Facts on Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born April 22, 1870 in Simbirsk, Russian Empire. Lenin worked as a lawyer for a few years in Samara before he moved to St. Petersburg in 1893. Instead of pursuing a legal career he instead became involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts and joined the Marxist group. He was arrested and when released was exiled to the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia. There he mingled with notable Marxist such as Georgy Plekhanov who intoduced socialism to Russia. He married Nadezhda Krupskaya a socialist activist during the month of July in 1898. In 1900 he began his travels throughout Russia and the rest of Europe. He was active in the RSDLP and in 1903 Bolshevik factions after splitting with the Mensheviks. The names referred to the narrow outvoting of the Mensheviks in the decision to limit party membership to revolutionary professionals, rather than including sympathizers. The division was inspired by Lenin’s Pamphlet “What is to be Done?” that focused on his revolutionary strategy. This was said to be one of the most influential pamphlets in pre-revolutionary Russia.

He returned to Russia November 1905 to support the 1905 Russian Revolution.Lenin was elected to the presidium of the RSDLP in 1906. Lenin at the time shuttled between Russia and Finland but in December 1907 the revolution was crushed by the Tsarist authorities he was returned to exile in Europe. He spent the majority of his time exiled in Europe until he revolutions of 1917. Lenin completed Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909 as a response to debates on a socialist revolutions proper course. His work became fundamental in the Marxist-Leninist Philosophy. He conyinued his travels and participated in many socialist meetings including the Prague Party Conference of 1912.

When WWI began in 1914 and the large Democratic Parties Of Europe supported their various efforts lenin was stunned at what the German Social Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the SI which was composed of these parties. Lenin adopted the stance he described as imperialist war that ought to turn to a civil war between the classes. As the war broke out he was detained by the Austrian authorities in the town of Poronin. He resided at Switzerland  on September 5, 1914 and attended the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference in 1915. He was the main leader of Zimmerwald left who urged unsucessfully againts the majority pacifists that the conference should adopt Lenin’s sstance of converting imperialist war into a class war. Lenin and the Zimmerwald urged a similar resolution at Kienthal (April 1916) but in the end settles for a compromise manifesto. Lenin wrote the important theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in Zurich in the spring of 1916, in this he argued that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to finance capital. According to Lenin capital is exported at the last stage of capitalism.