Childhood: 1870–1887
Lenin's father Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov was from a family of serfs; his ethnic origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was of Russian, Chuvash,

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Early activism and imprisonment: 1893–1900
In late 1893, Lenin moved to Saint Petersburg. There, he worked as a barrister's assistant and rose to a senior position in a Marxist revolutionary cell that called itself the Social

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Organising the Soviet government: 1917–1918
The Provisional Government had planned for a Constituent

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Lenin saw himself as a man of destiny and firmly believed in the righteousness of his cause and his own ability as a revolutionary leader. Biographer Louis Fischerdescribed him as "a lover of radical change and maximum upheaval", a man for whom "there was never

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Volkogonov claimed that "there can scarcely have been another man in history who managed so profoundly to change so large a society on such a

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• Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
• Lenin Peace Prize
• Lenin Prize

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Marxism and Leninism
Lenin was a devout Marxist, and believed that his interpretation of Marxism, first termed "Leninism" by Martov in 1904, was the sole authentic and orthodox one. According to his Marxist perspective, humanity would eventually

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