Inessa surrounded by Lenin. Armand and Lenin: finest hour and death
Nadezhda Krupskaya was 25 years old when she met Lenin. Both were professional revolutionaries. After the failure of the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, all its participants ended up in prison and exile.
In 1898, having received three years of exile, Krupskaya wrote a petition to be sent closer to Ulyanov, who was in exile in Siberia, who sent her an offer to become his wife in prison. And Krupskaya replied: “Well, a wife, a wife.” The newlyweds got married in the distant Siberian village of Shushenskoye - one of the exiles made their wedding rings from a copper coin. It's hard to say whether they loved each other. Krupskaya wrote that the main thing for them was the opportunity to “talk heart to heart - about schools, the labor movement.” It is known that Vladimir Ilyich’s family was not happy with his choice of wife. In their minds, Nadezhda Konstantinovna was a boring old maid. Lenin's older sister, Anna, was especially irreconcilable. About twenty versts from Shushenskoye, the exiled revolutionary Viktor Konstantinovich Kurnatovsky lived and worked at a sugar factory, who, having met Krupskaya, immediately fell in love with her. Krupskaya, as they said, could not resist his beauty. Ilyich’s silent, thoughtful wife suddenly turned into a cheerful, witty woman. Anna, who believed that there is no smoke without fire, was eager to talk to her brother about Nadezhda’s ugly behavior. But he said: “This is not the time, Annushka, to engage in all sorts of gossip.”
Armand Lenin and Krupskaya met Inessa Fedorovna in 1909 in Paris, where they lived in exile. Gradually, acquaintance grew into sympathy, and sympathy into strong friendship.
The father of the future Russian revolutionary was the successful British opera singer Theodore Stefan, and her mother was the French actress Nathalie Wilde. This married couple, besides Inessa, had two more girls. Due to the early death of her father, in order not to be a burden to her large family, Inessa goes to her aunt in Moscow, who became a music teacher in the Armand family of merchants and textile manufacturers. On October 3, 1893, Inessa married the son of the owner, Alexander Armand. Married to him, Inessa gave birth to 4 children: two sons and two daughters. An ardent admirer of social democratic ideas and Tolstoyanism turned out to be an unfaithful wife. She fell in love with her brother-in-law Vladimir Armand. Her husband's brother was nine years younger than Inessa. Under the influence of her new husband, Inessa became close to the Moscow group of Socialist Revolutionaries. In 1904 she joined the RSDLP. For her active participation in the revolution of 1905-1907, the authorities sent her into exile to the north of Russia in Mezen, from where Armand in 1908 fled first to St. Petersburg, and then, with the help of the Socialist Revolutionaries, went to Switzerland on a false passport, where she died of tuberculosis in her arms second husband Vladimir.
Thus, by the time she met Lenin and Krupskaya, Inessa had five children from two short-lived marriages, a couple of lovers, ran an excellent household and at the same time remained the soul of any society.
As the relationship developed, Lenin experienced increasingly conflicting feelings towards Inessa. Armand was the complete opposite of Krupskaya. It would be difficult to find more dissimilar women. Feminists and revolutionaries avoided wearing makeup, jewelry, and perfume. Against the background of these blue stockings, Inessa Armand stood out “like a lawless comet” with her beauty and charm. Party comrades joked that Inessa should be included in textbooks on Marxism as an example of the unity of form and content. She worked at the party school of propagandists in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau, where she became the head teacher, conducted agitation among French workers, and translated the works of Lenin and publications of the Party Central Committee. In 1912, Inessa wrote a brochure “On the Women's Question,” in which she advocated freedom from marriage.
With Inessa, Lenin unexpectedly discovered a new world, full of passion and pleasure. French socialist Charles Rapoport said: “Lenin did not take his Mongolian eyes off this little French girl.” Lenin and Armand tried to spare Krupskaya’s feelings as much as possible and cause her as little pain as possible. The apogee of their relationship came in 1913 in Krakow. Lenin was then 43 years old, Inessa was 39 years old.
Krupskaya reported about Inessa’s stay in Krakow in 1913: “We, all Krakow residents, were terribly happy about her arrival... In the fall, we all became very close to Inessa. There was a lot of cheerfulness and ardor in her. Our whole life was filled with party concerns and affairs, more like student life than family life, and we were glad to see Inessa. She told me a lot about her children, showed them their letters, and her stories emanated some kind of warmth.”
Nadezhda Konstantinovna was an intelligent woman: she saw everything perfectly and understood everything. In particular, the fact that Vladimir Ilyich devotes much more time to Inessa than he did to her in the first years of marriage. He could talk with Inessa for hours, listen to her play music or read aloud, or simply, having escaped from everyone, wander through the Polish meadows, holding hands. As Kollontai testified, Lenin himself confessed everything to his wife. And Krupskaya suggested her husband to divorce. Moreover, sick, she helped Inessa look for an apartment where a new family could build a cozy nest. Indeed, it seemed that the relationship between Inessa and Ilyich was about to end with a wedding, when suddenly, without explaining anything to anyone, Armand hastily left Krakow. According to Nadezhda Konstantinovna, the quiet life in the Polish province was not suitable for an energetic revolutionary, and she decided to go to Paris. However, the true reason for Armand’s flight was hidden elsewhere: there was a break with Lenin. Krupskaya wanted to “move away,” but Lenin asked her to “stay.” In the name of the triumph of the idea, Lenin sacrificed the love of his life.
Inessa wrote to him: “I loved you very much. Even now I would do without kisses, just to see you, sometimes talking to you would be a joy - and it could not hurt anyone. Why was I deprived of this? You're asking if I'm angry that you handled the breakup. No, I think you didn’t do it for yourself...”
When Armand was not around, Lenin wrote letters to her. Perhaps he wrote as many letters to few people as Inessa.
In April 1917, Armand arrived in Russia in the same compartment of a sealed carriage with Lenin and Krupskaya. Lenin settled in Petrograd, and Inessa settled in Moscow and immediately became involved in party work. Their intensive correspondence continued uninterrupted. Armand was a member of the Moscow District Committee of the Bolshevik Party and took part in the battles that took place in the city in October-November 1917. Then she was the chairman of the Moscow Provincial Economic Council. However, this type of activity did not attract her at all, and she continues to engage in campaigning. At the beginning of 1919, Armand goes abroad as part of a Red Cross delegation to achieve the return of interned and captured soldiers of the Russian army to their homeland. Upon his return, Armand becomes the first head of the women's department of the party's Central Committee. She regularly publishes in the Pravda newspaper and organizes the Kommunistka magazine.
Inessa's death remains somewhat of a mystery.
The revolution quickly strained Armand's strength. She eagerly took on any task that the party leaders entrusted to her. She had less strength than she needed during this crazy time. Children, a difficult life, a new environment, and the revolutionary rhythm of life in less than three years after the October Revolution devastated the woman’s soul and undermined her physical strength. She wrote: “...Now I am indifferent to everyone. And most importantly, I miss almost everyone. The warm feeling remained only for the children and for V.I. In all other respects, the heart seemed to have died out. It’s as if, having given all his strength, all his passion to V.I. and the work of his work, all the sources of love, sympathy for people with which he was previously so rich were exhausted... I am a living corpse, and this is terrible.”
She wanted to go to her native France, at least for a short time to escape from the embrace of the revolution and restore her wasted strength. She called Lenin, but he was busy and responded with a note in which he feared that she would be arrested in Paris and advised her to go south, “to Sergo in the Caucasus.” Armand followed his advice.
It was uneasy under the southern sun. A shooting incident occurred near the sanatorium where Inessa was vacationing, and Lenin decided to evacuate her. On the way home, 46-year-old Armand unexpectedly fell ill with cholera and died two days later on September 24, 1920 in Nalchik.
