Krupskaya, Nadezhda (1869–1939)

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Krupskaya, Nadezhda (1869–1939)

Russian educator, writer, Marxist revolutionary, and wife of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who took on Stalin but was powerless to stop him. Name variations: N.K. Krupskaya; Nadya Krupskaia; Nadya Lenin. Pronunciation: NA-de-AH KROOP-skay-yah. Born Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya on February 26, 1869, in St. Petersburg, Russia; died on February 27, 1939, in Moscow; daughter of Konstantin Ignatevich Krupsky and Elizaveta Tistrova Krupskaya; attended Prince A.A. Obolensky Female Gymnasium and University of St. Petersburg; married Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov or Ulyanov later known as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian revolutionary), in 1899 (died 1924); no children.

Awarded a gold medal for academic excellence (1882); left University of St. Petersburg (1890); met Lenin (1894); arrested (1895); sentenced to three years' internal exile (1898); published first Marxist work on the emancipation of women (1899); endured foreign exile (1901–05); served as editorial secretary of Iska (1901–03); served as editorial secretary of Vpered and The Proletarian (1903–05); returned to Russia (1905); lived in exile (1907–17); treated for thyroid disease (1913); headed Commission for the Aid of Russian Prisoners of War (1915); returned to Russia (1917); elected to Vyborg Soviet (1917); became commissar for Adult Education (1918); Lenin shot (1918); Lenin's first stroke (1922); Lenin died (January 21, 1924); signed manifesto against Stalin's agricultural policy (1925); developed a heart condition (1925); supported Stalin (1927); was a member of the Central Committee (1927); served as deputy commissar of education (1929); was a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1931); served as deputy of the Supreme Soviet (1937).

Selected publications:

The Woman Worker (1899); Public Education and Democracy (1915); Memories of Lenin (1930); Soviet Woman: A Citizen with Equal Rights (1937).

On Shrove Tuesday, 1894, a small gathering was held at the home of an engineer in St. Petersburg. Anyone who looked in would have seen a typical pancake party in progress, like thousands of others being held across the city to celebrate the holiday. This festive scene was, however, carefully stage-managed. A meeting of young Marxists was in progress, the subject of which was the future of the Russian Empire.

Tall, pale, her hair in a bun, 25-year-old Nadezhda Krupskaya had been involved in radical politics since 1890. At the so-called pancake party, she met a young Marxist named Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov and was intrigued by his intellect and convictions. They soon became friends and colleagues. Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov would, in later years, become universally known as V.I. Lenin.

Born in February 1869, Nadezhda Krupskaya came from a family of the nobility. Her father, Konstantin Ignatevich Krupsky, was an army officer, whose career had suffered due to his involvement in radical politics. Her mother, Elizaveta Tistrova Krupskaya , was a teacher and a children's author. Nadezhda seems to have been a retiring, bookish child. She lived during a period in Russian history when the vocation of a professional revolutionary was an option open to women. She attended the Prince A.A. Obolensky Female Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, which had a reputation as a progressive institution. In 1882, Krupskaya won a gold medal for academic excellence. The Gymnasium produced many of Russia's pioneering female Marxists, including Olga Grigoreva , Nina Gerd , and Lidya Davidova . A fellow student, Ariadne Tynkova , described Krupskaya at the time:

Earlier than any of us, more unyieldingly than any of us, she had defined her views, had set her course. She was one of those who are forever committed, once they have been possessed by their thoughts or feelings.

Krupskaya stayed on at the Gymnasium after her graduation, working as a part-time teaching assistant until 1891. She also enrolled in the Bestuzhev Courses, the first university program for women in St. Petersburg. Her true passion, however, soon became Marxist theory, and she left the University of St. Petersburg without completing her examinations. On evenings and weekends, she taught workers at a factory-school, where literacy, mathematics, history, and Russian literature were all part of the curriculum. As well, she recruited members for the revolution, disseminated propaganda, and assisted in the organization of strikes.

In 1895, Lenin was arrested for his involvement in labor unrest. Eight months later, Krupskaya's own arrest followed, for her subversive activities at the factory-school. Though sentenced to three years' internal exile in the town of Ufa in northern Russia, she soon petitioned the police for a transfer to Shushenskoye, in Siberia, where Lenin was serving a similar sentence.

