Editing Vladimir Lenin (section)

===Failed assassinations===
Lenin survived two serious assassination attempts. The first occasion was on 14 January 1918 in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrograd Petrograd], when assassins ambushed Lenin in his automobile after a speech. He and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Platten Fritz Platten] were in the back seat when assassins began shooting, and "Platten grabbed Lenin by the head and pushed him down... Platten's hand was covered in blood, having been grazed by a bullet as he was shielding Lenin".

The second event was on 30 August 1918, when the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Revolutionary_Party Socialist Revolutionary] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanya_Kaplan Fanya Kaplan] approached Lenin at his automobile after a speech; he was resting a foot on the running board as he spoke with a woman. Kaplan called to Lenin, and when he turned to face her she shot at him three times. The first bullet struck his arm, the second bullet his jaw and neck, and the third missed him, wounding the woman with whom he was speaking; the wounds felled him and he became unconscious.<span style="font-size:11px;line-height:0px;"> </span>Fearing in-hospital assassins, Lenin was brought to his [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlin Kremlin] apartment; physicians decided against removing the bullets lest the surgery endanger his recovery, which proved to be slow.

''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda Pravda]'' publicly ridiculed Fanya Kaplan as a failed assassin, a latter-day [[Charlotte Corday]] (the murderess of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat Jean-Paul Marat]) who could not derail the Russian Revolution, reassuring readers that, immediately after surviving the assassination: "Lenin, shot through twice, with pierced lungs spilling blood, refuses help and goes on his own. The next morning, still threatened with death, he reads papers, listens, learns, and observes to see that the engine of the locomotive that carries us towards global revolution has not stopped working..."; despite unharmed lungs, the neck wound did spill blood into a lung.

Historian [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pipes Richard Pipes] reports that "the impression one gains ... is that the Bolsheviks deliberately underplayed the event to convince the public that, whatever happened to Lenin, they were firmly in control". Moreover, in a letter to his wife (7 September 1918), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Krasin Leonid Borisovich Krasin], a Tsarist and Soviet régime diplomat, describes the public atmosphere and social response to the failed assassination attempt on 30 August and to Lenin's survival:
As it happens, the attempt to kill Lenin has made him much more popular than he was. One hears a great many people, who are far from having any sympathy with the Bolsheviks, saying that it would be an absolute disaster if Lenin had succumbed to his wounds, as it was first thought he would. And they are quite right, for, in the midst of all this chaos and confusion, he is the backbone of the new body politic, the main support on which everything rests.