Iskra was a fortnightly political newspaper of Russian socialist emigrants established as the official organ of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until his death in 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.