Inessa Armand

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Inessa Armand (born Inès Stéphane; May 8, 1874–September 24, 1920) was a French-born Communist who spent most of her life in Russia. She was rumored to have had an affair with Vladimir Lenin.

She was born in Paris as the daughter of Théodore Stéphane, an opera singer, and Nathalie Wild, a comedian. Her father died when she was only five and she was brought up by an aunt living in Moscow.

At the age of nineteen she married Alexander Armand, the son of a wealthy Russian textile manufacturer. Together they opened a school for peasant children. She also joined a charitable group helping destitute women in Moscow.

In 1903 she joined the illegal Social Democratic Labour Party. Armand distributed illegal propaganda and after being arrested in June 1907, she was sentenced to two years' internal exile in Mezen in Northern Russia.

In November 1908 Armand managed to escape from Mezen and eventually left Russia to settle in Paris where she met Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in foreign exile. In 1911 Armand became secretary for the Committee of Foreign Organizations established to coordinate all Bolshevik groups in Western Europe.

Armand returned to Russia in July 1912, to help organize the Bolshevik campaign to get its supporters elected to the Duma. Two months later she was arrested and imprisoned, only to be released against bail in March 1913. Once again illegally leaving Russia, she went to live with Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya in Galicia. She also began work editing Rabotnitsa.

Armand was upset that many socialists in Europe chose not to fight against the war effort during World War I. She joined Lenin in helping to distribute propaganda that urged Allied troops to turn their rifles against their officers and start a socialist revolution. In March 1915, Inessa Armand went to Switzerland where she organized the anti-war International Conference of Socialist Women.

On 1 March 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated, leaving the Provisional Government in control of the country. The Bolsheviks in exile were now desperate to return to Russia to help shape the future of the country. The German Foreign Ministry, who hoped that their presence in Russia would help bring the war on the Eastern Front to an end, provided a special train for Armand, Vladimir Lenin and 26 other revolutionaries to travel to Petrograd.

After the October Revolution Armand served as an executive member of the Moscow Soviet. Armand was a staunch critic of the Soviet government's decision to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On her return to Petrograd, she became director of Zhenotdel, an organization that fought for female equality in the Communist Party and the Soviet trade unions. She also chaired the First International Conference of Communist Women in 1920. Soon afterwards she contracted cholera and died at the age of forty-six.

Inessa Armand has been portrayed in the movies Lenin in Paris (1981, played by Claude Jade), Le Train (1987, played by Dominique Sanda) and All My Lenins (1997, played by Janne Sevchenko).

[edit] Further reading

• Pearson, Michael. Lenin's Mistress: The Life of Inessa Armand. New York: Random House, 2002 (hardcover, ISBN 0-375-50589-X).