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Bride of the Revolution:
Krupskaya and Lenin
Extracts from Bride of the Revolution: Krupskaya and
Lenin, Robert H. McNeal (1973)
p 135
It is highly probable that Inessa was Lenin's mistress for
about a
year in 1911-1912 and quite possible that they renewed their love
affair for a bit more than a year in 1914-1915. In any case,
Krupskaya's marriage was subject to considerable stress because of
Inessa, although Nadezhda did in time accommodate her life to Inessa's
presence. To be sure, all the parties to this episode treated it with
considerable discretion, and Soviet archivists and writers have been
careful not to publish anything that would establish a Lenin-Inessa
love affair. It is possible that Lenin and Inessa were not lovers,
physically. Such aberrations as total monogamy or impotence do occur,
but in this case they seem pretty unlikely. The French Communist
biographer of Inessa, who had access to unpublished papers in Russia,
seems to accept that there was an affair. "As for Lenin," he writes,
"how could he not be seduced by this exceptional being who combined
beauty with intelligence, femininity with energy, practical sense with
revolutionary ardor?"
pp 138-143
The early meetings of Lenin and Inessa in the winter of
1910-1911
are a blank, but they must have become quite well acquainted then,
because Lenin selected her to join the "faculty" of his summer school
for Bolsheviks in Longjumeau in 1911. This was a signal honor for a
woman who had no particular experience either as a theoretician or as a
practical organizer.
Most of the lectures were by Lenin and his two chief
colleagues of
the time, Zinoviev and Kamenev. According to one account Krupskaya gave
some classes on how to establish an illegal newspaper, which she was
certainly qualified to do. At Longjumeau Inessa and her children lived
in the building that was used for the classes and meals, and it is
quite clear that she was in close association with Lenin (politically,
at least) all through the summer.
When Lenin and Krupskaya moved back to their apartment at 4,
Rue
Marie Rose, in September 1911, he, or Inessa, or both, arranged for her
to take a flat at No. 2, the building next door. Until the following
July there is no doubt that Inessa and Lenin saw each other constantly
and were closely associated in their work. Both of them, and Krupskaya,
were leading members of the Paris group of the "Emigrant Organization"
of the party, a cell of about thirty-five members at this time.
In fact, Inessa became the secretary of the "Committee of
Emigrant
Organizations", which was the executive body of all the groups of
emigrant Russian Social Democrats that existed in about fourteen
different western European cities. Before the Revolution of 1905
Krupskaya had held just this post in the same body, then called the
"Foreign League of Russian Revolutionary Social Democrats," and during
the First World War she again carried this responsibility. But in the
period when Inessa was living next door, it was she whom Lenin chose to
handle the correspondence and other administrative work connected with
the emigrant branch of the party.13
Krupskaya continued to serve as secretary of Lenin's factional
newspaper, now called The Working-Class News (Rabochaia
Gazeta),
writing her accustomed letters in defense of the Bolshevik cause (with
special digs at Trotsky, who was more than usually at odds with Lenin
in 1911-1912).
But the more important task was the one entrusted to Inessa,
for
Lenin's chief tactical objectives at this point were closely involved
with the politics of the emigrant community, while the Russian
underground was still in the doldrums. The initial shock of Inessa's
affair with Lenin must have been very hard on Krupskaya, leaving
emotional scars that were still tender years afterwards. In her memoirs
of this period, written for mass consumption in 1928, she tries to
leave the impression that Inessa established close relations with the
family only after 1912, when all of them turned up in Austrian Poland.
"That autumn," (1913) writes Krupskaya, "all of us — our
entire
Cracow group — were drawn very close to Inessa ... We knew her, of
course, in Paris, but the colony there had been a large one, whereas in
Cracow we lived together in a small, close and friendly circle." No
mention of Rue Marie Rose, complete contradiction of Krupskaya's own
writing for a much more select, well-informed public a few years
earlier: "We saw each other every day [in Paris]. Inessa became a
person close to us. She loved my old mother very much."
