Early Activism

After Lenin was kicked out of school he was soon exiled to live in Siberia at his grandfather’s estate.  While exiled he began reading a lot of radical material, concentrating mostly on that of Karl Marx.  This later led him to declare himself as a Marxist in 1889 (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).

After returning from exile, Lenin finished his law degree.  His main client base consisted of peasants.  As he saw his clients struggle, Lenin began to notice the unequal system happening in Russia, a system that treated the majority of the population as second class citizens.  This frustrated Lenin very much and increased his desire to change that system.  In left his job in the mid 1890’s and began to do more political research.  Lenin met with like-minded Marxists and took an active role in their activities (Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 1998).

The Russian leaders soon figured out and arrested Lenin and several others.  This time he was exiled for 3 years to Siberia.  He was joined by Nadezhda Krupskaya, who would become his future wife.  Both of them began to formulate ideas to begin a revolution against the government.  After exile, he lived in Munich for a period of time and started a newspaper called, Iskra, “Spark”.  He soon returned to Russia and increased his leadership in the revolutionary movement (Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, 2014).