Krupskaya Nadezhda Konstantinovna years of life. Literary and historical notes of a young technician

In Soviet historiography Nadezhda Krupskaya was mentioned exclusively in the status of “wife and comrade-in-arms” Vladimir Lenin. In the post-Soviet period, because of this same status, she was subjected to mockery and insults from all kinds of “accusers” and “subverters.”

It seems that neither one nor the other was interested in the personality of this extraordinary woman, whose whole life was painted in tragic tones.

She was born on February 26, 1869 in St. Petersburg into an impoverished noble family. Nadenka graduated from the pedagogical class of the gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the Higher Women's Courses, but studied there for only a year.

Nadezhda Krupskaya, 1895. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Nadya’s father was close to participants in the Narodnaya Volya movement, so it is not surprising that the girl was infected with left-wing ideas from her youth, which is why she very quickly found herself on the list of “unreliables.”

Her father died in 1883, after which Nadya and her mother had a particularly difficult time. The girl made a living by giving private lessons, while simultaneously teaching at the St. Petersburg Sunday evening school for adults behind the Nevskaya Zastava.

And without that it’s not the same good health Nadezhda suffered greatly during the years when she ran from student to student through the damp and cold streets of St. Petersburg. Subsequently, this will affect the fate of the girl in a tragic way.

Party beauty

Since 1890, Nadezhda Krupskaya was a member of the Marxist circle. In 1894, in a circle, she met “The Old Man” - this was the party nickname of the young and energetic socialist Vladimir Ulyanov. A sharp mind, a brilliant sense of humor, excellent oratory skills - many revolutionary-minded young ladies fell in love with Ulyanov.

Later they would write that the future leader of the revolution was not attracted to Krupskaya female beauty, which did not exist, but exclusively ideological closeness.

This is not entirely true. Of course, the main unifying principle for Krupskaya and Ulyanov was the political struggle. However, it is also true that Vladimir was attracted to Nadya by female beauty.

She was very attractive in her youth, but this beauty was taken away from her by a terrible autoimmune disease - Graves' disease, which affects women eight times more often than men, and is also known by another name - diffuse toxic goiter. One of its most striking manifestations is its bulging eyes.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Nadezhda inherited the disease and already in her youth it manifested itself in lethargy and regular ailments. Frequent colds in St. Petersburg, and then prison and exile led to an exacerbation of the disease.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century effective ways There has not yet been a fight against this disease. Nadezhda Krupskaya's disease crippled her entire life.

Work instead of children

In 1896, Nadezhda Krupskaya was imprisoned as an activist of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class created by Ulyanov. The leader of the “Union” himself was already in prison by that time, from where he asked for Nadezhda’s hand in marriage. She agreed, but her own arrest postponed the wedding.

They got married in Siberia, in Shushenskoye, in July 1898.

Ulyanov and Krupskaya did not have children, which is why speculation arose - Nadezhda was frigid, Vladimir was not attracted to her, etc.

This is all nonsense. The relationship between the spouses, at least in the first years, was full-fledged, and they thought about children. But a progressive illness deprived Nadezhda of the opportunity to become a mother.

She tightly closed this pain in her heart, concentrating on political activity, becoming the main and most reliable assistant to her husband.

Her comrades noted Nadezhda’s fantastic ability to work - all the years, next to Vladimir, she processed a huge volume of correspondence and materials, delving into completely different issues and at the same time managing to write her own articles.

She was next to her husband both in exile and in exile, helping him in the most difficult moments. Meanwhile her own strength was undermined by an illness, due to which her appearance became more and more ugly. What it was like for Nadezhda to experience all this, only she knew.

Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya with Lenin’s nephew Viktor and the worker’s daughter Vera in Gorki. August - September 1922. Photo: www.russianlook.com

Love-party triangle

Nadezhda was aware that Vladimir might become interested in other women. And so it happened - he began an affair with another fellow fighter, Inessa Armand.

Inessa Armand, 1914. Photo: Public Domain

These relations continued after the political emigrant Vladimir Ulyanov became the leader of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, in 1917.

The story that Krupskaya allegedly hated her rival and her entire family is a fiction. Nadezhda understood everything and repeatedly offered her husband freedom, even being ready to leave herself, seeing his hesitation.

But Vladimir Ilyich, making it difficult not political, but life choice, stayed with his wife.

This is difficult to understand from the point of view of simple everyday relationships, but Inessa and Nadezhda remained in good relations. Their political struggle came before personal happiness.

Inessa Armand died of cholera in 1920. For Lenin, this death was a heavy blow, and Nadezhda helped him survive.

In 1921, a serious illness struck down Lenin himself. Nadezhda brought her semi-paralyzed husband back to life, using all her pedagogical talent, re-teaching him to speak, read and write. She managed the almost impossible - to return Lenin to active work again. But a new stroke brought all efforts to naught, making Vladimir Ilyich’s condition almost hopeless.

Life after Lenin

After January 1924, work became the only meaning of Nadezhda Krupskaya’s life. She did a lot for development in the USSR pioneer organization, women's movement, journalism and literature. At the same time, she believed Chukovsky’s fairy tales were harmful to children and spoke critically of the pedagogical system Anton Makarenko.

In a word, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, like all major political and statesmen, was a contradictory and ambiguous person.

The trouble was that Krupskaya, a talented, intelligent, self-sufficient person, was perceived by many in the USSR exclusively as “Lenin’s wife.” This status, on the one hand, evoked universal respect, and on the other, sometimes disdain for Nadezhda Krupskaya’s personal political position.

The significance of the confrontation Stalin and Krupskaya in the 1930s is clearly exaggerated. Nadezhda Konstantinovna did not have sufficient leverage to pose a threat to Joseph Vissarionovich in the political struggle.

“The Party loves Nadezhda Konstantinovna not because she great person, but because she close person our great Lenin,” this phrase once said from a high rostrum very accurately defined Krupskaya’s position in the USSR in the 1930s.

Death at the Jubilee

She continued to work, wrote articles on pedagogy, memories of Lenin, and warmly communicated with Inessa's daughter Armand. She considered Inessa's grandson her grandson. In her declining years, this lonely woman clearly lacked simple family happiness, which she was deprived of by a serious illness and political struggle.

Claudia Nikolaeva and Nadezhda Krupskaya in Arkhangelskoye, 1936. Photo: Public Domain

On February 26, 1939, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya celebrated her 70th birthday. Old Bolsheviks gathered to celebrate with her. Stalin sent a cake as a gift - everyone knew that Lenin’s comrade-in-arms loved sweets.

This cake will later become the reason for accusations against Stalin of the murder of Krupskaya. But in fact, not only Nadezhda Konstantinovna ate the cake, and such a plot itself looks somehow too unrealistic.

A few hours after the celebration, Krupskaya became ill. Nadezhda Konstantinovna was diagnosed with acute appendicitis, which soon turned into peritonitis. She was taken to the hospital, but could not be saved.

The resting place of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya was a niche in the Kremlin wall.

She devoted her entire life to her husband, the revolution and the building of a new society, never complaining about the fate that deprived her of simple female happiness.

Krupskaya was born in 1869 into the family of a military lawyer and a governess. Despite the fact that the family was not rich, Nadezhda Konstantinovna received a good education for a girl. The private gymnasium where Krupskaya studied was not to her liking: boring lessons, uninteresting teachers.

In 1887, Nadezhda Konstantinovna completed her studies at the gymnasium. She was not particularly beautiful. Many considered her an ugly girl. And Krupskaya herself understood this. It was necessary to decide what she would do in the future. In 1889, she decided to enroll in pedagogical courses. But I studied for them for no more than two months. She met young Marxists, dropped out of the course and got a job as a teacher at a school for workers. Krupskaya was arrested for her passion for Marx's ideas. She spent seven months in prison, and then was exiled to Ufa.

Even before being taken into custody and exiled to Siberia, Krupskaya met Vladimir Ulyanov. common goal made them friends. For him, Nadezhda Konstantinovna became a friend and ally in the political struggle. Finding themselves in exile in different places, they wrote letters for a whole year asking for permission to serve their sentences together. Finally they received permission. In 1898, at the place of Ulyanov’s exile, they were married in the old village church. Since then they have rarely been apart for long. Krupskaya helped Lenin rewrite articles and sorted his mail.

