Vladimir Lenin Quote

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist who was the founder and first leader of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. He was the founder and leader of the Bolsheviks, which led the October Revolution that established the world's first socialist state. During the Russian Civil War, Lenin's government centralised power in a one-party state ruled by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments of Marx's theories of party, imperialism, the state, and revolution are called Leninism.
Born to a schoolteacher's family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's execution in 1887. He was expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the tsarist government, and devoted the following years to a law degree before moving to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and emerging as a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, Lenin was arrested for sedition and exiled for three years to Siberia. He moved to Western Europe after his release and became a prominent figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1903, he played a key role in the party's ideological schism, leading his Bolshevik faction against the Mensheviks. He briefly returned to Russia during the failed 1905 Revolution, and during the First World War campaigned for its transformation into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution to overthrow capitalism and replace it with socialism. After the February Revolution of 1917 ousted the tsar and established a Provisional Government, Lenin returned to Russia, issued his "April Theses", and led the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the regime.
Lenin's government redistributed land to the peasantry, nationalised banks and industry, withdrew from the war by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, and promoted world revolution via the Communist International. The Bolsheviks initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and allowed elections to the multi-party Constituent Assembly, but by 1918 centralised power in the Communist Party. Amid the civil war, Lenin's government implemented economic policies known as "war communism", including forced requisitioning of grain from peasants, and carried out the Red Terror, a violent campaign administered by state security services in which tens of thousands of opponents were killed or interned in concentration camps. Responding to economic devastation, a major famine in 1921–22, and revolts such as the Tambov and Kronstadt rebellions, in 1921 Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy. Some non-Russian nations of the former empire were re-united in the Soviet Union in 1922, while others (notably Poland), gained independence. Lenin suffered three debilitating strokes in 1922 and 1923 and died the following year, with Joseph Stalin succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government.
Widely considered one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991. Under Stalin's leadership, he became a figurehead of the state ideology of Marxism–Leninism, which served as a major influence on the international communist movement. A controversial figure with a highly divisive legacy, Lenin is praised by his supporters for establishing soviet democracy and a "dictatorship of the proletariat" which took steps towards socialism, while critics accuse him of overseeing mass killings and political repression of dissidents and either leading or preparing the way for a totalitarian dictatorship.