Fighting friend, teacher, comrade
Nadezhda Krupskaya can be called a hereditary revolutionary. His father, Konstantin Krupsky, was a member of the Russian Officers’ Committee, a secret organization of ideological republicans and populists that was suppressed after defending the 1863 Polish uprising. After the death of her father, Nikolai Utin, a staunch Marxist from a Jewish family, took on the task of raising Nadezhda. After graduating from Princess Obolenskaya’s prestigious women’s gymnasium in 1887, Krupskaya began teaching at Smolenskaya. (That was the name of the school in St. Petersburg)Evening and Sunday school for workers. This became an important stage in the biography: in Soviet times, Lenin’s wife would have the image of a teacher, defend her doctoral dissertation on this topic and publish a ten-volume set of Pedagogical Studies.
According to Krupskaya, she was in love with the school and told everyone and students about it at the first opportunity. In addition, the working youth school was an excellent platform for promoting revolutionary ideas, which the girl had experienced since childhood. In Soviet times, Lenin’s wife was remembered as she was in the post-revolutionary years: an overweight woman with swollen eyes, suffering from Graves’ disease. In her youth, she was a tall, beautiful girl and helped recruit revolutionary activists at school.
So the famous hero of the 1905 revolution, Ivan Babushkin, passed through Krupskaya’s school, and according to rumors, the person who most attracted him to communism was initially the young teacher.
Krupskaya met Lenin in 1894 at a meeting of a Marxist circle disguised as the Maslenitsa feast. There was a debate about how to lead to revolution, and some of those present advocated the theory of “little deeds”: it is necessary not to engage in subversive work and organize uprisings, but to change society through “little deeds”. For example, as one of the Marxists said, he found the work in the literacy committee very important: The more literate the people are, the more open they are to the ideas of revolution.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna in Krupskaya Gorky. The exact shooting date has not been determined
Reproduction TASS
In response, Lenin laughed evilly and said sarcastically: “Whoever in the Literacy Committee wants to save the homeland, we will not interfere.” Vladimir Ilyich considered such people to be cowards at best, accomplices of the regime at worst, and did not hesitate to distance himself from them. Krupskaya had much the same views and wanted to get to know the balding young Marxist better. They married in 1898 – but this was a pure formality so that the wife could go into exile with her husband, where he was sent to agitate among the workers.
Krupskaya lived much longer than her husband and died only in 1939, a year after the end of the Great Terror. Under Stalin’s leadership she realized that the USSR had moved far away from revolutionary ideals. Moreover, he knew the truth about Stalin, namely that he was a minor and ordinary figure of the revolutionary movement until he came to power through the apparatus. In the mid-1920s, Krupskaya tried to join the anti-Stalinist opposition but soon abandoned the idea. She spent the rest of her life as a symbolic figure and “wedding general”, the wife of the late Leader.
Did Krupskaya have syphilis?
During the last year and nine months of his life, Lenin’s specialist doctors kept a diary of his medical history, which has been kept in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History since 1924. In the book “The Death of Lenin” by doctor-researcher Valery Novoselov. Scientific, clinical and historical-medical analysis of this unique document titled “Medical Detective” published in 2020 was carried out.
From this diary, the diagnosis, which was not subsequently included in any documents on the death of the leader, is clear: Lenin died of one of the clinical forms of late neurosyphilis. It is noteworthy that this diary also has a censored version showing the points treated by doctors.
However, it is not known whether Lenin’s wife, Krupskaya, had one of the various forms of the same disease.
According to the head of the gerontology department of Moscow State University MOIP. MV According to the author of the book, geriatrician and neurologist Valery Novoselov Lomonosov, syphilis was a common disease at that time (ranked third among infectious diseases after malaria and flu). For example, in Hamburg, one in four men and one in ten women had the disease. Russia was no different from Europe in this respect. In 1907, one in every five soldiers in the army of the Russian Empire suffered from this disease. Both old people and babies were sick.
Due to the different epidemic situation, the routes of infection were very unusual due to the characteristics of the syphilis causative agent, whose transmission mechanisms are not fully understood even today at the beginning of the 21st century. Syphilis was transmitted by even the slightest scratch. Novoselov notes that, surprisingly, the main mode of transmission of the disease among villagers was not sexuality.
But it is absolutely impossible to draw clear conclusions about whether Krupskaya was sick or not. Novoselov noted that he applied to the archive to request that Krupskaya’s medical documents be given to him, but was rejected.
“Krupskaya died on February 27, 1939. The confidentiality period of the documents lasts for 75 years, which has already passed. But the documents are still undisclosed, apparently because these are medical documents that can only be opened upon request or with the consent of direct descendants. But Krupskaya does not have these. And since the documents about his health condition are confidential, we cannot even guess whether he has syphilis or not,” Novoselov explained.
As it is known, syphilis can lead to complications including infertility. Krupskaya could not have children, but there is no information whether syphilis affected this.
Moreover, today the exact cause of death of the leader’s wife is unknown. According to official data, Krupskaya died of peritonitis, which could be caused by exposure to infectious irritants. When asked whether peritonitis could cause such an early death, Novoselov said it was impossible. He said it was more likely that Krupskaya had ingested arsenic.
“Here we see a clinical picture that can be attributed to arsenic ingestion. We can assume that this was a medically assisted suicide,” Novoselov said.
Additionally, Krupskaya died the day after her 70th birthday. In a photograph taken three years before his death, we see an old, worn-out man. He looks much older than his age. As Novoselov notes, based on the statements of those years, it can be assumed that Krupskaya probably suffered from depression.
“He saw his comrades pass away, he was alone: no children, no grandchildren, no wife. Of course, it is natural for a person to retire at the age of 70. However, conclusions can only be drawn after the medical documents of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya are given to investigators,” Novoselov emphasized.
What are you thinking?
Source: Gazeta

Barbara Dickson is a seasoned writer for “Social Bites”. She keeps readers informed on the latest news and trends, providing in-depth coverage and analysis on a variety of topics.