Was Vladimir real? Well the answer is yes!
But don't get the wrong idea! The REAL Vladimir in Anastasia's life was not a jolly, fat, cheerful man!
Oh no no no no! The real Vladimir in Anastasia's life was the one in charge of sending the Boshevik soldiers
to kill the Romanovs.
His name was Vladimir Ilich Lenin. He was born in Simbirsk, the son of a successful government official.
He wasn't the only one in his family that killed or tried to kill a Russian Czar. His older brother was
arrested and hanged for plotting to assassinate Czar Alexander III. In St. Petersburg, Lenin joined the
growing Marxist circle, and in 1895 he helped create the St. Petersburg Union for the Struggle for the
Emancipation of the Working Class. Police soon arrested the leaders of this organization. After 15 months
in jail, along with another union member, Nadezhda Krupskaya-soon to become his wife-Lenin went into Siberian
exile until 1900. Vladimir Lenin gained political stature through his writings and then as head of the
Bolshevik party. Then at the end of his first period in Siberia, Lenin went abroad where he remained until
1917. He led the 1917 Bolshevik takeover of the provisional government, which had governed Russia since
the fall of czarist rule a few months earlier. After becoming dictator, Lenin set a slow course toward
socialism, waiting until domestic and foreign conflicts were resolved before initiating most of his revolutionary
economic policies. In this wav below, Lenin ends a speech which was recorded on a gramophone in 1919: