Vladimir Lenin

A militant Marxist, Vladimir Lenin engineered the Bolshevik Revolution that transformed Czarist Russia into the world's largest communist state. A highly disciplined intellectual and political theorist, he also had a talent for adapting Marxist principles to suit the circumstances of the day.

When Lenin was 17 his brother was executed for attempting to assassinate the czar. The event triggered Lenin's revolutionary career and he began to study the works of Karl Marx and later became involved in student politics. Years of forced exile, due to his revolutionary activities, gave him the opportunity to formalize and publish his own political and revolutionary ideas.

After the fall of the czar in March 1917, Lenin returned to Russia and engineered the November 7 th uprising. Two days later he formed a Communist government, but before long Russia was torn apart by civil war. In 1921 he promoted an economic policy that relied on market forces to rebuild the country, but he was anticipating a return to full socialism when he suffered a series of strokes that killed him in 1924.   [UP]