Read Online Sex Lives of the Great Dictators by Nigel Cawthorne - Free Book Online
Authors: Nigel Cawthorne
Tags: Non-Fiction
Ads: Link
and received a handsome pension from the Soviet government in return.
Perhaps Nadya tolerated his affair with Inessa because she preferred him to see someone who could at least speak Russian and was devoted to the cause. Nadya certainly liked Inessa.
She enjoyed being with her and loved the two children she had brought to Paris with her.
Nadya wrote openly that "the house grew brighter when Inessa entered it". Lenin certainly did nothing to hide the direction in which his passion lay. However, the Revolution had to come first.
Lenin and Inessa were separated in 1914, when he went with Nadya to Cracow on
revolutionary business. Inessa missed him terribly.
"We have parted, you and I, my dear! And it is so painful," she wrote from Paris. "As I gaze at the familiar places, I realize all too clearly, as never before, what a large place you occupied in my life, here in Paris. All our activity here is tied by a thousand threads to the thought of you. I wasn't at all in love with you then, even though I did love you. Even now I would manage without the kisses, if only I could see you. To talk with you occasionally would be such a joy - and couldn't cause pain to anyone. Why did I have to give that up?"
Her letters also speak eloquently of the stresses and strains between the three of them.
"You ask me if I'm angry that it was you who "carried out" the separation. No, I don't think you did it for yourself. There was much that was good in Paris in my relations with N.K. [Nadya]. In one of our last chats she told me I had become dear and close to her only recently ...only at Longjumeau [their revolutionary summer school] and then last autumn over the translations and so on. I have become rather accustomed to you. I so loved not just listening to you, but looking at you as you spoke. First of all, your face is so animated, and secondly it was easy for me to look at you because you didn't notice."
The separation did not last long though and, after eight months apart, they settled together in Galicia. Initially, it did not work out and Nadya decided to leave, so that he could marry Inessa. But Lenin would have none of it. He depended on Nadya too much for his
revolutionary work. On the other hand, he needed Inessa too, for other reasons. So the menage a trois continued; and there were happy times.
"For hours we would walk along the leaf-strewn forest lanes," Nadya recalled. "Usually we were in a threesome, Vladimir Ilyich and Inessa and I... Sometimes we would sit on a sunny slope, covered with shrubs. Ilyich would sketch outlines of his speeches, getting the text right, while I learned Italian... Inessa would be sewing a skirt and enjoying the warmth of the sunshine."
For years, the three of them travelled and plotted and politicked together. They travelled back to Russia in March 1917 in the famous sealed train. Also on board was Angelica Balabanoff.
It was Lenin, Nadya and Inessa that planned the October Revolution. They formed the inner circle which took over the government, created the Soviet Union, ran the world's first Communist state and lived together in the Kremlin until Inessa's death from typhus in October 1920.
Two weeks before she died, Inessa wrote in her diary: "For romantics, love occupies the first place in their lives, it comes before everything else." She was a romantic.
Even as the illness took its toll, she remained devoted to Lenin. In a last scribbled note, she wrote: "Now I'm indifferent to everyone. The main thing is I'm bored with almost everyone. I only have warm feelings left for the children and V.I. In all other respects, it's as if my heart has died. As if, having given up all my strength, all my passion to V.I. and work, all the springs of love have dried up in me."
Inessa was laid in state in the House of the Soviets and buried in the Kremlin wall. The message on one wreath read simply: "To Comrade Inessa from V.I. Lenin."
Lenin himself was shattered. Angelica Balabanoff, now a Comintern
Perhaps Nadya tolerated his affair with Inessa because she preferred him to see someone who could at least speak Russian and was devoted to the cause. Nadya certainly liked Inessa.
She enjoyed being with her and loved the two children she had brought to Paris with her.
Nadya wrote openly that "the house grew brighter when Inessa entered it". Lenin certainly did nothing to hide the direction in which his passion lay. However, the Revolution had to come first.
Lenin and Inessa were separated in 1914, when he went with Nadya to Cracow on
revolutionary business. Inessa missed him terribly.
"We have parted, you and I, my dear! And it is so painful," she wrote from Paris. "As I gaze at the familiar places, I realize all too clearly, as never before, what a large place you occupied in my life, here in Paris. All our activity here is tied by a thousand threads to the thought of you. I wasn't at all in love with you then, even though I did love you. Even now I would manage without the kisses, if only I could see you. To talk with you occasionally would be such a joy - and couldn't cause pain to anyone. Why did I have to give that up?"
Her letters also speak eloquently of the stresses and strains between the three of them.
"You ask me if I'm angry that it was you who "carried out" the separation. No, I don't think you did it for yourself. There was much that was good in Paris in my relations with N.K. [Nadya]. In one of our last chats she told me I had become dear and close to her only recently ...only at Longjumeau [their revolutionary summer school] and then last autumn over the translations and so on. I have become rather accustomed to you. I so loved not just listening to you, but looking at you as you spoke. First of all, your face is so animated, and secondly it was easy for me to look at you because you didn't notice."
The separation did not last long though and, after eight months apart, they settled together in Galicia. Initially, it did not work out and Nadya decided to leave, so that he could marry Inessa. But Lenin would have none of it. He depended on Nadya too much for his
revolutionary work. On the other hand, he needed Inessa too, for other reasons. So the menage a trois continued; and there were happy times.
"For hours we would walk along the leaf-strewn forest lanes," Nadya recalled. "Usually we were in a threesome, Vladimir Ilyich and Inessa and I... Sometimes we would sit on a sunny slope, covered with shrubs. Ilyich would sketch outlines of his speeches, getting the text right, while I learned Italian... Inessa would be sewing a skirt and enjoying the warmth of the sunshine."
For years, the three of them travelled and plotted and politicked together. They travelled back to Russia in March 1917 in the famous sealed train. Also on board was Angelica Balabanoff.
It was Lenin, Nadya and Inessa that planned the October Revolution. They formed the inner circle which took over the government, created the Soviet Union, ran the world's first Communist state and lived together in the Kremlin until Inessa's death from typhus in October 1920.
Two weeks before she died, Inessa wrote in her diary: "For romantics, love occupies the first place in their lives, it comes before everything else." She was a romantic.
Even as the illness took its toll, she remained devoted to Lenin. In a last scribbled note, she wrote: "Now I'm indifferent to everyone. The main thing is I'm bored with almost everyone. I only have warm feelings left for the children and V.I. In all other respects, it's as if my heart has died. As if, having given up all my strength, all my passion to V.I. and work, all the springs of love have dried up in me."
Inessa was laid in state in the House of the Soviets and buried in the Kremlin wall. The message on one wreath read simply: "To Comrade Inessa from V.I. Lenin."
Lenin himself was shattered. Angelica Balabanoff, now a Comintern
Similar Books