There may be a kind of truth in this self-contradiction. It is
possible that the two women saw each other constantly in Paris, but
without cordiality. Only in 1913 did a real friendship between Inessa
and Nedezhda grow up. By that time Inessa had left Lenin, returned to
Russia, suffered imprisonment and was released. In her memoirs
Krupskaya implies that her rival took the initiative in bridging the
gap between them: "during this visit [near Cracow] she [Inessa] told me
a great deal about her life and her children [three of whom had lived
next door to Krupskaya for a year, previously!], and showed me their
letters. There was a delightful warmth in her stories. Ilyich and I
went for long walks with Inessa.
But in the first year of Lenin's attachment to Inessa,
Krupskaya was
not ready for long walks with her rival. According to the recollections
of Alexandra Kollontai, as reported by her one-time colleague, Marcel
Body, Krupskaya offered to leave, but Lenin asked her to stay. This is
certainly plausible. Kollontai was not in a position to know much at
first hand, never having lived in close proximity to Lenin in
emigration, but after the Revolution she became friendly with Inessa
Armand.
For her part, Krupskaya no doubt thought that she opposed the
"bourgeois" concept of marriage, and was obliged to free her husband
when he wished. But it could not have been easy for her. Surely
Krupskaya, who secretly kept the wedding ring that she could not wear
(because of the inverted prudery of her set), regarded marriage — and
especially her own marriage — with a lot more reverence than many
non-radical women. She never expressed approval of any alternative to
monogamy, and most certainly never followed Inessa Armand and Alexandra
Kollontai in advocating "free love". Quite apart from her ideology,
Nadezhda Krupskaya was a child of the Victorian middle class when it
came to sexual conduct.
Like many women of this background, she was pretty innocent in
sexual matters — she once wrote that the Russian Old Believers
(dissidents from the official Orthodox Church) did not, as a group,
suffer from syphilis because they did not eat out of common bowls,
which, she obviously believed, accounted for the spread of syphilis
among other Russians. For such a naïve person, the sexual conduct
of an
Inessa or a Kollontai (who had a series of lovers) would be both
frightening and shocking, no matter what Chernyshevsky had said.
Kollontai left a fictionalized version of the
Lenin-Inessa-Krupskaya
triangle in a novella published in Russia in 1927. Entitled A Great
Love,
the resemblances between the three real persons and "Scnya" (diminutive
of Semen or Simon), Natasha (for Inessa), and Annyuta (for Krupskaya)
are unmistakable. He is an emigrant Russian revolutionary leader who
has a beard and wears an old cap. His wife has a heart disease and
cannot be excited. (Something approximating this soon developed with
Krupskaya.) The other woman, Natasha, has known other lovers, and is
more exciting than his wife. Natasha also has ample independent
financial means (unlike her lover), works as a party secretary, and is
an excellent linguist. At the end of the story Natasha leaves Senya to
return to underground work in Russia (as Inessa did in 1912). This exit
ends Kollontai's story, but it does not exclude the possibility of a
sequel, which the lives of the real people did in fact provide. The
conclusion of this act in the fictionalized account also concurs with
Kollontai's statements to Body about Lenin's decision to remain with
Krupskaya.
The novella has it that the initiative in breaking off the
affair
came from the mistress, who was disappointed that her lover did not
esteem her revolutionary activities more highly. At the same time, both
felt that their passion was spent and that they should part. This is
precisely the kind of conduct that Lenin had found so admirable in
Turgenev's Andrei Kolosov. There is some fairly persuasive, if
complicated, evidence that Lenin and Inessa reached such a decision in
the middle of May 1912, while taking a holiday in the resort town of
Arcachon, near Bordeaux. This setting, incidentally, resembles one of
the places that Kollontai's fictitious lovers enjoyed together — "a
southern landscape."
The point of departure of the real-life evidence is a police
report,
dated April 30, 1912, which states that Inessa, though normally a
resident of Rue Marie Rose, is now taking a vacation at Arcachon. Lenin
confirms this in a curious way in a letter to his mother dated March 8
or 9: "E.V. [Krupskaya's mother] thinks of going to Russia, but I do
not expect she will. We are thinking of sending her to friends of ours
in Arcachon in the south of France." Of course, it is possible, but
exceedingly improbable, that Lenin had several friends in this small
town. But it seems that he was thinking of sending his mother-in-law to
stay with his mistress for a holiday.
