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 a famous feminist and comrade-in-arms of Lenin. It is precisely because of her closeness to the leader of the world proletariat that she 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 Elisabeth Pesce d'Urbanville. The future associate of Vladimir Ilyich grew up in an aristocratic bohemian family. Her father was a popular operatic tenor in France, who had a creative pseudonym Theodore Stephan. The mother of Inessa Armand is a chorus girl and artist, in the future a singing teacher Natalie Wild. In the young heroine of our article, French blood flowed from her father and Anglo-French blood from her mother's ancestors.
When Elizabeth was fiveyears, she and her two younger sisters were left without a father. Theodore suddenly died suddenly. In an instant, the widowed Natalie was unable to support three children at once. Her aunt, who worked as a governess in a rich house in Russia, came to her aid. The woman took her two nieces - Rene and Elizabeth - to her place in Moscow.
The heroine of our article ended up in the estate of a we althy industrialist Yevgeny Armand. He owned the trading house "Eugene Armand and Sons". Young pupils who came from France were warmly received in this house. The Armand family owned a textile factory on the territory of Pushkin, where more than one thousand workers worked.
As Nadezhda Krupskaya later recalled, Inessa Armand was brought up in the so-called English spirit, since 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, Elisabeth had already learned to play the piano perfectly, brilliantly performing Beethoven's overtures. In the future, this talent came in handy. Lenin constantly asked her to perform 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 came up with 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 whichindustrialists settled. Inessa arranged a school for the children of peasants from the villages located nearby.
In addition, she became a member of a feminist movement called the "Society for the Advancement of the Plight 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 fails to get a work permit, the authorities are embarrassed that by that time she is too fond of socialist ideas.
Three years later, it turns out that she was close to a distributor of illegal literature. On this charge, a teacher in the house of Inessa Armand is arrested. It is authentically known that she sympathized with her colleague all this time.
In 1902, Armand is fascinated by Vladimir Lenin's ideas of social equality. She turns to her husband's younger brother Vladimir, who also sympathizes with the revolutionary moods that came into fashion 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, one of Lenin's pseudonyms he used at the time. For Armand, this work causes an increasedinterest, she begins to look for information about the mysterious author, on the heels of which is the royal secret police. Finds out that he is currently hiding in Europe.
Introducing Lenin
Armand, at the request of the heroine of our article, obtains the address of an underground revolutionary. A Frenchwoman, carried away by the ideas of universal equality, writes a letter to the author of the book. There is a correspondence between them. Over time, Armand finally moves away from his family, more and more engaged in revolutionary theories and ideas. When Lenin comes to Russia, she comes to Moscow with him. Vladimir Lenin and Inessa Armand settle together on Ostozhenka.
Armandy are also actively involved in anti-government activities. In particular, they advocate the overthrow of the monarchy, attend underground meetings in the evenings. Inessa became a member of the RSDLP in 1904. Three years later, she is arrested by the tsarist police. 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 will learn from this article, amazed others with her rare ability to convince and unbending will. She managed to do this even with the prison authorities. Literally a month and a half before being sent to Mezen, she was not in a cell, but in the house of the head of the prison, from where she wrote letters to Lenin abroad. As a return address, she indicated the house of the prison guard. In 1908, she manages to forge a passport and flee to Switzerland. Soon Vladimir Armand, who returned fromlinks in Siberia. However, in harsh conditions, his tuberculosis worsened, and he soon died.
European voyage
Once in Brussels, Armand enters the university. She is taking a course in economics. Information about her acquaintance with Ulyanov, which refers to this period of her biography, varies. Some claim that they constantly met in Brussels, others that like-minded people did not see each other until 1909, when they crossed paths in Paris.
When this does happen, 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 duties of an interpreter, housekeeper and secretary. In a short time, she turns into the closest associate of the future leader of the revolution, in fact, into his right hand. Armand translates his articles, trains propagandists, conducts agitation among French workers.
In 1912, he wrote his famous article "On the Women's Question", in which he advocated freedom from the bonds of marriage. In the same year, she comes to St. Petersburg to organize the work of the Bolshevik cells, but she is arrested. Her ex-husband Alexander helps her out of prison. He makes a large bail for Inessa, when she is released, he persuades her to return to her family. But Armand is absorbed in the revolutionary struggle, she flees to Finland, from where she immediately goes to Paris to reunite with Lenin.
Return to Russia
After the February Revolution, the Russian opposition began to return en masse toRussia from Europe. In the spring of 1917, Ulyanova, Krupskaya and Armand arrive in a compartment of a sealed carriage.
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, he heads the provincial economic council.
Arrest in France
In 1918, Armand went to France on behalf of Lenin. She is faced with the task of taking several thousand soldiers of the Russian expeditionary force out of the country.
She is arrested in her historical homeland. But soon the French authorities are forced to let her go, Ulyanov actually begins to blackmail them, threatening to shoot the entire French mission of the Red Cross, which is currently in Moscow. This serves as another proof that his beloved woman, Inessa Armand, has been dear to him for a long time.
In 1919 she returned to Russia, where she headed one of the departments in the Central Committee of the Party. She becomes one of the key organizers of the first international conference of communist women, actively works, writes dozens of fiery articles in which she criticizes the traditional family. According to the heroine of our article, she is a relic of antiquity.
Private life
Dwelling on Armand's personal life, let's start with the fact that Inessa became the wife of a we althy heir to the textile empire at the age of 19. Later there were rumors that she managed to marry him to herself only with the help of blackmail. AllegedlyElizabeth discovered frivolous letters from a married woman in Alexander's possession.
However, this is most likely not the case. Everything indicates that Alexander sincerely loved his wife. For nine years of marriage, four children were born to Inessa Armand from a manufacturer. He was kind, but too weak-willed, so she preferred his 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 very upset by his death, only enthusiastic revolutionary work helped her escape.
Inessa's first son - Alexander, he worked as a secretary in the trade mission in Tehran, Fedor was a military pilot, Inna served in the office of the executive committee of the Comintern, worked for a long time in the Soviet mission in Germany. Varvara, born in 1901, became a well-known artist, while Vladimir's son Andrei died in 1944 in the war.
Relations with Lenin
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 proof of the love relationship between them is the correspondence. She 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 never wrote as much to anyone as to his own.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. The German citizen claimed that about six months after his birth, Ulyanov placed him in the families of his associates in Austria so as not to compromise himself. In the Soviet Union, the connection between Lenin and Armand was ignored for a long time. Only in the 20th century did it become public.
Death of a revolutionary
Heavy revolutionary activity had a negative impact on her he alth. Doctors seriously suspected she had tuberculosis. At 46, she planned to go to a doctor she knew in Paris who could put her on her feet, but Lenin convinced her to go to Kislovodsk instead.
On the way to the resort, a woman contracted cholera and died two days later in Nalchik. The year was 1920 outside. She was buried in Red Square near the walls of the Kremlin. Shortly after her loss, Lenin, who was grieving the loss, had his first stroke.
