Inessa Armand is a well-known revolutionary, a participant in the protest movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Her image was often used in Soviet cinema. By nationality - French. Known as the famous feminist and ally of Lenin. It is because of its proximity to the leader of the world proletariat that it went down in history. It is not known for certain whether there was a purely platonic or physical relationship between them.
Childhood and youth
Inessa Armand was born in Paris. She was born in 1874. Her birth name is Elizabeth Pesce d'Erbanville. The future ally of Vladimir Ilyich grew up in an aristocratic bohemian family. Her father was a popular opera tenor in France, who had a creative pseudonym Theodore Stefan. Inessa Armand's mother is a chorus girl and artist, and in the future, Natalie Wild, a singing teacher. In the young heroine of our article, French blood flowed from my father and Anglo-French from mother’s ancestors.
When Elizabeth was five, she and her two younger sisters were left without a father. Theodore suddenly died suddenly. In a flash, the widowed Natalie was unable to support three children at once. Aunt came to help her, who worked as a governess in a rich house in Russia. The woman took her two nieces - Rene and Elizabeth - to her in Moscow.
The heroine of our article was on the estate of a wealthy industrialist Eugene Armand. He owned the trading house "Eugene Armand and Sons." Young pupils who came from France were cordially welcomed in this house. The Armand family owned a textile factory in Pushkin, where more than one thousand workers worked.
As Nadezhda Krupskaya later recalled, Inessa Armand was brought up in the so-called English spirit, as the girl needed a lot of endurance. She was a real polyglot. In addition to French and Russian, she was fluent in English and German. Soon, Elizabeth already learned to play the piano beautifully, brilliantly performing Beethoven's overtures. In the future, this talent came in handy. Lenin constantly asked her to do something in the evenings.
Participation in the feminist movement
When the French sisters were 18 years old, they were married to the two sons of the owner of the house. As a result, Elizabeth received the surname Armand, and later she invented a name for herself, becoming Inessa.
Photos of Inessa Armand in her youth prove how attractive she was. Her revolutionary biography began in Eldigino. This is a village near Moscow, in which industrialists settled. Inessa set up a school for children of peasants from villages located nearby.
In addition, she became a member of the feminist movement, which was called the “Society for the Advancement of Women,” which categorically opposed prostitution, calling it a shameful phenomenon.
Ideas of Social Equality
In 1896, Inessa Fedorovna Armand, whose photo you will find in this article, begins to lead the Moscow branch of the feminist society. But she does not succeed in obtaining permission to work, the authorities are embarrassed that by that time she is too keen on socialist ideas.
Three years later, it turns out that she was close to the distributor of illegal literature. On this charge, teachers are arrested in the house of Inessa Armand. It is authentically known that all this time she sympathized with her colleague.
In 1902, Armand was carried away by the ideas of Vladimir Lenin on social equality. She turns to her husband’s younger brother Vladimir, who also sympathizes with the revolutionary moods that had become fashionable at that time. He responds to her request to arrange the life of the peasants in Eldigino. Arriving at his family estate, he founded a Sunday school, a hospital and a reading room there. Armand helps him in everything.
Vladimir gives Inessa a book on the development of capitalism in Russia, authored by Vladimir Ilyin, this is one of Lenin's pseudonyms that he used at that time. Armand has aroused increased interest in this work, she begins to look for information about the mysterious author, on whose heels is the tsarist secret police. He finds out that he is currently hiding in Europe.
Acquaintance with Lenin
Armand, at the request of the heroine of our article, obtains the address of an underground revolutionary. The Frenchwoman, fascinated by the ideas of universal equality, writes a letter to the author of the book. Correspondence is tied between them. Over time, Armand finally moved away from his family, more and more engaged in revolutionary theories and ideas. When Lenin arrives in Russia, she arrives with him in Moscow. Vladimir Lenin and Inessa Armand settle together on Ostozhenka.
Armands are also actively involved in anti-government activities. In particular, they advocate the overthrow of the monarchy; in the evenings they attend underground meetings. Inessa in 1904 became a member of the RSDLP. Three years later, the tsarist police arrest her. According to the verdict, she is forced to go into exile for two years in the Arkhangelsk province, where she settles in the small town of Mezen.
Conclusion
Inessa Armand, the biography that you learn from this article, amazed those around her with her rare ability to convince and her unbending will. She managed to do this even with the prison authorities. Just a month and a half before being sent to Mezen, she was not in the cell, but in the house of the head of the prison, from where she wrote letters to Lenin abroad. She indicated the house of the prison guard as the return address. In 1908, she manages to fake a passport and flee to Switzerland. Soon, Vladimir Armand joins her, returning from exile in Siberia. However, in severe conditions, his tuberculosis worsened, he soon dies.
