Vladimir Lenin

To put it simply, Vladimir Lenin was a Russian revolutionist, the Bolshevik party leader, Soviet Union's first Premier, and the founder of the Leninism idealogy.

Vladimir Lenin was born on May 4, 1870.  His father was a Russian nobleman who fought for increased democracy and free universal education, while his mother was the daughter of a land owning physician.  He had a very diverse ancestry which included Kalmyk, Volga German, Lutheran, Jewish, and Christianity backgrounds.  Lenin was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. 

Lenin excelled very well in school and studied Latin and Greek.  Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin's oldest brother, was hanged in May of 1887 for threatening to kill Tsar Alexander III.  Less than one year later, Lenin was expelled from Kazan University for student type protests.  He did, however, get his liscense to practice law in 1891 (being first in his class of 124) by studying independently.  All of this added to the fact that his father died in 1886 of Cerebral Haemorrhage, caused young Lenin to denounce his religion and the political system. 

After he went against his legal practices, Lenin began studying the teachings of Karl Marx's Marxism.  He even began a revolutionary paper but was arrested on the night of publication.  This caused his exile to Siberia in 1895. 

During his exile, he married Nadezhda Krupskaya (a socialist activist) in 1898.  They established their paper in Switzerland called Iskra (Spark) in 1900 after their exile.  He also became the active leader for RSDLP, also known as the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.  This split the party into two factions, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.  After waiting for revolutions to occur in Russia, Lenin's time finally came in October or 1917.  He was here placed as leader of Russia.

At 47, Lenin was named President of the Society of People's Commissars (Communist Party).  He had so many problems to deal with as leader including: the war with Germany, the loss of Ukraine to Germany, redistribution of land, and famine and typhus was killing over 27 million people.  He thus began the New Economic Plan which had capital ideas, limiting private industry, so that the could gain back the economy. 

Then came August 30, 1918.  This day Fanya Kaplan, Socialist Revolutionary Party member, came up to Lenin walking to his car.  She called to Lenin and when he turned she shot him three times.  He got hit twice in the shoulder and once in the lung.  Doctors refused to remove the bullets, as not to cause more damage.  Many believe this led to his decrease in health and possibly his later strokes. 

Meanwhile, most of Russia was in ruins.  The communists won the civil war in 1920.  A peace treaty was signed with Poland in 1921.  All this stress played a role in the decline of Lenin's health as well.

In May of 1922, Lenin had his first stroke.  His right side was paralyzed.  He had another in December of 1922, where he resigned from all political offices.  In March of 1923, Lenin had his third stroke and was left bedridden and unable to speak.  During his fourth stroke on January 21, 1924, Lenin died of complications.  Only eight out of the 27 physicians that did an autopsy on Lenin believe that he died from a stroke.  Another theory is that he died of syphilis. 

After the autopsy, there was much talk about cryogenically preserving Lenin's body.  The idea was to preserve him so that he can be revived in the future.  For some reason unknown to us, this was not done and Lenin was embalmed and put on permanent display in the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow. 

What is weird about people who looked up to Lenin is that before they embalmed him, they removed his brain.  This was in order to give to the German neuroscientist [Oskar Vogt].  Vogt studied Lenin's brain for two and a half years trying to figure out what part of the brain contained the cells responsible for geniusness.  Vogt published a paper in 1929 and stated that the pyramidal neurons in the third layer of Lenin's cerebral cortex were very large.  This supposedly concluded that Lenin was a genius by nature. 

Here are more interesting sharings on Lenin:

Cool posters, pictures, and paintings of Lenin: 99: Lenin Of Hollywood

Quotes said by Lenin: Lenin Quotes

Now that  I have told you about Lenin, you have to check out the resemblance of someone famous compared to Lenin.  See Famous Lenin

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