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Vladimir Lenin
(1870 - 1924)
In his 1902 essay “What Is to Be Done?” Vladimir Lenin rejected the assumption that workers would inevitably come to revolutionary socialism, proposing a political party that was the “vanguard of the proletariat.” The following year, he founded the Bolsheviks. After his November 1917 seizure of power, Lenin at the age of forty-seven confessed, “It makes one’s head spin.” His tomb is now a tourist attraction in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.