Vladimir Lenin

Russian revolutionary leader of the communist movement and the founder of the Soviet Union, a Marxist revolutionary shaped into his radical political views by living under the Tsarist government in Russia. A fanatical believer in the doctrine of Karl Marx, he spread it throughout Russia and tried to put it into practice as an international revolutionary leader. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism.