Communist Party Figure, Author. She received recognition, as the wife of Russia's first Communist leader, Vladimir Lenin, for her support of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and what would become the Communist Party. The couple were married on July 22, 1898 in Siberia, while serving sentences related to rebellious political activities against the Russian Empire's government and the Royal family. Like her husband, she was a follower of Karl Marx, and the couple met at a political meeting in 1894. In October of 1896, she was arrested and in 1898 sentenced to three years in exile for political reasons. Eventually she would join Lenin in his Siberian exile, which was done with her mother's permission only "if they were married as soon as she arrived". She arrived ill with her mother in May prior to the July Orthodox ceremony. While in Siberia in 1899, she wrote her first publication, "The Woman Worker". Born into a noble but poor family, her father was a Russian military officer, who was charged with "un-Russian activities" and released from the military. After that, he had problems finding employment to support his family. Her mother was highly educated, and taught school as a widow. An excellent student, she followed in her mother's footsteps in teaching and attended the University of St. Petersburg until 1890. She supported Leon Trotsky's ideas on education. At one point, she led hundreds of factory workers in a strike for better wages. After her husband was released from his Siberian exile in 1900, she was released in 1901 and followed him to western Europe. By 1905 she was an active member of what would become the Communist Party. After being released from their Siberian exile, the couple traveled to Munich, London, Paris, and Poland before returning to Russia. She taught school while they were in France. After Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War, they were part of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905 but soon left as the police was after them. In 1915 she published a book on education. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and her husband coming to power, she was appointed the People's Commissioner of Education in 1918. The same year, her husband received two gunshot wounds to his neck from an assassin's gun. In 1921 her husband had surgery to remove a lodged bullet from his neck, which followed with a stroke with paralysis. After her husband's second stroke in December of 1922, she received verbal abuse from her husband's ambitious political colleague Joseph Stalin according to her own publication. On March 10, 1923, another stroke made her husband aphasic and ending his political career. After her husband died from another stroke in January of 1924, Stalin outmaneuvered his rivals for control of the party. She continued to serve the Communist Party, becoming a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1924. In October of 1925, she signed a manifesto against Stalin's agricultural policy. By 1929 Stalin was dictator of the Soviet Union. In the midst of the secret police terror known as Stalin's Great Purge, she voted in favor of expelling members of the Communist Party, which eventually led to their executions, yet at other times pleaded in vain in an attempt to stop other executions. With millions of people kill or sent to work camp, she had lost any political influence that she once had when her husband was alive. She was pressured to follow Stalin's agenda. In 1931 she became a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Being chronically ill, she was diagnosed in 1903 with Graves' Disease, which is the overproduction of the thyroid hormones or hyperthyroidism. The condition causes a host of symptoms including bulging of the eyes, lumpy reddish thickening of the skin about the feet, and irregular menses, which may be the reason she had no children.In 1925 she developed a heart condition. She wrote her husband's memoirs, "Reminiscences of Lenin," which was published in 1934. The text has been translated to English. She also published her eleven-volume on education, "Pedagogical Works" from 1957 to 1963. She never visited the Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square. After her death, Stalin was one of the pallbearers at her funeral. An urn with her ashes was placed inside the Kremlin wall.