This may seem to be a unique idea in the annals of
philandering, but
it is not quite as improbable as it sounds. As noted above, Krupskaya
specifically said that her mother and Inessa were chummy in Paris. So
it is not out of the question that Elizaveta Vasilevna was invited to
Arcachon by her son-in-law's mistress. The old lady's mind was failing
in these years, and it seems likely that she was innocent of the nature
of the Lenin-Inessa relationship. But she did not go. Instead, the
chronological list of events in Lenin's life (as published in the
fifth, most recent and most exhaustive edition of his collected works)
states: "Before May 10 — Lenin leaves Paris for several days."
Among the thousands of entries in this reverent list of his
every
known activity, this one is unique. Where did he go? And why, in this
one case, do his latter-day Soviet Boswells not tell us? In other
cases, they are happy to explain where he went and why. Possibly they
don't know (and it is true that they do not have the archives of the
Paris office of the okhrana at their disposal to provide a clue). One
can't be sure, but it seems pretty fair to surmise that Lenin joined
Inessa Armand at Arcachon. If this were so, the outcome of the visit
appears to have been more in Krupskaya's favor than Inessa's. Lenin
came back to Krupskaya from wherever he had been and within a few weeks
moved, without Inessa but with his wife, from Paris to Cracow.
pp 156-7
Judging from her memoirs, one of the most cheering features of
this
difficult period was the comradeship of Inessa Armand. She arrived in
Berne in September 1914, and lived just across the street from them in
the suburb of Distelweg. The three of them were together much of the
time. "Sometimes we would sit for hours on a sunny wooded hillside,
Ilyich putting down notes for his articles and speeches, and polishing
his formulations, I studying Italian with the aid of a Toussaint
textbook, Inessa sewing a skirt in the autumn sunshine." In the
evenings they would often gather at the Zinovievs' tiny room in the
same neighborhood.
There is little detailed information on the character of the
triangle at this time. We do know that when Lenin and Krupskaya moved
to the Hotel Marienthal in Sorenburg, around the end of May 1915, they
were soon joined by Inessa, and that they stayed there together until
the fall, when they all returned to Berne. If Lenin and Inessa had an
amorous relationship in this period, Krupskaya left no sign that it
bothered her, unless there was an implied dig in the passage in her
memoirs that described the idyllic mornings at Sorenburg, Lenin and
Krupskaya working diligently, while Inessa (a dilettante?) played the
piano. Certainly it was widely taken for granted among socialists who
knew Lenin that Inessa was his mistress in 1915. In the opening months
of the following year Inessa went to Paris as his agent to contact
French members of the antiwar Left, travelling on a passport in the
name of "Sophie Popoff," supposedly born in Baku in 1881. The French
surete kept an eye on her and sent reports to the Russian okhrana,
which show that the detectives did not realize that "Popoff" was really
Armand, although they did understand that she went by the pseudonym
"Inessa" and that she was "la maitresse de Lenine." The impartiality of
this police report cannot be doubted. At the time it never occurred to
the French detectives that there was anything sensational involved. The
"maitresse de Lenine" reference was simply a matter of identification,
and no thought of puncturing future Soviet deification of Lenin could
have crossed their minds. Why shouldn't this obscure Russian emigrant
have a mistress?
Very likely they were correct, except for timing. When Inessa
left
Lenin in January 1916, to go to France, she left him forever. When she
returned from her trip to France, Inessa did not settle in Berne, but
instead moved restlessly among several other Swiss towns, seeing Lenin
only once more in Switzerland — at a political conference — before
joining him on the famous sealed train across Germany in April 1917.
Whatever the reason for this renewed separation, Lenin missed Inessa's
companionship and wrote a stream of letters to her in Switzerland,
fairly often complaining that he had not heard from her. Clearly he
wished that she had stayed. "After the flu," he wrote to her in Paris,
in January 1916, "my wife [not 'Nadya'] and I went for a walk on that
road to Frau-Kappelle for the first time — do you remember? — we three
had wonderful walks there once. I remembered it all and was sorry that
you weren't there.
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