He was named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, at birth but he tried out a number of different names including “k. Tulin” and “Petrov” prior to settling on “Linen” by 1902. Historians believe that it may have been a reference to the Lena River in Siberia. Other russian revolutionaries likewise used different names to confuse the authorities. For example Joseph Stalin's birth name was Lsif Dzhugashvili, and Leon Trotsky’s was Lev Bronshtein. ("9 Things You May Not Know About Vladimir Lenin - History in the ....") …show more content…
He spent most of the next seventeen years there,moving from one place to another frequently. One of his first steps was to join the editorial board of Iskra (the spark), the central newspaper of Russian Marxism at the time. After parting from Iskra he edited a series of papers of his own and contributed to other journals promoting socialism. His journalistic activity was closely linked with efforts to organize revolutionary groups,partly because the illegal organizational network within Russia was partly based on the distribution of illegal