Stalin and Krupskaya relations. Why Krupskaya did not love Stalin
Chapter 17. Krupskaya was poisoned by Stalin.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya died on February 27, 1939, the day after her 70th birthday. Rumors spread throughout the country that she had been poisoned on the orders of I.V. Stalin, because her memories regularly ruined his life. This cause of death of Lenin's wife is reported in the book by Vera Vasilyeva "Kremlin Wives". She notes that Khrushchev, who "revealed" this crime, told members of the Politburo that "Krupskaya was poisoned by the cake that Stalin gave her on her birthday. On the afternoon of February 24, 1939, friends visited her in Arkhangelskoye to celebrate the mistress's approaching seventieth birthday. The table was laid, Stalin sent a cake. Everyone ate it together. Nadezhda Konstantinovna seemed very animated. In the evening she suddenly became ill. However, at the call of doctors from the Kremlin clinic, it was not the ambulance officers who arrived, but the NKVD officers who placed Krupskaya under house arrest. Doctors arrived more than three hours later and diagnosed me with "deep damage to all internal organs." Endless consultations were held. The necessary emergency surgery was not performed. Three days later, Krupskaya died in terrible agony.
The story of the poisoning was publicized by the General Secretary, and, of course, he could only make such an accusation at the suggestion of his experts. It would seem that there is no reason not to trust such an authoritative statement, and yet it should be checked, and if true, then supported by serious arguments.
Let's try to clarify the reasons that forced Stalin to resort at that time to such cruel measures - to the physical elimination of the widow of the great Lenin. The authors of the version name two reasons that prompted Stalin to criminal actions:
1. Krupskaya was going to speak at the 18th Party Congress condemning Stalin's despotism. One of her friends said that she would not be given the floor. Krupskaya replied: “Then I will rise from the hall and demand the floor, because I have been in the party for forty years.” Stalin became aware of Krupskaya's intention.
In his bulletin on Krupskaya's death, L.D. Trotsky wrote from Mexico: “She knew too much. She knew the history of the party. She knew what place Stalin occupied in this history. All the latest historiography, which gave Stalin a place next to Lenin, could not help but seem disgusting and insulting to her. Stalin was afraid of Krupskaya, just as he was afraid of Gorky. Krupskaya was surrounded by the GPU ring. Old friends disappeared one by one: those who hesitated to die were killed openly or secretly. Every step she took was under control. Her articles were published only after long, painful and humiliating negotiations between the censor and the author. They imposed on her the amendments that were necessary for the exaltation of Stalin or the rehabilitation of the GPU. Apparently, a number of the most vile inserts of this kind were made against the will of Krupskaya and even without her knowledge. What was left for the unfortunate crushed woman to do.
2. Relations between Stalin and Krupskaya had not been friendly since V.I. Lenin's illness, and the aggravation of their mutual claims reached such an intensity that Stalin could no longer endure her eternal disagreement with his policy.
During Lenin's illness, relations between Stalin and Krupskaya deteriorated sharply. On December 22, 1922, Krupskaya wrote to L.B. Kamenev: “Lev Borisych, regarding the short letter I wrote under the dictation of Vlad. Ilyich, with the permission of the doctors, Stalin allowed me the most rude trick yesterday. I'm in the party for more than one day. But in all 30 years I have not heard a single rude word from a single comrade, the interests of the party and Ilyich are no less dear to me than to Stalin. Now I need maximum self-control. What can and cannot be discussed with Ilyich, I know better than any doctor, because I know what worries him, what does not, and, in any case, better than Stalin. I appeal to you and Grigory (Zinoviev - from the author), as V.I.'s closest comrades, and ask you to protect me from gross interference in my personal life, unworthy scolding and threats ... I am also alive and my nerves are tense to the extreme." In response to Lenin’s remark, Stalin wrote: “If you think that in order to preserve“ relations ”I must“ take back ”the words said above, I can take them back, refusing, however, to understand what is the matter here, where is my“ fault "And what, in fact, they want from me." Vyacheslav Molotov spoke about Stalin’s direct reaction to events many years later: “Stalin was annoyed: “What, should I walk on my hind legs in front of her? Sleeping with Lenin does not mean understanding Leninism!”
So, could Krupskaya speak at the congress with revelations of the Stalinist regime.
After the death of her husband, Krupskaya wrote her memoirs in December 1924. and sent the manuscript of the first part to Stalin along with a note: “Comrade. Stalin. I am sending you the beginning of my reminiscences. It is difficult for me to decide for myself whether they are suitable for anything, whether they can be printed. Of course, close people will read with interest, but that's another matter. I wrote this on a whim and, to be honest, I couldn't re-read it... Please write what you think... Forgive me for turning to you with this personal request, but I can't decide something myself. But this is the only way I can write memoirs.” Stalin's answer was calm and benevolent: “Nadezhda Konstantinovna! I read your memoirs in one gulp and with pleasure. It is necessary to print, if possible without changes. Peace seemed to be restored between them. Nadezhda Konstantinovna continued to actively participate in the life of the country.
Since 1924, as a member of the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Krupskaya stood at the origins of the creation of the system of education and enlightenment of the peoples of the USSR. She taught at the Academy of Communist Education since 1924. She was the organizer of the voluntary societies "Down with illiteracy", "Friend of Children", chairman of the Society of Marxist Educators. Since 1927 - member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR of all convocations. At meetings of the Politburo, conferences, congresses, she often spoke, expressed her opinion.
In 1924, at a meeting of the Politburo, where the issue of landowners who returned to their homes was discussed, Krupskaya tried to object to the decision on a special approach to landowners of non-noble origin, who were allowed to remain in bureaucratic positions, taking into account their merits and results of work. She believed that it was necessary to unconditionally expel everyone from the apparatus. She was immediately criticized.
In October 1925, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sokolnikov and Krupskaya submitted to the Central Committee a document reflecting serious contradictions in the views of the new opposition grouping with Stalin's line. The so-called "Platform of the Four" denied the possibility of building socialism in the USSR given the country's technical backwardness and the absence of proletarian revolutions in the developed countries of Europe. The new opposition asserted that the state industry of the Soviet country was not socialist, but state-capitalist, that the NEP was only a continuous retreat before the capitalist elements, that the Soviet economy was wholly dependent on the elements of the external capitalist market, that a monopoly of foreign trade was unnecessary. The leaders of the new opposition objected to an increase in appropriations for heavy industry, advocated the development of light industry and a wide import of industrial products from abroad. The oppositionists declared that the Central Committee of the party was in danger of degenerating.
At the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (December 1925), the opposition criticized the work of I. V. Stalin and proposed to remove him from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. At the congress, Krupskaya declared on behalf of the opposition that it was inadmissible to replace a principled discussion of topical issues with an organizational squabble, called "not to cover one or another of our views with the nickname of Leninism, but ... to consider this or that issue on the merits." The congress condemned the speeches of the "new opposition". In February 1926, the Leningrad Party Conference removed Zinoviev from leadership and elected a new provincial committee headed by S. M. Kirov. Krupskaya later admitted her position was erroneous. At the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “For the unity of the party, against the splitting activities of the opposition” on August 2, 1927, she stated: “In 1925, everyone felt a certain stabilization, then it seemed that it was necessary to especially sharply signal the danger of certain phenomena, which took place. That is why it seemed to me then in 1925 that the position of the opposition was correct. But now, at the moment of struggle, at the moment of the need to unite all forces, it seems to me that all the members of the opposition must withdraw from the opposition and unite closer around the Central Committee” (prolonged applause).
