Unknown details about Lenin’s life and death in the spotlight of the Presidential Library

The first head of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, died on January 21, 1924. For several weeks throughout the country, in every newspaper and in every journal speeches of prominent party figures, reports, and responses from abroad were printed. No matter what the orientation of the publication was - the central media, provincial, narrowly professional, multi-circulation - all editorial offices considered it their duty to pay tribute to the leader of the world proletariat. There are completely unique ones among the materials about Lenin. For example, the free supplement to the Penza newspaper Trudovaya Pravda is the magazine Tovarishch, published on February 10, 1924. Its entire issue is dedicated to Lenin’s death.  

The article opening the magazine contains a biography of Vladimir Ilyich: childhood, studying at the university, passion for the ideals of Marxism, arrest, exile, revolution, assassination attempt by Fanny Kaplan and the ending of the life of the leader of the world proletariat. The material is accompanied by a variety of illustrations - from the image of a boy signed "comrade Lenin is a child" until the "last photograph of the sick comrade Lenin before death".

It is written about the last years of Vladimir Ilyich’s life: “Titanic work breaks his strength. In the summer of 1922, the disease inflicted a severe blow to him. In August and September there was a significant gain in his health. In October he returned to his activities. In November, he gives three keynote speeches. December 16, the disease struck him with renewed vigor. There was paralysis of the right arm and right leg, causing him to fall into bed. In February 1923, he still dictated his political articles, but in March, a severe attack of paralysis of the right half of the body developed. Recently, there has again been an improvement in Lenin’s health. But on January 21, 1924, at 6 hours and 50 minutes after an hour of unconsciousness, Lenin died in Gorki, near Moscow”.    

The next article in the journal is called “Vladimir Lenin in Petrograd”. It is interesting that “this period in the life of Lenin and the Petersburg proletariat was shown in official coverage, that is, according to secret data from the police department”. The magazine reports: “The first case of the “Union of Struggle” arose at the end of 1895, when mass arrests were made among the intelligentsia and workers. And in this case, from the first sheet, the name of Lenin is repeated an infinite number of times. Arrested on December 9, after spending more than a year in prison, Comrade Lenin did not indulge the gendarmes with his testimonies. Only four interrogations were removed from him; the gendarmes apparently waved a hand at him, deciding that you would not get anything from him anyway.

Another material of the special issue of the journal is called "Ilyich in exile (from personal memoirs)". The young revolutionary V. Dyogot, who worked at the Central Committee's Paris printing house, focuses on his meetings with Lenin abroad. In addition to enthusiastic words about the “hard-stone Bolshevik”, the article also contains sketches of a seemingly everyday character, for example, about the dressing of the leader of the world proletariat.

The material "Shot of the Socialist Revolutionary Kaplan" spotlights the attempt on Lenin, which occurred on August 30, 1918. The magazine provides a version set forth by Lenin's personal chauffeur, Stepan Gil, who witnessed the assassination attempt. “The direct physical killer was duly punished, but the Social Revolutionaries succeeded. In the death of Ilyich there is a considerable proportion of their guilt. The working people will never forget and forgive them”, - Gil concludes his story. Let us recall that by the centenary of the assassination attempt of Fanny Kaplan on. Lenin, the Presidential Library has declassified official materials about the investigation of this case by publishing them on the institution’s portal.

Memoirs of the revolutionary N. A. Emelyanov, one of the organizers of the underground of Lenin in the village of Razliv near Sestroretsk, “about the illegal order of life Lenin and Zinoviev after July 1917" under the name "Mysterious hut" also contain details unknown to a wide audience. Initially, Lenin and Zinoviev, forced to hide in order to conspire “pinned down by Nadezhda Emelyanova” (the wife of a revolutionary), lived in the attic of a barn. However, “everybody could see them every minute, and so they had to think about a safer place. <...> The time is haymaking, but what if Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Evseevich, under the guise of mowers, move to mowing, especially since after transforming their appearance and haircuts, they were very similar to those. <...> The attic was replaced by another dwelling, now even smaller in volume, a "hut" made of branches and covered with hay from above. Yes, this “hut” should have been called the “headquarters of the revolution”, because here Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Evseevich quite calmly got down to work, preparing plans. The strength of the workers was weighed and in a peaceful environment they could calmly and accurately solve certain issues. Thus, comrade Ilyich began to live in this hut with comrade G. Evseevich, right next to it with the kitchen arranged, on the stakes of a pot, tea is heated. But at night, unbearably annoying mosquitoes do not give rest at all, no matter how you hide from them, but they will achieve their goal, and often you have to be bitten, but there is nothing to be done, not everything is fine. <...> Vladimir Ilyich and Grigory Evseevich did not miss the chance and opportunity to do physical work - I remember how both of them, not inferior to experienced porters, carried large haystacks, throwing haystacks. In the evening, we often went fishing with bullshit with the kids”.

An article by Nikolai Bukharin was briefly called and was consonant with the name of the magazine: "Comrade". It began as follows: “Lenin died. We will never see this huge forehead, this wonderful head, from which revolutionary energy radiated in all directions, these living, piercing, attentive eyes, these firm, powerful hands, all this strong, cast figure, which stood at the turn of two eras in human development. <...> Honey! Unforgettable! Great! Comrade Lenin has been and remains the only and unique in centuries”.

In turn, the revolutionary Vladimir Vilensky (Sibiryakov), a member of the anti-Kolchak underground, an international historian, argues on the pages of the magazine with the English writer and publicist Herbert Wells, who called in his book “Russia in the Dark” by Lenin “the Kremlin dreamer”: “Ah, Sir Wells how cruelly wrong you are. <...> Before you was a brilliant visionary, with his narrowed eyes who knew how to look far ahead and correctly predict the stages of the great struggle of the working class, the leader of which he was. Before you were the greatest practitioner of revolutionary affairs. You looked through Lenin...".  

The full contents of the magazine is available in the reading room of the Presidential Library, as well as in any of the centers of remote access to the collections of the institution (there are more than 1000 of them) located in 85 regions of Russia and 30 countries of the world.

In addition to other documents, the Presidential Library’s portal is freely accessible and contains unique newsreels of 1924, which feature the funeral of the founder of the Soviet state. Six minutes of the digitized film show mourning Moscow, an endless stream of people walking along the tomb of Lenin, and the Red Army soldiers on guard of honor. The mourning procession on Red Square, led by Vyacheslav Molotov, is visible on the screen. The film captured the first persons of the state: Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, who were later declared "enemies of the party and people". Joseph Stalin also came into the lens, who soon after the death of Lenin led the country.

The Presidential Library also presents a number of electronic copies of book rarities as part of its efforts to form a collection of figures from the Soviet era. For example, in the book of Grigory Zinoviev “On the Death of Lenin” published in Leningrad in 1925, Zinoviev’s speech is presented specifically on the occasion of the death of Vladimir Ilyich. In one row there are letters from the “worker-miner Tarasov” and “the worker Nikiforova”, Maxim Gorky, and the author’s thoughts.

In 1936, Zinoviev was sentenced to death. Kamenev was also shot on the same year. A decade earlier, under his editorship, the second 30-volume edition of the Works of Vladimir Lenin was published. They are also available on the library’s portal.