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Born in Simbirsk, a town 1500 miles from St. Petersburg, the capital. His mother was a school teacher, while his father was a government official. Lenin cam from a very diverse ancestry which included Christian, Russian, Tatar, German and Sweedish descent.
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Aleksandr Ulyanov, Lenin's elder brother was hung after being caught planning an assasination attempt on Czar Aleksander III. His father had also died a few months earlier from a brain hemmohrage.
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Began his schooling at Kazan University where he studied law and read the works of Karl Marx and Frederich Engles. He then particpated in a student riot advocating Marxism and was arrested and expelled from the university. Lenin later obtained a law degree, independently.
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Lenin moves to St. Petersburg where he becomes a proffesional Revolutionary. Lenin was eager to improve the living conditions and status of the middle class and was devoted to attempting create a more just Russia.
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Lenin was imprisoned for fourteens months in solitary confinement for plotting against Czar Alexander III in "St Peterburg's Remand Prison".
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Upon his release, Lenin was exiled to Siberia. This was very common, and many of Lenin's contemporaries were also exiled.
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Lenin lived in Munich from 1900-1902 and in London in 1903. In 1900, Lenin co-founded a newspaper publishing articles and books about revolutionary politics. He also recruited for the "Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour party" which was in line with Lenin's beliefs. Because of the danger of participating in a group that was against the government, Lenin changed his name from "Ulyanov".
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He returned to Russia to support the Russian Revolution, but returned to exile in 1907, when the Czarist regime conquered the revolution.
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There were two revoltuions in Russsia that caused Lenin to return. First, popular demonstrations provoked by the hardship caused by the war Czar Nicholas II to step down. When Lenin heard of the news, he headed back to Russia on a train from Switzerland and wrote his April Theses which contained the essence of the RSDLP movement.
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After he returned, he was once again exiled by the provisioanal government because he was believed to be the cause of another set of nasty riots.
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By this time, the people of Russia had lost patience with the provisional government and the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd and in Moscow on the fifth of Septmember.
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During Lenin's time in power, he worked to restructure the economic and society of Russia. Russia society and its economic became consistent with communism. All big industries were put under government control and the economy and the economy became socialist. Eventually, when the economy got so bad Lenin brought back some aspects of Capitalism through is "New Economic Policy".