2

The Family

Members of the inner circle and outsiders, even those who were to become bitter enemies, all speak in nearly the same terms of the friendly and industrious character of the Ulyanov family, of the purity and honesty of their domestic relations, of the cheerful mood in the family’s dining room. The absence of humiliating want or of flabby excess, the continual vivid examples of duty and industry in the father, the active and tender vigilance of the mother, a common interest in literature and music – all these conditions were very favourable to the bringing up of healthy and firm-hearted children.

Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, the head of the family, was descended from Astrakhan commoners. All the squalor of old Russia’s urban culture was incarnate in this townsman class. Its active and lucky elements soon escaped into the merchant class, or, having made their way through the schools into the bureaucracy, gained admittance into the nobility by service to the state. Except for industrial workers – who on their passports continued to be classified as peasants and townsfolk, being neither the one nor the other – there remained in the townsfolk caste a motley crowd of social failures, unfortunate artisans, traders on the edge of pauperism, gardeners, petty saloonkeepers, people with indefinite occupations finding shelter in the suburbs and somehow earning a living off the gentry, the bureaucrats, and the merchants. The trade of the commoner Nikolai Ulyanov, grandfather of Lenin, is unknown; there is some indication, however, that he was a tailor and worked in some sort of commercial enterprise. In any case, he left his family without means. But obviously it was an uncommon family of commoners; its members were characterized by an overly powerful desire to study. Only the early death of the father, which cast the entire burden of supporting the family upon the eldest son, forced die son to take up employment. He transferred his own dreams of education to his brother Ilya, Lenin’s father, who was then seven years old. The older boy’s persistent labour and deprivation made it possible for the younger to graduate from the Astrakhan High School, and afterwards supported him in the university until he got on his feet. All his life Ilya retained a feeling of devoted gratitude to his brother, who made these immeasurable sacrifices for him. Loyalty, a sense of duty, persistence in attaining a chosen goal – it is not by accident that we encounter these qualities first in the scant pages relating to Lenin’s forebears.

Ilya studied stubbornly and with success, entering Kazan University in 1850 in the faculty of physics and mathematics. He completed his course ‘in general subjects satisfactorily, and in his special subjects with distinction’. A supplementary examination earned him the title of ‘senior teacher of high-school mathematics and physics,’ The course of the young man’s life had been laid out. Upon leaving the university, he took up at once a position as teacher at the Penza Institute for Children of Noble Families; in 1863 he was transferred to a public high school in Nizhni Novgorod. While still in Penza, he met his future wife, Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a sister of the wife of Veretennikov, a fellow teacher. The wedding took place in the summer of 1863, establishing a firm and happy union.

The student years of Ilya Nikolayevich coincided with the end of the reign of Nicholas I, the years of reckoning for this hated regime. Even moderate liberals rejoiced in the military defeats, and the radical intelligentsia rejoiced even more. That turning point in the internal affairs of the country proved a great education in citizenship for the younger generation. No thinking person in those days could simply overlook the peasant question. Programmes of social transformation were debated openly for the first time. The destiny of Russia was compared with that of Western Europe or America. It was believed that progress would thenceforth be uninterrupted; that the people, once awakened, would move swiftly toward emancipation from ignorance and poverty; that the intelligentsia would fulfil with honour its mission as the people’s leader. It was with such or similar high-minded, misty thoughts that the young teacher set out upon his life’s journey.

In his social roots and in the date of his spiritual awakening, Ilya Nikolayevich was a typical raznochinets of the 1860s. However, the political colouring of this broad and variegated social stratum was far from uniform. Only a minority really tried to organize their ideas about the fate of the people into a finished system: only the left wing of the minority embarked on the road of revolutionary activity. The vast majority of the raznochintsy were satisfied, while young, with general ideas of love for the people, and quite prepared to forget them completely later in their careers. Otherwise, where would the government find its department heads and prosecuting attorneys, and the growing bourgeoisie its lawyers and engineers? There was much truth in the anonymous aphorism: ‘Le Russe est radical jusqu’a trente ans, et après – canaille.¹ Ilya Nikolayevich did not belong to the revolutionary wing; there is no reason to assume that he developed any consistent social views. But on the other hand he took seriously the elementary idea of duty to the people, which corresponded to his origin and cast of character, and he remained faithful to it throughout his life.

