WHO IS LENIN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12066, 23 July 1917, Page 4

WHO IS LENIN.

A REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN LEADER.

Cable messages received last, week mado further reference to the activities "of Lenin, the Russian extremist leader. An account of Lenin given in the " New York Times" recently says:

We hoar of Lenin travelling through Germany and receiving every .sort <>f courtesy and aid from the German authorities ; of Lenin haranguing; a crowd from thjjV balcony of the Petrograd homo of a famous Russian dancer, of adherents of Lenin driven from one of his lectures by an infuriated mob of Russians a.s a protest against* Ins peace, at-any-priee exhortations; of a. parade, of Russian soldiers, wounded in battle against the Germans, marching through the streets of Petrograd with banners bearing inscriptions advising " I/Miin and On." to discontinue their pro-Ger-man agitation and " get back to "William,'" their boss. All his life Leiun has been "agin' the. Government." Not only that-die comes of a lamity of ehroiiic rebels. One. brother, while, a student at Petrograd, in ISB7, was hanged for complicity in a plot to assassinate Czar Alexander 11.

The man who has now leaped into the limelight as the arch-troublemaker against the new democratic regime in Russia has been prominent among the Socialists of his native land si nop the early 'nineties, lie is described as a mail aboMt forty-live years old. one of the most fiery of all Russian orators, who chooses the simplest of words and phrases in his speeches. His real name is VTadimar Hitch Ulianoff, and lift hails from the district of Simbirisk. m the Volga, region of Russia- lie lirstcame to the fore in 1890, when be wrote a book on economics strongly impregnated with revolutionary doctrines. Thai g<»t him "in bad" right then and there with the Cza lists. From that vear onward he. began to spend a. good; deal of his time away Irom Russia. Lenin's second book appeared in 180!), and is by far the best known of, nil his works. U is entitled "The.Development of Capitalism m Russia, and placed its author in the ioreiro'.u; of the Russian Socialist Party Tn 1001 Lenin bobbed up as editor of the Socialistic newspaper " Lkar : ' (the "Spark "). Tt was published .in Pans, tho desire of the C/.ar's police to lay hands on Lenin having become so pressing as to render bis residence m M.Vsj,r impossible. This paper had a big circulation in Russia, m spite of tho fact that anvone found with a rop> in his possession was stmt to prison forthwitli. „.,n^;rlntir>' In 1905 M. Lenin became a candidat. for tho Second Duma, from the distr-c* of Petrograd, but he: was defeated. Ihins actife in the evolutionary movement, of that, .year, which h.ought Re Monday, and was the. most serious vwth which the Czar's regime. hn< been co - fronted for a long time. V. hrn the i - hols had been brought down Lenm nWin found foreign countries more healthful, and resided abroad crmtinu-ouslv-at least he did "oHlcinlly - ; until the, ovmts which have jus. brought him again into prominence. _ At"tho outbreak of tho war he was ill Cracow, capital of Austrian Poland, whero he was promptly gaoled as an nli'en enemv. But ho was soon released hv the Austrian authorities whereupon he returned to lus old lia.lin,S, Paris and Switzerland. " I am against him, said a £ew York Russian, "and so are most Russians here; but, T r.m convinced that he is doing what, he is doing not for the Germans, but for what ho thinks -are. tho interests of international Socialise. „ . ~.,-. "The bulk of the Russian Socialists are for the continuation cf the w.ar against Germany. Le:nin scornfully dubs these n*m "social patriots,' and declares that because they do not want peaco for the sake of the development cf international Socialism they are not mil Socialists «t all. " They iv.tort by calling him and his crowd 'Porajentzi '—the people who want defeat. And they heap accuse tions on Lenin of complicity with the Germans, and ask him searching questions as to how it happened that hej travelled across Germany by sepcial train, and was made much of tyy tjhe authorities there.

" His adherents explain tin's away by asserting that when he crossed Germany recently thero happened to bo a special train bearing Russian prisoners of war who had been exchanged for Germans held in Russia, and that Lenin was allowed to rido on the train purely as a. matter of courtesy.

" I think it safe to sa.y that if Lenin •were actually in the pay of the Germans, or really doing German propaganda, work, he would hava been arrested long ago."