Vladimir lenin vs vladimir putin biography

Lenin and Putin, depicted as traditional painted matryoshka dolls, are forever linked in the nation's history

(Image credit: Sergey Nikolaev/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The centenary of Vladimir Lenin's death on Sunday is expected to be met with silence from the current occupant of the Kremlin.

Russian president Vladimir Putin "cares about history", said Ishaan Tharoor in the The Washington Post.

He has "spent a great chunk of his time in power self-consciously cloaking his rule in the mantle of far earlier Russian eminences", linking his invasion of Ukraine to campaigns waged there by empire-building czar Peter the Great more than 300 years ago. 

But Putin's views on Lenin, the Bolshevik leader and founding father of Soviet Russia, are complicated and contradictory.

Putin "loathes Lenin and Trotsky" as the architects of the 1917 revolution and Soviet Russia, said historian Michael Burleigh on the i news site.