All language subtitles for Lenin. Episode 2. Documentary Film. English Subtitles. Russian History. (inglés)

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Lenin. A key image of the Soviet epoch.

For four years a creative group of historians, filmmakers, lawyers,

criminalists and researchers from other fields of knowledge

was studying the documents related to the life of Vladimir Ilyitch

Ulyanov-Lenin. In total, they studied over 20,000 documents,

tens of millions of pages from the leading Russian

and foreign archives and libraries.

The movie based on the largest-scale recent research gives an exact answer

on what kind of person Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin was in reality.

Many of the demonstrated documents and photos

are published for the first time.

In the morning of Sunday, May 10, 1887,

leaflets of an extra edition of the telegrams of the “Northern Telegraph Society”

were sold in the newspaper kiosks all over Simbirsk.

The government announcement about the court sentence

took the most part of it: “Shevyryov, Ulyanov, Generalov,

Andreyushkin, Osipanov who made an attempt at the life of the Emperor

are sentenced to death through hanging”.

It took Vladimir Ulyanov a couple of times of reading

before he realized the tragic essence of the last words of the message –

“executed on May 8”.

Vladimir Ulyanov’s hope that the Tsar would satisfied the appeal for pardon

sent by his elder brother Alexander didn’t come true.

LENIN. Episode Two

The family was happy when Olga Ulyanova graduated from the female gymnasium

and Vladimir graduated from the male gymnasium

with golden medals on June 10, 1887.

Maria Alexandrovna made a decision to sell the house and leave Simbirsk.

Further stay in the city was impossible for a family of a state criminal.

On June 27, at 10 p.m. Olga, Vladimir and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanovs

left Simbirsk for good on the cargo and passenger steamship “Mercuriy”.

In Kazan, Maria Alexandrovna and her son and daughter spent the night

in the house of her sister Anna Veretennikova

who denounced the actions of Alexander Ulyanov

but always helped the Ulyanovs together with her husband.

From Kazan, they went to the village of Kokushkino

which five daughters of Doctor Blank had inherited;

each of them owned a share of the estate worth about 3,000 rubles.

On July 29, 1887 Vladimir Ulyanov submitted two requests

to the rector of the Imperial Kazan University.

The first – about entering the first year of the law faculty;

the second – on relieving him of payment for the lectures in autumn of 1887.

By mid-August it became known that both requests were satisfied,

and Vladimir Ulyanov became a student.

“Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the gymnasium with the best marks.

His surname wasn’t written on the marble desk

only because the people in power saw his brother Alexander Ulyanov in him”,

Vladimir’s classmate wrote.

The personal file of the graduate of the gymnasium Vladimir Ulyanov,

signed by the director of the gymnasium Fedor Kerenskiy,

includes the following lines: “Studying the lifestyle

and character of Ulyanov, I couldn’t but notice some excessive reserve

and avoidance of communication even with people he knew,

both outside of the gymnasium and with his comrades…

and his general unsociability”.

In 1887, the Imperial Kazan University was the only university

for the huge territory to the east from Moscow up to the Pacific Ocean.

Lenin’s comrade Alexander Stopani said about Kazan of those years:

“Kazan of the workers and Kazan of the intelligentsia were leading

separate lives. In the center of Kazan no.2, of intelligentsia,

was the students’ life – land societies, self-educational circles

and circles of mutual assistance, wide “library” unions

and the “deputy assemblies”, parties and so on;

all of them, naturally, were operating undercover…”

In 1887-1888, there were 914 students there,

265 of those studied at the law faculty.

A half of the students came from the nobles and officials,

and another half were the children of bourgeois,

peasants and lower clergy ranks.

On August 19, Vladimir Ulyanov received an entrance ticket no. 197.

The school year at the law faculty started on August 25,

but student Ulyanov only came to the university on September 2.

The reason for his delay was a “Commitment” –

a printed paper given to every student to be signed before the start of the year.

According to the “Commitment”, the student of the university promised

“not to be a member and not to participate in any societies, like land societies,

and even not to enter any society permitted by the law

without an explicit permission given by the university management”.

Without that signature, the student couldn’t start attending the lectures.

