Why Vladimir Ulyanov called himself Lenin

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The most famous pseudonym of Vladimir Ulyanov was only one of one and a half hundred options. What is behind the famous surname?

The Bolsheviks needed nicknames for conspiracy. Using several nicknames at the same time was the norm for all occasions. Before the revolution, no one shone under real names - neither underground, nor in the press. Vladimir Ulyanov, the leader of the world proletariat, had 146 of them: 17 foreign and 129 Russians.

This is almost five times more than Joseph Stalin had. "Lenin" is the most famous of them, under which he most often signed his articles and works. True, why Ulyanov chose such a pseudonym for himself, he himself never told. So where did it come from? There are three most popular versions.

1. This is the name of the river and an internal party joke

Pseudonyms derived from the most common Russian names were the most popular in the revolutionary milieu. Therefore, the assumption that "Lenin" is formed from the female name Lena is considered the most probable. Only with the amendment that it is still in honor of the name of the river.

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Olga Ulyanova, Lenin's niece, recalled: “I have reason to believe,” my father wrote, “that this pseudonym comes from the name of the Lena River. Vladimir Ilyich did not take the pseudonym Volgin, since it was sufficiently worn out, in particular, it was used, as you know, by Plekhanov, as well as by other authors."

Probably, the pseudonym of Lenin is really a derivative of the Lena River, the researchers agree on this. But there is a version that Lenin chose him solely to "pin up" the Menshevik Georgy Plekhanov, who often used the name Volgin.

2. This is the surname from a fake passport of a deceased official

For the first time, with the nickname Lenin (more precisely - N. Lenin), a revolutionary signed in 1901 under his works in print. In fact, he became his author's pseudonym. This happened approximately at the moment when Lenin's friend handed him the passport of her father - Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin - with a changed date of birth. In 1900, Ulyanov needed to go abroad and needed fake documents.

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Historian Vladlen Loginov believes that having left with Lenin's passport, Ulyanov decided not to part with this surname. Who was this Lenin? The surname, along with the title of nobility, was granted in the 17th century to a certain Cossack, for merits in the conquest of Siberia and the creation of wintering on the Lena River. Nikolai Yegorovich Lenin - his descendant, who rose to the rank of state councilor, retired and settled in the Yaroslavl province.

Confuses only one thing: the same Nikolai Lenin died in 1902, a year later than Ulyanov first used this pseudonym.

3. Lenin was a fan of Leo Tolstoy

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In Leo Tolstoy's story "The Cossacks", a hero named Olenin is sent into exile in the Caucasus and is imbued with a love of life far from civilization. Lenin loved Tolstoy's work, Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya recalled that on the way to Siberian exile Lenin read this very story. It was 1898. Tolstoy, according to Lenin, was a "mirror of the Russian revolution," and according to the writer and historian Alexei Golenkov, it is likely that the hero's surname became the prototype of the famous pseudonym.