in the carriage; there were 2-3 hours left before departure. Someone told Lenin that Kalinsky's thyroid gland was not normal. Lenin invites him to his place and asks Semashko to send Kalinsky to rest. Kalinsky says: “My wife is in the carriage... she’s worried” - “You’ll go with your wife.”

Very important and interest Ask, which is still relevant to the problems occurring in the Communist Party. During Lenin's time there were great disagreements in the party. Did Lenin break personal ties with those with whom he differed in views? M.I. Ulyanova writes about Lenin: “He treated people well, but the measure was this: whether a person stands on a revolutionary point of view or has turned somewhere... If the disagreements were small, they could be resolved - he spoke out with sharp criticism. For example, Lenin treated Plekhanov with great respect. Lenin was very friendly with the Menshevik Martov. When he saw that they had changed, taken a different path, that they were going towards compromise, for Lenin the idea was higher than personal relationships. He then tried to win them over to his side.

Trotsky many times, with his speeches that contradicted the decisions of the party, put in dangerous situation not only the party, but also the state. Peace of Brest-Litovsk. He made a proposal: do not sign peace, do not wage war, demobilize the army. Lenin called this proposal extremely dangerous.

Trotsky's views on the role of trade unions were exactly the opposite of Lenin's. Lenin harshly criticized Trotsky's positions. But they did not break off personal relationships while being in the same party. The modern “Leninist” Simonenko calls views that do not coincide with his personal ones anti-party. Dozens of party members were expelled from the party using this wording, including participants in the Great Patriotic War.

What Lenin did in world history will remain for centuries. In theory and practice, this role could only be fulfilled by a great man, a genius. In his homeland and in the world communist movement, Lenin had enormous authority. But at the same time he remained an ordinary person among the people. There was authority, but there was no cult. No one created his authority on purpose. It worked out naturally, influenced by his practical and theoretical activities. He behaved like an ordinary person.

The Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, together with his wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya and sister Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova, decided to attend the opening of a power plant in the village of Kashino in November 1920. A lone unguarded car moves along a beaten highway. The road to Volokolamsk is known, but then we had to find out. The car stopped. A Red Army soldier approaches. Lenin asks him if he knows the way to Kashino.

- I local, I know the road well. Lenin invites him into the car with a promise to bring him back. The soldier was very embarrassed when he found out who he was in the same car with. In Kashino, peasants from many villages gathered around Lenin. The peasants talked about everything that ailed them. And this was after the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918. Opponents still insist that after this event the Red Terror was allegedly launched and special security was installed around Lenin. Lenin also visited factories. And one day on a day off V.I. Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya decided to go to the Rest House. By this time, several rest homes for workers had been opened. Lenin decided to find out how the holiday was organized. There he not only checked, but also relaxed with everyone else. One day he decided to play chess in the presence of a large crowd of fans. Nadezhda Konstantinovna was surrounded by women. Lenin blew the party. He embarrassedly made excuses: during the game it was performed favorite piece Ilyich - Beethoven's Eighth Sonata "Pathetique", he got distracted and made a mistake somewhere. Despite the lost game, the men began to pump him: they threw him up and caught him.

IN AND. Lenin used the meeting with the workers not only to receive information about the state of affairs on the ground and satisfy the necessary requests of people, but also to study the state of affairs in order to make decisions. He knew how to use seemingly small facts to solve important problems. He searched for and found the sprouts of the new, which were born by the creative genius of the liberated people. A brochure was published in the Tver province - a report on the first year of Soviet power. One copy came to Lenin. Ilyich read it, extracted grains from local experience and showed the germs of something new to the whole country. Vladimir Ilyich then wrote the article “A small picture for clarifying big issues.”

Vladimir Ilyich was an outstanding speaker. He performed differently in terms of techniques and methods. Either critically harshly, or simply, as if approaching, connecting with the listeners. Here is one of the memories of his speech before the Union of Representatives of Science, Proletariat and Technology. Vladimir Ilyich, with his characteristic energetic, swift gait, walked into the presidium... He spoke very simply, as if talking to the audience: he either came close to the podium, then moved away, walking around the stage. Vladimir Ilyich lisped slightly. This gave his speech a very nice intonation, a special emotional coloring. He emphasized certain parts of his speech with a characteristic energetic gesture. Lenin's speech deeply interested and captivated the audience, not only because Vladimir Ilyich freely expressed his thoughts, but also mainly because in his speech there was a hidden emotion and deep conviction, as well as a lot of preliminary work. Lenin set practical tasks and called for specific actions. Lenin’s speech at the First All-Union Congress of Working Women in Moscow, in the Column Hall of the House of Unions, was especially heartfelt. Only three months have passed since the villainous assassination attempt on Vladimir Ilyich. It was a historical speech about the role of women in the revolution and in the construction of socialism. Many, feeling emotional, wiped away their tears. Other memoirs emphasize the energy and fiery nature of Lenin’s speeches as a tribune.