Minister of the Internal Affairs Tolstoy write in a secret report:

“Land societies don’t differ from the secret societies

structurally, and are an environment

that is easily accessible for the revolutionaries who use them

to replenish their rows and to exercise various revolutionary actions”.

If Vladimir Ulyanov hoped that due to his being late

the commitment would be forgotten, he was disappointed –

the manager made him leave the necessary signature

right after he crossed the threshold of the university;

despite his promise, Ulyanov entered the Simbirsk Land Society

during the first days of his studies.

He was frequenting the shop of Andrey Derevenkov,

where the members of land societies often met

to discuss some prohibited book, sometimes hand-copied,

or illegal parties in the company of female students

of the Midwifes Institute and local Nurses Courses.

Because of Vladimir Ulyanov’s close communication with female students

sent out of Petersburg who were now studying at the Midwifes Institute

by the University and their less fortunate girlfriends,

also exiled from the capital to Kazan,

in November of 1887 Vladimir only visited the University 8 times.

As one well-known researcher of Lenin’s life wrote later:

“The female students from the capital were excellent in conspiracies,

and no matter how hard the Kazan gendarmes tried,

they couldn’t catch them in the anti-governmental activities”.

When he was free from communication with the fair sex,

he visited the meetings of the land society

which became more frequent by the end of the year.

In the end of October Maria Alexandrovna,

hoping for the sound mind of Vladimir, Olga and Dmitriy,

student of the 4th grade, began to go to the family estate of Kokushkino

to her younger daughter Maria more often,

believing that in her absence the children’s nanny Varvara Grigoryevna

would manage the kids.

During the first days of December the students of Kazan got excited

by the events that had happened on November 22 and 26 in Moscow.

The disturbances among the students were invoked by the report

of the Minister of the People’s Education of June 18, 1887

that was nicknamed “A Circular about the Cook’s Children”.

The Minister’s report stipulated the change in the social composition

of gymnasiums and their transformation

into the semi-privileged establishments.

The first article of that document prohibited the Jew children

from the lowest ranks to study in gymnasiums and proto-gymnasiums.

The second article granted the universities the right

to “determine the payment for the lectures

without limiting themselves to previously defined 50-ruble standard”.

From the legal point of view,

the Circular contradicted the law in force of July 30, 1871 that stipulated

abolition of the class and religious qualifications in the sphere of education.

But the author of the document, Minister of the People’s Education Delyanov

claimed: “A gymnasium is no place for the children of the servants,

coachmen, cooks, petty shopkeepers and the like…”

The Moscow students, organizers of the disturbances and protests,

arrived in Kazan and discussed Minister Delyanov’s report

at a secret meeting of the deputies of the student land societies of Kazan,

after what they wrote the “Appeal to All the Students of Kazan”

and a petition to the rector of the university.

Starting from the beginning of December,

Vladimir began to visit the University more often,

but not to improve his education –

the emotional state of the students’ masses invoked by the injustice

of the authorities, and the students’ readiness to confront the authorities,

even physically, proved infectious for him.

The reactionary anti-Semitic circular, the disbanding of the demonstration

and beatings of the Moscow students that followed

invoked a wave of protests among the Kazan students.

On December 4, 17-year old Vladimir, the eldest male in the family

responsible for the future of his sisters and his brother,

who knew about the harsh wound inflicted to his mother

by the elder brother, crossed the threshold of the university

as one of the organizers of the students’ disturbances.

The leaders of the land societies to whom Vladimir belonged too,

decided that the disturbances among the students

were a chance they simply couldn’t miss.

From the smoking room where a lot of exciting talks about the power were held,

the organizers of the meeting-demonstration went together

to the auditoriums of the university shouting: “To the meeting! To the meeting!”

Vladimir was running along the corridor shouting “Hurray!”.

“To the rector!” and “Let’s do away with the inspections!”

Breaking the door into the conference hall,

Vladimir and other students delivered speeches on the Tsar’s yoke,

the need for the students to confront the unjust regime.

Inspector Potapov who came to the meeting demanded the students

to dismiss, threatening them with the army and the police.

The students jumped at the inspector and beat him up;

it was only thanks to his strong build

that Potapov managed to escape the fight without any serious traumas.

Soon the rector Nicolay Alexandrovitch Kremlyov,

a liberal and an experienced professor who had lived through

numerous students’ disturbances came out to the crowd.

