Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova was a Russian noblewoman, polyglot, and the sister of Vladimir Lenin. She was born into a wealthy family of middle-class status but, in 1882, the family were elevated into the hereditary nobility. Ulyanova excelled in academics and planned to become a teacher, but was denied the position due to her brother Aleksandr Ulyanov's criminal offenses as a revolutionary. She was later given a certificate of reliability that allowed her to enroll in the Bestuzhev Courses in St. Petersburg. She studied French, German, English, Swedish, Italian, and Latin at Bestuzhev, as well as mathematics, physics, and drawing. Ulyanova had hoped to practice medicine once completing her studies, but died after contracting typhoid fever just six months after arriving in St. Petersburg.

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.