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present
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Lenin. A key image of the Soviet epoch.
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For four years a creative group of historians, filmmakers, lawyers,
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criminalists and researchers from other fields of knowledge
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was studying the documents related to the life of Vladimir Ilyitch
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Ulyanov-Lenin. In total, they studied over 20,000 documents,
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tens of millions of pages from the leading Russian
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and foreign archives and libraries.
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The movie based on the largest-scale recent research gives an exact answer
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on what kind of person Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin was in reality.
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Many of the demonstrated documents and photos
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are published for the first time.
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In the morning of Sunday, May 10, 1887,
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leaflets of an extra edition of the telegrams of the “Northern Telegraph Society”
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were sold in the newspaper kiosks all over Simbirsk.
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The government announcement about the court sentence
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took the most part of it: “Shevyryov, Ulyanov, Generalov,
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Andreyushkin, Osipanov who made an attempt at the life of the Emperor
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are sentenced to death through hanging”.
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It took Vladimir Ulyanov a couple of times of reading
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before he realized the tragic essence of the last words of the message –
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“executed on May 8”.
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Vladimir Ulyanov’s hope that the Tsar would satisfied the appeal for pardon
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sent by his elder brother Alexander didn’t come true.
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LENIN. Episode Two
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The family was happy when Olga Ulyanova graduated from the female gymnasium
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and Vladimir graduated from the male gymnasium
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with golden medals on June 10, 1887.
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Maria Alexandrovna made a decision to sell the house and leave Simbirsk.
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Further stay in the city was impossible for a family of a state criminal.
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On June 27, at 10 p.m. Olga, Vladimir and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanovs
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left Simbirsk for good on the cargo and passenger steamship “Mercuriy”.
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In Kazan, Maria Alexandrovna and her son and daughter spent the night
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in the house of her sister Anna Veretennikova
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who denounced the actions of Alexander Ulyanov
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but always helped the Ulyanovs together with her husband.
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From Kazan, they went to the village of Kokushkino
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which five daughters of Doctor Blank had inherited;
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each of them owned a share of the estate worth about 3,000 rubles.
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On July 29, 1887 Vladimir Ulyanov submitted two requests
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to the rector of the Imperial Kazan University.
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The first – about entering the first year of the law faculty;
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the second – on relieving him of payment for the lectures in autumn of 1887.
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By mid-August it became known that both requests were satisfied,
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and Vladimir Ulyanov became a student.
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“Vladimir Ulyanov graduated from the gymnasium with the best marks.
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His surname wasn’t written on the marble desk
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only because the people in power saw his brother Alexander Ulyanov in him”,
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Vladimir’s classmate wrote.
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The personal file of the graduate of the gymnasium Vladimir Ulyanov,
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signed by the director of the gymnasium Fedor Kerenskiy,
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includes the following lines: “Studying the lifestyle
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and character of Ulyanov, I couldn’t but notice some excessive reserve
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and avoidance of communication even with people he knew,
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both outside of the gymnasium and with his comrades…
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and his general unsociability”.
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In 1887, the Imperial Kazan University was the only university
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for the huge territory to the east from Moscow up to the Pacific Ocean.
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Lenin’s comrade Alexander Stopani said about Kazan of those years:
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“Kazan of the workers and Kazan of the intelligentsia were leading
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separate lives. In the center of Kazan no.2, of intelligentsia,
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was the students’ life – land societies, self-educational circles
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and circles of mutual assistance, wide “library” unions
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and the “deputy assemblies”, parties and so on;
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all of them, naturally, were operating undercover…”
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In 1887-1888, there were 914 students there,
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265 of those studied at the law faculty.
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A half of the students came from the nobles and officials,
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and another half were the children of bourgeois,
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peasants and lower clergy ranks.
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On August 19, Vladimir Ulyanov received an entrance ticket no. 197.
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The school year at the law faculty started on August 25,
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but student Ulyanov only came to the university on September 2.
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The reason for his delay was a “Commitment” –
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a printed paper given to every student to be signed before the start of the year.
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According to the “Commitment”, the student of the university promised
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“not to be a member and not to participate in any societies, like land societies,
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and even not to enter any society permitted by the law
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without an explicit permission given by the university management”.
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Without that signature, the student couldn’t start attending the lectures.
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Minister of the Internal Affairs Tolstoy write in a secret report:
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“Land societies don’t differ from the secret societies
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structurally, and are an environment
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that is easily accessible for the revolutionaries who use them
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to replenish their rows and to exercise various revolutionary actions”.
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If Vladimir Ulyanov hoped that due to his being late
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the commitment would be forgotten, he was disappointed –
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the manager made him leave the necessary signature
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right after he crossed the threshold of the university;
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despite his promise, Ulyanov entered the Simbirsk Land Society
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during the first days of his studies.
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He was frequenting the shop of Andrey Derevenkov,
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where the members of land societies often met
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to discuss some prohibited book, sometimes hand-copied,
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or illegal parties in the company of female students
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of the Midwifes Institute and local Nurses Courses.
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Because of Vladimir Ulyanov’s close communication with female students
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sent out of Petersburg who were now studying at the Midwifes Institute
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by the University and their less fortunate girlfriends,
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also exiled from the capital to Kazan,
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in November of 1887 Vladimir only visited the University 8 times.
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As one well-known researcher of Lenin’s life wrote later:
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“The female students from the capital were excellent in conspiracies,
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and no matter how hard the Kazan gendarmes tried,
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they couldn’t catch them in the anti-governmental activities”.
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When he was free from communication with the fair sex,
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he visited the meetings of the land society
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which became more frequent by the end of the year.
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In the end of October Maria Alexandrovna,
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hoping for the sound mind of Vladimir, Olga and Dmitriy,
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student of the 4th grade, began to go to the family estate of Kokushkino
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to her younger daughter Maria more often,
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believing that in her absence the children’s nanny Varvara Grigoryevna
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would manage the kids.
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During the first days of December the students of Kazan got excited
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by the events that had happened on November 22 and 26 in Moscow.
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The disturbances among the students were invoked by the report
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of the Minister of the People’s Education of June 18, 1887
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that was nicknamed “A Circular about the Cook’s Children”.
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The Minister’s report stipulated the change in the social composition
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of gymnasiums and their transformation
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into the semi-privileged establishments.
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The first article of that document prohibited the Jew children
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from the lowest ranks to study in gymnasiums and proto-gymnasiums.
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The second article granted the universities the right
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to “determine the payment for the lectures
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without limiting themselves to previously defined 50-ruble standard”.
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From the legal point of view,
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the Circular contradicted the law in force of July 30, 1871 that stipulated
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abolition of the class and religious qualifications in the sphere of education.
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But the author of the document, Minister of the People’s Education Delyanov
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claimed: “A gymnasium is no place for the children of the servants,
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coachmen, cooks, petty shopkeepers and the like…”
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The Moscow students, organizers of the disturbances and protests,
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arrived in Kazan and discussed Minister Delyanov’s report
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at a secret meeting of the deputies of the student land societies of Kazan,
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after what they wrote the “Appeal to All the Students of Kazan”
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and a petition to the rector of the university.