Kremlyov read the petition submitted by the students.

It listed the following demands:

a collegial body of the students was to rule the university independently,

the students got a right to allot grants at the discretion of the persons

elected by the students.

Kremlyov offered the students to go home, and left.

The mass psychosis of the hot-headed young men

reached its peak in the evening.

The organizers of the meeting suggested that the students

should leave the university as a sign of disagreement.

99 students signed a statement on withdrawal from the university;

among them, Vladimir Ulyanov.

One of the young men taking part in the meeting wrote:

“The tumultuous rumbling among the students went on that day

and the following days; the students walked about the city in groups,

mostly along the Voskresenskaya Street where the University

and the First Police Department were situated”.

The rented apartment of the Ulyanovs, the city of Kazan

When Vladimir came home that day,

he told his mother and his sister Olga about the events at the University.

He mentioned the beating of Inspector Potapov saying:

“The Inspector played on their nerves, and they beat him up”.

Ulyanov withheld the information

that he himself took part in that despicable action too.

At night of December 4 to 5 the police came to the Ulyanovs’ apartment.

Vladimir was arrested and taken to the police department.

Later he was transferred to the common cell of prison.

Over a hundred of students were arrested;

a part was released in one day.

The rest stayed in the cell, sang songs, read prohibited poems

and discussed plans for the future. Vladimir told his comrades

that there was only one path ahead of him:

the revolutionary struggle, a choice made for him by his elder brother.

Maria Alexandrovna who didn’t know

the details of Vladimir’s activities at the University believed

that the authorities were prejudiced towards Vladimir

because of his elder brother who had been hanged.

However, one of the police officers rebuked their claims to the authorities;

he informed her that Vladimir was practically always absent at the lectures,

was a member of illegal local societies

and ran at Inspector Potapov with his fists at the ready.

The university inspectors described Vladimir as a reserved,

not attentive and even not polite student.

On December 5, 1887 Vladimir Ulyanov was expelled

from the Imperial Kazan University and prohibited from living in the capital

and in the university cities.

The next day he left Kazan under the supervision of a police officer

with his mother and younger sister. At his mother’s request,

Vladimir was exiled to their family estate Kokushkino

where his elder sister Anna was doing her 5-year term of exile

for the participation in the gang of Shevyryov and Ulyanov.

In Kokushkino, Vladimir was mostly reading books and magazines

from the library of the late husband of his aunt Lyubov Alexandrovna.

During that period, he read works of Dobrolyubov, Chernishevskiy and Pisarev.

“I was carried away by reading”,

Vladimir said later about his stay at Kokushkino.

In 1887, Fedor Kerenskiy was certain:

“Ulyanov’s parents always monitored his education and moral development

with attention; since 1886, after his father’s death,

his mother was doing it on her own.

Religion and sound discipline were at the core of his upbringing.”

On his 18th birthday, on April 10, 1888,

Vladimir who severed all ties with religion at the age of 15,

became a godfather to a daughter of a peasant Yakim Georgiyev.

By demonstrating such ambiguous attitude towards Orthodoxy

(he was an atheist by words, a religious man by actions)

the future relentless fighter with religion Vladimir Ulyanov showed his ability

to act in accordance with the circumstances in any situation.

In one year, in July of 1889,

when Anna Ulyanova and Mark Yelizarov were married,

Vladimir Ilyitch was their voucher as an Orthodox noble;

by that, he conformed his life credo of immoral attitude towards religion.

In June of 1888, Vladimir’s mother solicited for a permission

for her son to study at the university again. Her solicitation was denied.

In September of 1888, Vladimir turned to the Minister of Internal Affairs

with a request to permit him to go abroad to enter some foreign university.

The Minister denied the request

but soon the police department allowed Vladimir to stay in Kazan.

By winter of 1888-1889, Vladimir Ulyanov got a hint of beard on his face.

That very winter, former student Ulyanov got interested

in the Social Democracy teaching.

He began to read “The Capital”,

a book of the German author and journalist Karl Marx.

In September of 1888, Anna Ulyanova underwent a medical examination

as a mental patient. She was then allowed to live in Kazan

to get the necessary treatment.