The lead coffin with the body of Inessa Armand was delivered to Moscow by train. Eyewitnesses recalled that Lenin was scary to look at; he literally fainted from grief. Among the wreaths laid on the grave, one was of fresh white flowers with the inscription on the mourning ribbon: “To Comrade Inessa from V.I. Lenin". Lenin's shock was enormous. Soon he had his first stroke. After Lenin’s death, Armand’s friend Alexandra Kollontai astutely remarked: “He could not survive Inessa Armand. The death of Inessa accelerated his illness, which became fatal..."
Krupskaya took care of Inessa Armand's children. Many years later, when not only Armand was no longer alive, but also Lenin, Inessa’s daughter, who was named Inessa in honor of her mother, became the closest person to Krupskaya. And the “all-Union grandmother,” who never had children of her own, perceived her son as nothing less than her own grandson.
Activist of the revolutionary movement. Participant in the 1905 revolution. In 1911 she taught at the party school in Longjumeau. In 1915 she represented the Bolsheviks at the International Conference. Since 1919, she headed the women's department of the Central Committee. Beloved of the Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin.
At the end of December 1909, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) and Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, his faithful wife, moved to Paris. It was here that the great revolutionary was destined to meet Inessa Armand. This “Russian Frenchwoman” left a deep heart scar in the soul of the Bolshevik leader. Krupskaya could not help but know that her forty-year-old husband was overcome by strong feelings. According to another fiery revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai, Krupskaya was aware of their relationship and knew that Lenin was very attached to Inessa, and more than once expressed a desire to leave. Lenin held her back.
Inessa Armand was the daughter of French actors Nathalie Wilde and Theodore Stephane. At the age of fifteen, together with her sister, she came to Russia to visit her aunt, who gave music and French lessons to the wealthy Armand family. The head of the family, Evgeny Evgenievich Armand, was the owner of forests, estates, apartment buildings in Moscow, and factories in Pushkino. Coming from France, they warmly welcomed Inessa and Rene Stefan, who appeared in their family with their aunt-governess.
Inessa married Alexander Armand, Rene married Boris.
Alexander's happy and prosperous wife Armanda was imbued with the ideas of her husband's brother, Vladimir, who in his revolutionary views went further than his older brother. Moreover, he turned out to be closer to Inessa not only in his views, but also in his feelings. They fell passionately in love with each other.
Noble Alexander released his beloved wife with four children, and she settled with her new husband on Ostozhenka in Moscow. Soon they had another child - son Vladimir.
Vladimir Sr., having fallen under the revolutionary influence of his wife, blindly followed her. And he soon found himself in prison, then in exile, and finally in exile.
Inessa fled from Mezen exile through Finland abroad, where she met her husband, who had already crossed there. Two weeks after her arrival, Vladimir Armand died. Inessa, having stoically survived the blow, moved to Paris, where she wanted to “get to know the French Socialist Party better.”
In 1910 she met Lenin. Perhaps this is why Krupskaya believed that “the most difficult years of emigration had to be spent in Paris.”
Armand, in the apt expression of A.I. Solzhenitsyna, having become “Lenin’s friend,” accepted the rules of the “three” game. She was able to show friendly feelings towards the wife of her loved one.
Krupskaya was a great conspirator. For the sake of the victory of the revolution, she was ready to do anything. If Lenin was destined to fall in love with Inessa Armand and this helped the cause of the revolution, Nadezhda Konstantinovna was ready to rise above philistine ideas about love, marital fidelity and her own feminine pride. Everything was subordinated to a great idea.
In the spring of 1912, the Ulyanov couple headed to Krakow, closer to Russia. Inessa also hurried to Poland. She became the shadow of the family.
When Armand was not around, Lenin wrote letters to her. Perhaps he wrote as many letters to few people as Inessa. Sometimes these were multi-page messages.
She wanted to go to her native France, at least for a short time to escape from the embrace of the revolution and restore her wasted strength. She called Lenin, but he was busy and responded with a note in which he feared that she would be arrested in Paris and advised her to go south, “to Sergo in the Caucasus.” Armand followed his advice.
Could Lenin have known that, having dissuaded Inessa from going to France, he would send her there where she would meet her death? A month later, a telegram arrived: “Out of line. Moscow. Central Executive Committee of the Russian Communist Party. Council of People's Commissars. Lenin. It was not possible to save comrade Inessa Armand, who was sick with cholera, period Ended on September 24, period We will transfer the body to Moscow Nazarov.”
An outstanding activist of the Russian revolutionary movement, Inessa Armand, also known under the pseudonym Elena Blonina, became a real find for Lenin and Krupskaya. She was a good housewife, a competent secretary, translator and close family friend. This “triple alliance” even today is a “stumbling block” for most Russian historians.
Daughter of famous artists
Elisabeth Pecheux d'Herbanville (Inessa's real name) was born on April 26, 1874 in Paris. She was the daughter of a famous French tenor and actress. After the death of her husband, the mother sent her daughter to Russia to live with her aunt, who at that time worked as a governess in the house of textile magnate Yevgeny Armand.
In the new family, the girl was raised extremely strictly - in the spirit of true English aristocracy. Thanks to this, the girl spoke four languages fluently and learned to skillfully play the piano, which in the future helped her win over Lenin, who was very fond of live music.
From family to socialism
When Inessa turned 19, she got married to Alexander Armand, the eldest son of the capital's oligarch. For a long time, relations in the family did not go well; the husband constantly looked around in search of young girls for entertainment. And then Inessa decided to take the situation into her own hands.
Over the course of five years, she gave birth to four children to Alexander. The husband appreciated such sacrifices of his wife and became an exemplary family man. But Inessa got bored with her monotonous life. She wanted bright emotions, more passions and new conquests. Against this background, the girl became seriously interested in the “fresh” ideas and slogans of socialism.
In 1902, Inessa began to maintain relationships with activists of the Social Democratic movement and some revolutionary figures.
After reading a book that was written by the famous Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyin (fictitious name), the girl initiates a correspondence with the author. This is how Armand met Lenin in absentia.
Relationships in the family began to gradually cool down - Inessa spent all her free time studying revolutionary literature.
Life in Lenin's family
After two arrests for revolutionary activities, Inessa continued her campaigning in France. In 1909, she met Lenin in person for the first time in Paris. At that time, Armand had already received a licentiate degree in economic sciences. In the Parisian house of the leader of the proletariat, Inessa became a personal secretary, translator and a good housewife. She translated Lenin's scientific works, as well as periodicals of the Party Central Committee. Along the way, Inessa carried out active campaigning among ordinary French workers.
Against the backdrop of a clash of working interests, hot feelings flared up between Inessa and Lenin, which they did not even hide from Krupskaya. During the First World War, Vladimir Ilyich simply bombarded his muse with frank letters with declarations of love.
It is unknown how this relationship would have developed further if not for a serious illness that took Inessa by surprise. In Russia, doctors discovered she had tuberculosis. Armand was going to go to France to see a doctor she knew, but Lenin insisted on treatment in Kislovodsk. On the way, Inessa contracted cholera. She died in the fall of 1920 in the city of Nalchik.
“We broke up, we broke up, dear, you and I! And it hurts so much. I know, I feel, you will never come here! Looking at well-known places, I was clearly aware, as never before, of what a big place you occupied in my life.This is the only surviving personal letter from Inessa Fedorovna Armand to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. She destroyed the rest of the letters. This was Lenin's request. He was already the leader of the party and was thinking about his reputation. And she thought about him and continued to love him.
I wasn’t in love with you at all then, but even then I loved you very much. Even now I would do without kisses, just to see you, sometimes talking to you would be a joy - and it would not hurt anyone. Why was I deprived of this?
You’re asking if I’m angry that you “handled” the breakup. No, I don’t think you did it for yourself.”
“At that time I was afraid of you more than fire. I want to see you, but it would be better, it seems, to die on the spot than to come to you, and when for some reason you came to Nadezhda Konstantinovna, I immediately became lost and stupid. I was always surprised and envious of the courage of others who came straight to you and talked to you. Only then, due to translations and other things, did I get used to you a little.Lenin was one of the most famous people of the era. People went to their deaths for him, they moved mountains and overthrew governments, they pushed each other aside just to get a glimpse of him. Probably, having become so popular, women also liked him. But only one of them loved him so much, ardently and unselfishly, and obeyed him in everything. And that's why she died.
