Lenin Early Writings

[Bolshevik 180]

Hello Comrades, Or something like that.

I have a question.

Typing in 'Works of Vladimir Lenin' on Google will get you a nice collection of about 40 or so volumes. Pretty impressive.

However they start in the late 1890s, now, if i'm correct Lenin would be in his 20s at this point.

I find it hard to believe that someone who achieved as academically well as Lenin didn't write anything BEFORE this period.

If this exists, is there a place to find it?

Thank you,

Also, I understand the whole revenue situation but there is something very ironic about having adverts on an anti-capitalist website.

[Noa Rodman]

They start in early 1890s, to be exact 1893; https://www.marxists.org/archive/len...date/index.htm
So are there writings from Lenin before age 23? Published apparently not. Letters, small documents or pamphlets were problaly not saved. As far as university, a dissertation to become lawyer seems not required.

[Ismail]

"In 1894 the first great work of Lenin was illegally circulated in Russia. It was printed on a hectograph and entitled What the 'Friends of the People' Are, and How They Fight Against the Social-Democrats.... [but] was able to achieve only a very limited circulation. Only two of its parts are extant, the first and the third. The second part has not yet been recovered." (Popov, Outline History of the CPSU Vol. I, 1934, pp. 38-39.)

Some other writings of Lenin were simply lost or destroyed by the Okhrana, in both cases thanks to the small amount of copies made.

According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia:

He became acquainted with Marxist literature through his elder brother. Upon graduating from the Gymnasium with the gold medal, Lenin entered the University of Kazan, but in December 1887 he was arrested, expelled from the university, and banished to the village of Kokushkino in Kazan Province for taking an active part in a revolutionary student gathering. From that time Lenin devoted his entire life to the struggle against autocracy and capitalism and to the emancipation of the working people from oppression and exploitation. In October 1888 he returned to Kazan and joined one of the Marxist circles organized by N. E. Fedoseev, in which the works of Marx, Engels, and Plekhanov were studied and discussed. The writings of Marx and Engels played a decisive role in shaping his world view, and he became a confirmed Marxist.

After independent study, Lenin passed the law examinations at the University of St. Petersburg in 1891 and began to practice law as an assistant attorney in Samara Province, where the Ul’ianov family had moved in 1889. Here he organized a Marxist circle, made contact with revolutionary youth in other cities of the Volga Region, and presented papers opposing the Narodnik (Populist) movement. Lenin’s earliest surviving work, the article “New Economic Developments in Peasant Life,” dates from the Samara period.

You can find Lenin's Collected Works in PDF format here: http://marx2mao.com/Lenin/Index.html

On a semi-related note, Kim Il Sung's first volume of Complete Works begins in 1926, when he was fourteen years old and was said to have gotten a bunch of students at school together to establish a communist group, so from that and from numerous badly-done YouTube videos I think it's safe to say you're never too young to be like "MARXISM YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."