At that time, the mental clinic of the Kazan District Hospital

was headed by Vladimir Mikhailovitch Bekhterev,

a professor of the Chair of Psychiatry of the Kazan University

who later became an academician, a director of the Institute of the Brain

of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Bekhterev’s colleague at the university,

an expert in histology Alexei Yefimovitch Smirnov

who in 1889 was awarded with a rank of a Doctor of Medicine

was working with him. On April 29, 1889

Vladimir Ulyanov received a medical conclusion no. 108

in which professor Nicolay Ivanovitch Kotovschikov, a therapist,

and Dr. Smirnov wrote that Vladimir Ulyanov had gastric catarrh

and needed alkaline mineral water for treatment,

preferably the French waters of Vichy.

In May, Vladimir Ulyanov applied to the Kazan Governor Poltoratskiy

to receive a foreign passport to go for treatment abroad.

The police department of Kazan now had the evidence

of the mental disorder of Anna Ulyanova and the disease of Vladimir Ulyanov,

the request of Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova

to allow her elder children to undergo treatments.

At the same time, the police department had a letter

of the director of the Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium

Fedor Mikhailovitch Kerenskiy to the district inspector Timofeev

in which Kerenskiy wrote: “Ulyanov, if I may think so,

could become mentally disturbed after the fateful catastrophe

that befell the poor family

and could influence the sensitive young man in a negative way”.

There are no doubts that the employees of the police department of Kazan,

professor Bekhterev, professor Kotovschikov, and Doctor Smirnov

knew about the suicide of Anna’s and Vladimir’s closest relatives –

their great uncle Dmitriy Dmitriyevitch Blank,

the brother of Maria Alexandrovna, Dmitriy Alexandrovitch Blank,

the uncle of her children; plus, psychology could only perceive

the actions of Alexander Ulyanov as a suicide.

Therefore, they could definitely talk about a hereditary mental illness –

circular psychosis that is now called the “maniac-depressive syndrome”.

At the beginning of 1889, the Ulyanovs moved to the Samara Region,

to the village of Alakayevka.

However, Maria Alexandrovna hopes

to pull Vladimir out of the revolutionary actions

by throwing him into the village chores were in vain.

“Mother wanted me to work in the estate in the village. I started it.

But then I saw – I shouldn’t;

the relations with the peasants began to go wrong”.

That was how Vladimir Ilyitch commented

on his stay in Alakayevka to Krupskaya years later.

According to the report of the police department:

“In May of 1889, the Kazan Governor submitted Ulyanov’s request

to permit him to go abroad for the treatment,

but His Honor Director rejected the abovementioned request

reasoning that Ulyanov could go to treat his disease to the Caucasus”.

Governor of Samara wrote a resolution for the decision of the police department

that “he may treat himself with the Caucasian mineral waters,

for instance, “Essentuki-17”.

In September, the Ulyanovs moved to Samara.

In winter of 1889, Vladimir met an attorney from Samara,

a chess player Andrey Nicolayevitch Khardin.

Vladimir made friends with Khardin on the basis of chess games

through correspondence with Mark Yelizarov,

and got an influential comrade who played an important part in his further fate.

During the first days in Samara,

Vladimir met the revolutionary youth and former exiles.

Among the intelligentsia, the Narodnik movement was popular.

It was an ideological doctrine and a social and political movement.

In essence, the Narodnik movement was one of the versions

of the utopic socialism.

The Narodniks believed that the common folk

were the center of social and moral ideals

and perceived the Russian peasant society as an impersonation of a commune.

For Russia, the Narodniks offered a special path of development –

from the autocracy to the socialism, past capitalism.

In the Soviet history, the Narodniks were showed as the enemy

of the Social Democracy. In reality, they were fighting the autocracy

just like the Social Democrats.

Social Democracy was a new revolutionary movement for Russia

as many people believed there were no sufficient conditions for it

in Russia for the lack of proletariat like workers of factories and plants.

Vladimir’s elder brother Alexander Ulyanov also reckoned himself to be a Narodnik;

he even wrote a Manifest of the terror organization “The People’s Will”.

During the first days of September of 1889,

Vladimir Ulyanov met his peer Alexei Pavlovitch Sklyarenko.

