In the room of Vladimir Ulyanov’s elder brother, Alexander, on the table lies Karl Marx’s ‘Capital’, the first volume of the first book, ‘The Process of Production of Capital’, printed in Russian in St. Petersburg in 1872.

Alexander Ulyanov was a serious authority to his younger brother Volodya and greatly influenced the formation of his views. The older Volodya grew, the more consciously he sought to emulate his elder brother and adopted his revolutionary and democratic ideas.

As a student in the natural sciences department of St. Petersburg University, he was introduced to the works of German philosopher, sociologist, and economist Karl Marx, and began to read his major work, ‘Capital. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.’ In the summer of 1885, Alexander came to Simbirsk on vacation, brought with him a German edition of ‘Capital’ and gave it to his 15-year-old brother. The book, written in German, was difficult, and Vladimir read the entire first volume of ‘Capital’ only in his first exile, which he served in the village of Kokushkino, Kazan province, at the estate of his grandfather, Alexander Blank.

Anna Ulianova-Elizarova recalled,

“Capital” consists of four parts; only the first one was printed during the author’s lifetime. Marx worked on the book from 1850 until he died in 1883. Marx’s friend and comrade-in-arms Friedrich Engels published the second and third books: in 1885, “The Process of Circulation of Capital, ” and in 1894, “The Process of Capitalist Production Taken as a Whole”. Karl Kautsky published the fourth part, “The Theory of Surplus Value, ” in 1905-1910.

In his work, Marx defined the surplus-value of the product, showed how labor differs from manpower, developed the theory of wages, and described various forms of economic exploitation. These ideas, as well as his critique of capitalism, became an important part of Marxism, a philosophical, political, and economic doctrine.