France. Paris. Flea market on Sunday morning on Boulevard des Capucines. Various objects for sale. An old painting with Lenin. A double decker bus for tourists is riding on the road. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870- 1924) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years (1917-1924), as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a socialist economic system. As a politician, Lenin was a persuasive orator, as a political scientist his extensive theoretic and philosophical developments of Marxism produced Marxism Leninism, the pragmatic Russian application of Marxism. 10.07.2011 © 2011 Didier Ruef