You will never have heard of Lenin’s descendants… That’s because he didn’t have any. But he came from a big family!
The leader of the proletariat had three sisters - Anna, Olga and Maria - and two brothers - Alexander and Dmitry. Another sister called Olga and a brother, Nikolai, died in infancy.
His elder brother Alexander was hanged for an attempt on the life of Emperor Alexander III. He was only 21 and he smoldered with revolutionary ideas.
Four years after his death, 19-year-old Olga died of typhoid fever. She had just completed a medical course and her dream was to become a doctor.
Lenin was outlived by Anna, Dmitry and Maria. They were all revolutionaries and became Soviet party activists. Anna had also been an accessory to the failed attempt on the life of the emperor, for which she was sentenced to five years’ exile. Having eventually toppled the tsar alongside her brother, she ended her days at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute as its founder and one of its research workers.
The youngest, Maria (affectionately known in the family as Manyasha), was arrested four times for revolutionary activity. After the Revolution, Manyasha became a member of the Communist Party’s Central Control Commission. She died in 1937.
Their brother Dmitry was a professor at the Communist University. He used Lenin’s residence in Gorki as a dacha and it was there that he died in 1943. Dmitry was the only one of the Ulyanovs who had children - a son and daughter. There are living descendants of his to this day. However, they have never considered a career in politics.
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