The concept should be clarified: Lenin as a person. At one time, one of the journalists asked the French writer Henri Barbusse: “Is it true that Lenin is a simple man?” The writer clarified: “Lenin is easy to communicate with.” Under a simple person is usually understood as an ordinary normal person, with ordinary (not outstanding) human qualities.

Lenin, on the other hand, possessed many outstanding human abilities: a strong, unshakable will, determination to achieve decision taken to the end, risk: making a decision to revolt is, on the one hand, a comprehensive consideration of the balance of power, and on the other, risk. The revolution had two possible outcomes: victory or defeat; outstanding influence to the masses, the ability to convince them and lead them. These and other qualities allowed Lenin to become the great strategist of the great revolution. Lenin treated revolution as an art (following Marx) and combined the qualities of a leader of the masses and a commander of a revolutionary army.

In the fight against enemies, Lenin called on the proletarian vanguard to mercilessly fight, even to the point of self-sacrifice. This refers to the class enemy. Lenin’s attitude towards the enemy within the labor movement is expressed as follows: “It is worth giving credit to Bolshevism, which has always led the most merciless and irreconcilable struggle against opportunism.” This tradition of Bolshevism is continued by the Communists of Crimea, led by L.I. Rook.

From the book by G. Sukhorukov

"For the purity of Marxism-Leninism"

Even during Lenin’s lifetime, his name was surrounded by an aura of legend, this naive and unconscious tribute of gratitude of the masses to great people. For the last six years there has been no man in the whole world more loved or more hated than him. And, perhaps, even stronger than the endless love with which the peasants and workers surrounded him, was the hatred of capitalists and reactionaries around the world towards him. But even enemies - with the exception of obviously unscrupulous slanderers - were always forced to admit that if, as a politician, Lenin was their opponent, then as a person he was distinguished by the impeccable purity of his intentions and his life.

Those who had the good fortune to know him closely could be convinced of the feeling of affection this man, so stern in appearance, was capable of, with what love he treated his family and, in particular, what tender affection he always had for children . And now, when the whole world is talking about him, when the proletarians of the whole world turn their eyes to him with excitement, gratitude and admiration, when even in the most remote corners of the earth they talk about this hero and enemies stubbornly repeat the tale of his “bloodthirstiness,” many teenagers The workers' quarters of Bern and Zurich remember this stern Mongolian face, this poorly dressed man who barely had enough money to buy bread for himself and his wife, but always had money to supply chocolate to his many little friends from the Spiegelglasse street. “Herr Doktor,” as older children called him in 1917, suddenly became the Russian “Kaiser.”

In the winter of 1916-1917, regulars of the Zurich “cantonal library”, or “library of social literature”, constantly saw a man with reddish hair, a blunt nose, small eyes and a large, almost bald head buried in books. Every morning he came here and sat down in his place, without looking at anyone, without entering into conversations with anyone. At noon he went out into the street, where a woman, modestly dressed like him, was waiting for him, and after lunch he was again at his post, among the books, bowing his head over his notes.

He read mainly books on socialism, so I soon guessed that he was one of “ours.” Therefore, I once asked a Russian comrade who this Mongolian scientist was.

How? - he answered. -You don’t know him? All of Zurich knows him! This is Lenin.

In fact, not all of Zurich knew him. Only a few Russian revolutionaries, hiding in Zurich and the rest of Switzerland from the first days of the war, knew him. However, Lenin led an extremely secluded life. During the day he worked in the library, dined at a small modest restaurant, and studied at home in the evening and at night. This revolutionary was not only a great man of action, but also a great man of science. He knew that one cannot be a good leader of the working class if one does not know the entire history of this class and the history of capitalism. And among modern Marxists, few, very few, knew these two stories as well as Lenin.

Lenin arrived unexpectedly in Switzerland, where he had already been before, at the beginning of the war, when he was forced to leave Austria. He spent several months in Zurich with his wife, who was, at the same time, his devoted comrade and in the political struggle, between his favorite books, in the circle of a few very close internationalist comrades, who, like him, set themselves the task of preparing revolution in Russia. They formed something like a circle, appropriating for themselves the name “defeatists,” and they welcomed every failure of Tsarist Russia on the battlefield as a step towards revolution.