Until the summer of 1929, she was one of the most authoritative figures in the leadership of Soviet education, being the deputy people's commissar of education. But in the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR, in whose collegium she was still during the life of Lenin, the circle of her duties narrowed more and more. First she was removed from propaganda, then from the fight against illiteracy, then from the management of schools and the preparation of school programs. In the end, after the 17th Congress, only libraries were in her charge, as N.K. herself wrote. Krupskaya, “I switched to another job, to librarianship; Organizationally, I have nothing to do with the issue of the school.” Outwardly, she was shown signs of respect, but inside the apparatus she was systematically compromised, humiliated, and the most ridiculous and rude gossip spread about her in the ranks of the Komsomol.
But she continued to write memoirs, collections of Lenin's sayings, while trying to present her husband as he was in life, a normal, talented person who sometimes made mistakes, with his inherent advantages and disadvantages. At this time, the image of Lenin in literature was canonized, he was deified, and his closest disciple and comrade-in-arms Stalin, a genius of the same scale, was constantly present next to him.
Krupskaya's conflict with the "Union of Atheists" in 1929 is known. The leaders of this organization proposed turning the school into one of the centers of the anti-religious struggle. But the leadership of the People's Commissariat of Education, in particular Krupskaya and Lunacharsky, considered the current situation to be quite normal, when the school remained virtually neutral. They were against radical methods of fighting religion, against having crosses torn off from believing children and mocked at them. But the ideas of the "Union of the Atheists" echoed Stalin's "general line", so both Krupskaya and Lunacharsky were in the minority.
In the second half of 1929, under strong pressure from Stalin, the entire collegium of the People's Commissariat for Education, headed by A.V. Lunacharsky, was forced to resign. New People's Commissar A.S. Bubnov met Krupskaya coldly. “In the summer of 1930, district party conferences were held in Moscow before the 16th Party Congress,” historian Roy Medvedev writes in his book They Surrounded Stalin. - At the Bauman conference, the widow of V.I. Lenin, N.K. Krupskaya accused the Central Committee of the party of ignorance of the mood of the peasantry and of refusing to consult with the people. “There is no need to blame the local authorities,” said Nadezhda Konstantinovna, “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 it, and he immediately left for the conference. Rising to the podium after Krupskaya, Kaganovich subjected her speech to a rude scolding. Rejecting her criticism on the merits, he also stated that, as a member of the Central Committee, she had no right to bring her criticisms to the rostrum of the district party conference. “Let N. K. Krupskaya not think,” Kaganovich declared, “that if she was Lenin’s wife, then she has a monopoly on Leninism.”
The corrected Krupskaya welcomed collectivization: "This restructuring on socialist principles of agriculture is a real genuine agrarian revolution." She stigmatized Trotsky, who had been thrown out of the country, who "never understood the peasant question", she suggested using all the mechanisms of the party apparatus more powerfully in collectivization: "the fight against the kulak consists in leaving no trace of kulak influence on the ideological front." And again Krupskaya is in the forefront, in 1931 she was elected an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In her speech at the 17th Party Congress in January 1934, Krupskaya pronounced Stalin's name in unison with all the other speakers: “At the 16th Congress, Comrade Stalin raised the issue of universal education. Of course, this is a matter of tremendous importance, the Party has been aware of this from the very beginning...”. In 1935 she was a delegate of the 7th Congress of the Comintern, was awarded the Order of Lenin, in 1936 she became the first doctor of pedagogical sciences in the USSR, in 1937 she was a deputy and a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the 1st convocation, in 1938 - member of its presidium.
In the late 1930s, Krupskaya tried to stand up for Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, protested against the persecution of children by "enemies of the people." All this caused Stalin's displeasure, he even threatened her “to present in future textbooks as Lenin's wife not her, but the old Bolshevik E.D. Stasova. Yes, yes,” Stalin added, “the party can do anything.” (In this remark, the names sometimes changed: instead of Stasova, they substituted either Inessa Armand or Fotieva). Stalin constantly included Krupskaya and Anna Ilyinichna in the party commissions that decided the fate of the former leaders of the party. Women, at best, did not appear at the meetings of these commissions or voted like everyone else, that is, for the proposal of comrade. Stalin. Krupskaya voted for putting N.I. Bukharin, for the exclusion from the party of L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev and his closest friends and associates in the party.
The last years of her life she was in a certain isolation - she was moved to the sanatorium of the old Bolsheviks "Arkhangelsk". On October 19, 1935, her closest friend, Lenin's elder sister, Anna Ilyinichna, who had been seriously ill for a long time, died in Moscow: difficult experiences, arrests, exiles had an effect. In house number 9 on Manezhnaya Street, in December 1982, a new Lenin Museum was opened. On the facade of the house there is a memorial plaque with the inscription: "A prominent figure in the Communist Party, the sister of V. I. Lenin, Anna Ilyinichna Ulyanova-Elizarova lived in this house from 1919 to 1935." After the death of Lenin, Anna Ilyinichna was until 1932 a researcher at the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, was a secretary and a member of the editorial board of the journal Proletarian Revolution. On behalf of the Central Committee of the party, she collected documents on the history of the Ulyanov family. Copies of documents obtained at the end of the summer of 1924 from the archives of the Medico-Surgical Academy testified to the Jewish roots of my grandfather on the maternal side and his conversion to the Orthodox faith. According to the official (track record) lists, it was possible to trace the career path of A. D. Blank. The receipt of the noble title was also confirmed by copies of the documents of the Noble Deputy Assembly of the Kazan province, where the Blank family settled after Alexander Dmitrievich retired. Documents about IN Ulyanov were received from Kazan. During a trip to Leningrad in the autumn of 1924, Anna Ilyinichna got acquainted with the originals of the discovered documents, from which it followed that her grandfather, Alexander Blank, received holy baptism in 1820 in St. Petersburg; until 1818, he was registered with the petty-bourgeois Jewish society of the city of Starokonstantinov, Volyn province, under the name Israel. She hoped to get Stalin's consent to the publication of this information. “It is probably not a secret for you that the study of the origin of the grandfather showed that he comes from a poor Jewish family, was, as the document on his baptism says, the son of the Zhytomyr tradesman Moshka Blank. But in recent years, hearing that anti-Semitism is again manifesting itself more strongly in our country, I come to the conclusion that it is hardly right to hide this fact from the masses, which, due to the respect that Vladimir Ilyich enjoys among them, can be of great service in the fight against anti-Semitism. , but, in my opinion, nothing can hurt ... I think that Vladimir Ilyich would have looked like that. After all, there can be no reason for us to hide this fact, and it is another confirmation of the data on the exceptional abilities of the Semitic tribe, which was always shared by Ilyich, and on the benefits for posterity of mixing tribes. Ilyich always placed the Jews highly. I am very sorry that the fact of our origin, which I assumed before, was not known during his lifetime. (The original letter dated 1932 is on display at the Moscow Historical Museum - A.Z.) Stalin forbade revealing the secret about the origin of the great teacher, and Anna Ilyinichna was fired at his direction from the institute.
