Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov (; – ) was a Russian revolutionary and political activist who was executed for planning an assassination against Alexander III of Russia. He was the elder brother of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union; his execution pushed his younger brother into activism.
Early life
thumb|left|200px|The Ulyanov family, 1879 (Aleksandr standing in the middle, Vladimir sitting to the right).
Ulyanov was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the second child and eldest son of schoolteachers Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova. He was often referred to as Sasha, a common diminutive form of the name Aleksandr. Through his father, Ulyanov was a member of the Russian nobility. Aleksandr and his brother Vladimir lived together, cohabitating their own separate wing of the Ulyanov home for some time; whenever their numerous cousins visited, the Ulyanov brothers greeted by saying, "Honour us with your absence."
Ulyanov, who served as both the main ideologist of the group as well as the bomb-maker, was later arrested. In court, Ulyanov gave a political speech. The conspirators were initially sentenced to death; all but five were then pardoned by Alexander III. Ulyanov was not among those pardoned. On 8 May, he and his four comrades – Pakhomy Andreyushkin, Vasily Generalov, Vasili Osipanov, and Petr Shevyrev – were hanged at Shlisselburg.
Influence on Lenin
Aleksandr's execution drove his younger brother Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (later known as Vladimir Lenin) into fervent political activity. Before Aleksandr's arrest, Lenin and the family had not known of Aleksander's activism and were comfortably middle class and essentially apolitical, holding no strong feelings for or against the Russian monarchy. Historian James D. White reported that Lenin's introduction to radical politics came only after Aleksandr's death in an attempt to understand the events: "The actions of Lenin and Olga in the period following Sasha’s [Aleksandr's nickname] execution suggest that they had resolved that their brother’s death would not be in vain and that they would serve the cause for which he had sacrificed himself – just as soon as they could discover what that cause had been."
Later in life, Lenin recalled thinking, "No, my brother won't make a revolutionary, I thought at the time. A revolutionary can't give so much time to the study of worms." Lenin also remembered how his family were shunned by liberal circles in Simbirsk following his brother's arrest. Vladimir acknowledged that his brother's death set himself on the revolutionary path, determined to succeed where Aleksandr failed, stating that, "the trail has been blazed for me by my older brother."
In 2010, Philip Pomper published the book Lenin's Brother: The Origins of the October Revolution, wherein he argued that it is impossible to understand Vladimir Lenin's evolution as a revolutionary and Bolshevik leader without comprehending the relationship between Lenin and Aleksandr.