Neither Lenin nor Krupskaya seem to have contemplated marriage, but their arrest contrived to bring that about. Permitted to travel to Siberia with her mother, Krupskaya was told by the authorities that unless she married Lenin promptly upon her arrival, she would be sent back to Ufa. Lenin wrote to his mother in May 1899, explaining the situation:

At last I have received the so long awaited guests. … Nadezhda Konstantinovna does not look well at all and will simply have to take care of her health. … As you know, they put to Nadezhda Konstantinovna the tragic-comic condition: either get married immediately or go back to Ufa. I am not disposed to let her get away, and so have already begun the moves.

Although marriage was considered unfashionable in some revolutionary circles, particularly among nihilists and anarchists, a long-term commitment, with or without a ceremony, was the norm among most Marxists. Krupskaya and Lenin were married in an Orthodox ceremony. Although both were atheists, Krupskaya's mother, a deeply religious woman, was pleased to see her daughter married in church.

While in Siberia, Krupskaya not only acted as Lenin's secretary and sounding board, but also wrote on the subject of female emancipation. At the time, her pamphlet, The Woman Worker, was the lone Marxist text devoted solely to the topic. In it, she argued that women could only find true liberation through inclusion in the work force and could only gain equal access to the workplace through a proletarian revolution. When Lenin's term of exile ended in late 1899, he traveled to Pskov, while Krupskaya returned to Ufa to serve the remainder of her sentence.

Between 1901 and 1905, Krupskaya and her husband lived abroad. She detested Western Europe, writing to a friend, "Akh, this emigration!," and referring to the West as a "dead sea." For several years, Krupskaya served as the editorial secretary of Iska (Spark), the periodical which Lenin had founded. During their first period overseas, Krupskaya was also responsible for coding and decoding sensitive communications between the party and activists inside Russia. It was a skill that Lenin had taught her in 1895. With the split of the Russian Social Democrats into Bolshevik (majority) and Menshevik (minority) factions in 1903, the Bolsheviks and Lenin lost control of Iska. However, he established a new journal, Vpered (Forward), as well as The Proletarian, of which Krupskaya naturally became secretary.

In 1905, Russia had just lost the Russo-Japanese War, the middle class wanted political re-form, and continuous strikes rocked the nation, as workers demanded better treatment by employers. On October 17, Tsar Nicholas II announced the institution of limited civil liberties, and the creation of a consultative assembly, the Duma, in which the Bolsheviks were permitted to sit.

The 1905 Revolution gave Lenin and Krupskaya the opportunity to return to St. Petersburg. The government, weakened by the events of the summer and fall, was tolerant of political dissent. By the fall of 1907, however, the Bolshevik Party was still not strong enough to challenge the government, and the new administration of Premier Petr Stolypin was beginning to round up political opponents. Krupskaya and Lenin returned to Switzerland with the police at their heels.

This was followed by a three-and-a-half-year stay in Paris, where, together with Krupskaya's mother and Lenin's sister Marie Ulyanova , they lived in a large apartment on rue Bonier. It was during their stay in the French capital that Krupskaya met Laura Marx (Lafargue), the elderly daughter of Karl Marx. In July 1912, Lenin transferred the headquarters of the Bolshevik Party to Austrian Poland, in order to be close to the Russian frontier. "Almost in Russia," wrote Krupskaya. "It was only half emigration." Her old friends Gregory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev also moved to Cracow.

During 1913, Krupskaya was increasingly afflicted by thyroid disease, and Lenin decided to have her treated in Berne. She gradually regained her health, though she admitted to being "pretty scared." The First World War caught Krupskaya and Lenin by surprise as she was recuperating in Austria. They both agreed that it was a capitalist conflict, in which the workers could only be harmed. Under the circumstances, the only safe harbor was back in neutral Switzerland. In 1915, Krupskaya became the head of the Commission for the Aid of Russian Prisoners of War, a Bolshevik organization designed to recruit party members. The Germans turned a blind eye to Bolshevik activities, always ready to encourage the enemies of the Russian tsar.