I loved not only listening, but also looking at you when you spoke. Firstly, your face becomes so animated, and secondly, it was convenient to watch, because you didn’t notice it at the time...”
“Well, dear, that’s enough for today. There was no letter from you yesterday! I'm so afraid that my letters don't reach you - I sent you three letters (this is the fourth) and a telegram. Didn't you receive them? The most incredible thoughts come to mind about this.
I kiss you deeply.
I also wrote to Nadezhda Konstantinovna.”
And this is perhaps the most interesting passage in the letter. It turns out that the wife, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, knew about her husband’s affair with Armand and did not break up not only with him, but also with her?
Krupskaya was, in modern parlance, an “absentee,” that is, a free woman to whom prisoners wrote extensive and pitiful messages. Lenin corresponded with her while sitting in a St. Petersburg prison. As is customary among prisoners, he began to call her his bride. Usually, absentee students are promised that they will marry them when they are released. But Krupskaya herself was arrested. She received three years of exile and asked to live with her fiancé in the village of Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district.
Reproduction of the painting by artist Ivan Ivanovich Tyutikov (1893-1973) “V. I. Lenin and N. K. Krupskaya in exile in the village of Shushenskoye", 1937
They probably wanted to enter into something like a fictitious marriage in order to make their life easier, but they were united forever. The administrative exile Krupskaya came to Lenin with her mother, Elizaveta Vasilievna, a devout woman, a student of the Institute of Noble Maidens. Nadezhda Konstantinovna did not part with her mother. The mother-in-law came across a golden one. It was she who improved the life of the young people.
Police photograph of V. I. Ulyanov
December 1895
Krupskaya recalled: “In the summer there was no one to help with the housework. And my mother and I fought with the Russian stove. At first, it happened that I used my grip to knock over soup with dumplings, which scattered all over my underside. Then I got used to it. In October, an assistant appeared, thirteen-year-old Pasha, thin, with sharp elbows, who quickly took over the entire household..."
Without a mother-in-law, Lenin would not have the comfort of home. Krupskaya did not know how to manage a household. When the mother-in-law died, they didn’t even cook dinner, they went to the dining room. And Lenin suffered from stomach problems from his youth; sitting down at the table, he asked anxiously: “Can I eat this?” Although he was unpretentious in food. In exile in Paris, Grigory Evssevich Zinoviev, the future owner of Leningrad and chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, lived with him. Zinoviev later told how in Paris Lenin “ran to the crossroads” in the evenings for the latest issue of evening newspapers, and in the morning for hot buns:
His wife preferred, between you and me, brioche, but the old man was a little stingy...
Nadezhda Konstantinovna was quite a pretty girl. According to her friend, “Nadia had white, thin skin, and the blush that spread from her cheeks to her ears, to her chin, to her forehead was soft pink... She had neither vanity nor pride. There was no place for love play in her girlish life.”
On July 10, 1898, Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezhda Konstantinovna got married, although they did not wear wedding rings. The marriage was not an early one. Both are under thirty. There is no reason to doubt that Lenin was the first man for Krupskaya.
In her youth, she moved in a circle of radical young people who supplied her with illegal literature. Among them was the once famous revolutionary Ivan Babushkin. Few people remember him now; Most Muscovites hardly suspect that the Babushkinskaya metro station is named after him. Krupskaya and Babushkin read Marx together and argued. But things did not go beyond talking about Marx. In those days, premarital intimate relations were strongly condemned.
Just as little is known about the male experience of Vladimir Ilyich, although a young man from a noble family was allowed certain entertainments and pranks. There would be interest...
Lenin's biographer, an emigrant, told the following story:
“A certain lady came to Geneva with the express purpose of meeting Lenin. She had a letter from Kalmykova (who gave money for the publication of Iskra) to Lenin. She was confident that he would receive him with due attention and respect.
After the meeting, the lady complained to everyone that Lenin received her with “incredible rudeness” and almost “kicked” her out. When Lenin was told about her complaints, he became extremely irritated:
“This fool sat with me for two hours, took me away from work, and gave me a headache with her questions and conversations. And she still complains! Did she really think that I would look after her? I was courting when I was a high school student, but now I have neither the time nor the desire for it.”
Was this courtship even in the high school years? Was young Ulyanov interested in girls, did he fall madly in love, did he suffer from unrequited love? Was he capable of passion, of tenderness?
“Lenin’s eyes were brown, thoughts always slid into them,” recalled Alexandra Kollonta. - A slyly mocking light often played. It seemed like he was reading your mind, that you couldn’t hide anything from him. But I didn’t see Lenin’s “gentle” eyes, even when he laughed.”
After Lenin’s death, Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote: “Vladimir Ilyich is portrayed as some kind of ascetic, virtuous philistine family man. His image is somehow distorted. He wasn't like that. He was a man to whom nothing human was alien. He loved life in all its diversity and greedily absorbed it into himself.”
No, it seems that women played a very minor role in the life of the revolutionary Lenin. Even the young wife, apparently, did not cause a special surge of joy. The newlyweds rented a new apartment, but slept in different rooms. Unusual for newly married young people. It seems that they both viewed their alliance as purely businesslike, as the creation of a revolutionary cell in the struggle against the autocracy.
However, Nadezhda Konstantinovna objected to this version: “We were newlyweds. They loved each other deeply. At first, nothing existed for us... The fact that I don’t write about it in my memoirs does not mean at all that there was no poetry or young passion in our lives.”
My mother-in-law liked that my son-in-law was a non-drinker and even a non-smoker. But Vladimir Ilyich was not simple in personal communication. He had fantastic determination and an iron will, but a fragile nervous system, historians write. From nervous outbursts, a rash appeared on the body. He got tired quickly and needed constant rest in nature. He was very hot-tempered, irritable, and easily fell into anger and rage. He suffered from insomnia, headaches, fell asleep late and slept poorly. His mornings were always bad. His manic concern for cleanliness was striking; he polished his shoes to a shine, and could not stand dirt and stains.
Krupskaya herself confessed to the daughters of Inessa Armand in 1923:
I once wanted to have a child...
If you knew how much I dream of babysitting my grandson...
And why, in fact, did they not have children? They were not given the usual tests in our era, so an accurate answer is impossible. Two years after the wedding, on April 6, 1900, Lenin wrote to his mother: “Nadya must be lying down: the doctor found (as she wrote a week ago) that her illness (female) requires persistent treatment.”
Women's diseases, as is well known, are dangerous due to complications - infertility. One of the modern historians discovered a note made by the Ufa doctor Fedotov after examining Krupskaya: “Genital infantilism.”
It is not possible to verify this diagnosis.
On March 10, 1900, the hereditary nobleman Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov addressed a petition to the director of the police department: “Having completed the period of public supervision this year, I was forced to choose the city of Pskov for my residence from the few cities allowed to me, because only there I found it possible to continue my experience , being listed as a sworn attorney. In other cities, I would not have any opportunity to be assigned to any sworn attorney and be accepted into the class by the local district court, and this would amount to the loss of all hope for a lawyer’s career for me.”
Nadezhda Konstantinovna served her term of public supervision in the Ufa province together with her mother. Krupskaya could not find a teaching job.
“Consequently, I will have to support her from my earnings, and I can now count on the meager earnings (and even then not immediately, but after some time) due to the almost complete loss of all my previous connections and the difficulty of starting an independent legal practice... Necessity keeping my wife and mother-in-law in another city puts me in a hopeless situation and forces me to enter into unpayable debts. Finally, I have been suffering from catarrh of the intestines for many years, which has become even worse due to living in Siberia, and now I am in dire need of a proper family life.