A year and a half later, on June 12, 1937, Lenin's younger sister, Maria Ilyinichna, died. She was very upset by the death of her older sister, tried to forget herself, worked hard, was not at home at all, took care of Krupskaya. Vera Drizo, Krupskaya's secretary, said that Maria Ilyinichna almost always bought clothes for Nadezhda Konstantinovna, ordered theater tickets, invariably took an interest in her health, sent doctors to her. March 8, 1933 Maria Ilyinichna was awarded the Order of Lenin, spoke at the eleventh morning meeting of the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b). The congress elected M.I. Ulyanova a member of the Commission of Soviet Control under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, in 1935 she was elected a member of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.
Elena Dmitrievna Stasova later spoke about the last hours of the life of Lenin's younger sister: “I remember our last meeting with her. The three of us - Maria Ilyinichna, Nadezhda Konstantinovna and I - participated in 1937 at a conference of the Moscow Party organization. Maria Ilyinichna had to leave the meeting to do some urgent work. She, who always cared for Nadezhda Konstantinovna, asked me to accompany her home, since Nadezhda Konstantinovna could not see well. Arriving in her office, Maria Ilyinichna felt a terrible headache, which caused a fainting state. The attack passed, but soon recurred. It was a cerebral hemorrhage, from which Maria Ilyinichna died. Her first attack began on June 7, doctors arrived, they managed to achieve a temporary improvement in her condition, Maria came to her senses. But soon a second attack began, after which she fell into a deep unconsciousness, the activity of the heart weakened every minute, and on June 12 she died. On June 13, all the newspapers of the Soviet Union reported on the death of M.I. Ulyanova. All the days of Maria Ilyinichna's illness, Nadezhda Konstantinovna was nearby, and she had to tell the sad news to Dmitry Ilyich, who was at that time in the sanatorium: “Dear, dear Dmitry Ilyich! Our Manyasha has died. I didn't call you because it was very hard, and the doctors, as usual, spoke differently ... Now we need to compile her biography, collect all the memories, compile a collection. This cannot be done without you, you are the best, you know her best of all. A deep party member, she gave herself to all the work, all without a trace. It is necessary to preserve its image, its appearance for history. It is necessary to collect everything; You now have a big task. We will talk about this matter with you when we meet. I hug you tightly. Take care of yourself. Your N.K.” Nadezhda Konstantinovna herself wrote an article about Maria Ulyanova in one night, and on the morning of June 13 the whole country read it in Pravda: “... Her whole life was inextricably linked with the life and work of Ilyich ... The first years of her work go Ilyich. Her experience of extensive work with the masses, Lenin's habit of listening to the voice of the masses made her an active organizer of the rabkor movement ... She did not spare her strength, she worked from morning until 3-4 o'clock in the morning, without rest, without interruption. Already sick, she took an active part in the work of the district, Moscow city and regional conferences. When she came to work from the conference, she felt unwell, fell ill and didn’t get up anymore ... ”.
With the death of Maria Ilyinichna, only Dmitry Ilyich, his children, Olga and Viktor, and Nadezhda Konstantinovna survived from the entire large Ulyanov family. Dmitry Ilyich worked since 1933 in the scientific sector of the clinic of the Kremlin Sanitary Administration. He was a delegate to the XVI and XVII congresses of the CPSU (b). Often sick.
Krupskaya used every opportunity, every occasion, to tell her stories about Lenin the Man to anyone who could remember them or write them down and pass them on to others. When it almost ceased to be published, Krupskaya began to use a workaround - she began to devote a large part of her time to consulting for authors writing about Lenin. Moreover, she not only told writers about his life, but also used the remnants of her influence to promote what was written in print. Particular irritation of Stalin and his entourage was caused by Marietta Shaginyan's novel "A Ticket to History".
In 1938, the writer Marietta Shaginyan approached Krupskaya for a review and support for her novel about Lenin, A Ticket to History. Nadezhda Konstantinovna answered her with a detailed letter, which caused Stalin's indignation. In a 1938 Politburo decision, the book was called "a politically harmful, ideologically hostile work." The novel was withdrawn from use, and everyone involved in its publication, including Krupskaya, was punished. The decision stated: “To condemn the behavior of Krupskaya, who, having received the manuscript of Shaginyan’s novel, not only did not prevent the appearance 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 carried full responsibility for this book. To consider Krupskaya’s behavior all the more unacceptable and tactless, since Comrade Krupskaya did all this without the knowledge and consent of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, behind the back of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, thereby turning the general party business of compiling works about Lenin into a private and family affair and speaking in the role of a monopolist and interpreter of the public and private life and work of Lenin and his family, to which the Central Committee never gave the right to anyone.
As the Central Committee demanded, Krupskaya immediately wrote negative reviews of M. Shaginyan's works to several editorial offices. In her letter to the Young Guard about the story Volodya Ulyanov, she conveyed her corrected opinion with the words: “I didn’t like the story very much, the influence of the era in which Vladimir Ilyich grew up and took shape is poorly shown ... I am against this fiction, distorting reality".
Regarding the first motivation for the murder of Krupskaya, let us ask ourselves the question: could she come out with a condemnation of despotism at the 18th Congress, essentially removed from important affairs, a lonely woman, frightened to death? The fact that she was morally demoralized is evidenced by the facts of her official statements with repentance and condemnation of her mistakes. Naturally, she went to the podium with repentance not of her own free will, and her vote for the expulsion of her closest associates from the party, and her signature in the party commissions that decided the fate of the Leninists - she was forced to do all this, realizing the strength of the threats of Stalin and his team . And the fact that these threats could come true, and this team would not be stopped even by the fact that she was Lenin's wife, she had no doubt. She did not have the strength to go on heroic deeds, in the name of who knows what, and expose the despot. The authors of this version suggest that a sick woman, like Danko, could tear her chest, take out her heart and consecrate the way for the peoples. To go on self-sacrifice, and even some faint hints of criticism of Stalin would turn into this, she was not capable, and she was reasonable enough to understand that such an action was useless.
