Communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was born into a middle-class family. When Lenin was young, his brother was hung for trying to assassinate Czar Alexander III. Lenin studied the works of Marx and went to St Petersburg, where he organized the League for the Liberation of the Working Class.
In 1897, he was exiled to Siberia. After his return, he moved to London, where he headed the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party.
Lenin returned to Russia for the 1905 Revolution, but was forced to flee to Switzerland in 1907. Ten years later, the Germans secretly provided a closed train for Lenin to reenter Russia, where he worked to secure power. He succeeded in overthrowing the Kerensky government and in October 1917, the Bolsheviks launched a revolution against the provisional Russian government.
With the success of the October Revolution, Lenin instituted the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he controlled.
After the "second revolution" was over, Lenin instituted his first economic plan. His health declined until he died on January 21, 1924.