ABSTRACT
Lenin is usually described as the third child. This is not accurate, for after Anna and Alexander, there was a baby girl, Olga, who must have been born defective or sick. Almost immediately after her birth it was believed that she would not live long, and she died after a few months, late in 1868. The mother was heartbroken. But Ilya had additional troubles. He lacked energy and felt tired: at thirty-six or thirty-seven, his brain no longer ‘was supplied with blood’, and his teachings had become dull. 1 He sent his wife and the two children to visit his family in Astrakhan, and in their absence he recovered. When Maria returned to Nizhni-Novgorod, the two ‘found each other in a real sense’. Ilya was appointed inspector of public schools at Simbirsk (1869) and on April 22, 1870, Maria gave birth to her fourth child, a boy, who in the orthodox and tsarist tradition was christened Vladimir – literally translated: ‘Rule the world.’
