Lenin on the Train

312 Pages·2017·23.55 MB·English

by  Catherine Merridale

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Table of Contents
About the Author
Photos
Copyright Page

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List of Illustrations
Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders. The publishers will
be pleased to make good any errors or omissions brought to their attention.
  1. Sir Samuel Hoare in 1917. (Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts and University Archives
(MS Templewood III:1). Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge
University Library)
  2. Major-General Sir Alfred William Fortescue Knox. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
  3. Sir George William Buchanan, photographed by Walter Stoneman in 1918. (Copyright ©
National Portrait Gallery, London)
  4. Maurice Paléologue. (Copyright © Bibliothèque nationale, Paris)
  5. Barricades in Petrograd: Liteiny Prospect, 27 February/12 March 1917. (Photograph: adoc-
photos/Lebrecht Collection)
  6. The Provisional Executive Committee of the State Duma, February 1917. (Library of Congress
Prints and Photographics Division, Washington, DC)
  7. Revolutionary crowds in front of the Tauride Palace on 1/14 March 1917. (Photograph:
Photo12/UIG/Getty Images)
  8. The Tauride Palace today. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
  9. Soldiers and sailors in the Tauride gathering to listen to Mikhail Rodzianko. (Photograph:
Photo12/Alamy)
10. Petrograd’s solemn funeral for the victims of the revolution. Procession along Nevsky Prospect,
10/23 March 1917. (Photograph: Sputnik/akg-images)
11. Alexander Helphand, better known as Parvus, photographed in 1906. (Photograph: Ullstein
bild/Getty Images)
12. Arthur Zimmermann, photographed in the last years of peace. (Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty
Images)
13. Fritz Platten, photographed around 1920. (Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv (Sozarch_F_Fb-0004-
41))
14. Karl Radek in Berlin, December 1919. (Photograph: akg-images)
15. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. (Photograph: Kharbine-Tapabor)
16. A view of Zurich’s Spiegelgasse, where the Lenins were living at the time of the February
revolution. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
17. The Russian travellers’ final list of conditions, addressed to the General Staff of the German
Army, dated 9 April/ 27 March 1917. (Photograph: akg-images)
18. Lenin in Stockholm, 31 March/13 April 1917. (Labour Movement Archives and Library,
Huddinge, Sweden. Photograph: Axel Malmström)
19. The Tornionjoki river between Sweden and Finland, photographed by Mia Green in 1915.
(Museum of the Torne Valley, Finland)
20. Tar barrels awaiting transport through Haparanda-Tornio during the First World War.
(Reproduction photographer Reino Kainulainen; Museum of the Torne Valley, Finland)
21. Sacks of international post at Tornio during the First World War. (Photographer Einar Reuter;
Museum of the Torne Valley, Finland)
22. Lenin on his way to Petrograd in the sealed train. A romantic view by Soviet artist P. V. Vasiliev
(1899–1975). (Photograph: De Agostini/Getty Images)
23. The Customs House in Tornio during the First World War. (Photographer Mia Green; Museum
of the Torne Valley, Finland)
24. Lenin’s arrival at the Finland Station, April 1917. Painting by M. G. Sokolov (1875–1953).
(Photograph: Frank Payne; Alliluev Apartment-Museum, St Petersburg.)
25. The Finland Station in the 1910s. (Photograph: Chronicle/Alamy)
26. Lenin speaking on the Balcony of Kshesinskaya’s Mansion on the night of 3/16–4/17 April
1917. Painting by A. M. Lyubimov (1879–1955). (Photograph: Frank Payne; Museum of
Political History, St Petersburg)
27. Kshesinskaya’s mansion and its balcony today. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
28. The prow-shaped drawing-room at the Elizarov Apartment Museum, St Petersburg.
(Photograph: Frank Payne)
29. Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky in 1917. (Photograph: UIG/akg-images)
30. Cover of Kladderadatsch for 8 April 1917: ‘The English Death’. (Photograph: copyright ©
Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg)
31. Lenin addressing workers at the Putilov factory in Petrograd, May 1917. Painting by Isaak
Brodsky (1883–1939). (Photograph: Bettmann/Getty Images)
32. Petrograd, 1 May 1917. (Photograph: akg-images)
33. Lenin’s office at the headquarters of Pravda, April–July 1917. (Photograph: Frank Payne;
Museum of the Press, St Petersburg)
34. Finnish Railways Steam Locomotive No. 293, photographed in 1961. (Photograph:
Sputnik/Topfoto)
35. Cover of Fritz Platten’s memoir collection Lenin’s Journey Through Germany, 1924. (private
collection)
36. Sassnitz: the Carriage of the Empress, built in 1912. (Photograph: copyright © K. Henning
Kurth)
37. Discarded plaster head for a projected Lenin statue, in storage at the Memorial Workshop of
Sculptor M. K. Anikushin, St Petersburg. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
38. Plaster model of a naked Lenin, Memorial Workshop of Sculptor M. K. Anikushin, St
Petersburg. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
39. Lenin Statue at the Finland Station, by Sergei Evseev, 1926. (Photograph: Frank Payne)
A Note on the Text
Two complications threaten to confound any English-speaker who writes about
Russia in 1917. The first is the Russian alphabet, which defies consistent
transliteration. In my text, I have opted to use the simplest and most familiar-
looking versions of Russian names wherever possible (which is why I have
ended up with Trotsky and not Trotskii or even Trockij), but the endnotes follow
the precepts of the Library of Congress, which is still the best system for
tracking Russian material through online catalogues.
Yet more problems arise with dates. In 1917, Russia still used the Julian
calendar, which almost always trailed behind the rest of Europe and the United
States (and most of the world) by thirteen days. Since I have had to deal with
telegrams (and people) travelling between both worlds, I have often been forced
to give both dates at once.
Meanwhile, of course, there are two Easters in this story, for Lenin left
Zurich on Catholic Europe’s Easter Monday afternoon (the date in Zurich was 9
April) and arrived in Petrograd a week later on Orthodox Russia’s Easter
Monday night (which was 3 April to the supporters who were waiting for him).