He was tall, physically strong, with a clever expressive face,

in a dark pince-nez and with a stick in his hands

that resembled a patriarch’s staff; Sklyarenko was incredibly brave

and could talk a lot and with great zest on the injustice of autocracy.

Sklyarenko made friends with a female student of a nurses’ collage

who lived in one apartment with him, an assistant to a railway driver

and a graduate of an industrial school.

From the first days of friendship with Sklyarenko,

Vladimir criticized his ideas proving to him that the Narodniks’ views

on the people were an illusion for in their opinion it was a unity

of different class groups – rich peasants, poor peasants and workers.

Soon Vladimir became well-known in Samara as a theorist

and an expert of Marxism.

Belyakov, a member of Sklyarenko’s circle,

described his meetings with Vladimir Ulyanov:

“We listened to Vladimir Ilyitch’s lectures on Marxism,

the deep knowledge of which was a dream of those-days smart youth,

as an interesting and educating fairy-tale.

We threw out the old gods with the carelessness of youth

without a second glance and even with some mean bitterness…”

Marxism as a social and political movement,

philosophical and social-political teaching, founded by Karl Marx

and Friedrich Engels, was introduced to Russia

by Pavel Vasilyevitch Annenkov –

a nobleman, a rich landowner from Simbirsk, a liberal author.

At 33, Annenkov met 28-year old Marx in 1846 in Germany.

Marx wrote: “In 1843-1844 in Paris,

the local Russian aristocrats carried me in their arms.

Nowhere did I sell as many books as in Russia.

The first foreign nation to translate my “Capital” was the Russian.

The Russian aristocrats were educated in German universities and in Paris.

They were attracted by the most extreme ideas offered by the West.

It was a pure gourmandize…”

The scientists-Marxists believed

that one of Marx’s most important achievements

was the materialistic method of comprehension of the social phenomena –

historical materialism. The Marxists’ claims

that Marx allegedly established a scientific theory – scientific Communism –

wasn’t confirmed for all Marx’s theories contradict the modern view

on the nature of scientific theories – tolerance to criticism

and proving by the historical line of events. The example of that

is the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Russia!

Interest of Marx and Engels to Russia was first of all commercial –

they were getting paid for the publication of literature,

and they weren’t shy to remind their Russian editors about that.

The Marxists of all times explain fundamental mistakes

made by Marx and Engels in their economical, philosophical,

social and political works with the fact that

“being no exceptions from human nature,

Marx and Engels could be mistaken in separate cases

in the evaluation of these or those factors”.

That was how Pavel Axelrod commented on the mistakes in Marx’s works.

Under the impression of Vladimir Ulyanov’s speeches about Marxism

Sklyarenko and his comrades renounced the ideas of the Narodniks

and began to consider themselves to be Marxists.

One of the serious obstacles for the young Marxists

was the purchase of Marx’s books which censorship prohibited.

On December 27, 1889 Vladimir Ulyanov sent a double card

with a prepaid reply to the bookseller Brockhaus situated in Leipzig.

In his letter Vladimir asked to inform him

“whether the company “Brockhaus” accepts Russian notes

as payments for the books, how much a Russian ruble is worth in Leipzig,

whether the company receives the lists of books

prohibited by the censors in Russia

and how much the delivery of these books to Samara will cost”.

Into that list, he included the works of Marx, Engels and Kautskiy.

Soon, the literature hunger of the Marxist circle of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov

was satisfied: book shelves in Vladimir’s room were replenished

by the books of Marx and his followers.

Among Ulyanov’s new acquaintances was an exile

Maria Petrovna Yasneva, a Narodnik, a Jacobin

who was one of the first to appreciate the propagandistic abilities

of a 19-year old Marxist.

All days, evenings and nights Vladimir was explaining

the teaching of Marx to a 30-year old Narodnik,

and soon she turned to the side of the Marxists.

In May of 1890, Maria Alexandrovna, worried

by Vladimir’s interest in the Marxists, made a desperate step –

she went to Petersburg for a meeting with the Minister

of the People’s Education Delyanov regarding the permission

for Vladimir to continue his education in one of the Russian universities.

The statement written by Maria Alexandrovna addressed to the Minister

of the People’s Education is simple and clear:

“It tears my heart to look at my son,

whose best years for the higher education are slipping away.

