2-548-220 - © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images

Vladimir Ilich Lenin, Russian Bolshevik revolutionary leader, speaking from a rostrum, 1917. Lenin (1870-1924) became leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party in 1903. He became involved in revolutionary politics when studying law at University in the late 1880s. In 1895 he was arrested by the authorities, serving a year's imprisonment followed by four years exile to Siberia. In 1906 he left Russia for security reasons, becoming the focus of the revolutionary opposition abroad. Lenin returned to Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution, but had to flee to Finland after a failed workers' uprising in July. In October the Bolsheviks overthrew Alexander Kerensky's Provisional Government in a further revolution, and Lenin was elected Premier of the Soviet Union. He was wounded in an assassination attempt in 1918 and this, together with the strains of revolution and the ensuing Civil War, led to a deterioration in his health. After a stroke left him partially paralysed in 1922, Lenin's active role in government declined. Found in the collection of the State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia, Moscow.