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Starting from the beginning of December,
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Vladimir began to visit the University more often,
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but not to improve his education –
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the emotional state of the students’ masses invoked by the injustice
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of the authorities, and the students’ readiness to confront the authorities,
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even physically, proved infectious for him.
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The reactionary anti-Semitic circular, the disbanding of the demonstration
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and beatings of the Moscow students that followed
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invoked a wave of protests among the Kazan students.
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On December 4, 17-year old Vladimir, the eldest male in the family
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responsible for the future of his sisters and his brother,
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who knew about the harsh wound inflicted to his mother
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by the elder brother, crossed the threshold of the university
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as one of the organizers of the students’ disturbances.
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The leaders of the land societies to whom Vladimir belonged too,
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decided that the disturbances among the students
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were a chance they simply couldn’t miss.
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From the smoking room where a lot of exciting talks about the power were held,
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the organizers of the meeting-demonstration went together
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to the auditoriums of the university shouting: “To the meeting! To the meeting!”
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Vladimir was running along the corridor shouting “Hurray!”.
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“To the rector!” and “Let’s do away with the inspections!”
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Breaking the door into the conference hall,
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Vladimir and other students delivered speeches on the Tsar’s yoke,
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the need for the students to confront the unjust regime.
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Inspector Potapov who came to the meeting demanded the students
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to dismiss, threatening them with the army and the police.
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The students jumped at the inspector and beat him up;
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it was only thanks to his strong build
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that Potapov managed to escape the fight without any serious traumas.
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Soon the rector Nicolay Alexandrovitch Kremlyov,
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a liberal and an experienced professor who had lived through
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numerous students’ disturbances came out to the crowd.
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Kremlyov read the petition submitted by the students.
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It listed the following demands:
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a collegial body of the students was to rule the university independently,
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the students got a right to allot grants at the discretion of the persons
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elected by the students.
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Kremlyov offered the students to go home, and left.
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The mass psychosis of the hot-headed young men
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reached its peak in the evening.
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The organizers of the meeting suggested that the students
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should leave the university as a sign of disagreement.
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99 students signed a statement on withdrawal from the university;
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among them, Vladimir Ulyanov.
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One of the young men taking part in the meeting wrote:
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“The tumultuous rumbling among the students went on that day
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and the following days; the students walked about the city in groups,
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mostly along the Voskresenskaya Street where the University
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and the First Police Department were situated”.
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The rented apartment of the Ulyanovs, the city of Kazan
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When Vladimir came home that day,
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he told his mother and his sister Olga about the events at the University.
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He mentioned the beating of Inspector Potapov saying:
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“The Inspector played on their nerves, and they beat him up”.
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Ulyanov withheld the information
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that he himself took part in that despicable action too.
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At night of December 4 to 5 the police came to the Ulyanovs’ apartment.
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Vladimir was arrested and taken to the police department.
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Later he was transferred to the common cell of prison.
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Over a hundred of students were arrested;
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a part was released in one day.
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The rest stayed in the cell, sang songs, read prohibited poems
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and discussed plans for the future. Vladimir told his comrades
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that there was only one path ahead of him:
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the revolutionary struggle, a choice made for him by his elder brother.
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Maria Alexandrovna who didn’t know
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the details of Vladimir’s activities at the University believed
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that the authorities were prejudiced towards Vladimir
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because of his elder brother who had been hanged.
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However, one of the police officers rebuked their claims to the authorities;
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he informed her that Vladimir was practically always absent at the lectures,
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was a member of illegal local societies
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and ran at Inspector Potapov with his fists at the ready.
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The university inspectors described Vladimir as a reserved,
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not attentive and even not polite student.
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On December 5, 1887 Vladimir Ulyanov was expelled
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from the Imperial Kazan University and prohibited from living in the capital
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and in the university cities.
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The next day he left Kazan under the supervision of a police officer
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with his mother and younger sister. At his mother’s request,
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Vladimir was exiled to their family estate Kokushkino
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where his elder sister Anna was doing her 5-year term of exile
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for the participation in the gang of Shevyryov and Ulyanov.
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In Kokushkino, Vladimir was mostly reading books and magazines
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from the library of the late husband of his aunt Lyubov Alexandrovna.
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During that period, he read works of Dobrolyubov, Chernishevskiy and Pisarev.
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“I was carried away by reading”,
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Vladimir said later about his stay at Kokushkino.
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In 1887, Fedor Kerenskiy was certain:
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“Ulyanov’s parents always monitored his education and moral development
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with attention; since 1886, after his father’s death,
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his mother was doing it on her own.
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Religion and sound discipline were at the core of his upbringing.”
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On his 18th birthday, on April 10, 1888,
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Vladimir who severed all ties with religion at the age of 15,
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became a godfather to a daughter of a peasant Yakim Georgiyev.
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By demonstrating such ambiguous attitude towards Orthodoxy
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00:18:23,596 --> 00:18:27,019
(he was an atheist by words, a religious man by actions)
238
00:18:27,250 --> 00:18:31,078
the future relentless fighter with religion Vladimir Ulyanov showed his ability
239
00:18:31,285 --> 00:18:35,881
to act in accordance with the circumstances in any situation.
240
00:18:45,950 --> 00:18:49,394
In one year, in July of 1889,
241
00:18:49,640 --> 00:18:53,277
when Anna Ulyanova and Mark Yelizarov were married,
242
00:18:53,455 --> 00:18:57,361
Vladimir Ilyitch was their voucher as an Orthodox noble;
243
00:18:57,651 --> 00:19:03,477
by that, he conformed his life credo of immoral attitude towards religion.
244
00:19:07,018 --> 00:19:11,248
In June of 1888, Vladimir’s mother solicited for a permission
245
00:19:11,446 --> 00:19:17,341
for her son to study at the university again. Her solicitation was denied.
246
00:19:18,105 --> 00:19:23,682
In September of 1888, Vladimir turned to the Minister of Internal Affairs
247
00:19:23,865 --> 00:19:29,593
with a request to permit him to go abroad to enter some foreign university.
248
00:19:30,202 --> 00:19:32,364
The Minister denied the request
249
00:19:32,538 --> 00:19:37,200
but soon the police department allowed Vladimir to stay in Kazan.
250
00:19:41,097 --> 00:19:50,348
By winter of 1888-1889, Vladimir Ulyanov got a hint of beard on his face.
251
00:19:51,047 --> 00:19:53,760
That very winter, former student Ulyanov got interested
252
00:19:53,976 --> 00:19:57,046
in the Social Democracy teaching.
253
00:19:58,757 --> 00:20:00,586
He began to read “The Capital”,
254
00:20:00,868 --> 00:20:03,945
a book of the German author and journalist Karl Marx.
255
00:20:05,363 --> 00:20:10,301
In September of 1888, Anna Ulyanova underwent a medical examination
256
00:20:10,519 --> 00:20:16,634
as a mental patient. She was then allowed to live in Kazan
257
00:20:16,837 --> 00:20:19,606
to get the necessary treatment.