Three years later, Krupskaya moved to Germany, where she worked as editor of the Iskra newspaper. After the failure of the first revolution, Krupskaya and Lenin continued to prepare for the next uprising.

After the October Revolution, Krupskaya took part in the construction of a new state. She did not have her own children, so she paid a lot of attention to orphans; neither their origin nor nationality was important to her. She often visited orphanages and helped organize holidays for them. Nadezhda Konstantinovna firmly believed that these children are the future of the socialist state. After reading many books about the scout movement in Europe, she decided that it was necessary to create similar organizations in Russia, but educate them in the spirit of communist ideology. In 1919, Krupskaya laid the foundation for the creation of Komsomol and Pioneer organizations.

Nadezhda Konstantinovna paid much attention to education. With its help, new schools, institutes, and vocational schools were opened. Krupskaya was called the creator of the Soviet educational system. For these services in 1937 she received a doctorate pedagogical sciences. In the years Stalin's repressions Nadezhda Konstantinovna tried to protect the children of political prisoners, for which she was sent to work as a library worker. Krupskaya took part in the opening of the museum, wrote books about Lenin, articles and memoirs for children.

Nadezhda Krupskaya to Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova:

Still, I feel sorry that I’m not a man, otherwise I’d be hanging around ten times more.

(Venedikt Erofeev, “My Little Leniniana”)

Mom and Dad

Elizaveta Vasilievna Krupskaya, née Tistrova, was very worried that her only daughter was not at all pretty and did not look like her handsome father. The former governess, who successfully married Lieutenant Konstantin Ignatievich, was afraid that Nadenka would not be able to find someone who would covet her exceptional mental capacity and will forgive the mediocre appearance.
However, marriage with Krupsky can only be considered a relative success. Having met during his service in Kielce (Poland), the young people fell in love at first sight. There was nothing surprising in this: orphans from impoverished noble families, raised at public expense, she - in the Pavlovsk Military Orphan Institute for Noble Maidens, he - in the Konstantinovsky cadet corps, they were similar in their views on life, in their attitude towards the world, in their aspirations and had a common value system.
The girl Tistrova was distinguished by her cheerful disposition, playfulness and homeliness. Krupsky, with his intelligence and literary abilities, was considered the life of the party. In general, many members of this family were noted for their literary abilities. Here is an excerpt from a petition written by Krupsky to his superiors, in which he insists on his transfer from rebellious Poland. He, a member of the First International, was disgusted by the service obliging him to suppress the national liberation uprising: “From the age of nine, the service separated me from everyone close to my heart, and together with my dear native land, leaving in my soul sweet memories of the happy years of childhood, the picturesque places of my native nest !. About everything that is so dear to everyone! From such circumstances of life, some unbearable melancholy oppresses the soul - my whole body, and the desire to serve native land day by day it takes greater hold of my feelings, paralyzing my thoughts.” Not an official note, but a poem! Elizaveta Vasilievna published the book “Children's Day” in 1874. She devoted 12 quatrains with pictures to discussions about the benefits of work, without once mentioning God.
He managed to escape from Poland by entering the St. Petersburg Military Law Academy. Here, on February 26, 1869, the Krupskys’ daughter Nadezhda was born. After graduating from the academy, Krupsky received the position of head of the district in Grojec (Poland). The family lived in prosperity for three years. But all this time the landowners-latifundists were denouncing the administrator, known for his revolutionary-democratic views. And the matter ended sadly - resignation, trial, ban on living in the capital. An appeal was filed, the consideration of which lasted until 1880. All this time, Nadenka was considered the daughter of a person under investigation, and this greatly complicated her life: her father could not find a job, and her mother wrote in the sources of payment for her daughter’s education, shameful for that time, “from own funds Krupskaya E.V. " And although Konstantin Ignatievich was acquitted, emotional stress led to a sharp deterioration in his health, weakened by tuberculosis. And the daughter, who was strongly attached to her father, fell ill with symptoms nervous disorder. This is how her thyroid gland made itself known for the first time.
Having moved to St. Petersburg, the parents sent their daughter to the most advanced for those times educational institution for girls - the Obolenskaya gymnasium, where brilliant representatives of the Russian intellectual elite taught: physicist Kovalevsky, mathematicians Litvinova and Bilibin, collector of Russian folklore Smirnov. And here she was the best student.
The family lived a difficult life - due to the deplorable state of health, the father practically did not work. Friends who were participants in the revolutionary democratic movement helped. Nadya grew up listening to their conversations about the great future of Russia, free from the oppression of tsarism.
On February 26, 1883, Krupsky died. On the birthday of his daughter, who loved him so much.
To make ends meet, Elizaveta Vasilyevna rented a large apartment and rented out rooms to telephone operators, seamstresses, students, and paramedics. They lived on the difference. 14-year-old Nadya gave mathematics lessons. In 1887, she graduated from the 8th pedagogical class and received a diploma as a “home tutor.”
A prosperous life did not suit the young girl; she dreamed of continuing her father’s work in the struggle for universal happiness and equality. I even wrote a letter to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. At this mirror of the future revolution, Nadenka asked about what she should do with herself next, how to benefit the fatherland. I received the answer not from Himself, but from Tatyana Lvovna (interestingly, in just ten years she herself will play the same role at the torch of the future revolution) - the volume of “The Count of Monte Cristo”. What did the writer’s daughter want to say by this, into what abysses should she send her young soul thirsty for social achievement? Nadezhda Konstantinovna approached the matter in detail: she checked the original text with the abridged and simplified Sytin edition for the people, corrected it, removed illogicalities and sent the result of her efforts back to Tolstoy. However, there was no answer.
In 1889 she entered the Bestuzhev courses. She joined the Marxist circle of Mikhail Brusnev.
In spring and summer, mother and daughter Krupsky rented a hut in the Pskov region. They lived on what the peasants gave for the fact that Nadenka worked with their children during field work.
Returning to St. Petersburg, she left her lucrative position as a gymnasium teacher and went to teach for free at a school for working youth behind Nevskaya Zastava.
At the end of February 1894 at pancakes At the engineer Robert Eduardovich Klasson, St. Petersburg workers met with the famous Marxist nicknamed “Old Man”, the author of the brochure “What are “Friends of the People””, which was sensational in their circles, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Teacher Nadya was also here. It was these girls who served as conductors of revolutionary ideas from the heated heads of commoners to the souls and hearts of workers who attended charity classes.

Thank you
Thanks to Nadezhda Konstantinovna, education in our country was genderless for 80 years: boys and girls ran races, threw hammers, chopped coal in mines, and solved trigonometry problems. As a result, Russia lost its men. But they still don’t want to do housework.

Ulyanov and Nadezhda began dating. He asked in detail about the life of the working people, their way of life and morals. One day, in order to answer some of the questions, Nadenka dressed up as a weaver and with a friend staged a spy raid into a workers’ dormitory. The oldest member of the “Union for the Liberation of Workers,” in which Ulyanov and Krupskaya were members, Mikhail Silvin, assessed the role of Nadezhda Konstantinovna this way: “She maintained and renewed connections, was the core of our organization.” Ilyich greatly appreciated the information she provided.
When he got sick, the girl looked after him. Her friends cooked, washed, cleaned for the young leader, while she sat by his bed, read aloud, and told the latest news.
Three years have passed. Mom was worried in vain. Having been rejected from the gate when courting Nadyusha’s friend, also a socialist and teacher, Apollinaria Yakubova, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov asked for his hand in marriage in a letter from prison faithful comrade Nadi. “A wife, a wife! “- the revolutionary girl happily agreed.

curious
Krupskaya did not just write pedagogical projects. She meticulously participated in their implementation. Sarkis Nanushyan, a famous Moscow architect who was entrusted with
to design standard buildings for children's institutions, recalled that Nadezhda Konstantinovna specifically met with him several times to discuss the smallest details of the layout of kindergartens and schools.