European voyage
Once in Brussels, Armand goes to university. She takes an economics course. Information about acquaintance with Ulyanov, which relate to this period of her biography, varies. Some argue that they constantly met in Brussels, others that like-minded people did not see each other until 1909, when they crossed in Paris.
When this still happens, the heroine of our article moves to the Ulyanovs house. There is talk around that Inessa Armand is Lenin's beloved woman. At least she becomes indispensable in the house, taking on the responsibilities of a translator, housekeeper and secretary. In a short time it turns into the closest ally of the future leader of the revolution, in fact, in his right hand. Armand translates his articles, prepares propagandists, and campaigns among French workers.
In 1912 he wrote his famous article "On the Women's Question", in which he advocated freedom from marriage. In the same year he came to Petersburg to establish the work of the Bolshevik cells, but she was arrested. From the conclusion, her ex-husband Alexander helps out. He makes a large pledge for Inessa, when she goes free, persuades him to return to the family. But Armand is absorbed in the revolutionary struggle, she flees to Finland, from where she immediately goes to Paris to reconnect with Lenin.
Return to Russia
After the February Revolution, Russian opposition began to return en masse to Russia from Europe. In the spring of 1917, Ulyanova, Krupskaya and Armand arrived in the compartment of the sealed wagon.
The heroine of our article becomes a member of the district committee in Moscow, takes an active part in skirmishes in October and November 1917. After the success of the October Revolution, it is headed by the provincial economic council.
Arrest in France
In 1918, Armand went to France on behalf of Lenin. Her task is to remove several thousand soldiers from the Russian expeditionary force from the country.
She is being arrested in her historic homeland. But soon the French authorities were forced to let her go, Ulyanov actually began to blackmail them, threatening to shoot at full strength the French Red Cross mission, which at that time was in Moscow. This serves as further evidence that his beloved woman, Inessa Armand, has been dear to him for a long time.
In 1919, she returned to Russia, where she heads one of the departments in the Central Committee of the party. He becomes one of the key organizers of the first international conference of women communists, actively works, writes dozens of fiery articles in which he criticizes the traditional family. According to the heroine of our article, she is a relic of antiquity.
Personal life
Dwelling in more detail on Armand's personal life, we begin with the fact that Inessa became the wife of a wealthy heir to the textile empire at 19 years old. Later, there were rumors that she managed to marry him only with the help of blackmail. Allegedly, Elizabeth found frivolous letters from Alexander from a married woman in Alexander.
However, most likely this is not so. Everything indicates that Alexander sincerely loved his wife. For nine years of marriage, four children were born to Inessa Armand from the manufacturer. He was kind, but too limp, so she preferred to him a younger brother who shared her revolutionary views.
Officially, they did not divorce, although Inessa gave birth to a son from Vladimir Armand, who became her fifth child. Inessa was sadly worried about his death; only enthusiastic revolutionary work helped her escape.
Inessa's first son is Alexander, he worked as a secretary in a trade mission in Tehran, Fedor was a military pilot, Inna served in the apparatus of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, and worked for a long time in the Soviet mission in Germany. Barbara, born in 1901, became a famous artist, and the son of Vladimir Andrei died in 1944 in the war.
Relations with Lenin
The meeting with Ulyanov turned her life upside down. Some historians deny that Inessa Armand is Lenin's beloved woman, they doubt that there was at least some kind of romance between them. Perhaps there were feelings on the part of Inessa for the party leader, which remained unrequited.
The evidence of the love relationship between them is correspondence. About her it became known in 1939 when, after the death of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Ulyanov’s letters addressed to Armand were transferred to the archive by her daughter Inna. It turned out that Lenin did not write to anyone as much as his companion and mistress.
In the 2000s, the media published an interview with Alexander Steffen, who was born in 1913 and called himself the son of Lenin and Armand. A German citizen claimed that about six months after his birth, Ulyanov added him to the families of his associates in Austria, so as not to compromise himself. In the Soviet Union, the connection between Lenin and Armand has been ignored for a long time. Only in the 20th century did it become public.
The death of a revolutionary
Stormy revolutionary activity negatively affected her health. Doctors seriously suspected her of tuberculosis. At 46, she planned to go to a familiar Parisian doctor who could put her on her feet, but Lenin persuaded him to go to Kislovodsk instead.
On the way to the resort, a woman contracted cholera, who died two days later in Nalchik. The year was 1920. She was buried in Red Square near the walls of the Kremlin. Soon after her loss, Lenin, who was seriously worried about the loss, suffered a first stroke.