The second reason could be taken seriously if in reality it was noticed behind Stalin that he dealt with those who were simply tired of him in this way. There was no need for Stalin to resort to such exotic methods of eliminating Krupskaya as poisoning. He constantly kept Krupskaya under his control. And as soon as she deviated from his course of the party even in some petty matters, she was summoned and made a serious, serious suggestion. In the last years of her life, after the execution of her friends, comrades-in-arms and the entire Leninist guard, it became clear to her that she could not fight alone with this machine. And she retired from political activity. She wanted to support Marietta Shaginyan, who had written an interesting book about her husband, but even here she was given a serious suggestion, and again she had to step over herself and invent negative reviews. Stalin's bloodthirstiness manifested itself in relation to his opponents and to those who supported them, and to those who knew something about his past and could blurt out. But Krupskaya was not dangerous for him, and he treated her with statements that she did not take good care of her dying husband, that she did not visit him at the Mausoleum. Once Stalin summoned Krupskaya to him and, in the presence of his comrades-in-arms, began to scold her for the fact that she “not only drove her husband to the grave, she also completely forgot him, she wasn’t in the Mausoleum for several months.” The former director of the laboratory of the Mausoleum, Professor Sergei Debov, said that Stalin set special hours for Krupskaya to visit her late husband. A chair was placed near the sarcophagus, and Krupskaya, whether she wanted it or not, had to spend the allotted time in the Mausoleum. The professor said that Nadezhda Konstantinovna was talking to Lenin, telling him something, crying, and then suddenly laughing as if she was going crazy. It is clear that after such nervous stress, her health did not increase. Her last visit to the tomb took place in 1938. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Krupskaya, approaching her husband’s coffin, allegedly told Boris Ilyich Zbarsky, who accompanied her: “Boris Ilyich, he is still the same, but I am getting old.” The fact that she was to die in the near future was reported to Stalin by the doctors who observed her.
Beginning in 1912, Krupskaya was constantly and seriously ill, Graves' disease destroyed her body, tormented and exhausted her. After the assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918, a new relapse occurred, and then his heart began to fail. Doctors recommended that she take regular rest and reduce the number of working hours. But she continued to work hard for days: she wrote reviews, gave instructions, answered letters, prepared speeches, rewrote the book of memoirs, although she understood that it would hardly be possible to print it. Even two months before her death, she continued to work intensively. Her medical history records:
“January 3, 1939. After a walk in the air in Arkhangelsk, there was clouding in the eyes. There is no headache. Reduce working hours to three hours a day and ban all public speaking.”
“January 11, 1939. Conversation with the orderly on duty of the attending physician: “He works four to five hours a day. He speaks and holds small meetings. I do not agree to the weakening of the working regime, refuses to inspect.
In 1939, Krupskaya decided to celebrate her seventieth birthday on Sunday, February 24, two days ahead of schedule, so as not to be distracted on a weekday by receptions and congratulations. In the Arkhangelskoye sanatorium, old friends and relatives gathered for a modest feast. The hero of the occasion ate almost nothing and drank a few sips of champagne for her health. And at seven o'clock in the evening she became very ill. An ambulance from Lechsanupra Kremlin reached the patient after three and a half hours. The doctor, Associate Professor M. B. Kogan, after examining Krupskaya, who complained of abdominal pain and nausea, gave her an injection stimulating her heart and ordered her to put a heating pad on her stomach. An hour later, the patient became worse, and the doctor wrote: “Drying in the mouth. Repeated urge to vomit, sharp pains in the abdomen. Heat doesn't help. Pulse 110-120. In view of the suspicion of an acute inflammatory process, prof. M. P. Konchalovsky and A. D. Ochkin. Reported by phone to the deputy head. Lechsanupra Levinson. An hour and a half later, a consultation took place, at which the doctors stated: “a very poor general condition with a sharply accelerated irregular pulse, with blue lips, nose and extremities ... During the study, severe abdominal pain was noted, especially in the lower half on the right. Taking into account the presence of acute inflammatory phenomena of the abdominal cavity (appendicitis is suspected) ... and the general serious condition of the patient, it was decided to urgently hospitalize the patient in the Kremlin hospital. Krupskaya was taken to the hospital only at half past five in the morning. Peritonitis developed and the patient got worse and worse. Having regained consciousness, she, however, said: “Whatever the doctors want, but I will go to the congress anyway.”
On February 26, the country celebrated Krupskaya's birthday, and collectives and individual citizens sent congratulations to Ilyich's faithful comrade-in-arms and girlfriend from all over the country. And the doctors wrote about the state of the hero of the occasion: “The patient is still in a state close to unconscious. Significant bruising. Coldness of extremities. Sticky sweat. The pulse is arrhythmic ... The general condition remains extremely difficult, not excluding the possibility of a near sad outcome. On the morning of February 27, she was gone. In a note to Stalin and Molotov, professors S. Spasokukotsky, A. Ochkin, V. Vinogradov and the head of the Kremlin Lechsanupra A. Busalov wrote that "surgical intervention ... with deep damage to all internal organs and at the age of 70 was absolutely unacceptable." The official cause of death was an acute attack of appendicitis, general peritonitis and thrombosis. Peritonitis was caused by rupture of a purulent appendicitis and bacteria entering the abdominal cavity. The diagnosis of "acute peritonitis" implies the need for urgent surgical intervention to identify and eliminate the source of peritonitis, and sanitation. After operations for severe forms of purulent peritonitis, mortality in adults reaches 80-90%. Even at the present stage. Krupskaya's internal organs were so destroyed by a benign disease that it made the operation almost useless. It was impossible to save Krupskaya after her appendix burst.
The newspapers urgently conveyed a message from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars: “On February 27, 1939, at 6:15 am, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya died with symptoms of cardiac paralysis. The death of comrade Krupskaya, who devoted her whole life to the cause of communism, is a great loss for the party and the workers of the USSR.”
None of the guests present at the jubilee in Arkhangelsk complained of pain in the stomach and did not call the doctors. There was no poisoning, and General Secretary N.S. Khrushchev, pursuing his political goals, reported deliberately false information to the whole country.
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She was born on February 26, 1869, and passed away on February 27, 1939 - suddenly, the day after her 70th birthday. It was said that her sudden death was not without the participation of Stalin . However, a lot of things were said about Krupskaya. Historian Yaroslav Listov he spent a lot of time sorting through the archives, and he can confidently assert: far from everything that Nadenka, beloved by Ilyich, represents, is true.
In photographs taken during the Soviet era, we are accustomed to seeing an elderly, overweight lady with a characteristic "Based" look, in ridiculous hats and baggy outfits. Once upon a time I was tormented by a naive question: well, how could the energetic, ruddy Ilyich, as he was portrayed on posters and in books, fall in love with such a woman? Which, moreover, did not know how to cook, did not want to create comfort, could not give her husband children - a standard set of "charges" against his wife Lenin. But they have been married for 30 years. So there was something else that connected these people?
Immediately about the unattractive appearance of Nadezhda Konstantinovna, - with masculine categoricalness, Yaroslav Igorevich Listov. When Vladimir Ilyich saw Krupskaya for the first time, she was 25 years old. Hope could not be called a beauty, but ... Krupskaya called her appearance "St. Petersburg": pale skin, light greenish eyes, blond braid. The disease, which eventually distorted the features, had already begun to develop, but from the outside it was not noticeable. Hope impressed many young people. Menshevik Sukhanov wrote: “The sweetest creature Nadezhda Konstantinovna ...” The owner of the apartment where he and Vladimir Ilyich met also noted the same.
- Was it purely a business date?
