Walter Herold

Vladimir Lenin - “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ленин, IPA ) (22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ульянов, IPA ), was the Bolshevik Leader of the 1917 October Revolution, and the first Head of State of the Soviet Union. Lenin was a powerful and persuasive orator and writer, and a keen practitioner of realpolitik. His massive theoretical and philosophic contributions to Marxism lead to the of Marxism-Leninism . Lenin's body of work is however rejected by traditional Marxists, as it includes novel theories on imperialism and of the vanguard party, as well as an assertion that a developed industrial proletariat (virtually non-existent in the agrarian Russia of 1917) was not essential to the achievement of a communist state.

Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, on 22 April 1870, to Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a schoolmistress, and Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov a physics instructor, at Simbirsk, a town on the Volga River in the Russian Empire; following family custom, he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. Later, the USSR renamed Simbirsk as Ulyanovsk.

In 1869, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov became the Inspector of Public Schools, and later the Director of Elementary Schools, for the Simbirsk Gubernia Oblast (province), a successful career in the Imperial Russian public education system. Tsarist cultural mores defined the Ulyanov family stock as "ethnically mixed"—"Mordovian, Kalmyk, Jewish (cf. Blank family), Volgan German, and Swedish, and possibly others"; being of the intelligentsia, the Ulyanovs educated their children against the ills of their time (violations of human rights, servile psychology), and instilled readiness to struggle for higher ideals, a free society, and equal rights. Subsequently, excepting Olga (dead at age 19), every Ulyanov child became a revolutionary.

Source: http://www.upi.com/topic/Vladimir_Lenin/wiki/

FULL ARTICLE AT WIKIPEDIA.ORG

RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS MARK LENIN' S BIRTHDAY IN MOSCOW

A Russian Communist activist holds a portrait of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin before his visit Mausoleum at the Red Square in Moscow April 22, 2006. Today communist supporters mark the 136th anniversary of the birth of Lenin.(UPI Photo/Anatoli Zhdanov)