Vladimir Lenin Biography

Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870 - 1924)

Born on April 10, 1870 this son of a Russian nobleman was to have a profound effect on the future of Russia and, indeed, the world. His father had been the son of a serf who had risen to post of inspector of schools in Simbirsk. While his mother was the daughter of land owning physician.

In school he proved himself to be very bright though he suffered alienation because of it. However, he excelled in his studies. He also enjoyed reading and writings of Goethe and Turgenev would affect him for the rest of his life.

Two major tragedies occurred which had an acute effect on the young Lenin (then Ulyanov). In 1886 his father died from a cerebral haemorrhage, the following year his brother, Alexander, was hung for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Lenin renounced religion and the political system. Added to this he was the brother of dead revolutionary and found many doors closed to him. He finally managed to be accepted in a Kazan University where he studied law. This was to be shortlived as he was expelled for attending a peaceful protest some three months later. He was ostracised from the academic world. He studied the law on his own and passed the exam, coming first in a class of 124 in 1891.

Rise to Power

He moved to St. Petersburg in 1893 where he practised law. While there he began developing a Marxist underground movement. He grouped members into six member cells. By this means industrial conditions were investigated, statistics compiled and pamphlets written. It was also through these groups that he met his future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who he married in 1898.

He travelled to Switzerland to meet like minded Social Democrats in 1895. While there he talked with Georgi Plekhanov. They argued over the means of bringing about change in Russia. Plekhanov wanted to include the liberal middle class; Lenin favoured the rise of the proletariat. This disagreement led to the eventual split of the Social Democratic party into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

When Lenin returned to Russia he carried with him illegal pamphlets, he wanted to start up a revolutionary paper. On the eve of its publication he and other leaders were arrested. He served fifteen months in prison. After this term he was exiled to Siberia and it was there that he and Krupskaya were married. Having finished their period of exile in 1900 they left for Switzerland where they finally managed to establish their paper, Iskra (Spark). During his years in Switzerland he rose to a position of power in the Social Democratic party. His uncompromising views were a core cause for the split in the party.

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The 1905 St. Petersburg Massacre spurred Lenin to advocate violent action. The Massacre itself occurred when Cossacks fired on peaceful protesters led by Father Georgi Gapon. This event led to several uprisings in Russia. Lenin returned to Russia for two years but the promised revolution did not happen as the Tsar made enough concessions to mollify the people. Lenin went abroad again.

1917 was to finally see the revolution in Russia. In fact two revolutions occurred in this year. In March steelworkers in St. Petersburg went on strike. It grew until thousands of people lined the streets. The Tsar's power collapsed and the Duma, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. Lenin made a deal with the Germans; if they could get him safely back to Russia, he would take power and pull Russia out of the war. Kerensky was to fall over this same issue. He refused to take Russia out a war in which they were suffering severe losses and causing brutal hardship at home. Lenin came to power in October after a nearly bloodless coup.

Lenin in Power

At age forty seven Vladimir Ilich Lenin was named president of the Society of People's Commissars (Communist Party). The problems of the new government were enormous. The war with Germany was ended immediately (his battle cry had been "Bread not War"). Though Russia lost the bread basket of the Ukraine to Germany this was soon regained when Germany was ultimately defeated in the war. Land was redistributed, some as collective farms. Factories, mines, banks and utilities were all taken over by the state. The Russian Orthodox Church was disestablished.

There was opposition and this led to a civil war in 1918 between the Mensheviks (Whites) and the Bolsheviks (Reds). Despite being supported by Britain and the U.S.A. the whites were defeated after a bitter struggle.

