Lenin and Krupskaya lived together for 26 years, but they never had children. Why?
Expert answer:
“Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya really wanted to have children, but this did not happen due to the illness of their wife,” says Art. Polina Savchenko, researcher at the Shushenskoye Museum-Reserve. – Soon after her marriage in 1898, Krupskaya suffered a serious female illness: months of imprisonment affected her (from October 1896 to March 1897 in the St. Petersburg House of Pretrial Detention). Her mother wrote a petition for her daughter’s release 6 times due to her extremely difficult condition.
In 1899, Maria Aleksandrovna Ulyanova, in a letter to Nadezhda Konstantinovna, asked her if she was healthy and how long to wait for the “arrival of the bird”. Krupskaya replied to her mother-in-law: “As for my health, I am perfectly healthy, but unfortunately, the situation is bad with regard to the arrival of the bird:“ no bird is going to fly in. ” In May 1900, when Nadezhda Konstantinovna arrived in Ufa to complete her term of exile, she consulted a doctor. After the Leninist Grigory Khait found in Ufa a record of the final diagnosis made by Dr. Fedotov: “genital infantilism”. No treatment could help in those days. “
Most of the widows of the first persons of the Russian state ended their lives in seclusion. The only exceptions are Nadezhda Krupskaya and Naina Yeltsina.
The wife of the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, is undoubtedly the most famous of the widows. Krupskaya was not only the wife of Vladimir Ilyich, but also not the last person in the party. Because of this, many today believe that personal relationships in this couple were replaced by a great common cause.
At the same time, they start from the later photos of Nadezhda Konstantinovna, where, frankly, she really does not look attractive.
But in her youth, Nadya Krupskaya impressed men not only with her sharp mind. She was a beauty, and their romance with Vladimir Ulyanov, which ended with a wedding in exile in Shushenskoye, became a manifestation of sincere feelings.
The life of Nadezhda Konstantinovna was by no means broken by exile, but by a serious autoimmune disease – Graves’ disease, or, in other words, diffuse toxic goiter.
The bulging eyes of elderly Krupskaya are just a consequence of the disease. But even worse is the fact that the disease prevented her from giving birth to a child.
She always hid this pain from those around her, heading into work. Nadezhda Krupskaya was not just Lenin’s wife and assistant, but a person on whom much depended on the Bolshevik party.
In the early 1920s, she had to fight for her husband, who was struck by a serious illness. Nadezhda brought the semi-paralyzed Ilyich back to life, using all her pedagogical talent, re-teaching him to speak, read and write. She succeeded almost impossible – to return Lenin to active work again. But a new stroke nullified all efforts.
After the death of her husband 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, the women’s movement, journalism and literature in the USSR. At the same time, she considered Chukovsky’s fairy tales harmful for children, criticized Anton Makarenko’s pedagogical system.
But in general, Krupskaya had to struggle with the stigma of “Lenin’s wife,” because of which she was no longer regarded as an independent figure. She did not manage to win this fight.
On February 26, 1939, Nadezhda Konstantinovna celebrated her 70th birthday. At the celebration, she allowed herself to deviate from the strict diet prescribed by doctors. Sweets by that time remained for her almost the only joy in life. Women’s weakness turned into acute appendicitis, which turned into peritonitis. The next day, Lenin’s widow died.
Photo: Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya, 1919 RIA Novosti