Based on the above, I have the honor to humbly request that my wife, Nadezhda Ulyanova, be allowed to serve her remaining term of public supervision not in the Ufa province, but together with her husband in the city of Pskov.”
The police department refused.
Lenin's entire life from his youth was devoted to the revolution. If he had not thought about her twenty-four hours a day, there would have been no October. The flip side of such an all-consuming determination is weakened interest in the opposite sex, reduced desire. It was as if nature itself was helping him concentrate on one thing. This is a frequent occurrence in political history.
He simply had no time for women. It took an incredibly strong impulse to awaken a vivid feeling in him. In 1910, a young revolutionary, Inessa Armand, arrived in Paris, elegant, cheerful, unusual.
“Those who happened to see her,” said a contemporary, “remembered for a long time her somewhat strange, nervous, seemingly asymmetrical face, very strong-willed, with large hypnotizing eyes.”
She amazingly combined the thirst for revolution with the thirst for life. This is what attracted Lenin! He just didn't care about beautiful ladies. He didn't even have friends. And it was like a lightning strike. He was thirty-nine years old, she was thirty-five. Witnesses recalled: “Lenin literally did not take his Mongolian eyes off this little French girl...”
Lenin had vision problems. Poets sang of his famous Leninist squint, but his left eye was very nearsighted (four to four and a half diopters), so he squinted, trying to see something. He read with his left eye and looked into the distance with his right. But Armand saw Inessa right away - a beautiful, temperamental revolutionary and a complete like-minded person in business...
Inessa, 1882
Frenchwoman Inessa Fedorovna Armand was born in Paris as Elisabeth Steffen. She was brought to Moscow as a girl. Here she married Alexander Armand, whose ancestors settled in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars.
They had three children. But the marriage quickly fell apart. Inessa fell in love with her husband's younger brother, Vladimir Armand, who was eleven years younger than her. They were connected, among other things, by their interest in socialist ideas. In those times, which seem puritanical to us, Inessa was not at all embarrassed about adultery. She did not consider herself a depraved woman; she believed that she had the right to happiness.
Inessa gave birth to a son from her lover and named him Andrey. This is the same future captain Armand, who is considered the son of Lenin. In reality, by the time Inessa met Vladimir Ilyich, the boy was already five years old. Inessa’s husband turned out to be an extremely noble man; he accepted her child as his own and gave her his patronymic. The romance turned out to be short-lived. Her lover fell ill with tuberculosis and died.
With her husband Alexander Armand. 1895
Inessa Armand was concerned not only with personal freedom, but also with public freedom. In Russia, this is the shortest way to jail. Inessa was imprisoned three times. From the exile she was serving in Arkhangelsk, she fled abroad. Here I met Lenin.
Krupskaya recalled:
“Arrested in September 1912, Inessa was imprisoned on someone else’s passport in very difficult conditions, which significantly undermined her health - she had signs of tuberculosis, but her energy did not diminish, and she was even more passionate about all issues of party life. We were all terribly glad for her arrival...
There was a lot of cheerfulness and ardor in her. It became more comfortable and more fun when Inessa came.”
Having lost a loved one, Armand was open to new love. Passionate and experienced, she opened up a new world of pleasures for Lenin. It turned out to be almost as exciting as engaging in revolution. Krupskaya, as usual, was the last to learn about their passion: “Ilyich, Inessa and I went for walks a lot. Zinoviev and Kamenev nicknamed us “the party of shirkers.” Inessa was a good musician, she encouraged everyone to go to Beethoven concerts, and she herself played Beethoven very well. Ilyich especially loved the Pathetic Sonata, asked her to play it constantly - he loved music... My mother became very attached to Inessa, to whom Inessa often came to talk, sit with her and smoke.”
Lenin's mother-in-law was the first to understand everything. Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya tried to leave several times, but Lenin held her back. Nadezhda Konstantinovna stayed, but went back to her mother’s room to sleep.
Krupskaya, compared to Armand, lost terribly. She had already lost her feminine attractiveness, had become plump and ugly. Her eyes were bulging, they called her a herring. Krupskaya suffered from Graves' disease. In medical books of that time they wrote: “Symptoms: strong heartbeat, increased excitability, sweating, swelling of the thyroid gland (that is, the appearance of a goiter) and protrusion of the eyeballs. The cause is a paralytic condition of the vasomotor nerves of the head and neck. Treatment is limited to a strengthening diet, iron, quinine, climate change and galvanization of the sympathetic cervical plexus."
Krupskaya used this treatment.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna wrote to her mother-in-law in May 1913: “I am disabled and get tired very quickly. I went to get electrified for a whole month, my neck did not get smaller, but my eyes became more normal, and my heart beats less. Here in the clinics for nervous diseases, treatment costs nothing, and the doctors are very attentive.”
Lenin informed his emigration comrade Grigory Lvovich Shklovsky, with whom he became very close: “We arrived in a village near Zakopane to treat Nadezhda Konstantinovna with mountain air for Graves’ disease... It’s a nervous disease. I was treated with electricity for three weeks. Success is zero. Everything is the same: swelling of the eyes, swelling of the neck, palpitations, all the symptoms of Graves’ disease.”
She was treated incorrectly. They didn’t know then that Graves’ disease is one of the most common endocrinological diseases and involves increased function of the thyroid gland. Now they would have helped her, but then Lenin’s wife was actually left without medical care. Based's disease affected both the character and appearance of Nadezhda Konstantinovna: a disproportionately thick neck, bulging eyes, plus fussiness, irritability, and tearfulness.
Lenin wrote to Grigory Shklovsky: “One more personal request: I would really ask you to try not to send Nadya any more papers on the Mokhov case, because it gets on her nerves, and her nerves are bad, Graves’ disease is returning again. And don’t write anything to me on this point (so that Nadya doesn’t know that I wrote to you, otherwise she’ll worry)..."
But what was not there was not: neither passion, nor love. He found all this in the arms of Inessa. Although there were hugs, or did the relationship develop as platonic?.. One way or another, Inessa Armand became Lenin’s true and only love.
But here's what's important. Lenin did not distance himself from his wife even at the height of his affair with Inessa Armand. But these were the happiest days of his short life. And yet he neglected this love. Did you consider love to be a transitory matter, less significant than strong friendly relations with Krupskaya?
Having no children, Krupskaya devoted her life to him. They were united by common ideals and mutual respect. This is not to say that their marriage was unsuccessful. Vladimir Ilyich valued his wife and sympathized with her suffering.
He understood how important the devotion and reliability of Nadezhda Konstantinovna, a well-educated and versatile woman, was for him. She, without complaining, helped him in everything. Carried out his extensive correspondence. I encrypted and decrypted correspondence with my comrades - a dreary and time-consuming task. They joked that the practical Lenin married Nadezhda Konstantinovna for the sake of her calligraphic handwriting.
We must pay tribute to Nadezhda Konstantinovna. She and Inessa did not sort things out over a man. They were even friends. Inessa, a sexually liberated woman, would be quite satisfied with a life of three. In fact, it was Inessa who proposed to Lenin: “There were a lot of good things in the relationship with Nadezhda Konstantinovna. She told me that I became dear and close to her only recently. And I fell in love with her almost from the first time I met her for her softness and charm.”
They say that Krupskaya, having learned about the affair, was ready to leave and give him a divorce so that he would be happy. But Lenin said: stay. Did you appreciate her devotion? Didn’t want to leave your not very healthy wife after so many years of marriage? Did you care about your reputation? Armand embarrassed him with her freedom of views on intimate life. She believed that a woman has the right to choose her own partner, and in this sense, the revolutionary Lenin was extremely old-fashioned...
Inessa Armand with children
In the end, Inessa left. Lenin tried to explain to her: “I hope we will see each other after the congress. Please bring, when you arrive (that is, bring with you), all our letters (sending them registered here is inconvenient: a registered letter can very easily be opened by friends)..."
