Vladimir Il'ich Lenin

Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk in 1870, he later became known to the world as Lenin. He emerged as a leading Marxist activist in the late Russian Empire, spending years in political struggle, exile, and writing before rising to international prominence in 1917.

Lenin led the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and became the founding head of government of Soviet Russia, later also leading the Soviet Union after it was established in 1922. Alongside his political career, he was a prolific author whose books, essays, and speeches set out his views on class struggle, revolution, imperialism, and the role of a disciplined political party.

He died in 1924, but his legacy has endured far beyond his lifetime. For some readers, he remains one of the most important revolutionary thinkers of the modern age; for others, he is inseparable from the violence and repression that marked the early Soviet system.