Among dozens of newly released documents that went on display at Moscow's State History Museum last week is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education, according to the Associated Press. "He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin as leader of the Soviet Communist party after Lenin's death in 1924.
Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism, writing "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists. It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses." Exhibition curator Tatyana Koloskova said that Stalin ignored the plea and ordered Ulyanova to "keep absolute silence" about the letter.