Volodya

Before the wedding, Nadya was arrested. There were almost no materials for it, but one of the student workers pawned the entire team. Krupskaya received three years of exile in Ufa.
Her mother petitioned for her release, writing in her petition: “My daughter is generally in poor health, very nervous, and has suffered from catarrh of the stomach and anemia since childhood.” The prison doctor also confirmed the deplorable state of the convict’s body, finding it “extremely unsatisfactory.” But this had no consequences.
Ilyich and Krupskaya sent a petition asking them to serve their exile together in Shushenskoye. To get money for long journey, Elizaveta Vasilievna sold the plot next to her husband’s grave at the Novodevichy cemetery.
The groom found the appearance of the arriving bride “unsatisfactory,” which he wrote to his sister about. Nadenka’s mother was also worried about her unhealthy “paleness.” The girl reassured: “Well, mom, I’m a match for northern nature, there are no bright colors in me.”
At the insistence of the mother-in-law, the wedding took place not according to revolutionary, but according to church canons on July 10, 1898.

Data
Shushenskoye, like Kokushkino, were family estates of the Ulyanov family. Annual income from them ranged from 8 to 17 thousand rubles.
Once a week for the master, the future leader of the revolution, they slaughtered one ram (sheep), one adult wild boar, and 3-5 poultry (turkeys and chickens). From the memoirs of Nadezhda Konstantinovna: “True, lunch and dinner were simple - one week they killed a sheep for Vladimir Ilyich, which they fed him day after day, until he had eaten everything, as soon as he had eaten - they bought meat for the week, the worker in the yard in a trough ... chopped bought meat for cutlets for Vladimir Ilyich, also for a week... In general, the exile went well... In my opinion, he has gotten terribly healthy, and he looks brilliant... One local Polish resident says: “Mr. Ulyanov is always cheerful.” He is terribly interested in hunting, and everyone here is generally an inveterate hunter.”
The exile was paid, according to some sources, 9 rubles. 24 kopecks, according to others - 8 rubles. 17 kopecks per month. During these years in Siberia, a ram cost from 20 to 30 kopecks.

Krupskaya recalled life in Shushenskoye as one of the happiest periods in her life. The mother, who took on all the household chores (and diligently performed them until death), hired a 15-year-old au pair. The funds received by two exiles and the pension of the widow of a collegiate assessor were quite enough for a comfortable existence: books and beloved Volodya were ordered from the capitals mineral water(which, by the way, he received in prison). Nadenka worked in the morning - she corresponded with her comrades who remained in freedom, read newspapers, and prepared excerpts for her husband’s articles. She edited his translation of “The Theory and Practice of English Tradeunianism” by Sidney and Beatrice Webb (translation commissioned, from the publisher, paid). During the day we walked a lot, Ilyich taught his wife to do gymnastics, went boating, cycling, and swam. We went hunting, picked mushrooms and berries. From evening until late at night, my husband sat at his desk.
Throughout their life together, he treated her with the same warmth, tenderness and care as his suddenly deceased beloved sister Olga. There is a lot of evidence of this, especially in Lenin’s correspondence with his relatives. The parents of Ilyich and Krupskaya, who adhered to Narodnaya Volya views, were supporters of the same educational system. It’s not surprising that their children found them so quickly mutual language and throughout their entire life together they understood each other in half a glance, half a word, no. Nadezhda was very friendly with Ilyich’s mother, before last days was best friend his sister Maria.
Neither of them were people without passions. There is evidence that in her youth, Krupskaya accepted the advances of a member of her revolutionary circle, the worker Babushkin, and in exile she became interested in the handsome revolutionary Viktor Konstantinovich Kurnatovsky. But when Lenin was reported about this, and even sister Anna wrote an indignant letter about this, he brushed it off: “This is not the time, Annushka, to engage in all sorts of gossip. We are now faced with grandiose tasks of a revolutionary nature, and you come to me with some kind of womanish talk.”

Ilyich himself once became seriously interested in the beautiful Inessa Armand, the daughter of a French opera singer and the wife of a very rich man. A beauty, she was the complete opposite of Nadezhda Konstantinovna. It happened in Lanjumeau, at a school for revolutionary workers. It was a beautiful, passionate romance. Krupskaya offered Lenin a divorce. But he refused, rejected Armand and returned to his revolutionary girlfriend. Do not forget that the beauty had five children from two marriages, and Krupskaya had a mother with a pension as the widow of a collegiate assessor.
There are rumors that the fruit of love between Armand and Lenin, the boy Andrei, was secretly raised and lived his life in the Baltic states. The beauty's relatives even deny the fact of the affair, but letters have been preserved indicating the opposite. After the breakup, from Paris, Inessa wrote to Lenin: “We broke up, we broke up, dear, you and I! And it hurts so much. I know, I feel, you will never come here! Looking at familiar places, I was clearly aware, as never before, of what great place You were still here in Paris, so important in my life that almost all my activities here in Paris were connected by a thousand threads with the thought of you. I wasn’t in love with you at all then, but even then I loved you very much. Even now I would do without kisses, just to see you, sometimes talking to you would be a joy - and it could not hurt anyone. Why was I deprived of this? You're asking if I'm angry that you handled the breakup. No, I think you didn’t do it for yourself...”
Only one thing is known for sure: supporting Vladimir Ilyich, who was losing consciousness in grief, at the coffin of Inessa, who died in Beslan from cholera (Lenin, knowing her problems with tuberculosis, recommended going to the Caucasus. So she went), Nadezhda Konstantinovna vowed to take care of her young children. And she kept her vow: for some time the younger girls grew up in Gorki. Later they were sent abroad. Until her last day, Krupskaya was in intimate correspondence with them. She especially loved the youngest, Inessa, and called her son “granddaughter.”

Teacher

In Shushenskoye, Krupskaya, at the insistence of Ilyich, wrote her first brochure: “Woman Worker.” Here are the lines from it: “A working woman or a peasant woman has almost no opportunity to raise her children, leaving them to fend for themselves all day long.” People's wolf Vera Zasulich highly praised this work, telling Ilyich that it was written “with both paws.” The book was published without the author's signature. And in 1906 it was declared anti-state and publicly destroyed.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna believed: the problem is not to free women from the need to work on an equal basis with men, but to create a system in which maternal, family education is replaced by public education. She devoted a significant part of her pedagogical works to this, which by the end of her life amounted to 11 weighty volumes, and her efforts: after the revolution, being deputy people's commissar of education Lunacharsky, it was she who laid the foundations Soviet system children's educational institutions: nurseries, kindergartens, camps, boarding schools, schools, work schools. She also took a direct part in the creation of youth—pioneer and Komsomol—organizations. For the latter, by the way, I wrote the charter.

Educational program
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disease, diffuse toxic goiter. This disease was named after German doctor Karl Adolf von Basedow, who gave him a complete and accurate description.
Graves' disease is accompanied by an increase in the size of the thyroid gland and an increase in its function due to autoimmune processes occurring in the patient's body.
The main causes of Graves' disease include:
long-term chronic foci of infection in the body;
hereditary predisposition;
chronic sore throats.
People of all ages are susceptible to the disease, but young and middle-aged women are most often affected. Various viral infections also contribute to the occurrence of toxic goiter.
A specific symptom for Graves' disease is changes in the eyes. When looking down at open eyes appears white stripe above the pupil, although normally the eyelid usually drops with the eyeball. The eyeball appears enlarged and protruded. The eyes shine, they are wide open, blinking is rare. The eyelids may be swollen. Due to malnutrition of the eyeball, different kinds infections and conjunctivitis occurs.

