Russian Museum Showcases Lenin’s Secret
Vladimir Lenin was born into a Jewish family from Ukraine, a fact that was hidden from the public once it became known to his successor, Josef Stalin.
September 29, 2017
It was a secret Stalin wanted kept secret: Vladimir Lenin’s maternal grandmother was a Ukrainian Jew. Now a Russian museum is showcasing the letter to prove it.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Documents apparently confirming rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish ancestors can now be seen at Russia’s State History Museum, AP reported on Monday.
Among the newly released documents on display at the museum is a letter written by Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova, claiming that their maternal grandfather was a Jew from the Ukraine who converted to Christianity to escape persecution in the Pale of Settlement and have access to higher education, the report said.
“He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of [the western Ukrainian city of] Zhitomir,” Ulyanova wrote in 1932 in a letter cited by AP.
In the letter written to Josef Stalin, who replaced Lenin after his death in 1924, Ulyanova wrote, “Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly. I am very sorry that the fact of our origin – which I had suspected before – was not known during his lifetime.”
Lenin was born with the surname Ulyanov, but changed it while in exile in Siberia. Stalin, on the other hand, pushed anti-Semitic purges and created his own plan to relocate Jews within the Soviet Union once he came to power.
The report states Stalin told his predecessor’s sister to “keep absolute silence” about his ancestry.