Lenin asked Inessa to return his letters in order to destroy them. Vladimir Ilyich was very frank with her:
“How I hate vanity, hassle, affairs and how I am inextricably and forever connected with them! This is another sign that I am lazy, tired and in a bad mood. In general, I love my profession, but now I often almost hate it. If possible, don't be angry with me. I caused you a lot of pain, I know that..."
The affair with Inessa, one way or another, lasted for five years, until Lenin broke off the love relationship, leaving only a business relationship. And still, tender notes constantly broke through:
"Dear friend!Lenin used the love of both women to the fullest. Nadezhda Konstantinovna headed his office and conducted correspondence. Inessa translated for him from French. No matter how much Vladimir Ilyich loved Inessa, he calmly sent her on a party errand to Russia, realizing how dangerous this journey was. And she really was arrested. But politics and the struggle for power were most important to him.
I just sent you, so to speak, a business letter. But besides the business letter, I wanted to say a few friendly words to you and shake your hand firmly, firmly. You write that even your arms and legs are swollen from the cold. This is truly terrible. Your hands were always cold anyway. Why else bring it to this?..
Your last letters were so full of sadness and such sad thoughts aroused in me and awakened such frantic remorse that I just can’t come to my senses...
Oh, I would like to kiss you a thousand times, greet you and wish you success.”
The February Revolution broke out. On March 6, 1917, Lenin, terribly excited by news from Russia, writes to Inessa:
“In my opinion, everyone should now have one thought: to ride. And people are waiting for something. Of course, my nerves are extremely tense. Yes, of course! Be patient, sit here...The Menshevik Yuli Martov, who was very scrupulous in matters of morality, proposed exchanging Russian emigrants from Switzerland for German and Austrian civilians interned in Russia. The German representatives agreed.
I am sure that I will be arrested or simply detained if I go under my own name... At times like now, you need to be able to be resourceful and an adventurer... There are many Russian rich and poor Russian fools, social patriots, etc. etc., who must ask the Germans for a pass - a carriage to Copenhagen for various revolutionaries.
Why not?..
You may say that the Germans will not give you a carriage. Let’s bet that they will!”
The Executive Commission of the Central Emigrant Committee sent a telegram to the Minister of Justice of the Provisional Government, Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, asking for permission to travel through Germany. Lenin did not want to wait for an answer. Together with Krupskaya, Armand and a group of emigrants, he went to Russia through Germany and Sweden. There was nothing secret about this trip. They compiled a detailed press document which they sent to newspapers.
Lenin returned to Russia in the spring of '17, middle-aged and unhealthy. One of those who met him at the station recalled: “When I saw Lenin get out of the carriage, it involuntarily flashed through my mind: “How he has aged!” In Lenin who arrived there was no longer anything of that young, lively Lenin whom I had once seen in a modest apartment in Geneva and in 1905 in St. Petersburg. He was a pale, worn-out man with a stamp of obvious fatigue.”
Returning home through the territory of hostile Germany was not in vain. Boris Vladimirovich Nikitin, head of counterintelligence of the Petrograd Military District, considered the Bolshevik leaders to be paid German agents. On July 1, 1917, he signed twenty-eight arrest warrants. The list opened with Lenin's name.
Nikitin took with him an assistant prosecutor and fifteen soldiers and went to Lenin’s apartment. Vladimir Ilyich, fleeing arrest, disappeared. Many accused him of cowardice, of running away at the decisive moment. The execution of his elder brother, Alexander Ulyanov, may have left an indelible mark on the psyche of Vladimir Ilyich. But Krupskaya, judging by Nikitin’s memoirs, was not at all afraid. “Leaving two outposts on the street, we climbed the stairs with three soldiers. We found Lenin's wife Krupskaya in the apartment. There was no limit to the impudence of this woman. Don't hit her with rifle butts. She greeted us with shouts: “Gendarmes!” Just like under the old regime!“ - and did not stop making her remarks on the same topic throughout the entire search... As could be expected, we did not find anything significant at Lenin’s apartment...”
Today, many historians have no doubt that Lenin carried out the October Revolution with German money and willingly plunged the country into chaos and ruin because he hated Russia. They say that he had too little Russian blood and therefore he was not a patriot.
Vladimir Ilyich himself spoke surprisingly little about his family. When filling out questionnaires, I wrote briefly to questions about my grandfathers; Don't know. Didn't you really know or didn't want to remember?
Lenin's maternal grandfather - Abel Blanc
After his death, in the twenties, Ilyich’s fans began to restore his family tree. Archival documents showed that Lenin's maternal grandfather, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, was Jewish. He converted to Orthodoxy, worked as a doctor and received the rank of court councilor, which gave him the right to hereditary nobility. Alexander Blank acquired an estate in the Kazan province and was included in the 3rd part of the provincial noble genealogy book.
In 1932, Lenin’s sister Anna Ilyinichna turned to Stalin: “Research into the origins of my grandfather showed that he came from a poor Jewish family, was, as the document on his baptism says, the son of the Zhytomyr tradesman Blank... It is hardly right to hide this from the masses a fact which, due to the respect that Vladimir Ilyich enjoys among them, can serve a great service in the fight against anti-Semitism, but cannot harm anything.”
But Stalin ordered documents about the origin of Alexander Blank to be removed from the archives and transferred for storage to the Central Committee. But historical research continued. Instead of a Jewish grandfather, a Kalmyk grandmother appeared - through the efforts of the writer Marietta Shaginyan, who wrote a novel about Lenin. She decided, based on one not very reliable study, that Lenin’s paternal grandmother, Anna Alekseevna Smirnova, who married Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanov, was a Kalmyk. Many found Tatar features in Lenin’s high-cheekboned face.
Stalin was extremely dissatisfied. On August 5, 1938, a devastating resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee appeared: “The first book of Marietta Shaginyan’s novel about the life of the Ulyanov family, as well as about Lenin’s childhood and youth, is a politically harmful, ideologically hostile work.”
The blame for this “gross political mistake” was placed on Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.
“Consider Krupskaya’s behavior,” Stalin dictated, “all the more unacceptable and tactless because Comrade Krupskaya did it without the knowledge and consent of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, behind the back of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, thereby turning the all-party matter of compiling works about Lenin into private and family affairs and acting as a monopoly interpreter of the circumstances of the public and personal life and work of Lenin and his family, to which the Central Committee never gave anyone any rights.”
Why did Marietta Shaginyan's novel cause such rejection among Stalin? The answer can be found in the resolution of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Writers, which was tasked with dealing with the author: “Shaginyan gives a distorted idea of the national face of Lenin, the greatest proletarian revolutionary, the genius of humanity, put forward by the Russian people and who is their national pride.”
In other words, Lenin could only be Russian. It was forbidden to talk about the fact that Lenin might have had non-Russian ancestors. By the way, Marietta Shaginyan’s assumption about Kalmyk relatives was not confirmed. Vladimir Ilyich's father was a Russian man. Those who are concerned about the purity of blood have no complaints about him. All claims are against Lenin's mother, Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova.
Writer Vladimir Soloukhin wrote that it was no coincidence that Maria Alexandrovna “trained her children in revolutionary activities, in hatred of the Russian Empire and - in the future - in destroying it.”
For Soloukhin, the reason for Maria Alexandrovna’s hatred of Russia was obvious: “If Anna Ivanovna Groshopf was Swedish, Lenin’s mother had fifty percent Jewish and Swedish blood. If Anna Ivanovna was a Jewish Swede, then Maria Alexandrovna, it turns out, is a purebred, one hundred percent Jewish.”
In reality, Lenin's grandmother, Anna Groshopf, had German and Swedish roots. Vladimir Ilyich himself had no idea about his non-Russian ancestors. In old Russia they did not engage in racial research and did not calculate the percentage of “alien” blood. Religious differences mattered. Anyone who converted to Orthodoxy was considered a Russian person.
Lenin had pro-German sentiments, but rather not of a political nature. Doctors, engineers, and businessmen were valued mainly by Germans - such were Russian traditions. In February 1922, Vladimir Ilyich wrote to his deputy in the government, Lev Kamenev: “In my opinion, it is necessary not only to preach: “learn from the Germans, lousy Russian communist Oblomovism!”, but also to take Germans as teachers. Otherwise, it’s just words.”
