Memories of Lenin [antikvár]

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya—Lenin's wife and life-companion—author of these reminiscences, has this in common with Lenin: not only has she devoted her whole life to the struggle for the emancipation of the working class, but, as with him, this devotion has been marked by the utmost self-negation and modesty. Thus, although these Memoirs must of necessity be to an extent autobiographical—in so far as N. K. Krupskaya was at Lenin's side from first to last in these years of struggle—^yet, by dint of her extreme modesty, we learn little from them about her capabilities, her personality, and the leading positions which she has occupied in the Russian revolutionary movement. One is therefore justified in prefacing these reminiscences with a brief outline of the career of their distinguished author. Nadezhda Krupskaya came from the "intelligentsia." At the age of fourteen, after her father's death, she began earning her own living. While still at school she started giving lessons. N. Krupskaya took an active part in the work of the social-democratic circles, from the time of their inauguration in 1891. After the arrival of Lenin in St. Petersburg, their lives became closely interwoven. Together they helped to unite the isolated social-democratic circles of St. Petersburg into the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class. In exile in Siberia, N. K. Krupskaya not only helped Lenin