It must be understood that this happened in patriarchal Russia, where intimate life was strictly taboo. Premarital affairs were condemned or kept secret - as a rule, they took place in the highest circles, where it could be hidden. In a revolutionary environment, it was considered a special chic to invite a girl to a revolutionary get-together. Nadezhda Konstantinovna was brought to a meeting with the Old Man - Lenin had such a nickname - for the same purpose. We are accustomed to look at Vladimir Ilyich as a monument from the Finland Station with an outstretched hand, but then he was a rather timid young man of 24 years old.
On the day they met, they say, the “timid” young man first drew attention not to Nadia, but to her more attractive friend.
This girl Apollinaria Yakubova, was, as they say, "blood with milk." And Vladimir Ilyich really took a great interest in her. But when he was imprisoned and needed a person to contact him, he chose Nadya. As Lenin wrote, she guessed his every word. It is often said that they got married by party order. Vladimir Ilyich made an offer before being sent into exile in Shushenskoye. It sounded like this: “Do you want to become my wife?” - "Well, the wife is the wife," - answered Krupskaya. Outside of marriage, she could not live with Ilyich under the same roof. By the way, in the Russian Empire they had a positive attitude towards the marriage of prisoners: it was believed that a person would settle down and leave the revolution. Lenin and Krupskaya got married in Shushenskoye.
- Nadezhda Konstantinovna became Ulyanova?
She took her husband's surname, but never used it. A “separate” surname helped her to distance herself from Lenin - many jokes about the old man Krupsky are connected with this. Before the revolution, she was more known by party nicknames: Fish, Lamprey, Onegin, Rybkin ...
- There was information that Nadezhda Konstantinovna had a connection with one of the political prisoners in Shushenskoye.
This is what the contemporary writer claims. Vasiliev. But any person who has been to Shushenskoye will say that it is impossible to start a secret romance there. Any absence - there were local peasants who reported where necessary. All political people were followed. For example, we know more about the hunting of Vladimir Ilyich than about the hunting of some princes. Where did he go, what did he bring: if he came with booty, then he was not at the turnout. These reports even contain value judgments: a good hunter walked for three hours, and dragged three capercaillie.
- Did Krupskaya's mother, Elizaveta Vasilievna, go to Shushenskoye to feed her son-in-law?
Of course, Nadezhda Konstantinovna could not compare with her mother in this skill. Girls from noble families were not taught cooking - they were entrusted with managing households: she knew how much fabric to buy for curtains, how to prepare jam ... Here, by the way, there is also a controversial point: when she and Ilyich lived in exile in Switzerland, an interesting note where Lenin says: “Nadya will treat me to the eighth kind of borscht.” But more often, Krupskaya herself wrote, they sat on dry food. This can be explained by the fact that, say, they did not have a kitchen in their Parisian apartment. We ate in a cafe, bought what the hostesses cooked and carried it to apartments. In Switzerland they hired a cook.
- On what means did the spouses live in exile?
At the beginning of the 20th century, renting an apartment in Zurich, Bern, Poznan or Paris was inexpensive. This was the money from the sale of Kokushkino - the estate of Lenin's grandfather, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. The second source is the pension that Nadezhda Konstantinovna received for her father: he died when she was 14 years old. And finally, income from journalistic activities. Abroad, many sympathized with the Russian Social Democrats and contributed money to mutual aid funds.
- It was in exile that relations between Vladimir Lenin and Inessa Armand began. Were they close?
To document that Ilyich cheated on his wife with Inessa Armand, no one has succeeded yet. Between them, no doubt, there were tender feelings. In the only letter that has come down to us, Inessa Fedorovna writes about kisses, without which she “could do without,” but I suspect her relationship with Lenin was rather platonic. With due respect from both sides to Nadezhda Konstantinovna.
- But Krupskaya herself suggested that Ilyich part.
Not a confirmed fact. The same Vasilyeva came up with a story that in 1919 Krupskaya allegedly ran away from her husband. Nadezhda Konstantinovna really left, since together with Molotov went to agitate along the Volga. During the trip, Ilyich constantly bombarded Molotov with questions about the health of his wife and, as soon as an indisposition arose, demanded her urgent return.
What was her diagnosis?
A disease associated with dysfunction of the thyroid gland led to infertility. Now this problem can be solved, but then it was incurable, and in order to compensate for the emptiness, after the death of Armand Krupskaya, she turned her attention to her children. She was especially close to 22-year-old Inessa. It was already too late to adopt a girl, but in other cases, other people's children were willingly accepted into families. Voroshilov raised not his own children, but children Frunze. In family Stalin the adopted son Artem grew up, the same was in the Molotov family, Kaganovich... Perhaps this "trend" was unofficially set by Ilyich's wife.
- The leader of the world revolution more than once "found" illegitimate children.
The Mensheviks were the first to talk about this, declaring that one of the sons of Inessa Armand was the leader's child. But he was born five years before his mother met Ilyich. There was talk that the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexey Kosygin- the last Russian prince saved by Lenin. He was also born in St. Petersburg, in the same year as Alexey Romanov. Lenin allegedly gave him bail to the nanny, and she was oblique, and therefore Kosygin. No relationship has yet been confirmed.
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Ilyich loved grilled meat
- Krupskaya shared what Lenin was like in everyday life?
Nadezhda Konstantinovna always advocated not making an icon out of Lenin - a "cherub", as she said. In recent works, she tried to “humanize” her husband - she recalled that Ilyich loved to listen to the nightingales, that he stopped for a walk and looked for bullfinches among the branches for a long time, washed himself with melt water, and rejoiced at the New Year tree in Gorki. Loved dark Bavarian beer and grilled meat. He was undemanding to clothes and wore boots to holes. I couldn't stand it when people smoke. In his youth, he ran well and fought with his fists. He liked to walk - in Gorki he waved ten kilometers.
By the way, in the first time after the revolution, Ilyich did not have a serious bodyguard. In 1918 in Moscow, even before the assassination attempt, they even managed to rob him. He was carrying a can of milk to Nadezhda Konstantinovna, who was ill. The car was stopped by local "authorities", the driver, Lenin and a guard with a can were taken out at gunpoint, and the car was stolen.
Stalin and Molotov, who lived in the National Hotel, also easily walked unaccompanied from the Kremlin to Tverskaya. One day a beggar asked them for a penny. Molotov did not give it and got it: "Oh, you bourgeois, you feel sorry for the working man." And Stalin held out ten rubles - and heard another speech: "Ah, bourgeois, you haven't finished off enough." After that, Iosif Vissarionovich thoughtfully uttered: “Our person needs to know how much to give: if you give a lot, it’s bad, if you don’t give enough, it’s also bad.”
- I read that Stalin accused Krupskaya of improperly caring for the sick leader.
- The “bad” departure consisted in the fact that Nadezhda Konstantinovna, violating the ban on the party, gave Ilyich newspapers to read.
- Is it true that Lenin asked his wife to give him poison to ease his suffering?
