One hundred years ago this month, a train pulled by locomotive No. 293 arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd (St. Petersburg). Though it was late at night, a large crowd waited waving red flags and flowers. Within a sealed railcar was a passenger who would soon become dictator of the world’s first Marxist state: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin.
The Daily Beast: 100 years of communism’s bloody legacy
Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov (1870-1924) better known as Lenin (top L) addresses 19 July 1920 at Uritsky Square in Petrograd the members of the second congress of the Third International (Comintern). Following the February 1917 Revolution, Lenin returned to the city in October 1917 and urged the immediate seizure of political power by the proletariat under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets". Than he led Revolution and became the head of the first Soviet government.
