Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov had in spades the ingredients necessary of a firebrand revolutionary: he could debate politics and philosophy deep into the night, and had the rhetorical power to convince everyone debating that he was right. He grew up in tumultuous decades in Russia: his brother was executed for allegedly plotting against the tzar, and Ulyanov himself was first expelled from his university for participating in radical student movements and then exiled completely to Siberia, along with his fellow radicals from the Union for the Liberation of the Working Class. Undaunted, he just continued his political agitations from exile.

On this day, April 16, in 1917, Vladimir “Lenin” – the nom de guerre he took on during exile – triumphantly returned to Petrograd, the nation’s capitol. His party won out; the tzar was deposed and in the monarchy’s place the union of people’s workers and peasants would govern.

The revolution that precipitated the Russian revolution and brought Lenin back was caused by the deprivations of WW I. Russian forces suffered stinging defeats on the western front, and civilians faced shortages of all staple foods. Lenin called for withdrawal from the war at all costs, and Germany was only too happy to allow him to return home if that would speed up Russia’s exit.