Two or three of his high-school students who subsequently attained eminence have written with respect about this young Nizhni Novgorod teacher of mathematics and physics, about his deep devotion to his work. He was demanding of his pupils, and still more of himself. He would meet the slower students in the schoolhouse on Sundays and tutor them free of charge, giving up his day of rest. He carried out his humble duties as a provincial schoolteacher with a warm and disinterested persistence that contained a grain of heroism.

He spent almost thirteen years at such work, a married man during six of them. His daughter Anna was five years old, and his son Alexander three and a half, when a change came in the life of the family, a change bound up with a turning point in the life of the country. The reforms of the new reign had extended into the sphere of education. A network of public schools was being established, partly by the ministry but chiefly by the zemstvos. These schools needed governmental control and guidance. Ilya Nikolayevich was offered the post of inspector of public schools of Simbirsk gubernia, with its population of about a million people. To accept the appointment meant forsaking the physical and mathematical sciences he loved, and tearing himself away from familiar surroundings and personal ties. The new work would be less pedagogical than administrative, and would be done in unfamiliar surroundings and difficult conditions. On the other hand, the scope was wider, and he would no longer be dealing just with select pupils, as in the high schools, but with the children of the true common people – i.e., the peasantry. It is possible, too, that the salary offered him was higher than a schoolteacher’s. Without hesitation, Ilya Nikolayevich accepted the appointment. In September of 1869 the family moved down the Volga from Nizhni Novgorod to Simbirsk, where they were to settle for two decades.

In Simbirsk gubernia, the zemstvo, which had come into existence five years earlier, was taken over by cliques of the landed gentry – more so than anywhere else. In an impoverished and roadless gubernia, with a significant minority of Asiatic ethnic groups, it was not easy, even given the best of intentions, to get the oxcart of public education moving. The newly appointed inspector of public schools was to discover that his district was a desert. Radical newspapers of the period cited a district in Russia with a population of 180,000 that boasted sixteen schools and three hundred taverns. Educational statistics for the majority of other districts were not much better. It was with good reason that the young publicist Shelgunov, on the eve of the period of reforms, wrote to his wife from some provincial backwater: ‘Wilderness, wilderness, wilderness, stagnation and stupidity. By God, it frightens me.’

The peasants learned to fear everything that came from the state: prisons, hospitals, and schools. The authorities needed literate persons to oppress the people. Some teachers took money from the peasants in return for a promise not to take the students away from their work at home. The inspector’s first concern was to refute the official lie and to make known how things really were. He had to begin virtually from scratch: build new schools, transform the few schools that existed, and select, train, or retrain the teachers.

The gubernia had neither highways nor railroads. Still, one had to travel almost constantly, by cart or sleigh, making one’s way over wagon trails through the steppes and forests, drowning in the mud or getting caught in snowstorms.

One had to negotiate endlessly with members of the zemstvo, with teachers, peasant societies, officials; one had to get excited, try to persuade, often compromise, sometimes threaten. After seventeen years of such work, some 450 schools were built in the gubernia, and the number of students doubled. These results, modest in themselves, were attained in large part because of Ilya Nikolayevich’s unusual ability to get along with people of different social standing and education. He passed on this capacity to his son, although in different and unexpected dimensions.

