Highlights about Lenin available in the Presidential Library’s documents

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, a man who turned our history around with the power of his ideas, the founder of the world's first socialist state was born on April 22, 1870. The personality is certainly bright and controversial. Many hated him, others admired him. Soviet citizens even gave their newborn children names in honor of the leader. The city of St. Petersburg from 1924 to 1991 bore his name.

Lenin repeatedly visited St. Petersburg - Petrograd. This city became the place of his "finest hour". Several interesting facts and myths are associated with his arrivals and stay here.

In early April 1917 Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia after 17 years of emigration. Preparations were carefully made for his arrival at the Finland Station in Petrograd; soldiers and sailors of the Baltic Fleet met Lenin. A few minutes after the arrival of the train, Lenin was already standing on the tower of an armored car and greeted the revolutionary proletariat: the soldiers and workers who had delivered Russia from tsarist despotism. Here Lenin expressed some of his thoughts, which he presented on April 4, 1917 in the Tauride Palace in the report "On the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution" (better known as the "April Theses"). He proposed a plan for the peaceful development of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist one, put forward the slogans: “No support for the Provisional Government!”, “All power to the Soviets!”, he asserted the need to exit the war and “peace without annexations and contribution”.

At the same time, according to Yegor Yakovlev, a guest of the Presidential Library, the video lecture “Historical Memory of Vladimir Lenin” participant, a journalist, a specialist in political history, in 1917 after the February Revolution, all parties from the Cadets, Octobrists to revolutionary democrats were in favor of continuing the First World War. And only the Bolsheviks called for peace. Naturally, such statements by Lenin gave rise to a wave of rejection among the officers, among whom the suspicion began to ripen that Lenin was an agent of the enemy, Kaiser's Germany. Some politicians felt it necessary to accuse Lenin of being a German spy and to say that he should be arrested. The French allies were interested in this, for they feared that if Russia withdrew from the war, then France would be the only continental adversary of Germany. It was also unprofitable for Britain. And the parallel body of power that appeared in Petrograd - the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies - was more and more inclined towards the withdrawal of the Russian Empire from the war. Therefore, the Provisional Government, largely under the influence of the Allies, began to come to the idea of ​​creating a case against Lenin as a German agent.

On July 7 (20) the Provisional Government ordered the arrest of Lenin. He was forced to go underground again and hid in a hut on Lake Razliv, near Petrograd, and then until the beginning of October - in Finland (Jalkala, Helsingfors, Vyborg).

All this time he continued to work and plan further actions. “Will the Bolsheviks retain state power”, “The Bolsheviks must take power”, “Marxism and the uprising”, “The crisis is ripe” - the titles of Lenin’s works written at that time speak for themselves. Lenin realized that the time had come for a revolution. In early October he illegally returned to Petrograd.

His return on the eve of the 1917 revolution is reminiscent of a detective story. Lenin was accompanied by the Finnish revolutionary Eino Rahja.

They put on Vladimir Ilyich a gray wig, glasses, a hat, a long black coat so that he looked like a Finnish pastor. In his memoirs, Rahja wrote that they traveled from home to the station in Vyborg by tram. As far as Raivola (now the village of Roschino) we rode in a vestibule and talked like a parishioner and a pastor. Moreover, the pastor-Lenin knew only “yes” and “no” in Finnish and often answered inappropriately. From Raivola to Petrograd, Lenin rode in a steam locomotive with the driver, and Eino Rahja was in the first carriage and listened to the conversations of the passengers. In the carriage at that time they were talking about Lenin, that it would be nice to dump him in feathers, drag him along Nevsky Prospekt and hang him. But thanks to the conspiracy, Lenin safely reached Petrograd. A little more than two weeks remained before the revolution...

From the Lanskaya station, Lenin went to the address Serdobolskaya street, 1 to the apartment of the teacher Margarita Fofanova, which became his last secret apartment. From here he led the preparations for an armed uprising. And here, on the night of October 24-25, according to the old style, Lenin changed clothes and made up so that it was impossible to recognize him. He walked along the Liteiny Bridge, Shpalernaya Street, past the Tauride Palace and the Smolny Cathedral, on the way they even checked his documents several times ... Lenin arrived safely in Smolny. The day of the revolution has arrived.

These and other highlights related to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin are available in the Presidential Library’s collections. The institution's portal also features the collection Vladimir Lenin. 1870–1924 which includes the writings of the statesman himself, the works of his associates, research, archival documents and visual materials. Their study and work with primary sources will help to form an opinion about the personality and activities of Vladimir Lenin.