Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, was the founder of Bolshevism and the architect of the October Revolution of 1917. A professional revolutionary in European exile for most of two decades, he returned to Russia in April 1917 — transported across Germany in a sealed train with the connivance of the German High Command, which calculated correctly that he would take Russia out of the war. His April Theses rejected cooperation with the Provisional Government and demanded all power to the soviets; his iron will drove a hesitant Bolshevik Central Committee to seize power in October. As head of the first Soviet government he signed the punitive Peace of Brest-Litovsk to save the revolution, dissolved the freely elected Constituent Assembly at gunpoint, and prosecuted the Civil War with systematic terror. He died in 1924 after a series of strokes, leaving a one-party state and a succession struggle that Stalin would win.
- Lived: 1870 CE – 1924 CE
- Nationality: Russian
- Roles: revolutionary leader, head of government, ideologue
