==Early Life==
Lenin was born on April 22, 1870 (later to be celebrated as Earth Day) to a middle class Russian family; his parents were school teachers. In 1889, he became a [[Marxist]] after his older brother was hanged for the murder of Tsar Aleksandr II. Lenin obtained a law degree shortly afterwards, and by 1895 was a [[subversion (political)|subversive]] who was arrested and sent to a prison in [[Siberia]] as punishment. He was in exile 1900-1917. He collaborated with Georgy Plekhanov and others to set up the clandestine newspaper ''Iskra'' (The Spark), designed to "ignite" radical consciousness. In the pages of ''Iskra'', Lenin denounced any alliance with liberals or other elements of the bourgeoisie because they would keep power in the hands of the middle class. He emphasized social democracy--equality of condition, rather than political democracy, as the basis for individual freedom. His major theoretical publication was the pamphlet "What Is to Be Done?" (1902). In 1903 he organized and controlled the '''"Bolshevik"''' wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labor party, fighting the opposition "Mensheviks." Lenin, like his populist predecessors in the Russian radical movement, stressed the need for a small elite vanguard to lead the revolution
Despite disapproval of the Mensheviks, Lenin's followers continued to raise money through a mixture of bank robberies, kidnapping, extortion, terrorism, and murder. Unlike the leaders of other Marxist organizations, Lenin did not spent the money on his own lifestyle and carefully strengthened his movement.