author
Vladimir Il'ich Lenin
1870–1924
A fierce revolutionary thinker and organizer, this Russian political leader helped overthrow the old imperial order and reshape world history. His ideas, speeches, and strategies became central to the rise of the Soviet state and to communist movements far beyond Russia.
1 Audiobook
A Letter to American Workingmen, from the Socialist Soviet Republic of Russia
by Vladimir Il'ich Lenin
About the author
Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk in 1870, Lenin trained in law before devoting himself to revolutionary politics. He became a leading Marxist writer and activist, spending years in exile and underground political work as he argued for a tightly organized party capable of making revolution.
Lenin is best known for leading the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution of 1917. After the fall of the tsar, he pushed for a transfer of power to the soviets, and later became the central figure in the new Soviet government, serving as its first head from 1917 until his death in 1924.
His legacy is enormous and deeply contested. He was a major political theorist as well as a practical leader, and his name remains tied to the founding of the Soviet Union, the spread of Leninist ideas, and some of the most consequential debates about revolution, state power, and socialism in the modern world.