258
00:20:20,548 --> 00:20:24,003
At that time, the mental clinic of the Kazan District Hospital
259
00:20:24,199 --> 00:20:27,407
was headed by Vladimir Mikhailovitch Bekhterev,
260
00:20:27,618 --> 00:20:30,797
a professor of the Chair of Psychiatry of the Kazan University
261
00:20:31,008 --> 00:20:34,923
who later became an academician, a director of the Institute of the Brain
262
00:20:35,164 --> 00:20:42,245
of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Bekhterev’s colleague at the university,
263
00:20:42,402 --> 00:20:47,058
an expert in histology Alexei Yefimovitch Smirnov
264
00:20:47,250 --> 00:20:51,680
who in 1889 was awarded with a rank of a Doctor of Medicine
265
00:20:51,866 --> 00:20:56,598
was working with him. On April 29, 1889
266
00:20:56,751 --> 00:21:00,617
Vladimir Ulyanov received a medical conclusion no. 108
267
00:21:00,761 --> 00:21:05,167
in which professor Nicolay Ivanovitch Kotovschikov, a therapist,
268
00:21:05,349 --> 00:21:10,409
and Dr. Smirnov wrote that Vladimir Ulyanov had gastric catarrh
269
00:21:10,567 --> 00:21:13,791
and needed alkaline mineral water for treatment,
270
00:21:14,007 --> 00:21:18,590
preferably the French waters of Vichy.
271
00:21:19,463 --> 00:21:24,389
In May, Vladimir Ulyanov applied to the Kazan Governor Poltoratskiy
272
00:21:24,623 --> 00:21:29,120
to receive a foreign passport to go for treatment abroad.
273
00:21:29,342 --> 00:21:32,038
The police department of Kazan now had the evidence
274
00:21:32,211 --> 00:21:36,627
of the mental disorder of Anna Ulyanova and the disease of Vladimir Ulyanov,
275
00:21:36,819 --> 00:21:39,379
the request of Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova
276
00:21:39,557 --> 00:21:42,662
to allow her elder children to undergo treatments.
277
00:21:50,624 --> 00:21:53,026
At the same time, the police department had a letter
278
00:21:53,257 --> 00:21:56,344
of the director of the Simbirsk Classical Gymnasium
279
00:21:56,574 --> 00:22:00,568
Fedor Mikhailovitch Kerenskiy to the district inspector Timofeev
280
00:22:00,759 --> 00:22:05,702
in which Kerenskiy wrote: “Ulyanov, if I may think so,
281
00:22:05,972 --> 00:22:09,805
could become mentally disturbed after the fateful catastrophe
282
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,314
that befell the poor family
283
00:22:12,569 --> 00:22:16,235
and could influence the sensitive young man in a negative way”.
284
00:22:17,972 --> 00:22:21,662
There are no doubts that the employees of the police department of Kazan,
285
00:22:21,826 --> 00:22:25,849
professor Bekhterev, professor Kotovschikov, and Doctor Smirnov
286
00:22:26,058 --> 00:22:31,076
knew about the suicide of Anna’s and Vladimir’s closest relatives –
287
00:22:31,348 --> 00:22:35,298
their great uncle Dmitriy Dmitriyevitch Blank,
288
00:22:35,477 --> 00:22:40,527
the brother of Maria Alexandrovna, Dmitriy Alexandrovitch Blank,
289
00:22:40,717 --> 00:22:46,795
the uncle of her children; plus, psychology could only perceive
290
00:22:47,001 --> 00:22:49,609
the actions of Alexander Ulyanov as a suicide.
291
00:22:49,836 --> 00:22:53,955
Therefore, they could definitely talk about a hereditary mental illness –
292
00:22:54,192 --> 00:23:00,404
circular psychosis that is now called the “maniac-depressive syndrome”.
293
00:23:04,131 --> 00:23:10,342
At the beginning of 1889, the Ulyanovs moved to the Samara Region,
294
00:23:10,567 --> 00:23:12,748
to the village of Alakayevka.
295
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:16,417
However, Maria Alexandrovna hopes
296
00:23:16,613 --> 00:23:19,295
to pull Vladimir out of the revolutionary actions
297
00:23:19,509 --> 00:23:23,039
by throwing him into the village chores were in vain.
298
00:23:24,501 --> 00:23:28,519
“Mother wanted me to work in the estate in the village. I started it.
299
00:23:28,721 --> 00:23:31,178
But then I saw – I shouldn’t;
300
00:23:31,298 --> 00:23:33,682
the relations with the peasants began to go wrong”.
301
00:23:34,393 --> 00:23:36,519
That was how Vladimir Ilyitch commented
302
00:23:36,698 --> 00:23:39,226
on his stay in Alakayevka to Krupskaya years later.
303
00:23:41,978 --> 00:23:44,641
According to the report of the police department:
304
00:23:44,911 --> 00:23:49,950
“In May of 1889, the Kazan Governor submitted Ulyanov’s request
305
00:23:50,122 --> 00:23:53,317
to permit him to go abroad for the treatment,
306
00:23:53,492 --> 00:23:59,657
but His Honor Director rejected the abovementioned request
307
00:23:59,923 --> 00:24:06,917
reasoning that Ulyanov could go to treat his disease to the Caucasus”.
308
00:24:08,451 --> 00:24:12,765
Governor of Samara wrote a resolution for the decision of the police department
309
00:24:13,038 --> 00:24:16,278
that “he may treat himself with the Caucasian mineral waters,
310
00:24:16,551 --> 00:24:19,139
for instance, “Essentuki-17”.
311
00:24:20,407 --> 00:24:23,285
In September, the Ulyanovs moved to Samara.
312
00:24:23,538 --> 00:24:27,038
In winter of 1889, Vladimir met an attorney from Samara,
313
00:24:27,277 --> 00:24:33,236
a chess player Andrey Nicolayevitch Khardin.
314
00:24:34,082 --> 00:24:37,478
Vladimir made friends with Khardin on the basis of chess games
315
00:24:37,744 --> 00:24:40,058
through correspondence with Mark Yelizarov,
316
00:24:40,247 --> 00:24:44,841
and got an influential comrade who played an important part in his further fate.
317
00:24:46,414 --> 00:24:48,174
During the first days in Samara,
318
00:24:48,424 --> 00:24:52,371
Vladimir met the revolutionary youth and former exiles.
319
00:24:55,083 --> 00:24:58,528
Among the intelligentsia, the Narodnik movement was popular.
320
00:24:58,718 --> 00:25:02,152
It was an ideological doctrine and a social and political movement.
321
00:25:02,419 --> 00:25:05,537
In essence, the Narodnik movement was one of the versions
322
00:25:05,712 --> 00:25:08,163
of the utopic socialism.
323
00:25:09,949 --> 00:25:11,911
The Narodniks believed that the common folk
324
00:25:12,099 --> 00:25:14,991
were the center of social and moral ideals
325
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:19,745
and perceived the Russian peasant society as an impersonation of a commune.
326
00:25:21,694 --> 00:25:25,592
For Russia, the Narodniks offered a special path of development –
327
00:25:25,878 --> 00:25:29,321
from the autocracy to the socialism, past capitalism.
