Anna Ilyinichna Yelizarova-Ulyanova (; – 19 October 1935) was a Russian revolutionary and a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

politician. The older sister of

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

and of

Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova (; – 12 June 1937) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, politician, and the younger sister of Vladimir Lenin and Anna Ulyanova. Biography Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova was born on 6 February 1878 in Simbirsk and ...

, she married Mark Yelizarov (1863–1919), who became

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

's first People's Commissar for Transport (in office, 1917–1918).

Biography

Anna Ulyanova was the first child of Maria Alexandrovna Blank and Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov. In the trial of her brother Alexander Ulyanov (for the planned assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III in March 1887) she was sentenced to five years in exile. She organized Lenin's contacts from prison with the Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, supplied him with literature and copied the party documents he had secretly written in prison. In 1898 she joined the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

. She arranged for the publication of Lenin's first work The Development of Capitalism in Russia and other works. In 1909, she organized the publication of Lenin's book '' Materialism and Empirio-Criticism.'' From 1913, she worked on the ''Pravda'' editorial board. In 1917, she was actively involved in the preparation and implementation of the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

as editorial secretary of ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' and editor of the journal ''Tkach''. After the revolution, she held senior positions in the People's Commissariat for Social Affairs and the People's Commissariat for Education. Ulyanova was one of the founders of the Commission for the Collection and Study of Materials on the History of the October Revolution and the Communist Party ( Istpart Commission) and the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, and served as editorial secretary of the journal ''Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya''. In 2011 the

State Historical Museum The State Historical Museum () of Russia is a museum of History of Russia, Russian history located between Red Square and Manezhnaya Square, Moscow, Manege Square in Moscow. The museum's exhibitions range from relics of prehistoric tribes that li ...

in Moscow put on display a 1932 letter from Anna to

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

, in which she reveals that Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jewish native of

Zhitomir Zhytomyr ( ; see #Names, below for other names) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the Capital city, administrative center of Zhytomyr Oblast (Oblast, province), as well as the administrative center of the surrounding ...

who converted in order to leave the

Pale of Settlement The Pale of Settlement was a western region of the Russian Empire with varying borders that existed from 1791 to 1917 (''de facto'' until 1915) in which permanent settlement by Jews was allowed and beyond which the creation of new Jewish settlem ...

. She asked Stalin to make this publicly known in order to counter increasing

anti-Semitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

in the Soviet Union at the time, but he refused and told her to keep the matter secret. Anna Ulyanova died on October 19, 1935 in Moscow. She was buried at the Literatorskie Mostki of the Volkovskoye Cemetery in Leningrad, next to her mother, husband and middle sister Olga.

References

External links

*''

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; , ''BSE'') is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Great Russian Enc ...

''
Entry on Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova

English translation
of

article 1864 births 1935 deaths Politicians from Nizhny Novgorod People from Nizhegorodsky Uyezd Family of Vladimir Lenin Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Old Bolsheviks Untitled nobility from the Russian Empire {{Russia-bio-stub