Lenin did not set out to change the world, but when the world around him changed, he became a catalyst for change. He had a protected childhood and seemed unconcerned with the world until a month before his 17th birthday in March 1887 when Alexander, his elder brother who was a Zoology student, was arrested for involvement in a plot to bomb Czar Alexander III. Alexander Ulyanov was hanged two months later.
Lenin tried to move on a few months later by securing admission to read law at the Kazan University, but was expelled within months for participating in a students’ protest. He could not get a new admission and had to study as an external candidate at St.
Petersburg University, graduating in 1891. But he remained on the radar screen of the Czarist monarchy and tried to evade arrest by using aliases like Petrov and K. Tulin. Three years later, he was sent to prison for one year and then moved to Siberia where he was released in 1900. He then adopted the alias Lenin, after the Lena River in Siberia.
