Even his habits and tastes are of bourgeois and not proletarian origin. He
is an Intellectual of the Intellectuals and has never had the slightest
proletarian experience. As a youth still in his teens he entered the
University of St. Petersburg, but his stay there was exceedingly brief,
owing to a tragedy which greatly embittered his life and gave it its
direction. An older brother, who was also a student in the university, was
condemned to death, in a secret trial, for complicity in a terrorist plot
to assassinate Alexander III. Shortly afterward he was put to death. Lenine
himself was arrested at the same time as his brother, but released for lack
of evidence connecting him with the affair. It is said, however, that the
arrest caused his expulsion from the university. Lenine was not the only
young man to be profoundly impressed by the execution of the youthful
Alexander Ulyanov; another student, destined to play an important role in
the great tragedy of revolutionary Russia, was stirred to bitter hatred of
the system. That young student was Alexander Kerensky, whose father and the
father of the Ulyanovs were close friends.
Lenine's activities brought him into conflict with the authorities several
times and forced him to spend a good deal of time in exile.
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