Vladimir Lenin (Владимир Ильич Ленин) (22 April 1870 - 21 January 1924) was the first leader of the Soviet Union. He was absolutely essential to the country in its infancy.
Lenin, a communist, opposed Russia's involvement in World War I and believed in the proletarian revolution called for by Karl Marx. During the war, he participated in the Russian Revolution as leader of the Bolshevik faction. He was thus involved in the regicide against Tsar Nicholas II. He led the Bolsheviks during an ensuing power struggle in which he was opposed by most western governments. Under his leadership, the Bolsheviks came to dominate Russian politics, and Lenin was proclaimed premier of the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922.
He was also a political theorist whose works would rival Marx's in their influence over future generations of communists. His political theories have collectively come to be called Leninism.
Lenin died at age 53 on 21 January 1924. Officially, his cause of death was a series of strokes which he'd suffered over the last two years of his life. He was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, whom Lenin had expressed opposition to prior to his death. Stalin created a posthumous cult of personality around Lenin that continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Although Vladimir Lenin had been dead for years before Joe Steele became President of the United States, Steele nonetheless despised Lenin and his successor, Leon Trotsky, for their failure to live up to their professed ideals of equality.[2]
Lenin's embalmed corpse rested in Red Square in Moscow. By 1953, it was expected that Trotsky would one day be embalmed next to him.[3]
While Vladimir Lenin was able to establish the Soviet Union and fight off several invading powers in Siberia, including the United States, Lenin was also forced to cede a number of territories. This list included Alaska, the sole Russian province in North America, which the U.S. seized.
