tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post2886969597756183197..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Lenin in Exile by Helen Rappaportjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-73393547257184105642010-05-17T08:54:32.692-04:002010-05-17T08:54:32.692-04:00If you wanted a modern model of "Robin Hood&q...If you wanted a modern model of "Robin Hood", shorn of his Hollywood disguise, a champion of the true sovereign against the usurper, a defender of the Celtic and Saxon natives against the Norman conqueror and arrogant priesthood, of the poor against the rich, then Joseph Stalin would be your man, at least during the period 1900-1917 when his brilliant banditry sustained the exiled Lenin and the struggling Bolshevik party as no other really could.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-66222644973910812972010-05-16T17:42:43.928-04:002010-05-16T17:42:43.928-04:00Paris: There remain many unanswered questions abo...Paris: There remain many unanswered questions about the longest and most urban period of Lenin's life in exile. Living in Paris for four years with an ailing wife, if he were going to kick over the traces of his highly circumscribed sex life ( inhibited between 1900-1915 by the almost constant presence of his mother-in-law) then Paris provided every opportunity. Lenin's official hagiographers consistently denied that he ever went near the more bohemian haunts of Paris, but this is not so. He lived in the heart of Montparnasse, and avoiding them would have been difficult. He was certinly seen at the Rotonde. Modigliani, Leger, Chagall, Soutine, and others from the Russian modernist school, as well as Picasso later, were all regulars. On one particular occasion, in a playfull mood, Modigliani set fire to the Russian newspaper in which Lenin was engrossed.. The English painter Christopher Nevinson remembered that many Russian artists at the Rotonde considered Lenin "a cranky extremist". They sometimes went to Russian meetings around the corner and listened to Lenin "in a spirit of irreverence" and "amused toleration."<br /><br />Lenin was also seen at another famous venue, the Closerie de Lilas. He liked to go there to find chess partners and was often seen playing with the poet Apollinaire. Occasionally he went across the road to the Cafe du Dome, the preserve mainly of Germain painters and cartoonists of the Munich based journal 'Simplicissimus'. Needless to say, these watering holes were also frequented by Parisian prostitutes, and rumors later circulated that Lenin had a preference for a brothel conveniently located near the Bibliotheque Nationale.<br /><br />The Russian emigre painter Evichev told the French-born American writer Julien Green the he and Lenin never talked politics: "We shared our women. Lenin was very gay and very good-natured, but, in matters of love, he was absolutely voracious." There are stories about an affair had with a young Russian activist Elizaveta de K. And then , of course, his long-time and tragic affair with Inessa Armand, of which his wife Nadya could not have been ignorant. Indeed, it seems certain that Nadya, who outlived Lenin by many years, was the principally responsible for removing this aspect of Lenin's life from the official hagiography. At any rate, no one sacrificed more to the Revolution and lived to tell about it than Lenin's wife, who managed the main part of his Bolshevic Party correspondences.<br /><br /><br /><br />The crowning achievement of late revisions about Lenin's sex life is the allegation that Lenin died of the complications of syphilis contracted sometime in the 1900s, rather than of a series of strokes. This is based on "the testimony of his doctors in the Kremlin and syphilis specialists in Germany and Switzerland" among whom was Professor Max Nonne who claimed to treated him with arsenic. So the official image of puritanical Lenin, fountainhead of a cult of revolutionary sainthood, who had no time for sex, has finally fallen, along with all his statutes.<br /><br />Conspirator; Lenin in Exile; The Making of a Revolutionary by Helen Rappaport, Basic Books, 2010johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com