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Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary and political theorist who became the first head of government of Soviet Russia in 1917 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924. He founded the Bolsheviks, led the October Revolution that produced the world's first communist state, won the civil war that followed and built a one-party system around the Communist Party. As a writer he was a Marxist polemicist first: fast, contemptuous, and organised around whoever he happened to be arguing with that year. His additions to the theory are called Leninism, and they were read as scripture across half the twentieth century.

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Where to start with Vladimir Lenin

Chto delatʹ? is where to start, the pamphlet on party organisation that explains more about the twentieth century than any of the later theory. State and Revolution is the most quoted, written weeks before he had a state of his own to run. Imperializm, kak vysshai͡a︡ stadii͡a︡ kapitalizma is the one that travelled furthest outside Russia. Detskai︠a︡ boleznʹ "levizny" v kommunizme is him arguing with his own left, which is the most entertaining he gets.

Genres Vladimir Lenin works in