Wife of Vladimir Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya was an outstanding personality of her era. Along with other leaders of the Bolsheviks, Nadezhda Konstantinovna participated in the revolution, and after 1917 she was engaged in educational issues in the young state of the USSR.
The first years of life and acquaintance with Lenin
Revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya came from a family of impoverished nobles. She was born in February 1869 in St. Petersburg (at that time this city was the capital of the empire).
In her youth, Nadia was considered a diligent student - she graduated from the gymnasium in the status of a gold medalist. Then Krupskaya became a student of the Bestuzhev courses - in this institution, the fair sex could count on a decent education. Nadezhda attended the Bestuzhev courses for only a couple of months, until she joined Mikhail Brusnev's Marxist circle. And in 1891 Krupskaya became a teacher at the St. Petersburg school for workers and conducted persistent propaganda work in this environment.
In February 1894, the Marxists held a regular meeting in the house of a St. Petersburg engineer Robert Klasson. At this meeting was attended by Krupskaya, as well as a guest from the banks of the Volga - Volodya Ulyanov (Lenin). Here between two people began a friendship, which later grew into a love affair.
In 1896, Krupskaya was arrested for political reasons and sent from the capital to the Ufa province. And Lenin himself was soon exiled to the village of Shushenskoye (it is located on the lands of the present Krasnoyarsk Territory).
Wedding and emigration
Lenin, serving his sentence in Shushensky, corresponded with Nadezhda. Once in a letter, he invited her to officially become his wife. After a little thought, Krupskaya agreed. After that, Lenin began to petition that Hope be transferred to Shushenskoye. Soon this request was granted. However, the couple was given a condition: they were obliged to get married according to Christian canons. The wedding ceremony was held in the nearest village church. Moreover, the rings exchanged by the newlyweds were forged by blacksmith craftsman from copper coins.
In 1900, immediately after the exile, Vladimir Ilyich left for Switzerland. The term of Krupskaya’s exile, as it turned out, ended later, and she could only get to Europe in 1901. Being abroad, Nadezhda Konstantinovna not only assisted her husband in all his affairs, but also acted as secretary of the editorial office of the Proletary press.
In 1905, when the first revolution broke out in the Russian Empire, Lenin and Krupskaya arrived from abroad on their native land - they could not stand aside. Nadezhda Konstantinovna during this period was appointed Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party - a very honorable and responsible position. But in December 1907, when the unrest subsided, the couple again had to leave Russia.
During the years of emigration, Nadezhda Konstantinovna was very carried away by the issues and problems of pedagogy. In 1915, she graduated and published her famous essay, Public Education and Democracy. It is worth noting that Krupskaya is considered one of the main ideologists of the Soviet educational system. And in the thirties, for her services in this field, she was awarded the title of Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences.