Emigration

After exile, Lenin emigrated to Austria. Nadezhda Konstantinovna and her mother went to Ufa to serve out their sentence. Here she again ended up in the hospital, where the doctor diagnosed “a disease of the endocrine system.”
The first Social Democratic newspaper Iskra began publication. It was published abroad, but money for this was collected in Russia. Notes made in Ilyich’s hand have been preserved: “427 marks 88 pfenings received from Russia (from Ufa).” This money was collected through the efforts of his wife, treasurer of the local Social Democratic organization Krupskaya.
Living in Ufa, Nadezhda Konstantinovna prepared for life in exile. Attended courses French(3 times a week for an hour, 6 rubles per month). For comparison, her own lessons to students were paid much more: for 6 hours she charged 62 rubles.
The couple united in 1901 in London. The first period of emigration lasted until 1905, the second - from 1907 to 1917.
They lived in Geneva, Lausanne, Vienna, Munich, Longjumeau, and Paris. We spent some time in remote Russian territories– in Finland and Poland. All this time, Krupskaya played the role of an entire secretariat: she corresponded with compatriots, prepared and held congresses, conferences, edited printed publications, acted as a translator and personal assistant for her husband. She gave lectures to French hatmakers about the role of women in the revolution. Years later, speaking at an evening dedicated to Ilyich’s 50th birthday, the famous revolutionary Olminsky assessed Krupskaya’s performance as follows: “. She did all the menial work, so to speak, she left the cleanest work to him, and all the secret communications, encryption, transport, relations with Russia, she did everything herself. And therefore, when we say that Lenin is a great organizer, I add that Lenin, with the help of Nadezhda Konstantinovna, is a great organizer.”
The couple usually spent their summers in European mountain resorts: the Alps, the Tatras. This was required by Krupskaya’s poor health: she was tormented by attacks of arrhythmia. In 1912, the situation worsened, and the question of an operation arose. The funds made it possible to do this with the best European specialist - Dr. Kocher Berne. For a while the disease subsided.
In 1915, Krupskaya’s mother died, and the family faced an acute crisis. financial issue. Long years It was her pension that served as the main source of livelihood. I had to look for lessons and translations. But in her letters, Krupskaya refutes rumors both about fattening at government expense and about a hungry existence: “We didn’t know the need when you don’t know what to buy bread with.”

In power

The Bolsheviks learned about the revolution that would bring them to power from the morning Parisian newspapers. The return to Russia was triumphant, but the holiday did not last long. And although a few months later the party took the leadership of the country into its own hands, all subsequent years were complicated not only by wars, famine and devastation, but also by intra-factional struggle.
The main problem for Krupskaya during these years was Ilyich’s health. Beginning in 1918, doctors periodically forbade him to work altogether - the general overwork of his weak body increasingly worsened and affected his health. intellectual abilities. And then ridiculous notes from him flew to the authorities. 1919: “Inform the Scientific and Food Institute that in 3 months they must provide accurate and complete data on the practical success of producing sugar from sawdust.” 1921, to Lunacharsky: “I advise you to put all theaters in a coffin.” Taking care of her husband, and herself tormented by attacks of chronic illnesses, Nadezhda Konstantinovna foresaw the end and last minute the life of a beloved comrade held his hand in hers.
After Lenin's death, she devoted herself entirely to government work. The productivity of this elderly, unhealthy woman is amazing: in 1934 she wrote 90 articles, held 90 speeches and 178 meetings, viewed 225 letters and responded to them. One month was lost due to hospitalization, one month due to restorative rest.

Death

The year 1939 came - the year of her 70th birthday. At the next party congress, she was preparing to speak out condemning the punitive policies of Stalinism.
She celebrated her birthday in Arkhangelskoye. Stalin sent a cake - it was known that after Ilyich’s death, Nadezhda Konstantinovna stopped playing sports, did not take too much care of her appearance and often spoiled herself with cakes. There is a version that the cake was poisoned. But it is refuted by the fact that the old Bolsheviks in Arkhangelsk ate it together with the birthday girl.
At night she became ill - her appendicitis worsened. They called the doctors, but the NKVD arrived. Only a few hours later, Krupskaya was examined by specialists and urgently hospitalized. Appendicitis was complicated by peritonitis, inflammation of the peritoneum. General state health and age did not allow surgical intervention. On the night of February 26-27, a fateful date for her fate, Nadezhda Konstantinovna died.
The urn with ashes was carried personally by Comrade Stalin to the burial site - the Kremlin wall.

Elena Kurasova

P.S. Krupskaya replaced Lenin's deceased sister Olga, with whom they dreamed of making a revolution together. That’s why he was so faithful to her. I understood one thing for sure: a woman even made a revolution in this country.

Krupskaya Nadezhda Konstantinovna

Assistant to the revolutionary, political figure, founder of the Bolshevik Party Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya (b. 1869-1939) - wife, friend and ally of V. I. Lenin, outstanding figure Communist Party, organizer of Soviet education, leading Marxist teacher. She made a huge contribution to the construction of the Soviet school and to the development of Soviet pedagogical theory. The practical activities and pedagogical works of N.K. Krupskaya embodied the Leninist program of educating a new person - an active builder of socialism and communism.

Nadezhda Krupskaya was born on February 26 (new style) 1869 in St. Petersburg into a poor noble family.

Father Konstantin Ignatievich, after graduating from the Cadet Corps, received the position of head of the district in the Polish Groets, and mother Elizaveta Vasilievna worked as a governess. His father died when Nadya Krupskaya was 14 years old, since her father was considered “unreliable” due to his connection with the populists, the family received a small pension for him.

Krupskaya studied in St. Petersburg at the private gymnasium of Princess Obolenskaya, and was friends with A. Tyrkova-Williams, the future wife of P. B. Struve. She graduated from high school with a gold medal, was fond of L.N. Tolstoy, and was a “sweatshirt.” After graduating from the eighth pedagogical class, Krupskaya received a diploma as a home tutor and successfully teaches, preparing students of Princess Obolenskaya’s gymnasium for exams.

Then she studied at the Bestuzhev courses. In the fall of 1890, Nadya abandoned the prestigious women's Bestuzhev courses. She studies the books of Marx and Engels and teaches classes in social democratic circles. I memorized German specifically for studying Marxism.

In January 1894, the young revolutionary Vladimir Ulyanov arrived in St. Petersburg.

Behind the back of the modest, twenty-four-year-old provincial, however, there were many experiences: the sudden death of his father, the execution of his older brother Alexander, the death of his beloved sister Olga from a serious illness. He went through surveillance, arrest, and easy exile to his mother's estate.

In February 1894, at a meeting of St. Petersburg Marxists, among others, Vladimir met activists Apollinaria Yakubova and Nadezhda Krupskaya, and began to court both of them, but on Sundays he usually paid visits to the Krupsky family.

According to the version widespread under the Soviet regime, Vladimir Ilyich married the ugly Nadezhda Konstantinovna in order to completely devote his life to the fight for the rights of the proletarians. And he was not mistaken: it was difficult to find a woman more devoted to the cause of the revolution than Krupskaya. By the time she met Lenin, Nadezhda already had affairs with like-minded people in the struggle, but the leader of the world proletariat was not very worried about this.

Lenin began to often visit the St. Petersburg house of the Krupskys, where everything exuded comfort. He liked that Nadya silently listened to his speeches with admiration, and her mother Elizaveta Vasilievna cooked deliciously.

Vladimir Ilyich immediately impressed Nadezhda Krupskaya with his leadership abilities. The girl tried to interest the future leader - firstly, with Marxist conversations, which Ulyanov adored, and secondly, with her mother’s cooking. Elizaveta Vasilievna, seeing him at home, was happy. She considered her daughter unattractive and did not predict happiness for her in her personal life. One can imagine how happy she was for her Nadenka when she saw a pleasant one in her house. young man from a good family! On the other hand, having become Ulyanov’s bride, Nadya did not cause much delight among his family: they found that she had a very “herring look.” This statement meant, first of all, that Krupskaya’s eyes were bulging, like a fish’s - one of the signs of Graves’ disease discovered later, because of which, it is assumed, Nadezhda Konstantinovna could not have children. Vladimir Ulyanov himself treated Nadyusha’s “herring” with humor, assigning the bride the appropriate party nicknames: Fish and Lamprey.

In 1895 V.I. Lenin and other leaders of the Union of Struggle were arrested and imprisoned, and a year later Nadezhda Konstantinovna was also arrested. Already in prison, he invited Nadenka to become his wife.

“Well, a wife is a wife,” she replied. Having been exiled to Ufa for three years for her revolutionary activities, Nadya decided that serving her exile with Ulyanov would be more fun. Therefore, she asked to be sent to Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, where the groom was already located, and, having obtained permission from the police officials, she and her mother followed her chosen one.

The first thing that the future mother-in-law said to Lenin when they met was: “You’ve been blown away!” Indeed, Ilyich ate well in Shushenskoye, led healthy image life: he hunted regularly, ate his favorite sour cream and other peasant delicacies. The future leader lived in the hut of the peasant Zyryanov, but after the arrival of the bride he began to look for other housing - with a room for his mother-in-law. Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezhda Konstantinovna did not want to enter into a church marriage - they were for “free” love, Elizaveta Vasilievna insisted on the wedding, and “to the fullest.” Orthodox form».

