Inessa Armand Revolutionary and Feminist

Inessa Armand was born of French-English parents in Paris in 1874, raised in the family of a wealthy Moscovite manufacturer, and buried at the age of 46 next to the walls of the Kremlin. In this biography, Professor R. C. Ellwood explores her relatively short life as a Tolstoyan, a lady philanthropist interested in rehabilitating prostitutes, an underground propagandist arrested five times by the tsarist police, an important Bolshevik organizer in Western Europe before the revolution, and a leading Soviet feminist from 1917 to 1920. Armand's unique life is made even more interesting by her close friendship with Lenin and this study examines their stormy relations, casting doubt on the conventional wisdom of an extended love affair.

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 protégée 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 Based on unpublished police reports, memoirs.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 revealing information on her upbringing 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.

List of illustrations; Preface; Introduction; 1. In the nest of gentlefolk; 2. From feminism to Marxism; 3. Underground propagandist; 4. Years of wandering; 5. Building a 'party of new type'; 6. In defence of women workers; 7. Lenin's 'girl friday'; 8. The end of an affair?; 9. On the eve of revolution; 10. Return to Moscow; 11. French fiasco; 12. Soviet feminism; 13. Death in the Caucasus; Bibliography; Index.

Based on unpublished police reports, memoirs, and Armand's correspondence, this study provides revealing information on Inessa Armand, the first Director of  the Women's Section of the Russian Communist Party and one of the most important women in the pre-revolutionary Bolshevik Party.