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August 17, 2003 Issue 
Lenin's Mistress, the Life of Inessa Armand by Michael Pearson 
Lenin's Best-Guarded Secret Revealed It came as a big shock to me when as a new American, eager to fill in the censored gaps in history, I discovered that comrade Lenin, with whose saintly morality those of us born under communism were indoctrinated, had actually been something of a philander. In particular, the mysterious Inessa Armand kept cropping up as Lenin's collaborator and lover. In all the years of memorizing entire paragraphs of revolutionary history, Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism, not once had I encountered the name Inessa Armand. Yet, she was a leading feminist and revolutionary and was instrumental in Lenin's consolidation of power. Finally, a new biography of Inessa Armand reveals the woman with whom the world's most hardened, calculating, power-hungry and conniving revolutionary was smitten. "Lenin's Mistress, the Life of Inessa Armand," the 2001 book by Michael Pearson was researched in the newly opened Soviet archives although the crafty censors had already destroyed many relevant letters and parts of memoirs. Born in Paris, Inessa was raised in Moscow's French-Russian community. At nineteen she married Alexander Armand, the oldest son of a wealthy French-Russian industrialist family. Quickly she bore four children. When she was twenty-eight she fell in love with Vladimir Armand, her husband's seventeen year-old brother, lived openly with him and bore him a son - her fifth and last child. The Armands were a progressive family, steeped in the Russian intelligencia tradition and eventually all would dabble in some form of revolutionary activities. Alexander and the entire Armand family seemed to have accepted Inessa's new arrangement with her brother-in-law. Husband Alexander even accepted the child as his and continued to support her financially and morally. Vladimir was a Marxist and it is he that inspired her compassion for the working people and fueled her nascent feminism. Even as a young girl she had begun to notice the dismissive ways in which men were treating women. "They think they are masters of creation," she wrote to Alexander before their marriage. "They have an absolute disdain for women that finds expression in their respect for feminine weakness." Inessa was a dedicated mother and possessed great charm. She spoke several languages fluently and was a good pianist. She was also rich, elegant and beautiful. But in spite of her social standing, she was arrested twice and in 1907 was sent into arctic exile. Vladimir, already sick with tuberculosis, accompanied her but left soon for a warmer climate when his health worsened. Shortly after that Inessa escaped and went into exile to France just in time to see Vladimir die. Inessa and Lenin met in Paris in 1909. "Inessa had never met a man like Lenin," writes the author, "none who had Lenin's knowledge and intellectual powers; none who believed it was his destiny to reshape the world." Although Lenin's wife Nadya Krupskaya offered to leave, chauvinist Lenin insisted that she stay. He needed both women. Krupskaya took care of him and after his death, was allowed by Stalin to build the Lenin cult. But Inessa did his dirty work. Not always willingly, she gave speeches in his place and helped him plot to get control of the revolutionary factions in exile. They had a major falling out and Lenin did not approve of her feminism, but their mutual respect, admiration and love for each other never waned in spite of all this. The revolution was to eradicate bourgeoisie mentality and replace it, theoretically at least, with new bold and more honest approaches to everything in life - from art and music to equality of men and women in work and in marriage. To lighten the load of women factory workers and give them free time after work to pursue education or self-improvement, Armand advocated nurseries in factories for the children of working women, free canteens and communal dining facilities. But Lenin and the other leading male revolutionaries were even more chauvinistic than the despised bourgeoisie. Probably because they were mostly from the upper classes (Lenin and his wife were both from the nobility), they found it difficult to separate themselves from the morality of their class and to accept the new revolutionary concept of marriage. Eventually the prudish Victorian morality of the 19th century, was reinstated completely by Stalin. Hence the cover up of Lenin's affair with Armand or of any other affairs as well. After the revolution, Inessa was given begrudgingly, the position of Head of the Women's Section of the Central Committee. Her sudden death in 1920 and Lenin's death in 1924 were all the reason needed for the complete closure of the Women's Section. Lenin was devastated by Inessa's death. Many thought they saw his hard Mongolian eyes fill with tears at her funeral and some believed that her untimely death hastened his. "After 1926, Inessa's memory faded from public view," writes the author. "This was partly due to her suspect relationship with Lenin, now overshadowed by his godlike image, but also to her background as a rich young wife, which did not fit the picture of a proletarian revolution." Inessa's husband Alexander remarried in 1927 and became the collective farm blacksmith in the village he formerly owned. None of the Armands were harmed during Stalin's purges. Only the communist ideologues, bent on anointing Lenin with bourgeois morality and on reinventing him, continued to delete any references to Inessa Armand. But Pearson's new book restores a woman of compassion, heroism and deep concern for the improvement of the condition of women and also of mankind, to a place of preeminence in history. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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