Inessa Armand was the first Director of the Women's Section of the Russian Communist Party (the Zhenotdel). She was one of the most important women in the pre-revolutionary Bolshevik Party, and second only to Aleksandra Kollontai in the ranks of early Soviet feminists. Yet if Armand is mentioned at all in Western literature, it is solely as Lenin's protegee and probable mistress. In this political biography of Armand, the first to appear in English, Professor R. C. Elwood seeks to correct this picture by portraying her as an accomplished revolutionary propagandist and Bolshevik organizer before 1917 and as a feminist who devoted much of her life to defending women's interests in the home, in the workplace and in society. Based on unpublished police reports, memoirs, Armand's letters to her five children and two husbands, and Lenin's 118 published letters to her, this study provides new and revealing information on Inessa's up-bringing in the wealthy Armand family, on the revolutionary sympathies of many members of that family, on their subsequent and controversial financial support of the Bolshevik Party, and on her career as a Tolstoyan and feminist long before she became a revolutionary. The author also examines Armand's stormy relations with Lenin and casts doubt on the veracity of earlier evidence that they had an extended love affair. Nonetheless Armand was a close friend of Lenin from 1909 to her death from cholera in 1920 and this biography also provides insights into the private life of the first Soviet leader - a man who was often patronizing, inconsiderate, rude and prudish and from whose tutelage Armand spent many of her last years trying to escape. INESSA ARMAND INESSA ARMAND Revolutionary and feminist R. C. ELWOOD Carleton University, Ottawa CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40West20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarc6n 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org ©Cambridge University Press 1992 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1992 First paperback edition 2002 A catalogue record/or this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Elwood, Ralph Carter, 1936- Inessa Armand: revolutionary and feminist IR. C. Elwood. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521414865 (hardback) I. Armand, I. F. (Inessa Fedorovna), 1874-1920. 2. Women communists - Soviet Union - Biography. 3. Feminists-Soviet Union - Biography. I. Title. HX313.8 .A75E48 1992 305.42'092-dc20 [B] 91-33752 CIP ISBN 0 52141486 5 hardback ISBN 0 521 89421 2 paperback CONTENTS List of illustrations viii Preface ix Introduction 1 1 In the neS't of gentlefolk 10 2 From feminism to marxism 2 5 3 Underground propagandist 44 4 Years of wandering 63 5 Building a 'Party of the New Type' 77 6 In defence of women workers 103 7 Lenin's 'girl friday' 125 8 The end of an affair? 173 9 On the eve of revolution 190 10 Return to Moscow 205 11 French fiasco 222 12 Soviet feminism 231 13 Death in the Caucasus 262 Bibliography 278 Index 292 vii ILLUSTRATIONS page 1 Nathalie Wild and Theodore Stephane (Pavel Podliashuk, 13 Tovarishch Inessa: Dokumental'naiapovest' 4th edn, [Moscow, 1984]). 2 Ines Stephane as a teenager (I. F. Armand, Stat' i, rechi, pis' ma 18 [Moscow, 1975]). 3 Inessa and Alexander Armand (1895) (I. F. Armand, Stat'i, 21 rechi, pis'ma [Moscow, 1975]). 4 Inessa Armand in her study at Eldigino ( 1902) (I. F. 29 Armand, Stat' i, rechi, pis' ma [Moscow, 19 7 5]). 5 Inessa Armand in the Swiss Alps (1904) (I. F. Armand, 36 Stat'i, rechi, pis'ma [Moscow, 1975]). 6 Police photographs taken after Armand's arrest in July 1907 54 (From Okhrana Collection, Hoover Institution). 7 Armand and exile friends in Mezen (1908) (Pavel Podliashuk, 59 Tovarishch Inessa: Dokumental' naia povest' 4th edn, [Moscow, 1984]). 8 Armand and her children in Brussels (1909 or 1910) (I. F. 71 Armand, Stat'i, rechi, pis'ma [Moscow, 1975]). 9 'Meeting in Poronin' (Lenin w malarstwie polskim [Cracow, 98 1978]). 10 Andre, Inessa and Varvara Armand on the Adriatic Coast 131 (1914) (Pavel Podliashuk, Tovarishch Inessa: Dokumental' naia povest' 4th edn, [Moscow, 1984]). 11 Bolsheviks in Stockholm (April 1917) (Dagens Nyheter). 202 12 Inessa Armand in 1918 (I. F. Armand, Stat' i, rechi, pis' ma 208 [Moscow, 1975]) 13 Inessa Armand in 1920 (Kommunistka, no. 5, October 1920). 260 viii PREFACE Inessa Armand, if she is mentioned at all in Western textbooks of Russian history or in popular biographies of V. I. Lenin, is usually portrayed as a beautiful woman with a talent for playing the piano and for speaking in four languages. She is rarely seen as a person of revolutionary significance other than allegedly being Lenin's mistress for most of the decade before he came to power. The first time I had reason to question this view was twenty years ago when working on Lenin's troubled relations with the pre-revolutionary Pravda. I was struck by the fact that in 1912 the Bolshevik leader sent Armand to St Petersburg to try to bring the recalcitrant editors into line. I wondered then (but not sufficiently to put my doubts into print) why he would dispatch a political neophyte, who supposedly was his lover, on a difficult and dangerous revolutionary mission that predictably ended with her arrest. Several years later, my preconceptions about Armand were again challenged when studying another event of revolutionary significance: the Brussels 'Unity' Conference of 1914. Once again Lenin chose her for a politically sensitive mission - this time to defend his untenable position on party unity before the leaders of European social democracy in Brussels. I was particularly intrigued by the nuances of their extensive correspondence at the time of this conference: by the way Lenin implored her to represent the Bolshevik faction, by his insensitive