What about the story of the return of Bolshevik emigrants to Russia in the spring of 1917 through the territory of Germany, an enemy state? Isn't this proof of a criminal conspiracy with the enemy?
Preparations for the return of Russian emigration from Switzerland in March and April of the seventeenth took place publicly and were discussed in the press. The British and French (Russia's allies) refused to allow Russian socialists - opponents of the war - to pass through their territory. The German authorities agreed. Not because German intelligence managed to recruit Russian emigrants as agents - one should not overestimate the successes of German intelligence officers. The return of obvious opponents of the war to Russia was to Germany's advantage. The Germans didn’t even need to recruit anyone!
“I never considered the Bolsheviks to be ‘corrupt agents of the German government,’ as the right-wing and liberal press called them,” wrote philosopher Fyodor Stepun, a prominent figure in the Provisional Government. “They always seemed to me to be as honest and ideologically steadfast as they were extremely immoral revolutionaries, who continued to do their own thing even with German money.”
Lenin understood: if anything could attract soldiers to the side of the Bolsheviks, it was only the promise to end the war, demobilize the army and let the peasants dressed in gray overcoats go home to their families and land. No matter how much he was accused of lack of patriotism, defeatism and outright betrayal, at rallies Lenin repeated again and again what they wanted to hear from him:
Comrade soldiers, stop fighting and go home. Establish a truce with the Germans and declare war on the rich!
That is why the Bolsheviks took power and won the Civil War.
After the October Revolution, Inessa Armand found a place in the system of the new government. Especially for her, a department for work among women was formed in the apparatus of the Central Committee of the party.
The moment came when the relationship between Lenin and Armand resumed. This happened after Lenin was shot on August 30, 1918.
The manic passion of the Soviet government for secrecy led, in particular, to the fact that the most insane rumors circulated. In 1970, on the eve of the centenary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Soviet leaders expected a libelous book about the causes of the death of the revolutionary leader to appear in the West. There were rumors that he died of untreated syphilis.
The Minister of Health, Academician Petrovsky, was instructed to draw up a true conclusion on the causes of Vladimir Ilyich’s death. He was allowed to get acquainted with two histories of Lenin's illness that were kept secret. The first was started in connection with his injury, the second was carried out during the development of his main illness, from 1921 until his death. The libelous book never appeared in the West. And there was no reason for the libel. An autopsy in January 1924 confirmed that Lenin did not suffer from syphilis. The basis for the rumors was the habit of the Soviet government to hide everything.
Vladimir Ilyich died because his body wore out prematurely. His physical and neuro-emotional systems could not withstand the strain. The first forty-six years of his life, that is, until he returned to Russia from emigration in 1917, he lived relatively calmly, without any special problems, doing literary work. He was not ready to take over control of a country plunged into chaos.
During the assassination attempt on him in August 1919 at the Mikhelson plant, two bullets hit him. They were not poisoned. And in general, Lenin was relatively lucky: the wound did not in any way affect the development of his main disease - atherosclerosis. He had a narrowing of the arteries supplying the brain.
Among the few people he wanted to see when he was brought from Mikhelson’s plant was Inessa Fedorovna. Perhaps, having found himself in the face of death, he rethought a lot, he wanted to see a person dear to him next to him.
Vladimir Ilyich, generally speaking, was a harsh and, apparently, angry person. He treated all his comrades with contempt, including those whom he himself elevated to high positions and brought closer to him. Vladimir Ilyich generally had a low opinion of his relatives. About his older sister, Anna Ilyinichna, he said:
Well, she's a brainy woman. You know what they say in the village - “man-woman” or “king-woman”... But she did an unforgivable stupidity by marrying this “klutz” Mark, who, of course, is under her shoe.
Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova (1864-1935)
Indeed, Anna Ilyinichna - this could not be hidden from strangers - treated her husband, Mark Elizarov, not just condescendingly, but with undisguised contempt. She was definitely ashamed that he was a member of their family and her husband. Meanwhile, according to the reviews of his contemporaries, Mark Timofeevich Elizarov was very sincere and direct, alien to phrases, did not like any poses... He did not hide the fact that he did not share Lenin’s ideas, and was very sensible and critical of him.
In May 1919, the Soviet Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government was formed in Crimea, liberated from the White Army. Lenin's younger brother, Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov, who had lived in Sevastopol since 1914, was appointed People's Commissar of Health and Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.
Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov in the uniform of a military medic
Lenin contemptuously said to the People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Leonid Krasin:
These idiots, apparently, wanted to please me by appointing Mitya... They did not notice that although he and I bear the same last name, he is just an ordinary fool who is only fit to chew printed gingerbread...
Lenin’s younger sister, Maria Ilyinichna, who had long been secretary of the communist Pravda, was considered a “fool” in the family and treated her with condescending but gentle contempt. Lenin spoke about her quite definitely:
Well, as for Mani, she won’t invent gunpowder, she... remember how in the fairy tale “The Little Humpbacked Horse” Ershov said about the second and third brothers:
The average was this and that.
The younger one was completely stupid.
Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova
In his articles and letters, Lenin cursed like a dray driver. That was his style. He did not hesitate to be impudent and rude in an argument. But the people whom he scolded remained his closest associates and assistants. He had fans - there were a lot of them, who idolized him and forgave him everything. But there were no close, bosom, intimate friends. Except for Inessa Armand.
She was suspected of hidden omnipotence - they say, “the night cuckoo will snack on the day.” At the Congress of Soviets, one of the Left Social Revolutionaries said:
Emperor Nicholas had an evil genius - his wife Alice of Hesse. Lenin probably also has his own genius.
For this statement, the Left Socialist-Revolutionary was immediately deprived of the floor, seeing in his words an insult to the Council of People's Commissars.
After work, Lenin often visited Inessa, since her apartment was nearby.
Inessa Armand, 1916
On December 16, 1918, Lenin gave instructions to the Kremlin commandant Malkov: “The giver is Comrade. Inessa Armand, member of the Central Election Commission. She needs an apartment for four people. As we talked to you today, you show her what is available, that is, show her the apartments that you had in mind.”
She was given a large apartment on Neglinnaya, and a turntable, highly valued by Soviet officials, was installed - a direct government communication device. If Lenin could not stop by, he wrote a note. Some have survived.
February 16, 1920:
"Dear friend!
Today after 4 pm you will see a good doctor. Do you have firewood? Can you cook at home? Are you fed?
I just sent this note and almost immediately writes a new one:
“Comrade Inessa!
I called you to find out the number of galoshes for you. I hope to get it. Was there a doctor?
Concerned about her health, he constantly thinks about her:
"Dear friend!
After the temperature drops, you need to wait a few days. Otherwise - pneumonia. The Spanish flu is now fierce. Write, are they sending food?”
As a result, his relationship with Nadezhda Konstantinovna deteriorated again. And she already had every reason to be offended. Her husband neglected her both at home and in politics. After so many years of active struggle for the Bolshevik cause, Krupskaya was given the insignificant position of Deputy People's Commissar of Public Education.
Inessa Armand's main rival, Alexandra Kollontai, was even more offended. She considered herself the grande dame of the revolution. But the most influential woman in Soviet Russia was Inessa. This was a blow for the proud Kollontai, who believed that the choice in favor of Inessa was dictated by her love relationship with Lenin.
In August 1920, Lenin wrote to Inessa, wanting to save her from disagreements with Kollontai:
"Dear friend!
It was very sad to learn that you were overtired and dissatisfied with your work and those around you (or work colleagues). Can I help you by setting you up in a sanatorium? If you don’t like going to the sanatorium, shouldn’t you go south? To Sergo in the Caucasus? Sergo will enjoy some rest and sunshine. He is the power there. Think about it.
I shake your hand tightly, tightly.”