Ulyanov, who was already twenty-eight, and Krupskaya, one year older than him, obeyed. A long bureaucratic red tape began with a marriage license: without this, Nadya and her mother could not live with Ilyich. But permission for a wedding was not given without a residence permit, which, in turn, was impossible without marriage. Lenin sent complaints to Minusinsk and Krasnoyarsk about the arbitrariness of the authorities, and finally, by the summer of 1898, Krupskaya was allowed to become his wife. The last word in this matter it was up to the Yenisei governor-general, who decided that if Krupskaya wanted to live with Lenin in exile, then she must have a legal basis for this, and only marriage could be considered such.

The wedding took place in the local Peter and Paul Church, the bride wore a white blouse and a black skirt, and the groom wore an ordinary, very shabby brown suit. Lenin made his next suit only in Europe. Interesting story came out with wedding rings. In one of his last pre-wedding letters, Vladimir Ilyich asked the bride to purchase and bring a box of jewelry tools to Shushinskoye. The fact is that along with Lenin, the Baltic worker Enberg languished in exile with his wife and numerous young offspring. The problem of feeding his family forced Ernberg to learn a profession
jeweler in order to somehow make ends meet. Having received so much from the bride and groom necessary tool, he immediately thanked the newlyweds by melting two copper coins and making wedding rings from them. The witnesses were local peasants Zavertkin and Ermolaev - on the groom's side, and Zhuravlev - on the bride's side, and the guests were political exiles. The modest wedding “banquet” with tea was so fun, and the singing was so loud that the owners of the hut, surprised to find no alcohol on the table, nevertheless asked to be quieter. “We were newlyweds,” Nadezhda Konstantinovna recalled about life in Shushenskoye, “and this brightened up the exile. “The fact that I don’t write about this in my memoirs does not mean at all that there was no poetry or young passion in our lives.”

Vladimir Ilyich turned out to be a caring husband. In the very first days after the wedding, he hired a fifteen-year-old girl-assistant for Nadya: Krupskaya never learned how to operate a Russian stove and grip. And the culinary skills of the young wife even took away the appetite of close people. When mother-in-law Elizaveta Vasilievna died in 1915, the couple had to eat in cheap canteens until their return to Russia. Nadezhda Konstantinovna admitted: after the death of her mother, “our family life became even more student-like.”

During his exile, Krupskaya was Lenin's only assistant in his enormous theoretical activities. However, some from Lenin’s entourage hinted that Vladimir Ilyich often gets it from his wife. This is how Lenin had an assistant, G.I. Petrovsky, one of his comrades-in-arms, recalled: “I had to observe how Nadezhda Konstantinovna, during a discussion on various issues, did not agree with the opinion of Vladimir Ilyich. It was very interesting. It was very difficult to object to Vladimir Ilyich, since everything was thought out and logical for him. But Nadezhda Konstantinovna noticed “errors” in his speech, excessive enthusiasm for something. When Nadezhda Konstantinovna made her comments, Vladimir Ilyich chuckled and scratched the back of his head. His whole appearance said that sometimes he gets it too.”

In 1899, N.K. Krupskaya wrote her first book, “Woman Worker.” In it, she exceptionally clearly revealed the living conditions of working women in Russia and, from a Marxist position, highlighted the issues of raising proletarian children.

This was the first book on the situation of working women in Russia, based on Marxist positions. After the end of her exile, N.K. Krupskaya went abroad, where Vladimir Ilyich was already living at that time, and took an active part in the work of creating the Communist Party and preparing the future revolution.

Returning from V.I. Lenin in 1905 to Russia, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, carried out enormous party work, which she then continued abroad, where she emigrated again with V.I. Lenin in 1907.

At the end of 1909, the couple, after much hesitation, moved to Paris, where Ulyanov was destined to meet Inessa Armand. There was a joke among revolutionaries about the beautiful Armand: she should be included in a textbook on diamat as an example of the unity of form and content. A lovely Frenchwoman, the charming wife of the rich man Armande, a lonely exile, a fiery revolutionary, a true Bolshevik, a faithful student of Lenin, a mother of many children. Judging by the correspondence between Vladimir and Inessa (a significant part of which has been preserved), we can conclude that the relationship between these people was illuminated not only by bright feelings, but by something more. As A. Kollontai said, “in general, Krupskaya was in the know. She knew that Lenin was very attached to Inessa, and more than once expressed her intention to leave. But Lenin kept her.” Nadezhda Konstantinovna believed that the most difficult years emigration. But she did not create scenes of jealousy and was able to establish outwardly even, even friendly relations with the beautiful Frenchwoman. She answered Krupskaya in the same way. The couple kept between themselves warm relations. Nadezhda Konstantinovna is worried about her husband: “From the very beginning of the congress, Ilyich’s nerves were tense to the extreme. The Belgian worker with whom we settled in Brussels was very upset that Vladimir Ilyich did not eat the wonderful radishes and Dutch cheese that she served him in the morning, and even then he had no time for food. In London, he reached the point where he stopped sleeping completely and was terribly worried.”

They returned in February 1917 to Russia, which they lived in thoughts about every day and which they had not visited for many years.

In a sealed carriage, Vladimir Ulyanov, Nadezhda Krupskaya and Inessa Armand were traveling in the same compartment. In Russia, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya meets with her husband in fits and starts, but keeps him informed of all matters. And he, seeing her abilities, burdens Krupskaya more and more with affairs.

In the autumn of 1917, events rapidly escalate. On the afternoon of October 24, Nadezhda Konstantinovna is found in the Vyborg District Duma and given a note. She opens it. Lenin writes to the Bolshevik Central Committee: “Delay in an uprising is like death.” Krupskaya understands that the time has come. She runs to Smolny. From that moment on, she was inseparable from Lenin, but the euphoria of happiness and success passed quickly. Cruel everyday life ate away the joy.

In the summer of 1918, Krupskaya settled in the Kremlin in a modest, small apartment specially equipped for her and Lenin. And then there was Civil War. The fight against counter-revolution. Diseases of Nadezhda Konstantinovna. Shot by Socialist-Revolutionary Fani Kaplan at Lenin. Death from typhus of Inessa Armand, which was a harbinger of a serious brain disease in Lenin. The disease progressed so quickly that Krupskaya not only forgot all the old grievances against her husband, but also carried out his will: in 1922, the children of Inessa Armand were brought to Gorki from France.

However, they were not allowed to see the leader. Lenin began to experience deteriorating health and pronounced signs of illness in the spring of 1922. At first, the symptoms pointed to ordinary mental fatigue: severe headaches, memory loss, insomnia, irritability, increased sensitivity to noise. However, doctors disagreed on the diagnosis. The German professor Klemperer believed main reason headaches; poisoning of the body with lead bullets that were not removed from the leader’s body after being wounded in 1918.

In April 1922, he underwent surgery under local anesthesia and one of the bullets in the neck was finally removed. But Ilyich’s health did not improve. And so Lenin was struck down by the first attack of illness. Krupskaya, by duty and right of wife, is on duty at Vladimir Ilyich’s bedside. They bend over the sick person best doctors and render a verdict: complete peace. But bad feelings did not leave Lenin, and he made a terrible promise from Stalin: to give him potassium cyanide in the event that he suddenly suffered a stroke.

Vladimir Ilyich feared paralysis, which doomed him to complete, humiliating helplessness, more than anything else. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) entrusts its Secretary General, Comrade Stalin, with responsibility for observing the regime established by doctors.

In December 1922, Lenin asked, and Krupskaya wrote under his dictation, a letter to Trotsky regarding the monopoly of foreign trade. Having learned about this, Stalin did not spare swear words for Nadezhda Konstantinovna on the phone. And in conclusion he said: she violated the doctors’ ban, and he will transfer the case about her to the Central Control Commission of the Party. Krupskaya's quarrel with Stalin occurred a few days after the onset of Lenin's illness, in December 1922.