Such senseless existence without some kind of a mission

definitely has a pernicious moral influence on a young man

and might almost undoubtedly lead him to thoughts about suicide”.

Olga, middle daughter of Maria Alexandrovna,

dreamt of becoming a doctor; among the works she studied

were books of the famous European psychiatrists:

“Genius and madness” by Cesare Lombroso, “Heredity”

by Teodule Ribot and “Psychology of Attention” by the same author.

Without any doubt, Maria Alexandrovna studied those books too.

A smart and well-educated woman could easily compare

the texts of those books with the history of suicides of her uncle,

brother Dmitriy and son Alexander.

The thought about the possible suicide of Volodya

in a result of a hereditary psychiatric disorder got reflected

in her letter to the Minister of the People’s Education.

The Minister satisfied the request of Maria Ulyanova

but made a note on her letter: “Ask his warden and police department

about him; he is a bad person”.

After getting the reply from the Ministry no. 8076 at the police department

which permitted Vladimir to pass the exams for the subjects

studied at the law faculty, he sent another request to pass the exams

before the testing commission at the Petersburg University.

At the end of August of 1890, Vladimir Ulyanov went to Petersburg

to find out the conditions of passing the exams.

In autumn of the same year, Olga Ulyanova

who entered the Higher Female Courses

also called the Bestuzhev Courses came to Petersburg too.

She made new friends at the courses –

Zinaida Nevzorova and Apollinaria Yakubova.

From the first day of their meeting, Olga informed Nevzorova and Yakubova

about the tragic fate of her elder brother Alexander,

her sister Anna who had been exiled and about her brother Vladimir

expelled from the university for taking part in students’ protests.

She passed them the hand-copied translation

of the “Manifest of the Communist Party” of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

made together with her brother Vladimir.

On the pages of that book that was censored in Russia,

together with many other incorrect phrasings and conclusions

Marx and Engels wrote the following about the wives:

“A bourgeois looks at his wife as at a simple tool of production”.

It means that for Marx and Engels, a common bourgeois

was a participant of a process in which there was a production tool –

his wife, and an end product – a child.

It’s clear that in that case, there was no hired labour

which, according to the Marxists, was the basis

of the capitalistic production. Investing his labour,

a bourgeois had to get the end product – a child,

which, in line with Marx’s dialectics, had to have some value.

In real life, children don’t have value and can’t equal a good.

Therefore, the wives aren’t production tools.

Further, the founding fathers of the scientific Communism wrote:

“The Bourgeois marriage is in fact a community of wives.

The Communists might only be reprimanded

for the fact that they want to introduce an official,

open community of wives instead of a secret, covered one.

The Communists don’t need to introduce the community of wives,

for it has always existed”.

Marx made such weird conclusions basing on his own experience,

as his biography suggests. Marx was unfaithful to his wife

with their housemaid Elena Demuth with whom he had an extramarital son.

After Karl Marx’s death, Demuth and her son lived with Engels.

Friedrich Engels followed Marx’s ideas even further and wrote:

“The first contradiction of the classes that is being born in history

coincides with the development of antagonistic feelings

between a husband and a wife in case of monogamy,

and the first class deprivation coincides with the enslavement

of the males by the females”.

Of course, such revolutionary ideas couldn’t but impress

students Ulyanova, Nevzorova and Yakubova.

It’s most likely that Vladimir Ulyanov noticed Apollinaria Yakubova,

the most beautiful girl among other female students,

during that first visit to Petersburg.

Her friend described her as follows:

“She had wide shoulders, light-haired head,

small shiny hazel eyes

and bright blush; she was an impersonation of health.

She smelled of the fresh field herbs.

We used to call her “the black-soil force”…”

At the end of October of 1890, Vladimir went back to Samara from Petersburg.

Until his next visit to the capital,

Ulyanov was ardently preparing for passing the exams to the University,

proving himself to be very hard-working.

During his second visit to Petersburg at the end of March of 1891,

Vladimir Ulyanov frequented the dormitory

of the Higher Female Courses where his sister Olga

together with Nevzorova and Yakubova organized a Marxist circle.

On March 24, Olga Ulyanova contracted a severe form of typhus.

