April 22 - Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, was born on April 22, 1870, in the provincial Russian city of Simbirsk on the Volga River. In 1887, his older brother was arrested in St. Petersburg for plotting against Tsar Alexander III, then convicted and hanged. This hardened Lenin against Tsarist Russia’s repressive culture and he began studying the radical writings of Karl Marx and others. He earned a law degree in St. Petersburg, where he became a professional revolutionary – for which he was exiled to Siberia. In 1901 he adopted the pseudonym Lenin, then spent many years in western Europe as a major exponent of the international revolutionary movement and leader of Russia’s Bolshevik political faction. He returned to Russia in 1917, led the overthrow of the provisional government in the October Revolution, and eventually gained control of the nation. He reorganized party factions into the Russian Communist Party and reinvented the Russian economy under Marxist socialism. Lenin died in 1924 at age 53.