Lenin—at this time Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov—has immersed himself in the radical writings of Marx and Chernyshevsky and continued his education.

His father had died in January 1886, when Lenin was fifteen, of a brain hemorrhage.

His subsequent behavior became erratic and confrontational and he renounced his belief in God.

Shortly afterward his older brother Aleksandr had been arrested in St. Petersburg for plotting against the tsar, convicted, and hanged in May 1887.