It seems that he asked about it, but there is still no paper, and it is important for us to see who wrote it, what signature is on what form. A certain document circulates in a list version, but it can neither be recognized as the original nor refuted. But it is hard to believe that Lenin could ask for such a thing. He steadfastly survived the first stroke, learned to speak, walk, write again - everything indicates that the person did not give up. Of course, his health was deteriorating, but there was nothing catastrophic that could push him to suicide.
- What diagnosis did the doctors make to Vladimir Ilyich?
Atherosclerosis - blockage of blood vessels. As a result of a wound received in 1918, a bullet injured the carotid artery that feeds the brain, and a blood clot began to form in it, which blocked the lumen of the vessel. The occlusion of the vessels with calcium was such that a hair did not pass through them. Ilyich, after being wounded, was given calcium-containing preparations ... Popular versions that the bullet that hit Lenin was poisoned and that he died of syphilitic brain damage were not confirmed.
- And what do doctors say about the cause of Krupskaya's death?
The medical history of Nadezhda Konstantinovna is still classified - 90 years must pass after her death. Krupskaya never considered herself ill. In recent years, she lived in a sanatorium in Arkhangelsk, where her receptionist constantly worked. Celebrating her 70th birthday, she violated the prescription of doctors. After a modest feast, her appendicitis worsened, which developed into peritonitis. There was no poisoned cake allegedly given by Stalin. The cake was made in the sanatorium and ten people ate it. The trouble happened only with Nadezhda Konstantinovna, who immediately became ill. If the special services were involved in this case, they would certainly have chosen a different method of elimination. They would cause a heart attack, something else, no one would even ask questions.
I came up with a dummy
In addition to extensive teaching activities, which Nadezhda Konstantinovna was engaged in until the end of her days, she paid great attention to hygiene issues. Together with Lenin's brother, People's Commissar of Health Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov, conducted a grandiose campaign to introduce pacifiers into the USSR, which saved the lives of millions of babies. Prior to this, mothers used a crumb of bread, which could contain ergot, a fungus that causes severe poisoning. Another fact in terms of caring for the younger generation: it was on the orders of Krupskaya Mayakovsky wrote the poster "Woman, my breasts before feeding."
Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya is perceived by many as the wife and faithful companion of the leader of the revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Meanwhile, she was in itself a rather extraordinary person, and in her biography there are many facts that may surprise.
girl with ideals
Nadezhda was born on February 14 (26), 1869 in St. Petersburg. Her father, an impoverished nobleman and former lieutenant Konstantin Ignatievich Krupsky, was one of the ideologists of the Polish uprising of 1863. He died in 1883, leaving the family no means. Despite this, the mother, Elizaveta Vasilievna, managed to give her daughter an education at the prestigious gymnasium of Princess Obolenskaya. After graduating from the pedagogical class with a gold medal, Nadya entered the Bestuzhev women's courses, but studied there for only a year.
From her youth, the girl was fond of the ideas of Tolstoyism, and then Marxism and revolution. To earn money, she gave private lessons and at the same time taught free classes at the St. Petersburg Sunday evening school for adults beyond the Nevskaya Zastava, participated in a Marxist circle, and joined the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
Wedding with copper rings
Acquaintance with the young Vladimir Ulyanov took place in February 1894. At first, Volodya was interested in another girl - Apollinaria Yakubova, even proposed to her, but was refused.
Soon Ulyanov really became close to Nadia Krupskaya, although she was a year older than him. But their romance was interrupted by the arrest of Nadezhda. In 1897, together with several other members of the union, she was expelled from St. Petersburg for three years. In the end, both Vladimir and Nadezhda ended up in exile in the Siberian village of Shushenskoye. There, in July 1898, they played a modest wedding. Despite their atheistic views, the young people got married in the church, exchanging rings made from melted copper nickels - Krupskaya's mother insisted on the wedding.
At first, Ulyanov's relatives did not react too warmly to the daughter-in-law. She seemed to them ugly and too dry, "insensitive". Moreover, her health was undermined by the damp Petersburg weather and prisons, as well as Graves' disease, which at that time could not be cured and which, apparently, deprived her of the opportunity to become a mother. But Krupskaya loved Lenin very much and took care of him in every possible way, so relations with his family gradually began to improve. True, Nadenka did not differ in special housekeeping, she did not shine with culinary abilities, and Elizaveta Vasilievna was in charge of the housekeeping, with a 15-year-old teenage girl hired to help.
Was Lenin the only man in Krupskaya's life? They say that in her youth, a member of the revolutionary circle she led, Ivan Babushkin, courted her. And in exile, when Lenin was not around, she became interested in another revolutionary - the handsome Viktor Kurnatovsky ...
Krupskaya and the Armand family
In 1909, in France, Lenin first met Inessa Armand, who not only shared revolutionary views, but was also a real beauty. And Krupskaya, because of Graves' disease, looked unattractive, because of her bulging eyes, Lenin jokingly called her "herring" ...
It is known that in 1911 Krupskaya even offered Vladimir Ilyich a divorce - apparently, the reason was his love affair with Armand. But instead, Lenin decided to break with Inessa.
The death of Armand in 1920 was a real blow to Lenin. He asked his wife to take care of the younger children of the former lover who remained in France. Nadezhda Konstantinovna kept her word, the younger daughters of Armand even lived in Gorki for some time, but then were again sent abroad. All her life, Krupskaya corresponded with them, and even called the son of one of them, Inessa, “granddaughter.”
After Lenin
Krupskaya's career did not end with the death of her husband. She worked in the People's Committee of Education, stood at the origins of the pioneer organization, wrote many books and articles, including on literature and pedagogy. Despite the fact that she herself never had children, Nadezhda Konstantinovna devoted the rest of her life to the problems of the younger generation, she struggled with child homelessness and neglect. But at the same time, she criticized Makarenko's pedagogical methods, believed that Chukovsky's fairy tales were harmful to children ... As a result, the poet had to publicly renounce his "ideologically harmful" works for some time.
Cake from Stalin
The relationship between Lenin's widow and Stalin was not easy. Nadezhda Konstantinovna did not approve of the policy of terror pursued in the country, she even spoke in defense of the "new opposition" - Kamenev, Bukharin, Trotsky and Zinoviev, protested against the persecution of children by "enemies of the people". There were rumors that at the 18th Party Congress she was going to publish Lenin's suicide letter, in which he proposes a candidate other than Stalin for the role of leader.
On February 26, 1939, Nadezhda Konstantinovna celebrated her 70th birthday in Arkhangelsk and invited guests. Stalin sent a cake for the anniversary - everyone knew that Lenin's widow was not indifferent to sweets. And in the evening she became ill. The doctor arrived only three and a half hours later, diagnosed with acute peritonitis. Krupskaya was taken to the hospital too late. On the night of February 27, 1939, she died.
Already today, a version has been put forward that Stalin's cake was poisoned. They say that Iosif Vissarionovich often did this with people who were objectionable to him - he sent a poisoned treat as a gift. But, on the other hand, after all, the rest ate the delicacy! Maybe just a plentiful feast provoked appendicitis, and medical care was not provided on time?
One way or another, the urn with the ashes of Krupskaya was buried in a place of honor - in a niche of the Kremlin wall. Although she herself, of course, would prefer to lie next to her husband, who still rests in the Mausoleum ...