328
00:25:30,278 --> 00:25:33,370
In the Soviet history, the Narodniks were showed as the enemy
329
00:25:33,542 --> 00:25:37,462
of the Social Democracy. In reality, they were fighting the autocracy
330
00:25:37,676 --> 00:25:40,006
just like the Social Democrats.
331
00:25:40,540 --> 00:25:43,264
Social Democracy was a new revolutionary movement for Russia
332
00:25:43,500 --> 00:25:47,527
as many people believed there were no sufficient conditions for it
333
00:25:47,729 --> 00:25:52,976
in Russia for the lack of proletariat like workers of factories and plants.
334
00:25:54,573 --> 00:25:59,979
Vladimir’s elder brother Alexander Ulyanov also reckoned himself to be a Narodnik;
335
00:26:00,184 --> 00:26:03,720
he even wrote a Manifest of the terror organization “The People’s Will”.
336
00:26:06,786 --> 00:26:10,048
During the first days of September of 1889,
337
00:26:10,221 --> 00:26:15,076
Vladimir Ulyanov met his peer Alexei Pavlovitch Sklyarenko.
338
00:26:17,096 --> 00:26:21,211
He was tall, physically strong, with a clever expressive face,
339
00:26:21,444 --> 00:26:24,451
in a dark pince-nez and with a stick in his hands
340
00:26:24,650 --> 00:26:28,653
that resembled a patriarch’s staff; Sklyarenko was incredibly brave
341
00:26:28,837 --> 00:26:34,439
and could talk a lot and with great zest on the injustice of autocracy.
342
00:26:36,582 --> 00:26:40,205
Sklyarenko made friends with a female student of a nurses’ collage
343
00:26:40,373 --> 00:26:44,873
who lived in one apartment with him, an assistant to a railway driver
344
00:26:45,027 --> 00:26:48,189
and a graduate of an industrial school.
345
00:26:48,551 --> 00:26:51,379
From the first days of friendship with Sklyarenko,
346
00:26:51,612 --> 00:26:55,259
Vladimir criticized his ideas proving to him that the Narodniks’ views
347
00:26:55,445 --> 00:26:59,958
on the people were an illusion for in their opinion it was a unity
348
00:27:00,162 --> 00:27:05,915
of different class groups – rich peasants, poor peasants and workers.
349
00:27:08,343 --> 00:27:11,230
Soon Vladimir became well-known in Samara as a theorist
350
00:27:11,500 --> 00:27:13,440
and an expert of Marxism.
351
00:27:14,018 --> 00:27:16,432
Belyakov, a member of Sklyarenko’s circle,
352
00:27:16,618 --> 00:27:19,424
described his meetings with Vladimir Ulyanov:
353
00:27:19,825 --> 00:27:23,393
“We listened to Vladimir Ilyitch’s lectures on Marxism,
354
00:27:23,565 --> 00:27:27,615
the deep knowledge of which was a dream of those-days smart youth,
355
00:27:27,810 --> 00:27:31,265
as an interesting and educating fairy-tale.
356
00:27:31,638 --> 00:27:35,110
We threw out the old gods with the carelessness of youth
357
00:27:35,287 --> 00:27:41,835
without a second glance and even with some mean bitterness…”
358
00:27:46,644 --> 00:27:48,981
Marxism as a social and political movement,
359
00:27:49,192 --> 00:27:54,207
philosophical and social-political teaching, founded by Karl Marx
360
00:27:54,414 --> 00:27:58,005
and Friedrich Engels, was introduced to Russia
361
00:27:58,221 --> 00:28:01,105
by Pavel Vasilyevitch Annenkov –
362
00:28:01,301 --> 00:28:06,212
a nobleman, a rich landowner from Simbirsk, a liberal author.
363
00:28:09,239 --> 00:28:16,172
At 33, Annenkov met 28-year old Marx in 1846 in Germany.
364
00:28:17,023 --> 00:28:22,306
Marx wrote: “In 1843-1844 in Paris,
365
00:28:22,502 --> 00:28:26,495
the local Russian aristocrats carried me in their arms.
366
00:28:26,828 --> 00:28:31,028
Nowhere did I sell as many books as in Russia.
367
00:28:31,434 --> 00:28:36,915
The first foreign nation to translate my “Capital” was the Russian.
368
00:28:37,229 --> 00:28:42,785
The Russian aristocrats were educated in German universities and in Paris.
369
00:28:42,997 --> 00:28:46,715
They were attracted by the most extreme ideas offered by the West.
370
00:28:46,990 --> 00:28:48,631
It was a pure gourmandize…”
371
00:28:48,971 --> 00:28:50,779
The scientists-Marxists believed
372
00:28:51,031 --> 00:28:53,570
that one of Marx’s most important achievements
373
00:28:53,751 --> 00:28:58,509
was the materialistic method of comprehension of the social phenomena –
374
00:28:58,700 --> 00:29:00,922
historical materialism. The Marxists’ claims
375
00:29:01,133 --> 00:29:04,583
that Marx allegedly established a scientific theory – scientific Communism –
376
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:08,625
wasn’t confirmed for all Marx’s theories contradict the modern view
377
00:29:08,782 --> 00:29:11,502
on the nature of scientific theories – tolerance to criticism
378
00:29:11,773 --> 00:29:18,452
and proving by the historical line of events. The example of that
379
00:29:18,611 --> 00:29:22,382
is the collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
380
00:29:23,011 --> 00:29:24,466
Russia!
381
00:29:26,050 --> 00:29:29,637
Interest of Marx and Engels to Russia was first of all commercial –
382
00:29:29,842 --> 00:29:34,980
they were getting paid for the publication of literature,
383
00:29:35,186 --> 00:29:38,986
and they weren’t shy to remind their Russian editors about that.
384
00:29:40,218 --> 00:29:43,017
The Marxists of all times explain fundamental mistakes
385
00:29:43,227 --> 00:29:46,595
made by Marx and Engels in their economical, philosophical,
386
00:29:46,825 --> 00:29:50,133
social and political works with the fact that
387
00:29:50,305 --> 00:29:53,423
“being no exceptions from human nature,
388
00:29:53,653 --> 00:29:57,540
Marx and Engels could be mistaken in separate cases
389
00:29:57,753 --> 00:30:01,562
in the evaluation of these or those factors”.
390
00:30:01,788 --> 00:30:05,380
That was how Pavel Axelrod commented on the mistakes in Marx’s works.
391
00:30:05,615 --> 00:30:09,006
Under the impression of Vladimir Ulyanov’s speeches about Marxism
392
00:30:09,201 --> 00:30:12,182
Sklyarenko and his comrades renounced the ideas of the Narodniks
393
00:30:12,442 --> 00:30:14,815
and began to consider themselves to be Marxists.
394
00:30:15,732 --> 00:30:18,444
One of the serious obstacles for the young Marxists
395
00:30:18,661 --> 00:30:22,089
was the purchase of Marx’s books which censorship prohibited.
396
00:30:23,084 --> 00:30:28,361
On December 27, 1889 Vladimir Ulyanov sent a double card
397
00:30:28,550 --> 00:30:34,027
with a prepaid reply to the bookseller Brockhaus situated in Leipzig.