Vladimir brought his sister to the Alexander Hospital

at the embankment of the Fontanka River.

When Olga started to recover, she caught a new infection,

and the erysipelatous inflammation suddenly started.

She had terrible edemas, she cried in pain,

and the doctors said that her state was critical.

Vladimir summoned Maria Alexandrovna to Petersburg with a telegram.

However, the mother’s arrival didn’t change the daughter’s state.

On May 1891, Olga Ulyanova died.

She was buried on May 10 at the Volkov Cemetery.

Many students of the Bestuzhev Courses including Zinaida Nevzorova

and Apollinaria Yakubova came to bid farewell to Olga.

Vladimir spent the hot summer of 1891 in Samara.

When summer heat became unbearable, Ulyanov, Sklyarenko

and their comrades often went to the beergarten at the Zhiguli Brewery

situated on the bank of the Volga. In best traditions of Marx,

“the little Marxists” (that was how the Narodniks from Samara

called the group of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov),

discussed the difficulties of comprehension of the dialectics

of their teacher with a mug of cold beer.

In the first days of September of 1891,

Vladimir left for the capital to pass the exams.

The Test Commission at the Law Faculty

at the Imperial University of St.-Petersburg awarded Vladimir Ulyanov

with a diploma of the first grade

which was considered prestigious for an aspiring lawyer.

On returning to Samara, Vladimir Ilyitch became an assistant

of attorney Khardin. As such, he took part in 15 proceedings:

on the theft of frozen linens, money, arbitrariness of landowners

and other unimportant cases; almost all of them were won.

Because of the drought of 1891, the situation in Russia deteriorated.

In 17 provinces, hunger erupted.

The government took urgent measures –

prohibited export of rye and wheat from Russia

and allotted over 34 million of rubles to the village communities

to buy food supplies.

Samara’s intelligentsia with the support of traders and manufacturers

started opening free canteens and give out food to the poorest residents.

Vladimir Ulyanov and Maria Yasneva,

basing on the stipulations of the Marxism,

refused to take part in assisting the hungry.

As a Marxist and Lenin-follower, Alexei Alexandrovitch Belyakov

later wrote: “Vladimir Ilyitch had the courage to claim openly

that the consequences of the hunger, the birth of the industrial proletariat,

the burying beetle of the bourgeois lifestyle, is a progressive phenomenon

because it stimulates the growth of industry and moves us

towards the end goal – socialism through capitalism;

however, not the hunger itself but its consequences

are a progressive phenomenon.

At the same time, hunger ruins the peasants’ estates,

kills the faith not only in the Tsar but in the God

which will inevitably push the peasants towards revolution

and facilitate the victory of the revolution”.

It’s well-known that the terrible consequences of hunger

are first of all deaths of people and the change of fate of the survivors.

By making that statement, Vladimir Ulyanov became a revolutionary

preaching death with an end of achieving the goal – the revolution in Russia.

Ulyanov was carrying out systematic and decisive actions

against the Committee of Assistance to the Hungry

organized with the participation of the Narodniks from Samara.

By the end of 1892, according to the witnesses’ testimonies,

Vladimir Ulyanov succeeded

in disorganizing the work of the Narodniks in those committees.

Assistance in the theoretical struggle with them came from abroad.

Brochures of Georgiy Plekhanov “The All-Russia Ruin”

and “On the Tasks of the Socialists in a Struggle with Hunger in Russia”

were smuggled into Samara and strengthened positions of Ulyanov

and the members of his circle. It was the group called

“The Liberation of Labour” founded by a nobleman from Tambov

Georgiy Valentinovitch Plekhanov in 1883 in Geneva

that was involved in smuggling of the illegal literature to Russia –

both Social Democratic and Marxist.

The group chose translation of books of Marx, Engels and other authors

of the Marxist school into Russian as the main direction of its activities.

The Russian Marxists in emigration started their struggle

for the mass audience with filling in young souls of students

of gymnasiums, seminaries, courses and different representatives

of intelligentsia with Marx’s ideas.

Plekhanov and the members of his group grew up

during the period of development of capitalism in Russia,

and it was as natural for them to gain profits

from the sales of illegal literature as to criticize the autocracy.

