718 Ch. 1 8 • The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism
New revolutionary groups, however, still believed the autocracy inca
pable of reforming itself and that only revolution could bring reform. The
populist Socialist Revolutionaries became the largest radical group, with
growing support among peasants, whom Socialist Revolutionaries, like
some of their optimistic predecessors, believed would one day overthrow
the tsar. In the meantime, national movements developed in Poland, Fin
land, Ukraine, and the Baltic region. In the distant Muslim reaches of the
empire, religion provided a new cohesiveness.
Marxists founded the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party in 1898.
They were confident that one day, though probably not in their lifetimes,
the Russian proletariat would be sufficiently numerous and class-conscious
to seize power. But this seizure of power could only occur, they believed,
after a democratic revolution had successfully overthrown the Russian
autocracy. Marxists claimed vindication for their view that peasants had no
true revolutionary potential when, despite the terrible suffering and deaths
of millions of peasants during the famine that followed the severe drought
and epidemics of 1891 — 1892, the countryside remained quiescent.
By 1900, the tsars police had succeeded in disbanding most of the revo
lutionary groups within the empire, deporting their leaders to join the
groups in exile, sending them to Siberia, or putting them in prison. Most
revolutionaries shared a belief that their country was far from revolution.
Lenin and the BolsheviksVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, was born in the Volga River town
of Simbirsk on April 22, 1870, more than 400 miles east of Moscow. His
father served as the director of primary schools for the province and, as a
result of loyal service, he obtained non-hereditary membership in the nobil
ity; Lenin’s mother, whose family had originally been German, was the
daughter of a doctor. Older brother Alexander, who joined the revolutionary
group “People’s Will,” was executed in 1887 for participation in a plot to
kill Tsar Alexander III. Lenin briefly attended university, but was expelled
for participating in a student demonstration. During the next six years,
Lenin read widely in history and philosophy, including the works of Marx
and Friedrich Engels, and received a degree in law from the University of
Saint Petersburg.
In 1895, Lenin went to Austria, France, and Switzerland, meeting Russ
ian political exiles and socialists from many countries. Back in Saint Peters
burg two years later, he was charged with organizing and writing articles in
a clandestine newspaper (Iskra, or Spark) and exiled to Siberia. When his
term of banishment ended in 1900, he moved to Switzerland. As a virtually
penniless exile, he bore his situation with good humor. Lenin’s few interests
outside of politics and revolution included chess, hunting, bicycling, and
mountain hiking. But he viewed most recreational activities—even, at times,
simple conversation—as interfering with revolutionary struggle. There was