398
00:30:36,693 --> 00:30:39,816
In his letter Vladimir asked to inform him
399
00:30:40,051 --> 00:30:43,399
“whether the company “Brockhaus” accepts Russian notes
400
00:30:43,608 --> 00:30:47,323
as payments for the books, how much a Russian ruble is worth in Leipzig,
401
00:30:47,469 --> 00:30:49,626
whether the company receives the lists of books
402
00:30:49,806 --> 00:30:52,038
prohibited by the censors in Russia
403
00:30:52,226 --> 00:30:54,789
and how much the delivery of these books to Samara will cost”.
404
00:30:55,019 --> 00:30:58,905
Into that list, he included the works of Marx, Engels and Kautskiy.
405
00:31:02,684 --> 00:31:06,015
Soon, the literature hunger of the Marxist circle of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov
406
00:31:06,253 --> 00:31:10,344
was satisfied: book shelves in Vladimir’s room were replenished
407
00:31:10,544 --> 00:31:13,178
by the books of Marx and his followers.
408
00:31:14,087 --> 00:31:17,421
Among Ulyanov’s new acquaintances was an exile
409
00:31:17,611 --> 00:31:20,799
Maria Petrovna Yasneva, a Narodnik, a Jacobin
410
00:31:21,057 --> 00:31:25,913
who was one of the first to appreciate the propagandistic abilities
411
00:31:26,112 --> 00:31:28,523
of a 19-year old Marxist.
412
00:31:28,785 --> 00:31:31,375
All days, evenings and nights Vladimir was explaining
413
00:31:31,586 --> 00:31:34,389
the teaching of Marx to a 30-year old Narodnik,
414
00:31:34,671 --> 00:31:37,451
and soon she turned to the side of the Marxists.
415
00:31:41,660 --> 00:31:45,730
In May of 1890, Maria Alexandrovna, worried
416
00:31:45,936 --> 00:31:49,136
by Vladimir’s interest in the Marxists, made a desperate step –
417
00:31:49,419 --> 00:31:53,564
she went to Petersburg for a meeting with the Minister
418
00:31:53,788 --> 00:31:56,910
of the People’s Education Delyanov regarding the permission
419
00:31:57,136 --> 00:32:01,284
for Vladimir to continue his education in one of the Russian universities.
420
00:32:07,382 --> 00:32:10,989
The statement written by Maria Alexandrovna addressed to the Minister
421
00:32:11,215 --> 00:32:13,972
of the People’s Education is simple and clear:
422
00:32:14,269 --> 00:32:16,803
“It tears my heart to look at my son,
423
00:32:17,030 --> 00:32:20,075
whose best years for the higher education are slipping away.
424
00:32:20,290 --> 00:32:24,759
Such senseless existence without some kind of a mission
425
00:32:24,909 --> 00:32:29,768
definitely has a pernicious moral influence on a young man
426
00:32:29,943 --> 00:32:36,235
and might almost undoubtedly lead him to thoughts about suicide”.
427
00:32:41,957 --> 00:32:44,274
Olga, middle daughter of Maria Alexandrovna,
428
00:32:44,490 --> 00:32:48,416
dreamt of becoming a doctor; among the works she studied
429
00:32:48,634 --> 00:32:51,467
were books of the famous European psychiatrists:
430
00:32:51,696 --> 00:32:55,087
“Genius and madness” by Cesare Lombroso, “Heredity”
431
00:32:55,257 --> 00:33:00,205
by Teodule Ribot and “Psychology of Attention” by the same author.
432
00:33:03,269 --> 00:33:08,365
Without any doubt, Maria Alexandrovna studied those books too.
433
00:33:08,592 --> 00:33:11,556
A smart and well-educated woman could easily compare
434
00:33:11,741 --> 00:33:15,211
the texts of those books with the history of suicides of her uncle,
435
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:17,685
brother Dmitriy and son Alexander.
436
00:33:18,108 --> 00:33:20,425
The thought about the possible suicide of Volodya
437
00:33:20,635 --> 00:33:23,479
in a result of a hereditary psychiatric disorder got reflected
438
00:33:23,682 --> 00:33:27,328
in her letter to the Minister of the People’s Education.
439
00:33:31,420 --> 00:33:33,816
The Minister satisfied the request of Maria Ulyanova
440
00:33:34,037 --> 00:33:37,979
but made a note on her letter: “Ask his warden and police department
441
00:33:38,196 --> 00:33:42,840
about him; he is a bad person”.
442
00:33:46,516 --> 00:33:51,438
After getting the reply from the Ministry no. 8076 at the police department
443
00:33:51,612 --> 00:33:54,910
which permitted Vladimir to pass the exams for the subjects
444
00:33:55,109 --> 00:33:59,158
studied at the law faculty, he sent another request to pass the exams
445
00:33:59,351 --> 00:34:03,417
before the testing commission at the Petersburg University.
446
00:34:05,750 --> 00:34:10,101
At the end of August of 1890, Vladimir Ulyanov went to Petersburg
447
00:34:10,443 --> 00:34:13,883
to find out the conditions of passing the exams.
448
00:34:17,833 --> 00:34:19,583
In autumn of the same year, Olga Ulyanova
449
00:34:19,778 --> 00:34:23,021
who entered the Higher Female Courses
450
00:34:23,190 --> 00:34:26,972
also called the Bestuzhev Courses came to Petersburg too.
451
00:34:27,188 --> 00:34:29,022
She made new friends at the courses –
452
00:34:29,230 --> 00:34:32,657
Zinaida Nevzorova and Apollinaria Yakubova.
453
00:34:34,626 --> 00:34:38,215
From the first day of their meeting, Olga informed Nevzorova and Yakubova
454
00:34:38,402 --> 00:34:41,375
about the tragic fate of her elder brother Alexander,
455
00:34:41,644 --> 00:34:45,222
her sister Anna who had been exiled and about her brother Vladimir
456
00:34:45,429 --> 00:34:49,332
expelled from the university for taking part in students’ protests.
457
00:34:53,202 --> 00:34:55,585
She passed them the hand-copied translation
458
00:34:55,851 --> 00:34:59,982
of the “Manifest of the Communist Party” of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
459
00:35:00,264 --> 00:35:03,004
made together with her brother Vladimir.
460
00:35:04,460 --> 00:35:07,525
On the pages of that book that was censored in Russia,
461
00:35:07,715 --> 00:35:11,072
together with many other incorrect phrasings and conclusions
462
00:35:11,271 --> 00:35:14,943
Marx and Engels wrote the following about the wives:
463
00:35:15,853 --> 00:35:20,339
“A bourgeois looks at his wife as at a simple tool of production”.
464
00:35:24,273 --> 00:35:26,908
It means that for Marx and Engels, a common bourgeois
465
00:35:27,161 --> 00:35:30,485
was a participant of a process in which there was a production tool –
466
00:35:30,695 --> 00:35:33,512
his wife, and an end product – a child.