Lenin found out about this only on March 5, 1923, and dictated to his secretary a letter to Stalin, similar to an ultimatum: “You were rude to call my wife to the telephone and scold her. Although she expressed her consent to forget what she said, nevertheless this fact became known through her to Zinoviev and Kamenev. I do not intend to forget so easily what was done against me, and there is no need to say that I consider what was done against my wife to have been done against me. Therefore, I ask you to weigh whether you agree to take back what was said and apologize or whether you prefer to break off relations between us.”

After the dictation, Lenin was very excited. Both the secretaries and Dr. Kozhevnikov noticed this. The next morning, he asked the secretary to re-read the letter, hand it over personally to Stalin and receive an answer. Soon after she left, his condition deteriorated sharply. The temperature has risen. Paralysis spread to the left side. Ilyich had already lost his speech forever, although until the end of his days he understood almost everything that was happening to him. These days, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, apparently, nevertheless made an attempt to stop her husband’s suffering. From Stalin’s secret note dated March 17, members of the Politburo know that she “arch-conspiratorially” asked to give Lenin poison, saying that she tried to do it herself, but she did not have enough strength. Stalin again promised to “show humanism” and again did not keep his word. Vladimir Ilyich lived for almost another whole year. Breathed. Krupskaya did not leave his side.

On January 21, 1924 at 6:50 pm Ulyanov Vladimir Ilyich, 54 years old, died. People didn’t see a single tear in Krupskaya’s eyes during the funeral days. Nadezhda Konstantinovna spoke at the memorial service, addressing the people and the party: “Don’t build monuments to him, palaces named after him, magnificent celebrations in his memory - he attached such little importance to all this during his life, he was so burdened by it. Remember that much has not yet been settled in our country.”

The last noble gesture of Krupskaya, who recognized great love Lenin and Armand, was her proposal in February 1924 to bury the remains of her husband along with the ashes of Inessa Armand. Stalin rejected the offer. Instead, his body was turned into a mummy and placed in a likeness Egyptian pyramid on the main square of the country.

Krupskaya survived her husband by fifteen years. A long-standing illness tormented and exhausted her. But she didn't give up. I worked every day, wrote reviews, gave instructions, taught how to live. I wrote a book of memories. The People's Commissariat for Education, where she worked, surrounded her with love and reverence, appreciating Krupskaya's natural spiritual kindness, which coexisted quite peacefully with harsh ideas. Nadezhda Konstantinovna outlived her husband by fifteen years, full of squabbles and intrigues. When the leader of the world proletariat died, Stalin entered into a fierce struggle with his widow, not intending to share power with anyone.

“Let her not think that if she was Lenin’s wife, then she has a monopoly on Leninism,” said loyal Stalinist L. Kaganovich in the summer of 1930 at a regional party conference.

In 1938, writer Marietta Shaginyan approached Krupskaya about reviewing and supporting her novel about Lenin, Ticket to History. Nadezhda Konstantinovna responded to her with a detailed letter, which caused Stalin’s terrible indignation. A scandal broke out and became the subject of discussion by the Party Central Committee.

As a result, it was decided to “condemn the behavior of Krupskaya, who, having received the manuscript of Shaginyan’s novel, not only did not prevent the birth of the novel, but, on the contrary, encouraged Shaginyan in every possible way, gave information about the manuscript positive reviews and advised Shaginyan on various aspects of the Ulyanovs’ life and thus bore full responsibility for this book.

Consider Krupskaya’s behavior all the more unacceptable and tactless because Comrade Krupskaya did all this without the knowledge and consent of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, thereby turning the all-party matter of compiling works about Lenin into a private and family matter and acting as a monopolist and interpreter of public and personal life and work of Lenin and his family, which the Central Committee never gave anyone the right to do.”

Her death was mysterious. It came on the eve of the XVIII Party Congress, at which Nadezhda Konstantinovna was going to speak. On the afternoon of February 24, 1939, friends visited her in Arkhangelskoye to celebrate her hostess’s approaching seventieth birthday. The table was set, Stalin sent a cake. Everyone ate it together. Nadezhda Konstantinovna seemed very animated. In the evening she suddenly felt ill. They called a doctor, but for some reason he arrived after more than three hours.

The diagnosis was made immediately: “acute appendicitis-peritonitis-thrombosis.” For some reason the necessary urgent operation was not performed. Three days later Krupskaya died in terrible torment at the age of seventy. However, Stalin personally carried the urn with Krupskaya’s ashes to the Kremlin wall, where she was buried.

Biography:

Krupskaya (Ulyanova) Nadezhda Konstantinovna, participant in the revolutionary movement, Soviet statesman and party leader, one of the founders of the Soviet public education system, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences (1936), honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1931).

Member of the Communist Party since 1898. Born into the family of a democratically minded officer. Being a listener of the Highest
women's courses in St. Petersburg, from 1890 she was a member of Marxist student circles. In 1891-96 she taught at an evening and Sunday school behind the Nevskaya Zastava, conducted revolutionary propaganda among the workers. In 1894 she met with V.I. Lenin.

In 1895 she participated in the organization and work of the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.”

In August 1896 she was arrested. In 1898 she was sentenced to exile for 3 years in the Ufa province, which, at her request, was replaced by the village. Shushenskoye Yenisei province, where Lenin served his exile; here K. became his wife. In 1900 she ended her term of exile in Ufa; She taught classes in a workers’ circle and trained future Iskra correspondents. After liberation, she came (1901) to Lenin in Munich; worked as secretary of the editorial office of the newspaper Iskra, from December 1904 - the newspaper Vpered, from May 1905 secretary of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In November 1905, she returned to Russia with Lenin; first in St. Petersburg, and from the end of 1906 in Kuokkala (Finland) she worked as secretary of the party Central Committee.

At the end of 1907, Lenin and K. emigrated again; in Geneva, K. was secretary of the newspaper Proletary, then the newspaper Social Democrat.

In 1911 he became a teacher at the party school in Longjumeau. From 1912 in Krakow, she helped Lenin maintain connections with Pravda and the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma. At the end of 1913 - beginning of 1914, she participated in organizing the publication of the legal Bolshevik magazine “Rabotnitsa”. Delegate to the 2nd-4th congresses of the RSDLP, participant in party conferences [including the 6th (Prague)] and responsible party meetings (including the Meeting of 22 Bolsheviks) held until 1917.

On April 3 (16), 1917, she returned to Russia with Lenin. Delegate to the 7th April Conference and 6th Congress of the RSDLP (b). Participated in the creation of socialist youth unions. Took Active participation V October revolution 1917; through K. Lenin transmitted leadership letters to the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Party Committee, to the Military Revolutionary Committee; being a member of the Vyborg district committee of the RSDLP (b), she worked in it during the days of the October armed uprising. According to M.N. Pokrovsky, before the October Revolution of 1917, K., being Lenin’s closest collaborator, “... did the same thing that real good “deputies” do now,” - she relieved Lenin of all current work, saving his time for such big things like “What should I do?” (Memoirs of N.K. Krupskaya, 1966, p. 16).

After the establishment of Soviet power, K. was a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR; together with A.V. Lunacharsky and M.N. Pokrovsky, she prepared the first decrees on public education, one of the organizers of political and educational work.

In 1918 she was elected a full member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences. In 1919, on the ship "Red Star" she took part in a propaganda campaign through the Volga region regions that had just been liberated from the White Guards. Since November 1920, Chairman of the Glavpolitprosvet under the People's Commissariat for Education. Since 1921, chairman of the scientific and methodological section of the State Academic Council (GUS) of the People's Commissariat for Education.

She taught at the Academy of Communist Education. She was the organizer of a number of voluntary societies: “Down with Illiteracy”, “Friend of Children”, chairman of the Society of Marxist Teachers. Since 1929, Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR.

Contributed major contribution in development the most important problems Marxist pedagogy - defining the goals and objectives of communist education; connection between the school and the practice of socialist construction; labor and polytechnic education; determination of the content of education; issues of age-related pedagogy; basics organizational forms children's communist movement, education of collectivism, etc. Great importance K. emphasized the fight against child homelessness and neglect, the work of orphanages, and preschool education. She edited the magazine “People's Education”, “ People's teacher", "On the way to new school”, “About our children”, “Help to self-education”, “Red Librarian”, “School for Adults”, “Communist Education”, “Reading Hut”, etc. Delegate of the 7-17th Party Congresses. From 1924 a member of the Central Control Commission, from 1927 a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

Member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of all convocations, deputy and member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation. Participant in all congresses of the Komsomol (except for the 3rd). Active figure in the international communist movement, delegate to the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th congresses of the Comintern. K. is a prominent publicist and speaker.

