A woman of the revolution
Review by Cissie Lodge
The story of Inessa Armand could not have been invented, even by the most imaginative of writers. It’s not by chance that Michael Pearson decided to make his account into a biography rather than a novel*.
The full story – especially her relations with Lenin – could only begin to be told after the Soviet archives were opened in the 1990s. Pearson has also drawn on a biography by the French author Georges Bardawil published in 1993 and Armand family sources. These are pieced together with her own correspondence and the many surviving letters written by Lenin to Inessa.
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| Inessa Armand and her husband Alexander soon after their marriage, 1893 |
Born in Paris in 1874, she was the illegitimate daughter of a French woman and a Parisian opera singer. Brought up near Moscow by her aunt, she married Alexander Armand, in 1893. The wealthy Armand family had an idyllic estate in Pushkino. After bearing Alexander four children, she fell in love with his brother Vladimir. She was increasingly drawn to Marxism and the revolutionary politics, in which Vladimir, 11 years younger than her, was well versed.
Vladimir used the family apartment in Moscow to hold meetings of radical students, leading to raids by the Czarist police.
Inessa, her husband and his brother, now her lover, amazingly, found a way of continuing life without breaking up their family. An old family servant recalled that after she fell in love with Vladimir “the three of them were sitting on a couch for hours, with Inessa between them, and all of them were crying…. And all the servants in the house were crying too”.
Instead of leaving her to her own devices, her husband continued to maintain her, Pearson writes, “supporting her various causes, paying her bail when she was jailed, as she often would be, and despite her requests for no favours, using what influence he could to gain her release. He aided her escapes when she had to cross borders illegally. He brought up the children when she was away in exile or prison and made sure that the Pushkino home was always available to her as a haven. He became a stalwart friend as she recognised with gratitude repeatedly”.
Pregnant, accompanied by her children but not her new lover, she spent a year in the Swiss Alps. She used the opportunity to change direction in her life. She broke with the liberal outlook she was born into, and began educating herself in Marxist ideas, reading Lenin’s book The Development of Capitalism in Russia.
The holiday atmosphere in Switzerland was soon broken by the events of 1905 in Russia to which Inessa had returned. She was arrested in front of her children in a police raid and held in jail for four months. On release she continued to organise illegal meetings and was rearrested.
She was banished to a town called Mezen near Archangel in the far north, within one degree of the Arctic Circle for two years. Here she suffered harsh conditions, malaria and witnessed violent beatings of prisoners by the Cossacks.
Inessa Armand finally managed to escape to Poland, but remained a wanted outlaw in Russia. Her lover Vladimir was in France being treated for tuberculosis. He took a sudden turn for the worse and died in her arms, after a desperate journey by Inessa to reach him.
She overcame her desolation at his death and studied in Brussels, travelling to Copenhagen and Paris. It was in Paris that she began to work closely with Lenin, organising the Bolshevik party schools at Longjumeau. Relations between them grew increasingly intense.
She joined Lenin on the famous “sealed train” which took them back to Russia in April 1917 and played a leading role in the struggle to hold on to Soviet power immediately after the revolution. Overwork and the harsh conditions of the Civil War period took their toll on her health. Despite Lenin’s constant efforts to help her regain her strength, she succumbed to cholera and died in 1920 aged only 46. Her loss was a huge blow which some believe contributed to Lenin’s own death just over two years later.
Inessa’s relationship with Lenin is documented closely in this book. When Pearson draws on Inessa’s letters to Lenin and her family, the flesh and blood woman appears before us, in all her predicaments and heroism. There were great twists and turns in her life. Some were dictated by historic events outside her control.
But at key moments, it is she who makes the decisions about what she will do with herself. She followed her heart as well as her political conscience, and did not see a conflict between the two. She refused to be intimidated or trapped, whether by the “morality” of bourgeois marriage or the Czar’s prisons.
We can learn not only about Inessa, but the circles in which she moved, especially about the women in the leadership of the Bolshevik party, even though Pearson tends to see things in terms of personal rivalries. He is astonished and fascinated by Inessa’s personality and dedication to her principles. He views her as a heroic, but tragically misguided idealist. Unfortunately, his understanding of Russian revolutionary history is drawn from “liberal” and anti-Bolshevik historians such as Robert Service, Richard Pipes and Orlando Figes.