467
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:36,489
It’s clear that in that case, there was no hired labour
468
00:35:36,728 --> 00:35:39,202
which, according to the Marxists, was the basis
469
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:42,594
of the capitalistic production. Investing his labour,
470
00:35:42,788 --> 00:35:46,188
a bourgeois had to get the end product – a child,
471
00:35:46,467 --> 00:35:49,990
which, in line with Marx’s dialectics, had to have some value.
472
00:35:51,940 --> 00:35:56,967
In real life, children don’t have value and can’t equal a good.
473
00:35:57,304 --> 00:36:00,668
Therefore, the wives aren’t production tools.
474
00:36:02,612 --> 00:36:05,702
Further, the founding fathers of the scientific Communism wrote:
475
00:36:05,898 --> 00:36:09,790
“The Bourgeois marriage is in fact a community of wives.
476
00:36:10,141 --> 00:36:11,864
The Communists might only be reprimanded
477
00:36:12,045 --> 00:36:15,934
for the fact that they want to introduce an official,
478
00:36:16,150 --> 00:36:20,503
open community of wives instead of a secret, covered one.
479
00:36:20,706 --> 00:36:23,196
The Communists don’t need to introduce the community of wives,
480
00:36:23,429 --> 00:36:25,398
for it has always existed”.
481
00:36:27,257 --> 00:36:30,653
Marx made such weird conclusions basing on his own experience,
482
00:36:30,871 --> 00:36:36,150
as his biography suggests. Marx was unfaithful to his wife
483
00:36:36,358 --> 00:36:40,763
with their housemaid Elena Demuth with whom he had an extramarital son.
484
00:36:40,992 --> 00:36:45,352
After Karl Marx’s death, Demuth and her son lived with Engels.
485
00:36:46,793 --> 00:36:51,543
Friedrich Engels followed Marx’s ideas even further and wrote:
486
00:36:51,815 --> 00:36:55,067
“The first contradiction of the classes that is being born in history
487
00:36:55,271 --> 00:36:58,443
coincides with the development of antagonistic feelings
488
00:36:58,634 --> 00:37:01,777
between a husband and a wife in case of monogamy,
489
00:37:02,010 --> 00:37:04,799
and the first class deprivation coincides with the enslavement
490
00:37:04,936 --> 00:37:07,358
of the males by the females”.
491
00:37:07,750 --> 00:37:10,378
Of course, such revolutionary ideas couldn’t but impress
492
00:37:10,565 --> 00:37:14,170
students Ulyanova, Nevzorova and Yakubova.
493
00:37:17,065 --> 00:37:21,447
It’s most likely that Vladimir Ulyanov noticed Apollinaria Yakubova,
494
00:37:21,672 --> 00:37:27,293
the most beautiful girl among other female students,
495
00:37:27,469 --> 00:37:29,695
during that first visit to Petersburg.
496
00:37:32,554 --> 00:37:35,217
Her friend described her as follows:
497
00:37:35,463 --> 00:37:38,648
“She had wide shoulders, light-haired head,
498
00:37:38,876 --> 00:37:41,180
small shiny hazel eyes
499
00:37:41,344 --> 00:37:46,200
and bright blush; she was an impersonation of health.
500
00:37:46,385 --> 00:37:49,478
She smelled of the fresh field herbs.
501
00:37:49,826 --> 00:37:52,925
We used to call her “the black-soil force”…”
502
00:38:03,626 --> 00:38:09,409
At the end of October of 1890, Vladimir went back to Samara from Petersburg.
503
00:38:09,735 --> 00:38:12,353
Until his next visit to the capital,
504
00:38:12,572 --> 00:38:16,024
Ulyanov was ardently preparing for passing the exams to the University,
505
00:38:16,213 --> 00:38:18,748
proving himself to be very hard-working.
506
00:38:22,918 --> 00:38:26,903
During his second visit to Petersburg at the end of March of 1891,
507
00:38:27,184 --> 00:38:30,163
Vladimir Ulyanov frequented the dormitory
508
00:38:30,391 --> 00:38:33,590
of the Higher Female Courses where his sister Olga
509
00:38:33,817 --> 00:38:37,969
together with Nevzorova and Yakubova organized a Marxist circle.
510
00:38:39,925 --> 00:38:44,420
On March 24, Olga Ulyanova contracted a severe form of typhus.
511
00:38:44,994 --> 00:38:47,577
Vladimir brought his sister to the Alexander Hospital
512
00:38:47,836 --> 00:38:50,722
at the embankment of the Fontanka River.
513
00:38:51,885 --> 00:38:55,448
When Olga started to recover, she caught a new infection,
514
00:38:55,695 --> 00:38:58,865
and the erysipelatous inflammation suddenly started.
515
00:38:59,188 --> 00:39:01,421
She had terrible edemas, she cried in pain,
516
00:39:01,630 --> 00:39:04,222
and the doctors said that her state was critical.
517
00:39:05,208 --> 00:39:09,253
Vladimir summoned Maria Alexandrovna to Petersburg with a telegram.
518
00:39:09,456 --> 00:39:13,224
However, the mother’s arrival didn’t change the daughter’s state.
519
00:39:14,148 --> 00:39:19,456
On May 1891, Olga Ulyanova died.
520
00:39:20,137 --> 00:39:23,645
She was buried on May 10 at the Volkov Cemetery.
521
00:39:25,112 --> 00:39:29,969
Many students of the Bestuzhev Courses including Zinaida Nevzorova
522
00:39:30,155 --> 00:39:32,956
and Apollinaria Yakubova came to bid farewell to Olga.
523
00:39:33,693 --> 00:39:38,374
Vladimir spent the hot summer of 1891 in Samara.
524
00:39:38,813 --> 00:39:42,356
When summer heat became unbearable, Ulyanov, Sklyarenko
525
00:39:42,561 --> 00:39:47,027
and their comrades often went to the beergarten at the Zhiguli Brewery
526
00:39:47,266 --> 00:39:51,015
situated on the bank of the Volga. In best traditions of Marx,
527
00:39:51,190 --> 00:39:53,851
“the little Marxists” (that was how the Narodniks from Samara
528
00:39:54,059 --> 00:39:56,418
called the group of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov),
529
00:39:56,614 --> 00:39:59,360
discussed the difficulties of comprehension of the dialectics
530
00:39:59,539 --> 00:40:01,987
of their teacher with a mug of cold beer.
531
00:40:02,706 --> 00:40:06,241
In the first days of September of 1891,
532
00:40:06,434 --> 00:40:09,170
Vladimir left for the capital to pass the exams.
533
00:40:09,733 --> 00:40:12,715
The Test Commission at the Law Faculty
534
00:40:12,898 --> 00:40:17,425
at the Imperial University of St.-Petersburg awarded Vladimir Ulyanov
535
00:40:17,601 --> 00:40:19,762
with a diploma of the first grade
536
00:40:19,992 --> 00:40:22,602
which was considered prestigious for an aspiring lawyer.
537
00:40:24,858 --> 00:40:27,361
On returning to Samara, Vladimir Ilyitch became an assistant
538
00:40:27,485 --> 00:40:34,014
of attorney Khardin. As such, he took part in 15 proceedings:
539
00:40:34,175 --> 00:40:39,120
on the theft of frozen linens, money, arbitrariness of landowners
540
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:43,496
and other unimportant cases; almost all of them were won.
