BOOK OF THE DAY: Lenin's BrotherBy Philip Pomper W.W. Norton, 288pp, £17.99
WHAT TURNS a gentle, bookish young man into an assassin? The question has contemporary relevance. The bombs prepared by Alexander Ulyanov and his friends would have killed not only their target, Tsar Alexander III, but also many innocent bystanders. Using their knowledge as science students they prepared dynamite, lead bullets treated with strychnine, and various other devices. The date chosen, March 1st, 1887, was the anniversary of the assassination of the previous tsar six years earlier, and their conspiracy has therefore been called “The Second March First”.
The plot was uncovered; Alexander (Sasha) Ulyanov and four of his comrades were hanged. The attempt might be forgotten but for the fact that his younger brother, Vladimir, then 17, went on to dedicate his life to revolution as the Bolshevik leader Lenin.
Pomper, whose The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsiais a standard text, has used his keen understanding of the ideological context to explore what led Sasha and his friends to the conclusion that, as Vladimir remarked on learning of the attempt by his revered older sibling: "he had to act that way – he couldn't act in any other way". This was not an act of mindless violence. Sasha was "one of the elite students of his generation", who might have enjoyed a brilliant scientific career. He was responding to circumstances and ideas that led him to the "inescapable" conclusion that he had to destroy the tsar and/or perish in the attempt.
Pomper traces Sasha’s childhood and youth in Simbirsk, a town on the Volga. His parents, Ilya Nicolaevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Blank, were educated and enlightened, of mixed ethnic backgrounds – the fact that Lenin had a Jewish grandfather was a well-kept secret in Soviet times. Of six surviving children, Anna, the eldest, was closest to Sasha, her memoirs providing invaluable insights into his character and motivation. The family was comfortably off and both parents were ambitious for their children. Sasha, the eldest boy, having duly graduated from Simbirsk gymnasium with a gold medal, went on to study biology in St Petersburg University. These were years of heavy repression, largely in response to the murder of Alexander II. While still at school, Sasha had been profoundly influenced by the revolutionary literature of his day, which preached the duty to dedicate oneself to the masses, if necessary through revolutionary violence. Conceiving how, precisely, the yearned-for social democratic system was to be achieved through terror generally required large doses of optimism. Tragically, it was high-mindedness that drew young men like Sasha to brutal and ultimately self-defeating acts of assassination.
His progression through student movements is traced, from the relatively innocent zemlyachestva– regional societies among students, to terrorist cells, although for most of his years in the capital he dedicated himself to his studies, only joining the revolutionary terrorists in the autumn of 1886. There were probably 20 people directly involved in the Terrorist Faction of the People's Will, all in their early 20s (one spent his 20th birthday in prison awaiting trial).
It is often suggested that the execution of his older brother provided the defining moment that pushed Lenin toward revolution. Indeed, Pomper presents Sasha’s fate as “the reason why Vladimir Ilyich became Lenin”. This seems an oversimplification, as does the subtitle of the book. It is fatuous to locate the origins of the October Revolution in one event. However, one might suggest that, as for the young Ulyanov, a combination of revolutionary ideas and impatience at the repressive nature of the regime was what ultimately led so many to a willingness to risk all in revolution.
Carla King is a lecturer in modern history at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, Dublin