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 the same status, she was subjected to mockery and insults from all kinds of "denunciators" and "subversers".
It seems that neither one nor the other was interested in the personality of this outstanding 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 she studied there for only a year.
Nadezhda Krupskaya, 1895 Photo: www.globallookpress.comNadia's father was close to the members of the Narodnaya Volya movement, so it is not surprising that the girl was infected with leftist ideas from her youth, which is why she quickly found herself on the lists of "unreliable".
Father died in 1883, after which Nadia and her mother had a particularly hard time. The girl earned a living by private lessons, while teaching at the St. Petersburg Sunday evening school for adults behind the Nevsky Zastava.
The already not very good health of 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 belle
Since 1890, Nadezhda Krupskaya was a member of the Marxist circle. In 1894, in a circle, she met the “Old Man” - such a party nickname was worn by a young and energetic socialist Vladimir Ulyanov. A sharp mind, a brilliant sense of humor, excellent oratorical skills - many revolutionary young ladies fell in love with Ulyanov.
Later they will write that the future leader of the revolution in Krupskaya was attracted not by female beauty, which was not there, but exclusively by 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 Nadia and female beauty.
She was very attractive in her younger years, 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 a different name - diffuse toxic goiter. One of its most striking manifestations is bulging eyes.
Photo: www.globallookpress.comNadezhda inherited the disease and already in her youth manifested itself in lethargy and regular ailments. Frequent colds in St. Petersburg, and then prison and exile led to an aggravation of the disease.
At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, there were no effective ways to combat this disease. Nadezhda Krupskaya Graves' disease crippled her whole life.
Work instead of children
In 1896, Nadezhda Krupskaya ended up in prison as an activist of the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation 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 the hand of Nadezhda. She agreed, but her own arrest delayed the wedding.
They got married already in Siberia, in Shushenskoye, in July 1898.
Ulyanov and Krupskaya did not have children, and speculation appeared from this - Nadezhda was frigid, Vladimir did not feel attracted to her, etc.
All this is nonsense. The relationship of the spouses, at least in the early years, was of a full-fledged nature, 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, focusing on political activities, becoming the main and most reliable assistant to her husband.
Colleagues noted the fantastic performance of Nadezhda - all the years next to Vladimir she processed a huge amount of correspondence, materials, delving into completely different issues and managing to write her own articles at the same time.
She was next to her husband both in exile and in exile, helping him in the most difficult moments. Meanwhile, her own strength was sapped by an illness that caused her appearance to become 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 could be carried away by other women. And so it happened - he had an affair with another wrestling comrade-in-arms, Inessa Armand.
These relations continued after the political emigrant Vladimir Ulyanov turned into 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, she was even ready to leave herself, seeing his hesitation.
But Vladimir Ilyich, making a difficult life choice, not a political one, remained with his wife.
This is difficult to understand from the point of view of simple everyday relationships, but Inessa and Nadezhda remained on good terms. Their political struggle stood above personal happiness.
Inessa Armand, 1914 Photo: Public Domain
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 Lenin himself. Nadezhda brought her half-paralyzed husband back to life, using all her pedagogical talent, re-teaching her to speak, read and write. She succeeded in 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 in January 1924, work became the only meaning of the life of Nadezhda Krupskaya. She did a lot for the development of the pioneer organization in the USSR, the women's movement, journalism and literature. At the same time, she considered Chukovsky's fairy tales harmful to children, spoke critically about the pedagogical system Anton Makarenko.
In a word, Nadezhda Konstantinovna, like all major political and state figures, was a controversial and ambiguous person.
The trouble was also that Krupskaya, a talented and intelligent, self-sufficient person, was perceived by many in the USSR exclusively as “Lenin's wife”. This status, on the one hand, caused universal respect, and on the other hand, sometimes disregard for the personal political position of Nadezhda Krupskaya.
Significance of 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 is a great person, but because she is a close person of our great Lenin,” this phrase once said from a high rostrum very accurately defined Krupskaya’s position in the USSR of the 1930s.
death on anniversary
She continued to work, wrote articles on pedagogy, memories of Lenin, warmly communicated with the daughter of Inessa Armand. She considered Inessa's grandson her grandson. In her declining years, this lonely woman clearly lacked the simple family happiness that her serious illness and political struggle deprived her of.
Claudia Nikolaeva and Nadezhda Krupskaya in Arkhangelsk, 1936. Photo: Public Domain
On February 26, 1939, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya celebrated her 70th birthday. The old Bolsheviks gathered for the celebration. 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 in the murder of Krupskaya. But in fact, not only Nadezhda Konstantinovna ate the cake, but 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 the niche of the Kremlin wall.
She devoted her whole life to her husband, the revolution and building a new society, never grumbling at the fate that deprived her of simple female happiness.
Stalin poisoned? Why Krupskaya died
Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaya died 80 years ago / February, 2019
80 years ago, a widow died from inflammation of the peritoneum as a result of an intestinal clot Vladimir Lenin, the oldest member of the Communist Party and Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR Nadezhda Krupskaya. More Lenin and the family, and, incl. more
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There were rumors that she was poisoned on orders Joseph Stalin, who had been at enmity with her since the early 1920s.
Early in the morning of February 27, 1939, Nadezhda Krupskaya, a noblewoman, a revolutionary, a famous public figure, who had just celebrated her 70th birthday, died. The tragic coincidence provoked a wave of rumors in the USSR about her poisoning on the orders of Joseph Stalin. Allegedly, at a birthday celebration, she ate a cake sent by the leader of the state.
This version does not seem to be very consistent due to the fact that the closest friends invited to the anniversary to the Arkhangelskoye sanatorium ate the same treat: energy scientist Gleb Krzhizhanovsky with his wife Zinaida, Lenin's younger brother Dmitry Ulyanov, colleague at the People's Commissariat of Education Felix Cohn and others. None of them complained of being sick.
However, the features of the era contributed to the spread of speculation.
In the USSR, there was an active purge of representatives of the “Leninist Guard”, well aware of all those close to power.
On the day when Krupskaya was walking at a banquet in the western suburbs of Moscow, south of the capital, at the Kommunarka training ground, the former 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR Stanislav Kosior and the hero of the Civil War, commander of the 1st rank Ivan Fedko were shot. His elderly communist, by the way, knew quite well - in 1937 both were elected deputies of the Supreme Council of the first convocation.
A number of researchers have no doubt that Lenin's sister Maria Ulyanova also died on June 12, 1937, not by her own death. And a few months after her death, the Kremlin commandant's office very persistently tried to give Krupskaya milk, allegedly sent from Gorki. However, as her secretary Vera Drizdo found out, no one sent such a gift. In addition, after the death of Lenin, the widow's landline telephone was removed - and she had to talk through the Kremlin switchboard. This information is given in the work of the historian Mikhail Stein "Ulyanovs and Lenins: family secrets."