During the war, Krupskaya wrote widely on the subject of education, in magazines such as Free Education. No specific Marxist theory of education had yet been developed, and she sought to remedy this oversight. In a booklet entitled "Public Education and Democracy," she set forth her ideas for education in a socialist state. Like Marx, she argued that periods of physical labor should be part of the curriculum, in order to promote respect for proletariat values.

On May 12, 1917, while in Switzerland, Krupskaya wrote to a friend about the unexpected news leaking out of Russia:

It is hard to make sense today because of the telegrams that have excited all the Russians here: about the victory of the Revolution in Russia, the seizure of Power by the Kadet-Octobrist bloc, the three-day battle, and so on. Perhaps it is another hoax.

The abdication of Tsar Nicholas II opened the way for the return of Krupskaya and her husband to Russia. Getting there, however, was no simple matter. It took an offer from the German government, anxious to encourage the antiwar movement, to provide safe railroad passage via neutral Sweden. Krupskaya and Lenin joined a group of 30 other socialists to make the trip across Germany. Late on the evening of April 3, 1917, they arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station, where the couple were greeted by a delegation from the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

From the time of their arrival to the end of the October Revolution, Krupskaya would see little of her busy husband. During much of this period, Lenin was preoccupied with the defense of his "April Thesis," which advocated the violent overthrow of the Provisional Government. In June, Krupskaya was elected to the local soviet of Vyborg, a suburb of Petrograd (St. Petersburg). She served as the head of public education and, from this period until October, was faced with the challenge of developing a new educational system for the district. On October 24, 1917, the night of the Bolshevik insurrection, while Leon Trotsky's Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee stormed buildings and seized bridges throughout the capital, Krupskaya went to the Smolny, where the Petrograd Soviets were headquartered, though in the confusion and excitement she missed Lenin.

With the downfall of the capitalist Provisional Government and the creation of the world's first socialist state, Krupskaya and Lenin moved to the new capital, Moscow. Krupskaya was not content to remain merely the wife of the new head of the Soviet state. Like the wives of many prominent Bolsheviks, she wanted to be an active participant in the building of a socialist society.

Thus, while blossoming into a prolific author and orator, Krupskaya also became the commissar for Adult Education. She envisioned an educational system similar to that of the United States, with locally elected school boards, but in which teachers would also be elected.

On August 30, 1918, a young woman named Fanya Kaplan shot Lenin at close range. He was taken, bleeding, to the Kremlin, where Krupskaya sat up with him all night. But Lenin's recovery was swift, and in 1919 and 1920 he kept up a furious work pace. In late May 1922, he suffered a stroke. Krupskaya gave up her heavy workload at the Commissariat for Adult Education and helped to nurse him at their country home. In mid-December, however, he suffered another stroke. As it became apparent that Lenin's illness would force him to give up the leadership of the party temporarily, if not permanently, a power struggle began in earnest. Lenin clearly favored Leon Trotsky, but the powerful alliance of Zinoviev, Leo Kamenev, and Joseph Stalin were aligned against him.

Krupskaya had acted as Lenin's personal assistant for many years, so it is hardly surprising that she did so again during his convalescence. She wrote letters on his behalf, some supporting the Trotsky faction. Krupskaya did, however, try to get Lenin to rest, but this was often a difficult task. Unfortunately, the succession struggle became increasingly bitter, and Stalin resented Krupskaya's interference. He telephoned her and ordered her not to meddle in party politics. Using abusive language, he threatened to have her arrested and brought before the party's disciplinary Control Commission.

Lenin's last will and testament was highly influenced by Stalin's treatment of his wife. In it, he wrote that "Stalin is too crude, and this fault, though tolerable in dealings among us Communists, becomes unbearable in a General Secretary. Therefore I propose to the comrades to find some way of removing Stalin from his position." On January 21, 1924, Lenin died. Krupskaya disapproved of the deification of her husband. In fact, she never visited his mausoleum in Red Square.

