Where did Vladimir Lenin grow up and live?

📍Simbirsk, Ulyanovsk, Russia

1870 – 1924

“I was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on the 22nd of April 1870 in Simbirsk — now Ulyanovsk — on the Volga River, the son of a school inspector who had been elevated to the nobility. My brother Alexander was hanged in 1887 for plotting to assassinate the Tsar, and his execution determined the direction of my life. I became a revolutionary, was exiled to Siberia, lived in Western European exile for years, and returned to Russia in April 1917 in the sealed train that the Germans provided, hoping I would destabilise the Russian war effort. I led the Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 and governed Soviet Russia until the strokes that ended my effective leadership in 1922. Simbirsk and the memory of Alexander were always present.”

👍 LovedThe Volga River and the Simbirsk landscape. The intellectual clarity of Marxist analysis applied to Russian conditions. The October Revolution as the hinge of the twentieth century.

👎 DislikedAlexander's execution and the grief that drove everything. The Red Terror and the violence of the revolutionary period. The strokes that came before I could complete what I had started.

Map showing where Vladimir Lenin lived — Simbirsk, Ulyanovsk, Russia

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Vladimir Lenin's home at Simbirsk, Ulyanovsk, Russia

📍 Street view today

Sources: Service, R. Lenin: A Biography (2000), Macmillan; Volkogonov, D. Lenin: A New Biography (1994, translated Harold Shukman), Free Press