Georgiy Valentinovitch was passionately fighting with his competitors

for the monopolist right to translate into Russian

and print Marx’s and Engels’ works abroad for further sales in Russia.

In his letters to Marx, Plekhanov called him “the great teacher”

and addressed Engels as “my general”, “chief” and “my teacher”.

In a letter to Engels in London of March 25, 1893 Plekhanov wrote:

“Please accept, my dear teacher, assurance of my sincere loyalty”.

In a letter of October 30, 1894 Plekhanov called Engels “my dear general”.

That approach to the inexhaustible source of profit –

printing of books of Marx and Engels – brought the fruits:

Engels granted Plekhanov an exclusive right to print and sell

his and Marx’s book in Russia.

The appearance of Plekhanov’s brochures in Samara

was first of all a result of development of the commercial activities

of the “Liberation of Labour” group in Russia

and personal hatred of its members towards autocracy.

Samara’s group of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov was the last link

in the chain of distribution of the Marxist literature;

the further movement of the books was defined by the agitation

with engaging of new members into the group.

The Samara period gave Ulyanov experience

of organization of the Marxist circles,

delivery and sales of illegal literature,

struggle with the competitive social and political movements.

By the end of winter of 1893, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov got bored.

Life in Samara was very monotonous.

He got bored of the noisy jour-fixes and secret meetings of the Marxists.

The town’s provincial patriarchal lifestyle started to depress Vladimir.

The last impulse that made Ulyanov think about the move to St.-Petersburg,

was the novel by Anton Chekhov “Ward no. 6”.

He described his impressions from it in the following way:

“When I finished reading that story yesterday in the evening,

I felt awful; I couldn’t stay in my room, I stood up and went out.

I had a feeling as if I was locked up in a Ward no. 6”.

“For him, Samara became the same “Ward no. 6”,

he was trying to get out of it like Chekhov’s poor patient,

he wanted to settle in a livelier, smarter

and more revolutionary center – Petersburg”,

Anna Ulyanova wrote about the reasons why Vladimir left Samara.

Contemporary of Ulyanovs, professor of Sorbonne,

doctor of medicine Teodule Armand Ribot,

founder of the French experimental psychology wrote in his book

“The Theory of Attention”: “Cases of deep and stable attention

demonstrate all traits of inexhaustible passion

that constantly renews and demands satisfaction”.

The Ulyanovs had that book in their home library;

comparing her brother with the hero of the “Ward no. 6”,

knowing his character well, Anna Ulyanova was very exact

in determining Vladimir’s state

during the last months of his stay in Samara.

Teodule Ribot discovered the so-called law of the evolution

of the psychic functions according to which the higher functions

of the brain – intellect and morality -

being the highest achievements of the human development,

are the first to get damaged in cases of diseases

or under the influence of drugs.

In Vladimir Ulyanov’s opinion,

morality was connected with the class analysis of the social phenomena.

He stated that moral interests of people were hiding their class interests.

Lenin wrote: “We’re saying that our morality

succumbs to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.

Our morality derives from the interests of the class struggle”.

Petr Maslov, basing on personal conversations with Lenin,

his literature works and public speeches,

opens the world view of Vladimir Ulyanov:

-What is the truth?

-Anything that leads to the revolution and the victory of the working class.

-What is moral?

-What leads to the revolution.

-Who is a friend?

-The one who leads to the revolution.

-Who is an enemy?

-The one who hinders it.

-Who is the goal of life?

-The revolution.

Participation in illegal organizations,

dissemination of illegal literature were actions,

immoral towards his family that needed Vladimir’s constant support

as well as towards the class to which nobleman Ulyanov belonged.

The boycott of the organizations supporting the hungry

for the sake of satisfaction of his own wishes

were the manifestations of absolute immorality –

as was the participation of Vladimir, an atheist, in religious ceremonies.

On August 20, 1893 at 2 p.m. the Ulyanovs left Samara.

In his pocket, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov had a letter

from the Samara attorney Khardin to an attorney from Petersburg

Mikhail Filippovitch Volkenstein,

in which Khardin gave a recommendation for Ulyanov

as of a smart and energetic lawyer.

A new period was about to start in the life of 23-year old Vladimir –

the Petersburg Period.