From 1919 to 1921 famine and typhus ravaged Russia and left over 27 million people dead. To counter these disasters Lenin put into effect the New Economic Plan. This plan embraced some capital ideas (limited private industry) in order to revitalise the flagging economy. However he was never to see the full effect of his measures

Decline and Death

In May 1922 Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes, less than a year later he suffered a second one. In his two remaining years he tried correct some of the excesses of the regime. He saw that it would be necessary to learn coexistence with capitalist countries and eliminate the inefficiency of his bureaucracy. He also tried to ensure that Trotsky and not Stalin succeeded him. In this endeavour he failed. Stalin was far too clever and astute even for Lenin. 1923 saw him decline further as he had another stroke which left him paralysed and speechless. He never fully recovered and died of a cerebral haemorrhage on January 21, 1924.

When Tomorrow Comes. . .

The sun rised,

The sun fell,

The sun slew the shadows well,

The sun rises,

The sun falls,

The sun banishes the shadows on the walls,

The sun will rise,

The sun will fall,

The sun will die after shadows grow tall,

A new day has been aroused,

Yet not all has even stirred,

Noise, by sleep, has been doused,

As nothing can be heard,

As the time never goes back,

When tomorrow comes…

my first poem,:)..

please give your comment(behave yourself)..:)

Sincerely by,

Muhammad Wazien Bin Zuraidi.

sTrAnGe bUt tRuE,bElIeVe iT oR nOt....

1.Koalas and humans are the only animals with unique fingerprints. Koala prints cannot be distinguished from human fingerprints. Luckily, few koalas pursue a life of crime.

2.Benjamin Franklin was the proud owner of the very first bathtub in the colonies.

3.Only female bees work. Males remain in the hive, their only mission in life being to fertilize the queen bee on her maiden flight. After they have served their function, the males are not allowed back into the hive but are left outside, where they starve to death.

4.In the Roman Republic of 500 B.C., the senate could appoint a supreme national commander for a limited time during periods of emergency. While in charge, his word was law. His title in Latin meant "I have spoken." The title was "dictator."

5.Laptop computers falling from the overhead bins onto passenger's  heads are among the most common accidents aboard airplanes.

6.Citizens of seventeenth-century England used ashes, bread, and urine to clean their clothes.

7.Although the early Egyptians were the most famous mummy makers, they were not exactly the first to practice this now-long-dead art. An extremely advanced fishing tribe known as the Chinchoros, who inhabited the north coast of what is present-day Chile, were wrapping up their ex-tribesmen from head to toe as early as 5000 B.C.- way before the pharaohs!

8.Before bath tissue was introduced in the United States in perforated form in 1884, a number of outhouses in America were stocked with dried leaves.

9.A rat can squeeze through an opening no larger than a dime.

10.The men who served as guards along the Great Wall of China in the Middle Ages often were born on the wall, grew up there, married there, died there, and were buried within it. Many of these guards never left the wall in their entire lives.

11.Babies are born without kneecaps; they don’t appear until the ages of 2-6 months old.

12.It is difficult to drown an ant because water doesn't penetrate their minuscule breathing tube; the ants will suffer, however, from too much carbon dioxide, which knocks them out. It takes awhile, but they will eventually die.

13.The sound a camel makes is called nuzzing.

14.Surprisingly, a cat stands a greater chance of survival if it falls from a higher place than from a lower place. Laws of physic explain why: A falling object, after traveling a certain distance through the air, reaches a final speed, or "terminal velocity," because the object’s friction with the air slows the fall. The smaller the object’s mass, and the greater its area, the more it will slow.

15.Visual scientist have estimated that, by the age of 60, our eyes have been exposed to more light energy than would be released by a nuclear blast. The rapid, irregular eye movement that occurs when changing focus from one point to another, as while reading or looking out from a moving train, is called saccade.

16.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, some people thought comets were the eggs or sperm of planetary systems.

17.The British royal family changed their last name to Windsor from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha during World War I so as not to appear pro-German. They have never changed it back.

18.Benjamin Franklin slept in four beds every night. He had a theory that a warm bed sapped a man’s vitality. So when one bed became too warm, Ben jumped into another.

Thats all from me,enjoy it!

Thank you. :)

Muhammad Wazien Zuraidi.