Saving Inessa from female squabbles in the corridors of the Central Committee and wanting to please her, Lenin persuaded her to rest in Kislovodsk. Inessa went with her son. The leader of the world proletariat took care of her rest himself, having already become convinced that the Soviet apparatus he had created would fail in any undertaking. The trip turned out to be fatal.
"T. Sergo!
Inessa Armand is leaving today. I ask you not to forget your promise. It is necessary that you telegraph to Kislovodsk, give orders to arrange for her and her son properly and monitor their implementation. They won’t do a damn thing without checking execution...”
“Before, I used to approach every person with a warm feeling. Now I'm indifferent to everyone. And most importantly, I miss almost everyone. I only have a warm feeling for the children and Vladimir Ilyich. In all other respects the heart seemed to have died out. It’s as if, having given all his strength, all his passion to Vladimir Ilyich and the work of his work, all the sources of work with which he had previously been so rich were exhausted...Relations with Lenin, warm and cordial, were limited by certain limits that he himself established. But she wanted real love, ordinary female happiness. Who knows how her life would have turned out, but she was no longer destined to meet another man: Lenin was worried and reminded Ordzhonikidze: “I kindly ask you, in view of the dangerous situation in the Kuban, to establish contact with Inessa Armand so that she and her son can be evacuated if necessary ..."
And people feel this deadness in me, and they pay with the same coin of indifference or even antipathy (but before they loved me). And now the ardent attitude towards the matter is drying up. I am a man whose heart is gradually dying..."
So it was in vain that she was torn from the safety of Kislovodsk. They were afraid of one thing, but trouble lurked on the other side. In the Caucasus, in Beslan, Inessa contracted cholera and died.
The local telegraph operator tapped out the telegram:
“Out of line.
Moscow. Central Executive Committee of the Russian Communist Party, Council of People's Commissars, Lenin.
It was not possible to save my comrade Inessa Armand, who fell ill with cholera, period ended on September 24, period the body will be transported to Moscow Nazarov.”
There were big problems with transport. For eight days her body lay in the morgue in Nalchik while they looked for a galvanized coffin and a special carriage.
Two weeks later, in the early morning of September 11, 1920, the coffin was delivered to Moscow. At the Kazansky station, the train was met by Lenin and Krupskaya. The coffin was placed on a hearse and taken to the House of Unions.
Funeral of Inessa Armand. Moscow, 1920
The daughter of member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic Sergei Ivanovich Gusev, Elizaveta Drabkina, recalled:
“We saw a funeral procession moving towards us. We saw Vladimir Ilyich, and next to him Nadezhda Konstantinovna, who supported him by the arm. There was something inexpressibly mournful in his drooping shoulders and low bowed head.”
Vladimir Ilyich followed the coffin through the entire city. What was he thinking about during these hours? About the fact that he vainly refused the love of Inessa Armand and cruelly deprived himself? Did you feel lonely? Did you feel an incurable disease inevitably approaching, which would soon, very soon turn him into a complete invalid?
“It was unrecognizable at Lenin’s funeral,” wrote Alexandra Kollontai. - He was crushed by grief. It seemed to us that he could lose consciousness at any moment.”
Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya in Gorki, autumn 1922
The death of Inessa Armand did not bring relief to anyone. There was no talk of getting rid of the lucky rival. Jealousy is a thing of the distant past. Lenin's illness progressed rapidly, and for Krupskaya the worst was yet to come. What she did for her husband in the last years of his life was a feat. Only those who have gone through this themselves understand what agony and suffering it is to see what the disease does to a loved one.
Her own strength was running out. Having learned that she was passing on Lenin’s notes to Leon Trotsky, Stalin attacked Nadezhda Konstantinovna with rude abuse. He threatened that the party inquisition, the Central Control Commission, would deal with it.
No one dared talk to the leader's wife like that. Lenin’s sister, Maria Ilyinichna, in notes found after her death, recalled: “Nadezhda Konstantinovna was extremely excited by this conversation: she was completely different from herself, sobbing, rolling on the floor, and so on.”
Such a painful reaction meant that the nervous system of unfortunate Nadezhda Konstantinovna was exhausted. She herself needed treatment and care. But her own husband could no longer protect Nadezhda Konstantinovna. Lenin's condition rapidly deteriorated. On the night of December 23, 1922, he suffered paralysis of his right arm and right leg. And on March 10, 1923, he suffered a blow from which Vladimir Ilyich never recovered. He lived for another year with full consciousness and understanding of his plight, but he could no longer influence the political life of the country. Stalin's hands were untied...
In May 1923, Lenin showed slight improvement. In the second half of June there was a new exacerbation, which was accompanied by severe agitation and insomnia. He stopped sleeping completely. Since the end of July things have improved again. He began to walk, uttered some simple words - “here”, “what”, “go”, tried to read newspapers.
Lenin in Gorki, summer 1923
On December 18, 1923, Lenin was brought to the Kremlin for the last time; he visited his apartment. His life ended after painful agony. His dying agony was terrible. Perhaps the suffering was aggravated by the fact that during periods of enlightenment he saw that he had failed. He lost to Stalin, who would take full advantage of his death.
On Monday, January 21, 1924, Vladimir Ilyich died. I was exhausted, as they said before. An autopsy revealed that the vertebral and carotid arteries were severely narrowed. The left internal carotid artery had no lumen at all. Due to insufficient blood flow, the brain tissue softened. The immediate cause of death was hemorrhage into the lining of the brain.
Lenin's funeral, no matter what we think of him now, was then an event of enormous significance. In the notes of my grandfather, Vladimir Mikhailovich Mlechin, who was then studying in Moscow at the Higher Technical School, I found a description of this day:
“On January 27, I came to Red Square, where the fires were burning. Policemen were warming themselves by the fires, there were very few of them, Red Army soldiers, also not numerous, and people who had come to say goodbye to Lenin.
Who guessed in those days to bring fuel and build fires in different places? This was a man worthy of a monument himself. And not only because he saved hundreds, and maybe thousands and thousands of people from frostbite. He showed clearly what one should do even in such moments when everything current, everyday, everyday seems unimportant, transitory, tertiary.
There were a lot of people, but there was no crowding, no disorder. And there weren’t enough police. The order developed somehow on its own. These were not crowds, thousands and thousands of citizens walked, and everyone instinctively knew their place, without jostling, without pushing on others, without trying to rush forward.
After that, I never saw such an order that seemed to be unorganized and naturally preserved by anyone - neither at parades, nor during demonstrations, which every year struck me with an ever-increasing number of guardians of order and less and less internal discipline and self-organization of the masses. People with cruel tenacity were weaned from moving independently through life... And along the street too.”
N.K. Krupskaya at the funeral of V.I. Lenin
You won’t envy Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. First, Vladimir Ilyich died heavily in her arms, then before her eyes, almost all of his comrades, who were also her friends, were destroyed. She was silent, sat on the presidium and approved everything. She risked supporting her friends Zinoviev and Kamenev against Stalin, but was afraid of her own courage. Both were shot.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya near the Bolshoi Theater after the meeting of the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks
“Outwardly,” recalled Leon Trotsky, “she received signs of respect, or rather, half-honor. But inside the apparatus she was systematically compromised, blackmailed, humiliated, and in the ranks of the Komsomol the most absurd and rude gossip was spread about her. What could the unfortunate, crushed woman do? Absolutely isolated, with a heavy stone on her heart, insecure, in the grip of illness, she lived a hard life.”
In her declining years, Nadezhda Konstantinovna no longer saw Inessa Armand as a successful rival, she took care of her children, and often remembered this bright and temperamental woman. How many happy days and months did she have in her life? Just a little. Just like in Lenin's life.
Who knows, if he had a loving and beloved wife, a full-fledged family, children - a revolution? Wouldn't the civil war and Soviet rule have been so bloody?
However, perhaps if he had a desire to spend time with his family, take care of his wife and children, the revolution would not have happened at all...
From the book by Leonid Mlechin “15 women of Leonid Mlechin”
via: liveinternet
In the Soviet Union they were silent about this for many years. They bashfully hushed up the absence of children from Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. An absolute taboo was the Jewish roots in the genealogy of the leader of the proletariat and his personal life.
And suddenly it came out of the blue: Lenin had a mistress. Celestials do not have mistresses. And the “Kremlin dreamer,” as the English writer Herbert Wells called Lenin, seemed to be a kind of Olympian god. Ordinary citizens of the country of the Soviets did not know ancient myths, which is a pity. The gods descended from Olympus to mortal women, because nothing human was alien to them.
And then the chosen ones were well aware of the relationship between Vladimir Ilyich and Inessa Armand. An experienced Bolshevik, the world's first female ambassador, Alexandra Kollontai, after the death of Ulyanov-Lenin, astutely remarked: “He could not survive Inessa Armand. Inessa’s death accelerated his illness, which became fatal.”
Some journalists nicknamed Inessa Armand “the leader’s muse.” It’s somehow awkward to imagine the leader of the world revolution in the guise of a kind of Apollo Musagete, that is, the “lord of the muses.” Muses, for the most part, are also drawn to artistic natures, to creators and creators, and not to destroyers, albeit of the “old world.” However, Inessa had her reasons for receiving such an epithet.
Like many professional revolutionaries, Inessa Fedorovna Armand also had several names, not counting pseudonyms. At different times, and sometimes at the same time, her name was Elisabeth Pécheux d'Herbenville or Inessa Stéphane, and later Armand or Inès Elisabeth Armand. However, it was not yet a matter of revolution. It was just that she was born in Paris on May 8 (April 26, old style) 1874, the parents belonged to the creative bohemia. And in this environment, like revolutionaries and criminals, pseudonyms and nicknames are in use. In a word, the habit of nicknames is in the blood.
The father of the future Russian revolutionary was the successful French opera singer Théodore Stéphane, his real name was Théodore Pécheux d'Herbenville, and her mother was the French actress Nathalie Wild. This married couple, besides Inessa, had two more girls. Due to the early death of her father, in order not to be a burden to her large family, Ines goes to her aunt in Moscow, who became a music teacher in the Armand family of merchants and textile manufacturers.
On October 3, 1893, in the Church of St. Nicholas in the village of Pushkino, which was then part of the Mytishchi volost of the Moscow district of the Moscow province, Inessa Stefan married Alexander Armand. Married to him, Ines gave birth to 4 children: two sons - Alexander and Fedor and two daughters - Inna and Varvara. An ardent admirer of social democratic ideas and Tolstoyanism turned out to be an unfaithful wife. She fell in love with her brother-in-law Vladimir Armand. Her husband's brother was nine years younger than Inessa.
Having accidentally learned about adultery, Alexander Evgenievich Armand, despite the shock, showed generosity. Vladimir and Inessa first went to Naples, and then settled in a Moscow house on Ostozhenka. In 1903, in Switzerland, the couple had their first child, Andrei. In 1905, “Comrade Inessa” was arrested for the first time, and in 1907 she was sent to the Arkhangelsk province, where her new husband followed her. Vladimir Armand died of consumption in one of the Swiss private clinics.
Feminists and revolutionaries avoided wearing makeup, jewelry, and perfume. Against the background of these blue stockings, Inessa Armand stood out “like a lawless comet” with her beauty and charm. Party comrades joked that Inessa should be included in textbooks on Marxism as an example of the unity of form and content.
Lenin met Inessa Armand in her hometown, Paris, in 1909 or 1910. The exact date didn't matter to either of them as it was pure friendship. “At that time I was afraid of you more than fire,” Armand wrote to Lenin in 1913. - I would like to see you, but it seems better that I would die on the spot than go into your room, and when for some reason you entered N.K.’s room (Nadezhda Krupskaya - ed.), I immediately became lost and stupid.
I was always surprised and envious of the courage of others who came straight to you and talked to you. Only in Longiumeau (Lonjumeau - ed. . ) and then next fall due to translations, etc. I got a little used to you. I loved not only listening, but also looking at you when you spoke. Firstly, your face becomes so animated, and secondly, it was convenient to watch, because you didn’t notice it at the time...” They began to sit for a long time in a Parisian cafe near porte d'Orléans.
Two years after they met, Lenin complained in his letter to Armand: “oh, these “deeds” are similar to deeds, surrogates of deeds, an obstacle to the deed, how I hate vanity, trouble, deeds and how I am inextricably and forever connected with them! That"is a sign more that I am lazy and tired and badly humoured. Generally I like my profession and now often almost hate it" (This is another sign that I am lazy, tired and in a bad mood. In general, I love my profession, and now I often almost hate it).
In this recognition, some researchers even see Lenin’s desire to throw the whole business of the world revolution to hell and indulge in all the delights of Eros with his beloved woman. More serious ones believe that Ilyich did not expect to see the victory of the revolutionary forces in Russia during the lifetime of this generation - hence, they say, the fatigue...
Nevertheless, observant contemporaries noticed that the leader of the Russian revolutionaries was not indifferent to the lively Frenchwoman. French socialist Charles Rapoport said: “Lenin did not take his Mongolian eyes off this little French girl.” The apogee of their relationship came in 1913. Lenin was then 43 years old, Inessa was 39 years old. As Kollontai testified, Lenin himself confessed everything to his wife. Krupskaya wanted to “move away,” but Lenin asked her to “stay.” In the name of the triumph of the idea, Lenin sacrificed the love of his life.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna, who had faded over the years, treated her husband’s feelings with understanding. She wrote that Lenin “could never fall in love with a woman with whom he differed in views, who was not a workmate.” The subjunctive mood with the triple particle “would” clearly reveals how difficult it was for an unloved woman to receive such forgiveness.
“There must be a connection between the will to power and sexual impotence. I like Marx: it feels like he and his Jenny made love with enthusiasm. This can be felt in the serenity of his style and his constant humor. At the same time, as I once noticed in the corridor of the university, if you sleep with Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, then with iron inevitability the person will write something terrible, like “Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,” our contemporary Italian writer and writer would write at the end of the 20th century. medievalist Umberto Eco in his bestseller “Foucault’s Pendulum”.
Lenin wrote to his passion in English: “Oh, I would like to kiss you a thousand times... (“Oh, I would like to kiss you a thousand times..."). It is unlikely that the kisses in July 1914 became exclusively friendly. Although his addresses to her in letters always remained emphatically friendly. Yes, that’s what he wrote in English - dear friend! How contrasted against this background were her letters with the constant address “dear” and with the ending: “I kiss you deeply. Yours Inessa."
Inessa's death remains somewhat of a mystery. Tired of the endless revolutionary struggle, Armand wanted to go home to restore her wasted health, but in August 1920, Lenin persuaded her by letter to go to a sanatorium in the Caucasus, to Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who “is where the power is” and was supposed to arrange for his mistress “rest, sun, good job." Soon comrade Sergo cheerfully reported to the leader: “Everything is fine with Inessa.” Probably this old acquaintance of hers, who once attended school in the Parisian suburb of Longjumeau, managed to arrange the “sun”!
And suddenly a telegram: “Out of line. Moscow. TsEKa RKP. Council of People's Commissars. Lenin. It was not possible to save my comrade Inessa Armand, who fell ill with cholera, period Ended on September 24, period We will transfer the body to Moscow Nazarov.” Historians were surprised by this telegram signed not by Ordzhonikidze, but by the unknown Nazarov. It is quite possible that he was a security officer. In less than two days, 46-year-old Inessa Armand unexpectedly fell ill with cholera and died.
On October 11, 1920, the zinc coffin with Armand’s body was delivered from the Kazansky railway station to the center of Moscow on a hearse drawn by two white horses. The next day, Armand was buried in the Kremlin wall between the American journalist John Reed and the pediatrician Ivan Vasilyevich Rusakov. A few months later Lenin suffered his first stroke.