He was the father of revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who became a Bolshevik leader and founder of the Soviet Union, and Aleksandr Ulyanov, who was executed for his attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander III in 1886.

His father was Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanov (or Ulyanin; 1765–1838), a port-city tailor and a former serf of possible Chuvash, Mordvinian, Russian or Kalmyk descent, who came from Sergachsky District, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate.

In the 1850s and 1860s, he taught mathematics and physics at Penza Institute for the Dvoryane, and later at a gymnasium and a school for women in Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1882, Ulyanov was promoted to the rank of Active State Councillor, which gave him a privilege of hereditary nobility and accompanied by the award of the Order of Saint Vladimir, 3rd Class.

Others, such as Tony Cliff, dispute this image (arguing that this was a posthumous Stalinist attempt to improve the reputation of Lenin's family), saying in his biography of Lenin, 'Nikolaevich's standing in the Ministry of Education, and his steady rise up the hierarchical ladder, somehow do not fit the image of a revolutionary, or even a radical.