Date: Sat, 09 Nov 1996 12:58:26 -0500
From: Vladimir Bilenkin <"achekhov-AT-unity.ncsu.edu"-AT-ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: M-G: Lenin married in a church?


Karl Carlile wrote:
> 
> KARL: Hi Vladimir. Thanks for the information.
> 
> VLADIMIR: This was the only legal form of marriage in tsarist Russia. In 1898 Lenin
> served his term of exile in the village of Shushenskoe, Krupskaya did her
> time in the city of Ufa. The only way they could live together was to obtain
> a permission for marriage from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was
> eventually given to them, with the condition to have an official marriage
> "immediately" upon Krupskaya's arrival to Shusha.
> 
> KARL: Surely as the committed and dedicated marxist that he claimed
> to be he would forgo getting married in a christian church.

Surely? Then, of course, Engels - another committed and dedicated marxist 
as he claimed to be- would've forgone being an owner of a textile factory; and his
friend, one Moor, who - while claiming not being a marxist - knew a few things
about capitalist exploitation would've never thought of living off the profits
Engels made by exploiting his workers.  True, this bunch of unprincipled individuals
had some weak excuse to make for their moral transgressions by claiming that while
being a part of the bourgeois society they did what they could to bring it down.
Perhaps, they could also ask (from their graves) their modern critics what is
the economic foundation of their own moral uprightness, their critical
powers, education, and the varigated lives resulting from it.  Perhaps, they could
ask how this educated public justifies its own priviliged position in the 
division of labor on the backs of the billions of modern slaves, and how these
billions who feed and clothe this caste judge ITS morality.

> 
> It is interesting that his marriage does not seem to have been mentioned either by
> Kruoska in her memoirs nor by Lenin in his collected works. It seems
> that, like many other things, it has been kept quite form any years.

And why would they - both professional revolutionaries - consider this private 
event (if it happened at all!) so important and "interesting" that to include it
in their political writings (Krupskaya's memoirs are also political writing par
excellence)? Was it because they were trying to hide some grim secret, or because
their understanding of what was appropriate and what was not for their generation
of revolutionary marxists was different from their modern chastisers?  BTW, this
is not true that their marriage or rather plans to have a legal marriage are not
mentioned in Lenin's collected works (not collected by him). V.55 of the 5th
edition of Lenin's Complete Works contains his letters to relatives (1893-1922).
This collection is not complete. And in her introduction to the 1930 collection of
Lenin's letters, his older sister Anna Ulyanova-Elizarova mentions with regret that 
many of Lenin's letters to "his relatives and friends" had been lost over the years.
Yet even those left and published repudiate any claim that Lenin himself or the
handlers of his literary heritage tried to conceal or supress any facts concerning
his marriage. How else could we explain that the complete works contain a number
of Lenin's letters re his church, i.e. the legal marriage procedure? 
E.g. in Letter# 47 (10/5/98) Lenin writes to his mother:

	As you know, N.K. (Krupskaya-V.B.) was given a tragicomic ultimatum:
	if she does not marry *immediately* (sic!) she will be deported back
	to Ufa. I am not going to let them do this, and therefore we have begun
	our "petitions" (mostly, requests for documents without which it is
	impossible to get married (in church) [Lenin uses Russian 'venchatsa' that
	means to be married in church - V.B.], so that we can have married before
	the Lent. /Trans is mine/.

For anyone who knows Russian this letter clearly tells that Lenin and Krupskaya 
planned to get married legally, i.e. according to the rites of the Eastern Orthodox
Church.  Why would those who created "myths" about Lenin and allegedly tried
to suppress the fact of his church marriage would publish such an "incriminating" 
document?  The real question is: in whose eyes this sort of facts are construed
as "incriminating" and for what purposes? 

Karl enigmatically refers to "many other things" that have been kept in secret
>from the moral consciousness of modern judges. Well, let us hear them and hope
that next time the judges will be more forthcoming and give a better sense of 
where their moral authority stems from.
> 
> I wonder whether there has been much stuff released from the Soviett archives
> on Lenin since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I would say there is some
> very interesting material to found deep down in those archives
> concerning Lenin. After all what has been constructed
> is the Lenin legend, not the real guy.

I have a gut feeling of what sort of hope this neuter "interesting" might express.
I can assure you, Karl, that an army of "experts," "scholars" and other sorts
of bourgeois worshippers of Minerva's owl have been eagerly looking for 
"interesting material" in Russian/Soviet archives. And you can rest confident
that they and those who pay them will make any affort imaginable to spread the 
"good news" around the world when they have them. Just keep listening to the
vultures' sounds.


Vladimir Bilenkin


     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---