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| Lenin's Room at Marx House |
by New Worker correspondent
Most
of us know that Lenin worked in London editing Iskra, the underground Russian socialist newspaper, from a room in
the building now known as Marx House in Clerkenwell Green. In actual fact Lenin
made five trips to London in the early 1900s, calling himself ‘Jacob Richter’
and a number of other aliases to confound the Czarist secret police who
covertly monitored the activity of all the Russian opposition movements in
Britain.
British Marxists and Russian tourists can
explore what’s left of the Edwardian capital on 'Lenin’s London' walks, but the Bolshevik leader’s presence is barely
recognised in what were his familiar haunts in the centre of the city that was,
in Lenin’s days, the hub of a British empire that spanned the globe.
Their first port of call is usually the
house in Clerkenwell Green where Lenin edited Iskra from April 1902 until the spring of the following year. Iskra was the organ of the Russian
Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) that later split into Bolshevik and
Menshevik factions. The name means ‘Spark’ in Russian and it comes from a line
of a poem by Alexander Odoevsky, a leading figure in the ‘Decembrist’ uprising
of 1825.
The building, now owned by the Marx
Memorial Library, was then a major social-democratic centre and Lenin shared an
office with Harry Quelch, the director of the Twentieth Century Press. Although
nothing remains of the original décor, you can still see the ‘Lenin’ room,
which contains original copies of Iskra
and other mementoes of Lenin’s life.
Lenin returned to London in 1905 for the
third congress of the RSDLP. He stayed at a safe house in Percy Circus, in the
Kings Cross area. A blue plaque marks the site today. Another blue plaque is on the site of the
rooms in Tavistock Place where Lenin stayed when he returned to London in 1908.
Sadly, a bust of Lenin is all that remains
of a monument erected during the Second World War. It comes from a memorial put
up during the Aid to Russia campaign at the site in Holford Square where Lenin
lodged in 1902. It was removed following repeated vandalism by local fascists
and the Lenin bust now stands in the Islington Museum.
Still, you can always drink to Lenin’s
memory in the pubs that claim his name. There’s at least five, including the Crown
Tavern in Clerkenwell Green where, it is said, Lenin first met Stalin, and the
Water Rats in Grays Inn Road that also claims Karl Marx as a former patron!
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