Nicholas I of RussiaNicholas I ( – ) was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland. He was the third son of Paul I and younger brother of his predecessor, Alexander I. Nicholas's reign began with the failed Decembrist revolt. He is mainly remembered in history as a reactionary whose controversial reign was marked by geographical expansion, centralisation of administrative policies and repression of dissent. Nicholas had a happy marriage that produced a large family; all of their seven children survived childhood.
Russian Revolution of 1905The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, began on 22 January 1905. A wave of mass political and social unrest then began to spread across the vast areas of the Russian Empire. The unrest was directed primarily against the Tsar, the nobility, and the ruling class. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. In response to the public pressure, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to go back on his earlier authoritarian stance and enact some reform (issued in the October Manifesto).
Vladimir Lenin'Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin', was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary, politician and political theorist who served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party over the course of the Russian Civil War. Ideologically a Marxist, his development of the ideology is known as Leninism.