It is unlikely that it will ever become clear whether Stalin was involved in the murder of Krupskaya [ and was it at all - mamlas], but the very bad personal relationship between them is beyond doubt. He literally hated Lenin's wife in the early 1920s, when the Central Committee of the RCP (b) made the future leader responsible for isolating the current leader from any political information coming from the "outside world".
Lenin was very ill, and any stress, according to doctors, could lead to irreversible consequences. Contrary to Stalin's orders, Krupskaya wrote letters to her comrades-in-arms under her husband's dictation, and sometimes arranged confidential meetings for him. For example, with Lev Trotsky in Gorki, with whom Lenin sharply became close in the final period of his life and whom, perhaps, he wanted to see as his successor. Naturally, Stalin was categorically against this. On the basis of competition for access to the body, he developed a persistent prejudice towards Krupskaya. He considered it an obstacle to the implementation of his plans - or at least an obstacle to the successful completion of the task of the Central Committee.
During one of the quarrels about the regime for Lenin, Joseph Vissarionovich strongly nasty Nadezhda Konstantinovna on the phone. In a letter to Lev Kamenev, chairman of the Control Commission of the Central Committee, she complained:
“Stalin allowed the rudest trick against me yesterday. I'm in the party for more than one day. For all 30 years I have not heard a single rude word from a single comrade, the interests of the party and Ilyich are no less dear to me than to Stalin.
Now I need maximum self-control. What can and what cannot be discussed with Ilyich, I know better than any doctor. Lenin's wife also demanded that she be protected "from gross interference in her personal life, unworthy abuse and threats."
As Maria Ulyanova recalled, after a conversation with Stalin, Krupskaya "was completely different from herself, sobbed and rolled on the floor." On March 5, 1923, Lenin himself dictated a note to Stalin, in which he noted that "I do not intend to forget what happened so easily."
“You were rude to call my wife to the phone and scold her. Although she agreed to forget what was said to you, 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 it is useless to say that I consider what was done against my wife to be done against me. Therefore, I ask you to weigh whether you agree to take back what was said and apologize or prefer to break off relations between us, ”the head of the Council of People's Commissars was indignant.
In a reply message, Stalin, of course, backtracked and explained his vehemence solely by concern for the health of his senior comrade. He did apologize to Krupskaya, which he considered a great shame for himself.
The next peak of Stalin's dissatisfaction with Lenin's widow came in the mid-1920s, when she supported Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev and spoke out in defense of Trotsky.
In the 1930s, the old Bolshevik came up with various initiatives that caused allergies in the new master of life in the country. Naturally, Stalin could not please her petitions for the repressed and the children of "enemies of the people." Nor did he agree with Krupskaya's interpretation of a number of Lenin's propositions. One of the editorial articles in Pravda, Stalin, as the publicist Vladimir Sukhodeev points out in his book Legends and Myths about Stalin, ended like this:
"Sleeping with Lenin does not mean knowing Lenin."
“Stalin explained to us in a narrow circle that she was not Lenin’s wife at all,” Nikita Khrushchev noted in his memoirs. “He spoke quite loosely about her another time. Already after the death of Krupskaya, he said that if this continued, then we could doubt that she was Lenin's wife.
At some point, she was removed from serious work in the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR, retaining, however, the position of Deputy People's Commissar until her death.
Trying to capture the mood of Stalin, Soviet historiography mentioned Krupskaya only as Lenin's "wife and comrade-in-arms", completely ignoring her own services to the party and the Soviet system - and in terms of promoting communism to the masses, educating young people, converting the younger generation "to their faith "She was active and productive, like few others in the then existing system. She was an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the author of numerous articles on pedagogy and about her late wife.
At the same time, her "Memories of Lenin" was actually banned, since they did not mention Stalin.
After the mass purges, Krupskaya remained the oldest member of the party, joining the RSDLP already in 1898, the year of foundation.
The attitude towards Krupskaya in the late USSR can be described as ironic and dismissive. She became the heroine of sarcastic jokes, the most famous of which sounds like this:
“In the Kremlin corridor, an old woman approaches Brezhnev.
Don't you recognize me? - asks. - I'm Krupskaya. You must remember my husband, Vladimir Ilyich, well.
Well, how! - answers Brezhnev. - I remember, I remember the old man Krupsky.
Some who knew Krupskaya closely said that in Arkhangelsky she was preparing a speech for the March XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b), which could contain some kind of criticism of Stalin's decisions, others claimed that she was only writing an article dedicated to International Women's Day.
As an employee of the People's Commissariat for Education, Alexandra Kravchenko, recalled, in a conversation with which Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, historian Vladimir Kumanev referred to in 1971, “Krupskaya really wanted to go to the congress and talk about the disastrous impact of the Stalinist regime on the gains of the revolution.”
“It is not difficult to understand - even Lenin’s closest associates were repressed,” noted Krupskaya’s ally from pre-revolutionary times. “The legendary Yemelyanov family, who in the July-August days of 1917 hid Lenin and Zinoviev from the arrest of the Provisional Government, was exiled, accused of assisting the “enemy of the people” Zinoviev.”
Almost in the midst of the celebrations on the occasion of the 70th anniversary, at half past seven in the evening, Krupskaya suddenly felt unwell and went to her room. Soon she began to experience severe pain in her abdomen. Her attending doctor Mikhail Kogan was urgently summoned to Arkhangelskoye, posthumously ranked in January 1953 with a group of "killer doctors" and declared an agent of the Zionist organization "Joint". Despite the efforts made, the pain did not subside. At 1 o'clock in the morning, Kogan urgently called for consultations with a therapist and a surgeon.
It was decided to immediately hospitalize the patient in the Kremlin hospital.
The car left at 3 am, accompanied by doctors and Drizdo's secretary. On the way to Moscow, Krupskaya's heart began to fail, but the doctors managed to resuscitate the patient. The surgeon Sergei Spasokukotsky, known even before the revolution, diagnosed inflammation of the peritoneum as a result of an intestinal clot. Still, the urgently convened council of the best luminaries failed to save Krupskaya.
“The disease developed rapidly and from the very beginning was accompanied by a sharp decline in cardiac activity and loss of consciousness. In this regard, there was no opportunity to help the patient in an operative way. The disease progressed rapidly, and death followed on February 27 at 6:15, ”the official “Comrade N. K. Krupskaya’s Illness Report” said.
The historian Stein in his book mentions an employee of the City Public Library. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Isaac Belenky, who spoke about receiving a handwritten archive from Kravchenko. It contained the memoirs of the nurse of the Kremlin hospital L. V. Lysyak recorded in 1962,
where it was said that Krupskaya underwent an operation that was not mentioned in official documents.
When Stalin was informed of the death, he personally dictated an official notice from the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR: “On February 27 at 6:15 am, the oldest member of the party, Lenin’s closest assistant, member of the Central Committee and deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Comrade Krupskaya, died. The death of Comrade Krupskaya, who devoted her whole life to the cause of communism, is a great loss for the Party and the working people of the USSR.”
On March 2, Stalin, along with other party leaders, stood in the guard of honor, walked in a funeral procession, carried an urn with the ashes of the deceased to the Kremlin wall. The corresponding photograph was placed in the Pravda newspaper.