She spoke at numerous party, Komsomol, trade union congresses and conferences, meetings of workers, peasants, and teachers. Author of many works about Lenin and the party, on issues of public education and communist education. K.'s memories of Lenin are the most valuable historical source, covering the life and work of Lenin and many important events in the history of the Communist Party.

She was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. She was buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall.

Main works:

Memories of Lenin (1957)

About Lenin. Collection of articles (1965)

Lenin and the Party (1963)

Pedagogical works (1957-1963)

Biography
Nadya Krupskaya grew up in a poor family. Her father, considered “unreliable,” at one time became close to the populists, so the family received a small pension for him. A modest and silent girl, after completing the Bestuzhev courses, began working at an evening school. I memorized German specifically for studying Marxism. Her passion for Marxism quickly acquired the characteristics of fanaticism.
She met Vladimir Ulyanov thanks to her friend Apollinaria Yakubova, who brought Nadya to a Marxist gathering, organized under the plausible pretext of pancakes.
“Before his marriage in July 1898 in Shushenskoye to Nadezhda Krupskaya, only one noticeable “courtship” of Vladimir Ulyanov is known,” says historian Dmitry Volkogonov. “He was seriously attracted to Krupskaya’s friend, Apollinaria Yakubova, also a socialist and teacher.
Ulyanov, no longer very young (he was then over twenty-six), wooed Yakubova, but was met with a polite but firm refusal. Judging by a number of indirect signs, the unsuccessful matchmaking did not become a noticeable drama for the future leader of the Russian Jacobins..."
Vladimir Ilyich immediately impressed Nadezhda with his leadership abilities. The girl tried to interest the future leader - firstly, with Marxist conversations, which Ulyanov adored, and secondly, with her mother’s cooking. Elizaveta Vasilievna, seeing him at home, was happy. She considered her daughter unattractive and did not predict happiness for her in her personal life. One can imagine how happy she was for her Nadenka when she saw a pleasant young man from a good family in her house!
On the other hand, having become Ulyanov’s bride, Nadya did not cause much delight among his family: they found that she had a very “herring look.” This statement meant, first of all, that Krupskaya’s eyes were bulging, like a fish’s - one of the signs of Graves’ disease discovered later, because of which, it is assumed, Nadezhda Konstantinovna could not have children. Vladimir Ulyanov himself treated Nadyusha’s “herring” with humor, assigning the bride the appropriate party nicknames: Fish and Lamprey.
Already in prison, he invited Nadenka to become his wife. “Well, a wife is a wife,” she replied.
Having been exiled to Ufa for three years for her revolutionary activities, Nadya decided that serving her exile with Ulyanov would be more fun. Therefore, she asked to be sent to Shushenskoye, Minusinsk district, where the groom was already located, and, having obtained permission from the police officials, she and her mother followed her chosen one.
The first thing that the future mother-in-law said to Lenin when they met was: “How you were blown away!” In Shushenskoye, Ilyich ate well and led a healthy lifestyle: he hunted regularly, ate his favorite sour cream and other peasant delicacies. The future leader lived in the hut of the peasant Zyryanov, but after the arrival of the bride he began to look for another place to live - with a room for his mother-in-law.
Arriving in Shushenskoye, Elizaveta Vasilievna insisted that the marriage be concluded without delay, and “in full Orthodox form.” Ulyanov, who was already twenty-eight, and Krupskaya, one year older than him, obeyed. A long red tape began with a marriage license: without this, Nadya and her mother could not live with Ilyich. But permission for a wedding was not given without a residence permit, which, in turn, was impossible without marriage... Lenin sent complaints to Minusinsk and Krasnoyarsk about the arbitrariness of the authorities, and finally, by the summer of 1898, Krupskaya was allowed to become his wife. The wedding took place in the Peter and Paul Church, the bride wore a white blouse and a black skirt, and the groom wore an ordinary, very shabby brown suit. Lenin made his next suit only in Europe...
Many exiles from the surrounding villages had fun at the wedding, and they sang so loudly that the owners of the hut came in to ask them to calm down...
“We were newlyweds,” Nadezhda Konstantinovna recalled about life in Shushenskoye, “and this brightened up the exile. The fact that I don’t write about this in my memoirs does not mean at all that there was no poetry or young passion in our lives...”
Ilyich turned out to be a caring husband. In the very first days after the wedding, he hired a fifteen-year-old girl-assistant for Nadya: Krupskaya never learned how to operate a Russian stove and grip. And the culinary skills of the young wife even took away the appetite of close people. When Elizaveta Vasilievna died in 1915, the couple had to eat in cheap canteens until their return to Russia. Nadezhda Konstantinovna admitted: after the death of her mother, “our family life became even more student-like.”
“The couple never shared their pain with anyone: the childlessness of Nadezhda Konstantinovna, who suffered from Graves’ disease and, as Vladimir Ilyich himself writes, not only that. In a letter to his mother loving son reports: “Nadya must be lying down: the doctor found (as she wrote a week ago) that her illness (female) requires persistent treatment, that she should lie down for 2-6 weeks. I sent her more money (I received 100 rubles from Vodovozova), because treatment will require considerable expenses...” (D. Volkogonov).
Some of Lenin's entourage hinted that Vladimir Ilyich often gets abused by his wife. G.I. Petrovsky, one of his comrades-in-arms, recalled: “I had to observe how Nadezhda Konstantinovna, during a discussion on various issues, did not agree with the opinion of Vladimir Ilyich. It was very interesting. It was very difficult to object to Vladimir Ilyich, since everything was thought out and logical for him. But Nadezhda Konstantinovna noticed “errors” in his speech, excessive enthusiasm for something... When Nadezhda Konstantinovna made her comments, Vladimir Ilyich chuckled and scratched the back of his head. His whole appearance said that sometimes he gets it too.”
There is also a story that one day Krupskaya, who knew about her husband’s love for Inessa Armand, invited him to break up so that he could arrange his own personal happiness. But Vladimir Ilyich chose to stay with his wife. It was rumored that Ilyich’s friend, the exiled Kurnatovsky, was secretly in love with Nadezhda Konstantinovna. He very often went to the Ulyanovs, supposedly to talk about Marxism... Be that as it may, the revolutionaries, who linked their destinies, lived a long life together and were inseparable until the death of Vladimir Ilyich. Lenin began to feel worse and had pronounced signs of illness. in early spring 1922. All symptoms pointed to ordinary mental fatigue: severe headaches, weakened memory, insomnia, irritability, increased sensitivity to noise. However, doctors disagreed on the diagnosis. The German professor Klemperer considered the main cause of headaches to be poisoning of the body with lead bullets, which were not removed from the leader’s body after being wounded in 1918. In April 1922, he underwent surgery under local anesthesia and one of the bullets in the neck was finally removed. But Ilyich’s health did not improve. Professor Darshkevich, who diagnosed overwork, prescribed him rest. But forebodings did not leave Lenin, and he made a terrible promise from Stalin: to give him potassium cyanide in the event that he suddenly suffered a blow. Vladimir Ilyich feared paralysis, which doomed him to complete, humiliating helplessness, more than anything else.
He spent that spring in Gorki. On the night of May 25, as usual, I could not fall asleep for a long time. And then, as luck would have it, a nightingale sang under the windows. Lenin went out into the garden, picked up pebbles and began throwing them at the nightingale, and suddenly noticed that his right hand was hard to obey...
By morning he was already very ill. Speech and memory suffered: Ilyich at times did not understand what was being said to him, and could not find words to express his thoughts.
On May 30, Ilyich called Stalin to Gorki and reminded him of this promise. He seemingly agreed, and on the way to the car he told everything to the leader’s sister Maria Ilyinichna. Together, they persuaded Lenin to wait to commit suicide, convincing him that the doctors had not lost hope for his full recovery. He believed.
“We’ll see what kind of wife you are to him,” Joseph Vissarionovich Krupskoy hinted more than once. And one day Nadezhda Konstantinovna, an extremely reserved woman, lost her temper: she became hysterical and cried. This, according to one version, allegedly finished off the barely alive Ilyich.
In the first ten days of March of the following year, Ilyich had already lost his speech forever, although until the end of his days he understood everything that was happening to him. From the notes of the doctor on duty: “On March 9, he looked at Krupskaya and told her: “We need to call my wife...”
These days, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, apparently, nevertheless made an attempt to stop her husband’s suffering. From Stalin’s secret note dated March 17, members of the Politburo know that she “arch-conspiratorially” asked to give Lenin poison, saying that she tried to do it herself, but she did not have enough strength. Stalin again promised to “show humanism” and again did not keep his word... However, Vladimir Ilyich’s days were already numbered.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna outlived her husband by fifteen years, full of squabbles and intrigues. When the leader of the world proletariat died, Stalin entered into a fierce struggle with his widow, not intending to share power with anyone. Nadezhda Konstantinovna begged to bury her husband, but instead his body was turned into a mummy...
“In the summer of 1930, before the 16th Party Congress, district party conferences were held in Moscow,” historian Roy Medvedev writes in his book “They Surrounded Stalin.” – At the Bauman Conference, V.I. Lenin’s widow, N.K. Krupskaya, spoke and criticized the methods of Stalinist collectivization, saying that this collectivization had nothing to do with Lenin’s cooperative plan. Krupskaya accused the Party Central Committee of ignorance of the mood of the peasantry and refusal to consult with the people. “There is no need to blame the local authorities,” said Nadezhda Konstantinovna, “for the mistakes that were made by the Central Committee itself.”
When Krupskaya was still making her speech, the leaders of the district committee let Kaganovich know about this, and he immediately went to the conference. Having risen to the podium after Krupskaya, Kaganovich subjected her speech to rude criticism. Rejecting her criticism on the merits, he also stated that she, as a member of the Central Committee, did not have the right to bring her critical remarks to the podium of the district party conference. “Let N.K. Krupskaya not think,” said Kaganovich, “that if she was Lenin’s wife, then she has a monopoly on Leninism.”
In 1938, writer Marietta Shaginyan approached Krupskaya about reviewing and supporting her novel about Lenin, Ticket to History. Nadezhda Konstantinovna responded to her with a detailed letter, which caused Stalin’s terrible indignation. A scandal broke out and became the subject of discussion by the Party Central Committee.
“To condemn the behavior of Krupskaya, who, having received the manuscript of Shaginyan’s novel, not only did not prevent the birth of the novel, but, on the contrary, encouraged Shaginyan in every possible way, gave positive reviews about the manuscript and advised Shaginyan on various aspects of the life of the Ulyanovs and thereby bore full responsibility for this book. Consider Krupskaya’s behavior all the more unacceptable and tactless because Comrade Krupskaya did all this without the knowledge and consent of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, thereby turning the all-party matter of compiling works about Lenin into a private and family matter and acting as a monopolist and interpreter of public and personal life and work of Lenin and his family, which the Central Committee never gave anyone the right to do..."
Her death was mysterious. It came on the eve of the XVIII Party Congress, at which Nadezhda Konstantinovna was going to speak. On the afternoon of February 24, 1939, friends visited her in Arkhangelskoye to celebrate her hostess’s approaching seventieth birthday. The table was set, Nadezhda Konstantinovna seemed very animated... In the evening she suddenly felt ill. They called a doctor, but for some reason he arrived after more than three hours. The diagnosis was made immediately: “acute appendicitis-peritonitis-thrombosis.” For some reason the necessary urgent operation was not performed. Three days later, Krupskaya died in terrible agony at the age of seventy.