and condescending comments to her during the meeting, and by her show of independence in refusing to bow to his demands after Brussels. The impression conveyed was certainly not the conven tional one of a loyal. docile and mindless protegee. I was fortunate that in 1981 Janet Hyer, then an undergraduate at Carleton University, was looking around for a topic on which to write her honours research essay. I suggested that the prevailing view of Armand might bear re-examination. Her excellent essay and sub sequent Master's thesis on Rabotnitsa focussed on Inessa's contributions to the women's movement in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia - another facet of her life which has largely been ignored by Western and ix PREFACE Soviet commentators. On the basis of Ms Hyer's work and my sus picions, I decided to look at Armand's entire life, not just at her relations with Lenin, and to attempt a biography that would concentrate on her overlooked roles as a revolutionary and as a feminist. As a summer research assistant, Ms Hyer has called my attention to many of the sources on which this book is based; as a person with a sharply focussed feminist perspective, she challenged an old-fashioned political his torian's view of the world and forced me to rethink many of my own stereotypes; as a friend, she read a draft of this manuscript and made many helpful criticisms - some of which I have taken to heart. I would like to acknowledge my very great debt to Janet Hyer for the assistance which she has given me and to absolve of blame in those areas where critics may still find me too old fashioned. Most of my research was done in various hospitable libraries in London and in the marvellous archives of the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California. Like most Canadian scholars, I am indebted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which has generously supported my research. I also wish to thank Peter Redda way, then of the London School ofEconomics, who provided me with a conducive work space while I was on sabbatical leave at LSE in 1984-5; Jacques Galley and Pierre-Alain Crausaz who loaned me their foresters' hut near Ecuvillens so that I might collate material gathered in London while gazing at the Swiss Alps; and Ronald M. Butaloff, archi vist at the Hoover Institution, who patiently answered my queries before, during and after my visit to Stanford in 1986. The writing of this biography was done in Ottawa thanks to a Marston Lafrance Fellow ship which relieved me of teaching duties at Carleton University for a year. I hope that both the then Dean of Arts, Naomi Griffiths, who administered this unique fellowship, and the former Dean of Social Sciences, Dennis Forcese, who provided me with a quiet hideaway in which to write, will realize how much they have contributed to the completion of this project. I doubt if any historian working in North America and especially in Canada could function without the services of local Inter-Library Loan offices. I am grateful that Doris Cole and her efficient associates at Carleton were able to acquire all but one of the many items I requested. My thickest research file contains correspondence with friends, col leagues and other scholars known to me only through their published work who have generously answered my questions, sent me material I had overlooked or, in a couple of cases, gone to archives I could not visit. To them, and to others closer to home who have helped me with x PREFACE problems either of translation or of an unfriendly computer, I wish to express my sincerest appreciation. I hope that the following people will see reflections of their assistance at different points in Inessa's biography and will accept this simple expression of thanks: Andrei Belykh, Laurie Bernstein, John Bushnell, Barbara Clements, John Channon, Fred Corney, David Doughan, Linda Edmondson, Hasmik Egian, Ben Eklof, Marjorie Elwood, Beate Fieseler, Carl Jacobsen, Samuel Kassow, John Keep, Peter King, Ronnie Kowalski, George Melnikoff, Egor Nazarenko, Iuri Orlov, Elizabeth Popoff-Backer, Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Steve Sampson, Joseph Sanders, Gregory Smolnyec, Mikhailova Svetlana, Edward Swiderski, Michael Sydenham and Tova Yedlin. To Robert H. McNeal - friend, scholar, tiller of the same vineyard - who for twenty-five years answered my questions, encouraged my efforts, and commented in a constructive fashion on my work - I owe a most profound debt. While we argued on occasion about Lenin's rela tions with Inessa Armand, I was greatly looking forward to Bob's reading of this manuscript before it went to press and to his usual insightful criticism. It certainly would have been a better book for it. Tragically, the profession was deprived of an excellent historian and I lost a good friend when Robert McNeal was killed in a car accident in June 1988. This book is dedicated to his memory. To my wife, Jill St. Germain, who listened patiently as I tried to work out seeming contradictions in Inessa's life, who put my illegible scrawl onto readable computer disks, and who criticized my style and ques tioned my logic to good effect, I can only repeat that old bromide of other over-indulged author-husbands: without you this book would never have been written. * * The dates used herein have been expressed in the form used by the participants themselves at the time and place in question. This means that all events in western Europe or in Soviet Russia after February 1918 are dated according to the 'new-style' Gregorian calendar. When dates refer to publications or occurrences in tsarist Russia or during the 1917 revolutions, I have used the 'old style' Julian calendar. When the distinction is unclear or confusion seems possible, I have sought to provide both dates. xi