Despite the author’s frequent speculation about people’s motives and his false accusations against Lenin, the selfless and free-spirited nature of the revolutionaries comes across again and again. The support and love Inessa received from her sister-in-law, Anna Konstaninovich, Lenin’s wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, from Lenin himself – and which she reciprocated – shines through the lines of this book.
Pearson depicts the poignancy and depth of her relationships with a sympathetic novelist’s mind. He reveals her courage and intelligence even though he is at odds with the philosophy and politics that lay behind these qualities.
http://www.aworldtowin.net/reviews/Inessa.html
Inessa Armand (nata Elisabeth-Inès Stéphane) nacque l’8 maggio 1874 a Parigi. Figlia di Théodore Stéphane (nome d’arte di Théodore Pécheux d’Herbenville), cantante d’opera, e di Nathalie Wild, attrice, in seguito alla morte del padre fu trasferita a Mosca presso una zia (1879).
Ebbe una formazione da istitutrice e a diciannove anni sposò Alexander Armand, figlio di un ricco industriale tessile russo. Insieme aprirono una scuola per i bambini contadini e, successivamente, un’associazione per l’aiuto delle donne indigenti a Mosca.
Ma Inessa non seppe adattarsi alla vita borghese e a venticinque anni lasciò il marito ed i figli per dedicarsi completamente alla politica. Dal 1903 al 1904 soggiornò in Svizzera, dove scoprì gli scritti di Lenin e aderì definitivamente al marxismo. Si iscrisse al partito socialdemocratico del lavoro e partecipò alla sua propaganda illegale.
Nel 1907 venne arrestata e condannata a due anni di confino in Siberia. Terminata la condanna si trasferì a Parigi ed entrò in contatto con Vladimir Lenin ed altri bolscevichi che vivevano in esilio.
Nel 1911 divenne segretaria del comitato di coordinamento dei bolscevichi in Europa occidentale e l’anno seguente tornò in Russia per organizzare la campagna elettorale del partito per le elezioni della Duma. Dopo aver trascorso altri sei mesi in carcere raggiunse Lenin e Nadezhda Krupskaya in Galizia (agosto 1913), ove pubblicò l’opera Rabotnitsa. In quegli anni Lenin intrecciò con lei una lunga relazione sentimentale oltre che una stretta collaborazione lavorativa. Fu la sola persona, al di fuori dei familiari, a cui Lenin diede del “tu” nelle sue lettere.
Inessa partecipò agli incontri del movimento di Zimmerwald e nel marzo 1915 si recò a Berna dove aveva organizzato la Conferenza internazionale pacifista delle donne socialiste.
Nell’aprile del 1917 fece ritorno assieme a Lenin e ad altri 26 rivoluzionari in Russia. Dopo la rivoluzione di ottobre, Inessa divenne Commissario del popolo per l’Assistenza, membro del comitato esecutivo del Soviet di Mosca e della commissione femminile del comitato centrale, che presiedette dal 1919 fino alla morte. Nel febbraio 1919 fece parte della missione della croce rossa per rimpatriare i prigionieri di guerra russi. Al suo ritorno a Pietrogrado prese la direzione di Zhenotdel, un’organizzazione che ebbe lo scopo di battersi per l’uguaglianza femminile nel partito comunista e nei sindacati sovietici.
Nel 1920 presiedette il Primo Congresso Internazionale delle donne comuniste.
Inessa morì di tifo a quarantasei anni (il 24 settembre 1920) durante un viaggio a Nalcik (Caucaso).
Il suo legame con Lenin fu profondo ma quest’ultimo non volle mai rinunciare alla moglie Nazeda Krupskaja che era a conoscenza del rapporto (era stato lo stesso Ilich a confessarlo) e che avrebbe acconsentito a farsi da parte.
Il funerale di Inessa si svolse a Mosca e Lenin lo seguì con grande commozione. La sua salma fu sepolta sulla Piazza Rossa, sotto le mura del Cremlino, accanto a quella di John Reed. Qualcuno ipotizzò che quel dispiacere influì negativamente sulla sua salute, accelerando lo sviluppo della malattia che poco tempo dopo lo avrebbe colpito. Ci fu una voce secondo cui dall’amore tra Lenin ed Inessa sarebbe nata una bambina, ma le sue presunte tracce si persero nella Russia staliniana.
http://www.1917.org/Biografie_Armand.html