While supportive of maintaining Lenin's legacy, she told European press that it was a mistake to make him into an icon.

Olga Ulyanova was born in Moscow on 4 March 1922, the daughter of the Russian physician and revolutionary Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov and Antonia Ivanovna Neshcheretova.

Her grandfather, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was an educator who was promoted to the rank of Active State Councillor, thus granting the family the privilege of hereditary nobility.

[1] In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was discussion of moving Lenin's preserved body from his tomb on Red Square to Kremlin Wall Necropolis or Volkovo Cemetery.

[1] Ulyanova, a chemist and physicist, worked as professor of chemistry and physics at various Russian universities.