A year after the outbreak of the war, i.e. In the fall of 1915, Lenin left Zurich with his wife and mother-in-law and moved to Bern. In the Swiss capital, he led the same extremely poor lifestyle, settling in a small boarding house. They took two portions of lunch for three at 90 centimes each; in the evening - tea with bread. Neither Lenin, nor his wife, nor his mother-in-law ever appeared in cafes or places of entertainment. During the day, Lenin worked in libraries; at night the lamp burned on his desk almost until dawn. With his literary talent, he could have easily provided himself with all the conveniences and comforts of life, but, instead, he wrote articles for socialist newspapers and magazines, which paid him just enough to not die of hunger.

One fine day his fee turned out to be insufficient even to pay for the modest dinners that he had hitherto enjoyed. Then he changed the “restaurant”. He began going with his wife to the “Russian student canteen,” where lunch cost only 60 centimes. However, visitors to this canteen were obliged to take turns cleaning the premises, sweeping rooms, washing dishes, etc. And then the day came when Lenin’s turn came. His companions, young, enthusiastic youths who admired this revolutionary, who had in the past many years of struggle and suffering endured for the proletariat, wanted to free him from this work. However, Lenin did not agree to make any exceptions for him, and resignedly performed the functions of a dishwasher in this cheerful revolutionary company. From Bern he returned to Zurich, where he subsequently launched broad and energetic revolutionary activities. However, his private life hasn't changed one bit.

In Zurich, Lenin and his wife - his mother-in-law had died a few months earlier in Bern - settled in a poor room at No. 14 Spiegelglasse Street, on the second floor. To get to Lenin, you had to climb a small, dark staircase, the steps of which creaked under your feet. He lived here throughout 1916 and the first months of 1917. His landlord was the shoemaker Kammerer, who is now - as is easy to understand - more than ever proud of his great tenant. And from his lips you can hear interesting details about the life of a man full of hardships, who later became the dictator of the greatest state in the world.

“Comrade Lenin,” said Kammerer, “was distinguished by his unusual simplicity. Both he and his wife did not attach any importance to good clothing and good food. They paid me 28 francs a month. In winter I had to make them a pair of heavy peasant shoes with large nails. - “Comrade. Lenin,” I told him, “with these shoes you will be mistaken for a peasant elder.” He laughed, but continued to wear these shoes throughout the winter. When Lenin's wife fell ill, the two of them went to French Switzerland. I rented out their room to others. Upon Lenin's return, I evicted the new tenants. We have always been good friends. Currently he lives in the Kremlin. I can imagine what rooms he has there!”

Travel to the Kremlin! Who can forget the excitement, enthusiasm and hope of the April days of 1917? I remember the evening before the sealed train left Zurich for Russia. In the hall “Eintracht” (Concord), in which the voices of the largest European socialists who had fled to Switzerland had been heard many times before, the Zurich comrades organized a farewell party for the Russian comrades, who finally had the opportunity to return to their homeland and begin revolutionary work among their people . Then, in another large hall, where charity festivals were usually held for the benefit of the poorest comrades, a second meeting was held to celebrate the dawn of a new life. Everyone was here: young people, old people, students, female students, workers and people in general who had spent years and decades (p. 247) in Siberia, in the Peter and Paul or Shlisselburg fortresses. The old revolutionaries seemed to become younger, and the more than 60-year-old Cohn danced the dances of his country like a young man.

The next day, the sounds of the Internationale, performed in German, French, Italian and Russian, were loudly heard on the platform of Zurich Station. The exiles of tsarism returned to their country: Martov, Bobrov, Kon, Lapinsky, Ryazanov, Bronsky, Balabanova, whose hair was decorated with red flowers by her Italian comrades, and many, many others. Finally, the sealed train started moving. The Trojan horse, which German imperialism helped to bring into the enemy fortress, was set in motion, not noticing that its own enemies were hidden in this horse.

Lenin had left a few days earlier. Before leaving Switzerland, he participated in a conference of Swiss and Russian socialists, on behalf of which he addressed the Swiss working class with a greeting that is one of the finest and most revolutionary works of his pen. On April 3, he arrived in Petrograd, where he was greeted by a huge enthusiastic crowd...

"Avanti" 27-28/I 1924.

Reprinted from Lisovsky P.A. Foreign press about Lenin. L., 1924. p. 130-134; the article is not signed.

http://ru-history.livejournal.com/4345683.html