Nadezhda Krupskaya was poorly equipped to execute her husband's wishes. She was not a powerful political figure, although she did enjoy a prominent position in Soviet society. She had few political allies, and, in the end, it was easy for the party to suppress Lenin's politically embarrassing last wish. In the struggle for the succession, Krupskaya allied herself with Zinoviev and Kamenev, principally because she feared a split in the party, which might destabilize the nation. In an article in Pravda in December 1924, she criticized Trotsky for having "a purely administrative and utterly superficial view" of the party. When Stalin split with Zinoviev and Kamenev, Krupskaya found herself in opposition for the first time in her life. In October 1925, she took the unprecedented move of signing a manifesto against Stalin's and Nikolai Bukharin's moderate agricultural policies. At the same time, she also developed a serious heart condition.

Krupskaya consistently urged greater democracy and intellectual freedom within the party, both of which Stalin's autocratic methods precluded. She even went so far as to have a copy of Lenin's testament smuggled out of the country. Though published on October 18, 1926, in The New York Times, it had little effect in the Soviet Union, due to heavy press censor-ship. In her despair over Stalin's heavy-handed rule, she told Kamenev, "If Lenin were alive today, he would be in jail."

Stalin began to pressure Krupskaya to conform, at a time when her allies seemed to be faltering. He told her that if she did not stop supporting the opposition, he would "make someone else Lenin's widow." A whispering campaign began against her. Stalin was intent on depriving the opposition of its prestigious association with her. By the summer of 1927, she was forced to concede defeat, rationalizing her reluctant support of the regime by reasserting the need for party unity. Krupskaya had clearly failed in her bid to influence state policy and in her bid to influence the selection of a new leader.

In the last years of Krupskaya's life, she became the maternal symbol of Communism. By the 1930s, she even looked the part of an archetypal Russian grandmother. However, she did hold positions of considerable responsibility, including those of deputy commissar for education, member of the Central Committee, and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. She wrote and spoke at length on issues concerning the Soviet family. While many women considered legalized abortion and easy divorce important steps towards equality, Krupskaya held markedly conservative views on those subjects. On the issue of education, the Stalinist model of the '30s closely resembled the pre-revolutionary system, with school uniforms, subject specialization, and heavy discipline. The imposition of such a system shocked Krupskaya deeply, as did Stalin's forced collectivization policy and purges.

In 1937, she was elected to the Supreme Soviet. As one of the few women to attain high political office, Krupskaya became a figurehead for the party's traditional belief in the equal rights of women. In reality, however, while many Soviet women moved into the professions, they were exhausted by their dual roles as workers and homemakers. Thus, high political office remained largely a male preserve. Krupskaya did little to change this.

On February, 27, 1939, Nadezhda Krupskaya died in her apartment in the Kremlin, which had been her home for her last 20 years. Stalin was one of the pallbearers at her funeral. An urn with her ashes was placed inside the Kremlin wall, where she rests with other heroes of the Soviet Union.

Women played a key role in the Russian revolutionary movement, and along with Vera Zasulich and Alexandra Kollontai , Nadezhda Krupskaya was a remarkable figure. Although she may be remembered primarily as Lenin's wife, she was instrumental as a party organizer and administrator. Krupskaya opposed Stalin's dictatorship, although she was often powerless to stop him. As well, her contributions to Soviet education should not go unmentioned, for while they were downplayed during the Stalinist period, they were recognized and celebrated in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Nadezhda Krupskaya was a woman of considerable intelligence and dedication, who remained true to the principal tenets of Marxist-Leninism, before and after the October Revolution.

sources:

Goncharov, Lev, and Ludmila Kunetskaya. "Nadezhda K. Krupskaya, Founder of Soviet Public Education," in School and Society. Vol. XCIX, 1971, pp. 235–237.

Krupskaya, Nadezhda. Memories of Lenin. NY: International Publishers, 1930.

Payne, Robert. The Life and Death of Lenin. NY: Simon and Schuster, 1964.

Raymond, Boris. "A Sword with Two Edges: The Role of Children's Literature in the Writings of N.K. Krupskaya," in Library Quarterly. Vol. XLIV, no. 3, pp. 206–218.

Wolfe, Bertram A. Three Who Made a Revolution. NY: Dial Press, 1964.