541
00:40:45,644 --> 00:40:51,237
Because of the drought of 1891, the situation in Russia deteriorated.
542
00:40:51,536 --> 00:40:53,951
In 17 provinces, hunger erupted.
543
00:40:54,666 --> 00:40:56,593
The government took urgent measures –
544
00:40:56,822 --> 00:41:01,449
prohibited export of rye and wheat from Russia
545
00:41:01,608 --> 00:41:05,626
and allotted over 34 million of rubles to the village communities
546
00:41:05,802 --> 00:41:07,757
to buy food supplies.
547
00:41:09,626 --> 00:41:13,978
Samara’s intelligentsia with the support of traders and manufacturers
548
00:41:14,242 --> 00:41:19,947
started opening free canteens and give out food to the poorest residents.
549
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:35,072
Vladimir Ulyanov and Maria Yasneva,
550
00:41:35,259 --> 00:41:38,161
basing on the stipulations of the Marxism,
551
00:41:38,349 --> 00:41:41,152
refused to take part in assisting the hungry.
552
00:41:46,922 --> 00:41:50,969
As a Marxist and Lenin-follower, Alexei Alexandrovitch Belyakov
553
00:41:51,159 --> 00:41:54,272
later wrote: “Vladimir Ilyitch had the courage to claim openly
554
00:41:54,449 --> 00:41:58,052
that the consequences of the hunger, the birth of the industrial proletariat,
555
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:02,941
the burying beetle of the bourgeois lifestyle, is a progressive phenomenon
556
00:42:03,119 --> 00:42:06,370
because it stimulates the growth of industry and moves us
557
00:42:06,547 --> 00:42:10,831
towards the end goal – socialism through capitalism;
558
00:42:11,286 --> 00:42:14,913
however, not the hunger itself but its consequences
559
00:42:15,126 --> 00:42:17,156
are a progressive phenomenon.
560
00:42:18,134 --> 00:42:21,041
At the same time, hunger ruins the peasants’ estates,
561
00:42:21,251 --> 00:42:24,610
kills the faith not only in the Tsar but in the God
562
00:42:24,809 --> 00:42:28,748
which will inevitably push the peasants towards revolution
563
00:42:28,902 --> 00:42:32,283
and facilitate the victory of the revolution”.
564
00:42:36,576 --> 00:42:39,454
It’s well-known that the terrible consequences of hunger
565
00:42:39,681 --> 00:42:43,827
are first of all deaths of people and the change of fate of the survivors.
566
00:42:44,369 --> 00:42:48,927
By making that statement, Vladimir Ulyanov became a revolutionary
567
00:42:49,155 --> 00:42:54,644
preaching death with an end of achieving the goal – the revolution in Russia.
568
00:42:56,255 --> 00:42:59,987
Ulyanov was carrying out systematic and decisive actions
569
00:43:00,202 --> 00:43:02,717
against the Committee of Assistance to the Hungry
570
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:05,875
organized with the participation of the Narodniks from Samara.
571
00:43:06,210 --> 00:43:11,096
By the end of 1892, according to the witnesses’ testimonies,
572
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:12,969
Vladimir Ulyanov succeeded
573
00:43:13,153 --> 00:43:17,025
in disorganizing the work of the Narodniks in those committees.
574
00:43:18,666 --> 00:43:22,665
Assistance in the theoretical struggle with them came from abroad.
575
00:43:22,869 --> 00:43:26,019
Brochures of Georgiy Plekhanov “The All-Russia Ruin”
576
00:43:26,315 --> 00:43:30,395
and “On the Tasks of the Socialists in a Struggle with Hunger in Russia”
577
00:43:30,675 --> 00:43:34,024
were smuggled into Samara and strengthened positions of Ulyanov
578
00:43:34,231 --> 00:43:37,187
and the members of his circle. It was the group called
579
00:43:37,378 --> 00:43:39,739
“The Liberation of Labour” founded by a nobleman from Tambov
580
00:43:40,137 --> 00:43:45,063
Georgiy Valentinovitch Plekhanov in 1883 in Geneva
581
00:43:45,266 --> 00:43:50,036
that was involved in smuggling of the illegal literature to Russia –
582
00:43:50,213 --> 00:43:52,274
both Social Democratic and Marxist.
583
00:43:52,445 --> 00:43:56,491
The group chose translation of books of Marx, Engels and other authors
584
00:43:56,688 --> 00:44:01,288
of the Marxist school into Russian as the main direction of its activities.
585
00:44:01,469 --> 00:44:04,554
The Russian Marxists in emigration started their struggle
586
00:44:04,704 --> 00:44:08,523
for the mass audience with filling in young souls of students
587
00:44:08,737 --> 00:44:12,195
of gymnasiums, seminaries, courses and different representatives
588
00:44:12,313 --> 00:44:15,338
of intelligentsia with Marx’s ideas.
589
00:44:15,563 --> 00:44:18,066
Plekhanov and the members of his group grew up
590
00:44:18,217 --> 00:44:20,540
during the period of development of capitalism in Russia,
591
00:44:20,762 --> 00:44:22,996
and it was as natural for them to gain profits
592
00:44:23,231 --> 00:44:26,831
from the sales of illegal literature as to criticize the autocracy.
593
00:44:31,036 --> 00:44:33,380
Georgiy Valentinovitch was passionately fighting with his competitors
594
00:44:33,579 --> 00:44:36,633
for the monopolist right to translate into Russian
595
00:44:36,777 --> 00:44:41,699
and print Marx’s and Engels’ works abroad for further sales in Russia.
596
00:44:47,918 --> 00:44:51,576
In his letters to Marx, Plekhanov called him “the great teacher”
597
00:44:51,791 --> 00:44:56,614
and addressed Engels as “my general”, “chief” and “my teacher”.
598
00:44:56,771 --> 00:45:03,974
In a letter to Engels in London of March 25, 1893 Plekhanov wrote:
599
00:45:04,644 --> 00:45:11,402
“Please accept, my dear teacher, assurance of my sincere loyalty”.
600
00:45:12,576 --> 00:45:20,115
In a letter of October 30, 1894 Plekhanov called Engels “my dear general”.
601
00:45:22,990 --> 00:45:25,873
That approach to the inexhaustible source of profit –
602
00:45:26,099 --> 00:45:29,842
printing of books of Marx and Engels – brought the fruits:
603
00:45:30,117 --> 00:45:34,255
Engels granted Plekhanov an exclusive right to print and sell
604
00:45:34,539 --> 00:45:37,231
his and Marx’s book in Russia.
605
00:45:37,918 --> 00:45:40,478
The appearance of Plekhanov’s brochures in Samara
606
00:45:40,706 --> 00:45:43,785
was first of all a result of development of the commercial activities
607
00:45:44,063 --> 00:45:46,652
of the “Liberation of Labour” group in Russia
608
00:45:46,894 --> 00:45:49,807
and personal hatred of its members towards autocracy.
