Vladimir Lenin. Beginning of Revolutionary Activity
(1870-1900)
V.I.Lenin, 1901
Lenin with some members of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. 1897.There is a photograph on the wall of seven young people, with V. I. Lenin in the centre.This is the group of leaders of the "League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class", founded by Lenin in 1895 on the basis of the unification of all Marxist circles in St. Petersburg. The "League of Struggle" was the embryo of the revolutionary party of the proletariat. It was closely associated in its activities with workers' circles in other cities in Russia.
Lenin at the time of his arrest in connection with the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class case. 1895-1896.Under this photograph are two snapshots of cell No 193 in St. Petersburg Prison. V.I. Lenin was held in solitary confinement there for 14 months after his arrest in December 1895. Displayed here are the "Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party" and the leaflet "To the Tsarist Government", which testify to the fact that he worked intensively during his stay in prison.
In the centre of the exposition is the hectographic edition of V. I. Lenin's book, What the "Friends of the People" are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats. In this work the 24-year-old author set forth and substantiated the basic propositions of the Russian revolutionary Social-Democrats: on the historical role of the working class in Russia as the leading force in the revolution of the proletariat, the necessity of unity between the working class and the peasants-the basic condition for victory over tsarism, on the leading role of the working-class Marxist party in the struggle for democracy and socialism. Three issues of this book were printed in St. Petersburg, where Lenin moved in 1893.
In February 1897 V.I.Lenin was exiled from St. Petersburg to village Shushenskoye in the Minusinsk district of the Yenisei Gubernia (Province) in Eastern Siberia. At the time this was the very remotest depths of the provinces, hundreds of miles from a railroad. (At present Shushenskoye is a regional centre in the Krasnoyarsk region. In 1938 Lenin's house there was opened as a museum. The houses where he lived and the neighbouring part of the village were restored to their condition at the end of the last century and have been preserved.) On display in this hall are the photographs of the house of the peasant Zyryanov, where Lenin lived at the beginning, and the model of his work room in another house belonging to the peasant woman Petrova. Lenin lived there with N. K. Krupskaya, who moved to Shushenskoye in May 1898 and became Lenin's wife, remaining his close friend, comrade and true helper till the end of his life. (see Krupskaya article about Lenin at the Defend Lenin mausoleum! site)
V.I.Lenin, 1901
Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, 1898.Their life in Shushenskoye was filled with unceasing work. They translated into Russian foreign books needed by V.I.Lenin in his work, and Nadezhda Konstantinovna copied Vladimir llyich's work. They spent their free time in the forest, on the river and in the fields. Lenin loved the mighty Siberian nature and the deep Yenisei River. To this day people in Shushenskoye point out the steep banks of the Yenisei from which Lenin often loved to watch the sunsets. Lenin often engaged In athletics, considering that a revolutionary, whose life is dedicated to struggle and abounds in privations and difficulties, must be hardy, eduring and strong in both body and spirit.
On display is the first publication of V. I. Lenin's book The Development of Capitalism in Russia, upon which he continued to work, and finished in Shushenskoye. It was published in 1899 under the pseudonym "Vladimir llyin". Lenin wrote more than 30 theoretical works during his years of exile. Several of these are on display in this hall. For a Marxist Party of a New Type (1900-1904) |
