Lenin’s presence in London is well known and documented. A fascinating story of the area where he used to stay during his visits is described in the Survey of London.

A bust of Lenin from the Islington Museum (via Europe A la carta )

Lenin’s visits to the British Museum Library are also documented and written about (see our previous posts on Lenin at the British Library by our former colleague Dr Robert Henderson).

The British Museum Donation Register lists presents 152 (11 Jan. 1908) and 537 (14 Mar 1908):  Za 12 let (“12 Years Writings”) and Agrarnyi  vopros (“The agrarian question”) respectively.  These two books meant to constitute the first two volumes of a three-volume collection.  A copy of Za 12 let is Lenin’s only donation to bear a note made by a member of the British Museum staff: “Donation from the author”.  According to his letters, it doesn’t seem that Lenin left Geneva between January and March 1908, but he definitely was in London in May 1908, so who presented the volumes on these two occasions remains unclear.

 Za 12 let.  Tom pervyi. Shelfmark Cup.403.w.8

Lenin’s works appeared under one of his pseudonyms – Vl. Il’in. The title of the book is an allusion to then recently published collection of Georgii Plekhanov’s  works Za 20 let (“20 years of Writing”; St Petersburg, 1905). Lenin selected articles previously published between 1894 and 1905, edited and shortened some of them, and wrote a preface. The first volume that contained Chto delat’? (“What’s to be done?”), Shag vpered, dva shaga nazad (“One step forward, two steps back”), Zadachi russkikh sotsial-demokratov  (“The Tasks of the Russian Social-Democrats”), etc.  was legally published  in 1907 (although the date given on the title page is 1908) by the Bolshevik publishing house Vpered (“Forward”) founded and managed by a politician and writer Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, who served as Lenin’s secretary after the October revolution. When Vpered was closed by the police in summer 1907 all the materials very transferred to the publishing house Zveno (“A Chain”), led by Mikhail Kedrov, in the Soviet period – a Chekist and organizer of the first labour camps in the USSR. Printing was done by by the Bezobrazov printing house in St Petersburg, which produced books on a variety of topics from Greek etymology to the popular cookery book by Elena Molokhovets. 

Lenin attempted to publish his almost complete collection of writings (excluding Razvitie kapitalizma v Rossii - “The Development of capitalism in Russia”) for the second edition of which he had already had a contract with another publisher that brought him about 2,000 Roubles, at the very end of the period of press liberalisation that had started with the 1905 October Manifesto. After the second Duma  had been dissolved on 3 June 1907, the newly emerged free press was crushed by a system of fines and bans which in effect restored the pre-1905 censorship. However, advertisements  for this collection of works appeared in Russian newspapers, e.g. in the weekly Novaia kniga (“The New Book”) and subscription for the first two volumes at the price of four Roubles was announced. 

The subscription campaign was not very successful, and by the time the first book came out only 200 subscribers had contributed towards its cost. The first volume appeared in 3,000 copies, and Lenin received an agreed fee of 60 Roubles per  24 pages of typescript for reprinted works and 100 Roubles per 24 pages for contributions written specially for this edition.  It was not too bad money, considering that in the 1900s the best-paid ‘proletarian’ Russian author, Maxim Gorky's rate was around 1200 Roubles, Ivan Bunin's - 600 Roubles, and medium range authors received around 200 per 24 pages.

The first volume of Za 12 let was banned by the Russian authorities, as it was announced in the newspaper Rus’ on 11 December (28 November)  1907. So it was decided to publish the second volume under the separate title Agrarnyi  vopros (“The agrarian question”) in two parts, where part one would consist of previously ‘legally’ published articles, and part two would contain the Bolsheviks’ agrarian programme.

 Agrarnyi vopros. Chast 1.  British Library's shelfmark Cup.403.w.8

However, when the proofs were sent by the printers to the Zveno office, the police were already there to confiscate it. After this there were no further attempts before the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917 to publish the rest of this collection.

References/further reading:

Robert Service,  Lenin: a biography (London , 2000) YC.2001.a.8941

 

Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator East European Collections, European Studies