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returned to St. Petersburg and joined his future
antagonist Yuli
MARTOV
in founding the Union of
Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working
Class, a Marxist group that sought to organize
the capital's industrial workers. One of its early
members was Nadezhda
KRUPSKAYA
, later to
become his wife and lifelong partner. In 1897,
Lenin was arrested and sentenced to three years
of Siberian exile, and Krupskaya joined him a
year later. Freed from most distractions, he
wrote copiously and quickly produced his first
major study,
The Development of Capitalism in Rus-
sia
(1899), an attempt to study contemporary
Russian society from a Marxist perspective.
Released from exile, he settled in western
Europe and joined Georgi
PLEKHANOV
and Mar-
tov in editing the revolutionary socialist newspa-
per
Iskra
(
The Spark
). In his influential pamphlet
What Is to Be Done?
(1902), Lenin developed his
own views about the organization of an under-
ground revolutionary party, arguing for a small,
disciplined party of full-time professional revolu-
tionaries. This brought him into conflict with
Plekhanov and Martov, and eventually led to a
split in the Russian Social Democratic Party in
1903, between supporters of Lenin, known as
BOLSHEVIKS
(majority), and Martov, known as
Mensheviks (minority). After a brief return to
Russia on the occasion of the 1905 Revolution,
Lenin left again in 1907, moving frequently,
before settling in Switzerland in August 1914. For
the next few years, he spoke and wrote actively
against World War I and its support from many
moderate socialists. Another important work,
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
(1916),
argued that the war was a conflict between rival
imperialist powers and that only the overthrow
of capitalism could end it. He attended the two
Zimmerwald Conferences organized by antiwar
socialists, but by 1916 his hopes for revolution in
Russia were dwindling. He even wrote privately
that he feared he would not see revolution in his
lifetime.
After the abdication of
NICHOLAS II
in March
1917, Lenin returned to Russia thanks to the
mischievous efforts of the German government,
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, ca. 1920
(Library of Congress)
which provided a “sealed train” for the passage
of Lenin and his retinue through German soil in
the hopes that Lenin would create trouble for
the new Russian government. Back in Petrograd
(St. Petersburg), Lenin argued for an uncompro-
mising Bolshevik policy calling for the over-
throw of the Provisional Government, the
transfer of power to the Petrograd Soviet, and an
end to the war. Through the summer of 1917
the Bolshevik Party's fortunes rose, despite the
temporary setback of the failed insurrection of
the
JULY DAYS
that forced Lenin to flee to Finland.
From hiding, he insisted to his reluctant com-
rades on the need to overthrow the Provisional
Government, eventually overcoming their resis-
tance after his secret return to Petrograd in mid-
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