Why did Vladimir ilych change his name to Lenin?

Answer 1

Vladimir Illych Ulyanov changed his name to Vladimir Lenin because he was a wanted man. The secret police were try to capture him so they could arrest him, and he hoped changing his name would help him escape.

Answer 2

Because his last name caused him too much trouble. His brother Aleksandr was in an organization that wanted to assasinate the tzar called "the People's Will" and he was killed for it. Why Lenin I don't know for sure but that is my best bet.

It was probably derived from name of the River Lena which flows through Siberia. Lenin had been exiled to Siberia from 1897 to 1900. Lenin first used he name in 1901. See Orlando Figes, in his book, "A People's Tragedy-A History of the Russian Revolution", copyright Orlando Figes, 1996, published by Viking Penguin in 1997, footnote at page 142.

Answer 3

In Russian the word Stalin means "Man of Steel". He did it to improve his image.

In addition, his true last name, Dzhughashvili, identified him as a Georgian rather than as a Russian. In order to make himself more acceptable to the Russians in the Bolshevik Party, he adopted the name Stalin because it made him sound more Russian than he really was. The people of Russia probably would not have liked having a Georgian ruling their country.

Answer 4

Trotsky had two reasons. One was that he was Jewish with his real name being Lev Davidovich Bronstein. He wanted to have a less Jewish sounding name because of the anti-semitism that existed. Another reason was that he wanted to hide his true identity, because he was wanted by the government for his revolutionary activities.

Many of the high ranking Bolsheviks did this for the same two reasons. Lev Kamenev's real last name was Rozenfeld. Grigory Zinoviev had been born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky.

Answer 5

V.I Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in 1870.

Lenin changed his name for the same reason many other revolutionaries did at the time: to escape arrest by the Tsarist government they were trying to overthrow, by only using code names. The code names they used for each other were later adopted as their Soviet names. Two other notable Bosheviks were Josip Dshugashvili (Stalin = steel) and Lew Bronstein (Trotsky). Lenin may have adopted his code name from the Lena River.

Answer 6

Lenin adopted the name Lenin in 1901 after serving 3 years in exile in Siberia in a town on the River Lena. He took the name from the name of the river.