609
00:45:52,503 --> 00:45:55,803
Samara’s group of Sklyarenko and Ulyanov was the last link
610
00:45:56,050 --> 00:45:58,817
in the chain of distribution of the Marxist literature;
611
00:45:59,018 --> 00:46:02,186
the further movement of the books was defined by the agitation
612
00:46:02,411 --> 00:46:04,660
with engaging of new members into the group.
613
00:46:05,992 --> 00:46:08,391
The Samara period gave Ulyanov experience
614
00:46:08,632 --> 00:46:10,846
of organization of the Marxist circles,
615
00:46:11,059 --> 00:46:13,562
delivery and sales of illegal literature,
616
00:46:13,853 --> 00:46:18,445
struggle with the competitive social and political movements.
617
00:46:20,057 --> 00:46:26,487
By the end of winter of 1893, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov got bored.
618
00:46:27,277 --> 00:46:30,121
Life in Samara was very monotonous.
619
00:46:30,726 --> 00:46:35,121
He got bored of the noisy jour-fixes and secret meetings of the Marxists.
620
00:46:35,409 --> 00:46:40,524
The town’s provincial patriarchal lifestyle started to depress Vladimir.
621
00:46:41,784 --> 00:46:46,586
The last impulse that made Ulyanov think about the move to St.-Petersburg,
622
00:46:46,929 --> 00:46:49,833
was the novel by Anton Chekhov “Ward no. 6”.
623
00:46:51,487 --> 00:46:54,686
He described his impressions from it in the following way:
624
00:46:55,217 --> 00:46:57,838
“When I finished reading that story yesterday in the evening,
625
00:46:58,047 --> 00:47:03,903
I felt awful; I couldn’t stay in my room, I stood up and went out.
626
00:47:04,378 --> 00:47:08,493
I had a feeling as if I was locked up in a Ward no. 6”.
627
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:15,492
“For him, Samara became the same “Ward no. 6”,
628
00:47:15,869 --> 00:47:19,466
he was trying to get out of it like Chekhov’s poor patient,
629
00:47:19,815 --> 00:47:22,043
he wanted to settle in a livelier, smarter
630
00:47:22,123 --> 00:47:24,514
and more revolutionary center – Petersburg”,
631
00:47:24,594 --> 00:47:29,796
Anna Ulyanova wrote about the reasons why Vladimir left Samara.
632
00:47:32,541 --> 00:47:35,009
Contemporary of Ulyanovs, professor of Sorbonne,
633
00:47:35,242 --> 00:47:38,556
doctor of medicine Teodule Armand Ribot,
634
00:47:38,809 --> 00:47:42,203
founder of the French experimental psychology wrote in his book
635
00:47:42,460 --> 00:47:46,751
“The Theory of Attention”: “Cases of deep and stable attention
636
00:47:46,954 --> 00:47:50,326
demonstrate all traits of inexhaustible passion
637
00:47:50,503 --> 00:47:55,527
that constantly renews and demands satisfaction”.
638
00:47:56,664 --> 00:47:59,538
The Ulyanovs had that book in their home library;
639
00:47:59,762 --> 00:48:02,544
comparing her brother with the hero of the “Ward no. 6”,
640
00:48:02,746 --> 00:48:05,774
knowing his character well, Anna Ulyanova was very exact
641
00:48:05,938 --> 00:48:08,271
in determining Vladimir’s state
642
00:48:08,456 --> 00:48:11,193
during the last months of his stay in Samara.
643
00:48:12,235 --> 00:48:15,181
Teodule Ribot discovered the so-called law of the evolution
644
00:48:15,358 --> 00:48:18,077
of the psychic functions according to which the higher functions
645
00:48:18,231 --> 00:48:20,742
of the brain – intellect and morality -
646
00:48:20,858 --> 00:48:25,010
being the highest achievements of the human development,
647
00:48:25,159 --> 00:48:28,166
are the first to get damaged in cases of diseases
648
00:48:28,376 --> 00:48:31,045
or under the influence of drugs.
649
00:48:32,050 --> 00:48:33,880
In Vladimir Ulyanov’s opinion,
650
00:48:34,077 --> 00:48:37,518
morality was connected with the class analysis of the social phenomena.
651
00:48:41,528 --> 00:48:46,782
He stated that moral interests of people were hiding their class interests.
652
00:48:47,972 --> 00:48:50,638
Lenin wrote: “We’re saying that our morality
653
00:48:50,847 --> 00:48:54,447
succumbs to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.
654
00:48:54,630 --> 00:48:59,442
Our morality derives from the interests of the class struggle”.
655
00:49:02,976 --> 00:49:06,052
Petr Maslov, basing on personal conversations with Lenin,
656
00:49:06,250 --> 00:49:08,652
his literature works and public speeches,
657
00:49:08,873 --> 00:49:12,521
opens the world view of Vladimir Ulyanov:
658
00:49:13,045 --> 00:49:14,804
-What is the truth?
659
00:49:15,077 --> 00:49:18,223
-Anything that leads to the revolution and the victory of the working class.
660
00:49:18,452 --> 00:49:19,807
-What is moral?
661
00:49:20,143 --> 00:49:21,916
-What leads to the revolution.
662
00:49:22,119 --> 00:49:23,422
-Who is a friend?
663
00:49:23,599 --> 00:49:25,407
-The one who leads to the revolution.
664
00:49:25,632 --> 00:49:26,836
-Who is an enemy?
665
00:49:27,079 --> 00:49:28,784
-The one who hinders it.
666
00:49:29,177 --> 00:49:30,989
-Who is the goal of life?
667
00:49:31,206 --> 00:49:32,505
-The revolution.
668
00:49:33,012 --> 00:49:34,917
Participation in illegal organizations,
669
00:49:35,077 --> 00:49:37,662
dissemination of illegal literature were actions,
670
00:49:37,860 --> 00:49:41,483
immoral towards his family that needed Vladimir’s constant support
671
00:49:41,721 --> 00:49:46,514
as well as towards the class to which nobleman Ulyanov belonged.
672
00:49:46,746 --> 00:49:51,306
The boycott of the organizations supporting the hungry
673
00:49:51,465 --> 00:49:54,008
for the sake of satisfaction of his own wishes
674
00:49:54,179 --> 00:49:56,793
were the manifestations of absolute immorality –
675
00:49:56,911 --> 00:50:01,621
as was the participation of Vladimir, an atheist, in religious ceremonies.
676
00:50:02,992 --> 00:50:09,494
On August 20, 1893 at 2 p.m. the Ulyanovs left Samara.
677
00:50:09,972 --> 00:50:12,654
In his pocket, Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov had a letter
678
00:50:12,833 --> 00:50:16,672
from the Samara attorney Khardin to an attorney from Petersburg
679
00:50:16,856 --> 00:50:20,464
Mikhail Filippovitch Volkenstein,
680
00:50:20,653 --> 00:50:23,668
in which Khardin gave a recommendation for Ulyanov
681
00:50:23,846 --> 00:50:26,114
as of a smart and energetic lawyer.
682
00:50:26,340 --> 00:50:29,444
A new period was about to start in the life of 23-year old Vladimir –
683
00:50:29,583 --> 00:50:31,782
the Petersburg Period.
65242
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