LENIN - Biography "As a child, Lenin was of a livdy temperament and already showed promise of talent. At five years of age he was already able to read. On reaching the age of nine, he entered the first form at the Simbirsk High School. Thanks to his exceptional abilities and diligence in his studies he made excellent progress, and passed from form to form with the highest honours. ................ All the efforts of Maria Alexandrovna to save the life of her eldest son proved fruitless. He was executed in the Schliisselburg Fortress on May 3 1887. As soon as the news of Alexander Ulyanovs arrest reached Simbirsk Liberal society in that town began to shun the Ulyanov family. Even dose acquaintances ceased to visit them. This evidence of widespread cowardice made a deep impression upon young Lenin it taught Hm what the highflown chatter of the Liberals was real y worth. The dealt of his brother was an important factor in deciding Lenin to take the path of revolution. But much as he admired his brothers heroism he already at that time, considered that terrorist methods of fighting the autocracy were mistaken and that the goal could not be reached that way. When he first learned that Alexander belonged to a terrorist organization, he said : No, we shall not take this road. This is not the road to follow, Lenin graduated from the High School, winning the highest prize, the Gold Medal. On August 13, 1887 he entered the Kazan University to study law. In Kazan, Lenin soon established contact with revolutionaries and joined a students5 circle of an extremely pernicious trend, as the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, described it. In student circles, Lenin was an out standing figure. He was revolutionary minded, energetic, wellread and expounded his views with great force and conviction. While at the University he was kept under special surveillance by the Gendarmerie and the Univer sity authorities. The tsarist government tried to fill the University Chairs only with reactionary professors, and all student organizations were severely persecuted, The students were kept under strict surveillance all student circles and societies, even mutual aid societies, were suspected of pursuing subversive objects. Students who gave utterance to opinions of an oppositiona character were kept for varying terms in solitary confinement in the punish ment cells at the University. This police persecution evoked sharp protests. The immediate cause of the student unrest in 1887 was the enforcement of the socalled University Regulations of 1884, At the end of November, 1887, disorders broke out in the Moscow University and quickly spread to the universities in the provinces. On December 4 1887 disorders broke out at the Kazan University. Lenin took a most active part in the conferences at which preparations for the demonstrations were made and also in the actual demonstrations. The tsarist authorities at once resorted to a series of reprisals. That very night Lenin was arrested at Ms lodgings, as were a number of other active members and organizers of the revolutionary student movement. Lenin spent his childhood and youth on the Volga, in the Simbirsk, Kazan and Samara Gubenms. These were typical peasant gabemias which, afforded him opportunities of observing peasant life the poverty and ignorance the irrtpmap, slavery and brutal exploitation that prevailed in rural districts."