Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist whose six-year service as the founder and head of the Soviet government across 1917–1924 produced one of the foundational documents of 20th-century international Marxist-Leninist political movement — particularly his October 1917 Russian Revolution leadership and his subsequent 1917–1922 Russian Civil War political-and-military leadership of the Bolshevik Russian SFSR. He was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (modern Ulyanovsk, Russia), into a Russian middle-class family. His father Ilya Ulyanov was a Simbirsk-area Russian Imperial school inspector, and his mother Maria Alexandrovna Blank was a homemaker. The May 8, 1887 hanging-execution of his older brother Alexander Ulyanov (for his participation in a March 1887 plot to assassinate Russian Tsar Alexander III) shaped his early-life biographical narrative.

His education at Kazan Imperial University (1887; without earning a degree, after his December 1887 expulsion for participating in student-political-protest activities) and his subsequent 1891 Saint Petersburg Imperial University external-examination J.D. completion launched his early-career path. His 1893 emigration to Saint Petersburg and his subsequent work as a Saint Petersburg-area attorney produced his early-career Russian-Marxist political-public-profile.

His 1895 first arrest by the Russian Imperial police and his subsequent 1897–1900 Siberian internal-exile period produced his early-career Russian-revolutionary political-public-profile. His 1900 emigration from Russia to Western Europe (across multiple Munich, London, and Geneva-area exile periods, where he edited the Russian-Marxist newspaper Iskra across 1900–1903) launched his early-1900s international Russian-Marxist political-public-profile.

His July–August 1903 Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Brussels and London — across which he led the Bolshevik ("majority") faction's split from the Menshevik ("minority") faction — produced the foundational Bolshevik-Russian-Marxist-Leninist political-movement public profile.

His April 16, 1917 return to Saint Petersburg from his Swiss exile (across the German-government-arranged sealed-train transit across Germany to Saint Petersburg) launched his 1917 Russian Revolution political-leadership public profile. His October 25 (Old Style) 1917 October Revolution leadership produced the Bolshevik takeover of the Russian government and the founding of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. His subsequent 1917–1924 service as the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (the Soviet Premier-equivalent position) produced his 1917–1924 Soviet-government leadership. He died on January 21, 1924, at age 53, in Gorki, Soviet Russia, of stroke-and-arteriosclerosis-related complications.

His name Vladimir derives from the Slavic Vladimir meaning "famous ruler." Vladimir has been climbing in American naming since the 2000s.