KRUPSKAYA (Ulyanova) Nadezhda Konstantinovna participant in the revolutionary movement, Soviet statesman and party leader, one of the founders of the Soviet public education system, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences (1936), honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1931). Member of the Communist Party since 1898.
Born into the family of a democratically minded officer. As a student at the Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg, from 1890 she was a member of Marxist student circles. In 1891-96 she taught at an evening and Sunday school behind the Nevskaya Zastava, conducted revolutionary propaganda among the workers. In 1894 she met with V.I. Lenin.
In 1895 she participated in the organization and work of the St. Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class.” In August 1896 she was arrested. In 1898 she was sentenced to exile for 3 years in the Ufa province, which, at her request, was replaced by the village. Shushenskoye, Yenisei province, where Lenin served his exile; here Krupskaya became his wife.
In 1900 she ended her term of exile in Ufa; She taught classes in a workers' circle and trained future Iskra correspondents. After liberation, she came (1901) to Lenin in Munich; worked as secretary of the editorial office of the newspaper Iskra, from December 1904 - to the newspaper Vpered, from May 1905 secretary of the Foreign Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In November 1905, she returned to Russia with Lenin; first in St. Petersburg, and from the end of 1906 in Kuokkala (Finland) she worked as secretary of the party Central Committee.
At the end of 1907, Lenin and Krupskaya emigrated again; in Geneva, Krupskaya was the secretary of the newspaper "Proletary", then the newspaper "Social Democrat".
In 1911 he became a teacher at the party school in Longjumeau. From 1912 in Krakow, she helped Lenin maintain connections with Pravda and the Bolshevik faction of the 4th State Duma. At the end of 1913 - beginning of 1914, she participated in organizing the publication of the legal Bolshevik magazine "Rabotnitsa".
Delegate to the 2nd-4th congresses of the RSDLP, participant in party conferences [incl. 6th (Prague)] and responsible party meetings (including the Conference of 22 Bolsheviks) held until 1917.
On April 3 (16), 1917, she returned to Russia with Lenin. Delegate to the 7th April Conference and 6th Congress of the RSDLP(b). Participated in the creation of socialist youth unions. She took an active part in the October Revolution of 1917; through Krupskaya, Lenin transmitted leadership letters to the Central Committee and the St. Petersburg Party Committee, to the Military Revolutionary Committee; being a member of the Vyborg district committee of the RSDLP (b), she worked in it during the days of the October armed uprising.
According to M.N. Pokrovsky, before the October Revolution of 1917, Krupskaya, being Lenin’s closest collaborator, “... did what real good “deputies” do now,” she relieved Lenin of all current work, saving his time for such large things like “What should I do?” (Memoirs of N.K. Krupskaya, 1966, p. 16).
After establishing Soviet power Krupskaya - member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR; together with A.V. Lunacharsky and M.N. Pokrovsky, she prepared the first decrees on public education, one of the organizers of political and educational work. In 1918 she was elected a full member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
In 1919, on the ship "Red Star" she took part in a propaganda campaign through the Volga regions that had just been liberated from the White Guards. Since November 1920, Chairman of the Glavpolitprosvet under the People's Commissariat for Education. Since 1921 chairman of the scientific and methodological section of the State educational council(GUS) People's Commissariat for Education. She taught at the Academy of Communist Education. She was the organizer of a number of voluntary societies: “Down with Illiteracy”, “Friend of Children”, chairman of the Society of Marxist Teachers. Since 1929, Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR.
She made a major contribution to the development of the most important problems of Marxist pedagogy - determining the goals and objectives of communist education; connection between the school and the practice of socialist construction; labor and polytechnic education; determination of the content of education; issues of age-related pedagogy; foundations of organizational forms of the children's communist movement, education of collectivism, etc.
Krupskaya attached great importance to the fight against child homelessness and neglect, the work of orphanages, and preschool education. She edited the magazine “People's Education”, “People's Teacher”, “On the Road to a New School”, “About Our Children”, “Help to Self-Education”, “Red Librarian”, “Adult School”, “Communist Education”, “Izba-Reading Room” " and etc.
Delegate to the 7th-17th party congresses. From 1924 a member of the Central Control Commission, from 1927 a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. Member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of all convocations, deputy and member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the 1st convocation. Participant in all congresses of the Komsomol (except for the 3rd). Active figure in the international communist movement, delegate to the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th congresses of the Comintern.
Krupskaya is a prominent publicist and speaker. She spoke at numerous party, Komsomol, trade union congresses and conferences, meetings of workers, peasants, and teachers. Author of many works about Lenin and the party, on issues of public education and communist education. Krupskaya's memoirs about Lenin are a valuable historical source covering the life and work of Lenin and many important events in the history of the Communist Party.
She was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. She was buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall.