Nadezhda
Krupskaya, the daughter of a military officer, was born in St. Petersburg
on 26th February, 1869. A radical from an early age, Krupskaya was
a committed Marxist and was the member of
several illegal organizations.
Krupskaya
taught in an evening school for adults and in 1894 met fellow revolutionary,
Vladimir Lenin. Two years later Lenin was
arrested and sentenced to three years internal exile in Siberia.
Krupskaya joined Lenin in Shushenskoye and they married in July, 1898.
While living in exile Lenin and Krupskaya also translated from English
to Russian, The Theory and Practice of Trade
Unionism by Sidney Webb and Beatrice
Webb.
Released
in February, 1900, Krupskaya, Vladimir Lenin
and
Jules Martov decided
to leave Russia. They moved to Geneva where they joined up with George
Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod
and other members of the Liberation
of Labour to
publish Iskra (Spark). The paper
was named after a passage from a poem: "The spark will kindle
a flame". Others who joined the venture included Gregory
Zinoviev, Leon Trotsky and
Vera Zasulich. Another revolutionary,
Clara Zetkin, arranged for Iskra
to be printed in Leipzig, Germany.
At
the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London
in 1903, there was a dispute between Vladimir
Lenin and Julius Martov. Lenin argued
for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large fringe
of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing
it was better to have a large party of activists. Martov won the vote
28-23 but Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction
known as the Bolsheviks. Those who
remained loyal to Martov became known as Mensheviks.
Those who
joined the Bolsheviks included Krupskaya,
Gregory Zinoviev, Joseph
Stalin, Anatoli Lunacharsky,
Mikhail Lashevich, Alexei
Rykov, Yakov Sverdlov, Mikhail
Frunze, Maxim Litvinov, Vladimir
Antonov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Gregory
Ordzhonikidze, and Alexander Bogdanov.
During
the First World War Krupskaya and Vladimir
Lenin lived in Switzerland. After the overthrow of Nicholas
II in April, 1917, they returned to Russia. Lenin now joined with
Leon Trotsky in plotting against the
government being led by Alexander Kerensky.
When the Provisional Government collapsed
in October, Lenin and the Bolsheviks took control of Russia.
Krupskaya had opposed Lenin's calls for an early revolution but after
its success she hid her political differences with her husband. In
November, 1917, Krupskaya was appointed to serve under Anatoli
Lunacharsky as Deputy People's Commissar of Education and Enlightenment.
Lenin's
health declined after being shot by Dora Kaplan
on 30th August, 1918. Two bullets entered his body and it was too
dangerous to remove them. Lenin suffered a stroke in May, 1922 and
a second one in December, 1922. Four days later he dictated his famous
'testament' where he assessed all the main party leaders.
Three days after writing this testament Lenin had a third stroke.
Lenin was no longer able to speak or write and although he lived for
another ten months, he ceased to exist as a power within the Soviet
Union.
Krupskaya
published her memoirs, Reminisces
in 1926. Nadezhda Krupskaya died on 27th February, 1939.
Nadezhda Krupskaya and Vladimir
Lenin
in 1922.
(1) Nadezhda
Krupskaya later described to a friend her time with Vladimir
Lenin
in Siberia.
We were
young then, we had just got married, we loved each other passionately.
For a time nothing else existed for us. And he would have us doing
nothing but translating the Webbs.
(2)
Lydia
Dan, the sister of Jules Martov and the
wife of Fedor Dan, was in Munich with Nadezhda
Krupskaya and Vladimir
Lenin
in 1901.
On Sundays
w e usually had lunch together in some large beer hall, where Lenin
very attentively examined the menu and selected a good portion of
meat, such as he probably never got at home during the week for Krupskaya
was not much of a cook. He drank beer with pleasure, teasing me because
I drank mineral water rather than beer in Munich. Finally, he would
declare that he was at our disposal and was ready, if it pleased us,
to go for a walk. However, he never forgot to make it a condition
- one which we accepted with varying degrees of pleasure - that we
should not discuss politics.
Lenin did
not like talking while he walked; he walked to relax; he may have
given himself up to contemplating the landscape; but he was invariably
in a good mood. In those days, like all of us, he loved to sing. But
none of us had good voices.
(3)
Nadezhda Krupskaya and Vladimir
Lenin
went to live in London in April,
1902. Krupskaya wrote about this in her book, Reminiscences
(1926)
Lenin liked
the bustle of this huge commercial city. The quiet squares, the detached
houses, with their separate entrances and shining windows adorned
with greenery, the drives frequented only by highly polished broughams,
were much in evidence, but tucked away nearby, the mean little streets,
inhabited by the London working people, where lines with washing hung
across the street, and pale children played in the gutter - these
sites could not be seen from the bus top. In such districts we went
on foot, and observing these glaring contrasts of wealth and poverty,
Ilyich would mutter between clenched teeth, in English! "Two
nations!"
(4)
Maxim Gorky, letter to Romain Rolland
(November , 1922)
The fact is that Lenin's wife is by nature not a very
bright person, suffering from Basedov disease, and is therefore psychologically
not very sound. She compiled a list of allegedly counter-revolutionary
works and ordered these to be removed from libraries. The old woman
considered works of western European philosophers, thinkers, writers
as well as Russian as counterrevolutionary My first thought was to
renounce my Soviet citizenship but then, it would not have changed
much.
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