The reminiscences that were written about the Ulyanov family in the years of the Soviet regime must, of course, be treated with some caution: as shall be demonstrated, even conscientious authors tend to discover in the parents traits that would correspond to the image of the son. Fortunately, we have convincing testimony, published while Lenin was still a boy, a very young man, a hunted revolutionary. The Simbirsk landowner Nazaryev, a member of the zemstvo and a contributor to liberal publications, a man given to enthusiasms, referred in print to Inspector Ulyanov as a 'rare, extraordinary phenomenon’, and with great inspiration described his untiring chase across the gubernia, in defiance of the elements and the indifference of men: ‘Such endurance and strength can come only from a boundless dedication to one’s work, to the point of self-abnegation’ (Vestnik Yevropy, 1876). The ministry itself recognized in writing that the initiative and perseverance of the Simbirsk inspector ‘merit complete attention’. A history of public-school education published in 1906 notes that among leading figures in the field of education in the Simbirsk gubernia, ‘in the unanimous opinion of contemporaries, the first place belongs to Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov.’ There is no reason to doubt such disinterested testimony.

That charge of social idealism which had been implanted in Ilya Nikolayevich during his youth had found a peaceful and praiseworthy application. His moral equilibrium had been assured. He had nothing to repent of. On the contrary, even now, especially in summertime in the country, Ilya Nikolayevich loved to sing the song of his student years set to the words of Ryleyev, the Decembrist poet hanged by Nicholas I. It was an oath of hostility to the ‘scourges of our native land’. The first scourge was serfdom – it had fallen. The second scourge was the people’s ignorance – against it Ilya Nikolayevich was waging war with all his might. Of the third scourge, the autocracy, the inspector of public schools preferred not to talk, and apparently not even to think. Though a progressive-minded government official, he was no revolutionary.

In his personal make-up, his ways and manners, Ilya Nikolayevich was a far cry from the stereotype of the cut-and-dried bureaucrat. On the contrary, he was a very warm human being – sociable, alert, with a good sense of humour. During his endless journeys, when stopping at the estate of some liberal zemstvo member, he loved to open up his heart in conversations about the life of the gubernia, and especially its educational affairs. He would bring home fresh tales of the teachers and schools of which his life was so full. He loved to tell these tales, with his gently guttural Vs, at the family table, and he would laugh with great gusto, throwing his whole body back until tears came to those small brown eyes, slit like a Kalmuk's. Whoever saw Lenin and heard his speech and laughter can form a lively image, at least in boldest outline, of his father: the short, stocky figure, the agility of his body, the high cheekbones, high forehead, swarthy skin, and early baldness. Only the son’s physique, it seems, was stronger and stockier than the father’s.

In 1874 Ilya Nikolayevich was appointed director of the public schools. By now, several inspectors were his subordinates. He was recognized as an important personage in the gubernia. The order of St Vladimir and the rank of civil councillor brought the former townsman hereditary nobility. In the innumerable police questionnaires right up to 1917, his sons and daughters had to write down in the proper space their noble rank. But there was nothing aristocratic in the physical moulds of either himself or the members of his family. Wide noses, high cheekbones, and stubby fingers clearly revealed their plebeian origin. Ilya Nikolayevich was also in no way the typical bourgeois gentilhomme. The inborn democracy of his nature, his distaste for any snobbery, his unaffected way of dealing with people, were his best qualities. He passed them on in full to his children.

Generally speaking, his influence upon his children was profound and effective. To be sure, the father spent most of his time away on business, and the family would frequently not see him for weeks at a stretch, but his very absence acquired a special significance, as though continually suggesting to the children: duty above all! His never-slackening zeal for the cause – for its essence and not its form – his integrity and accessibility, purged the father's image of those traits of bureaucracy which were all too well known to the children from their high-school experiences. His tales at the family table of overcoming obstacles on the road of popular education were eagerly absorbed by the children’s minds. Their father seemed the incarnation of a higher principle standing above the narrow interests of the family circle. ‘His authority in the family,’ writes the eldest daughter, ‘and his children’s love for him, were very great,’

Maria Alexandrovna came from a more affluent and cultivated family than her husband. Her father, a physician and owner of an estate in Kazan gubernia, was for those times, according to his grand-daughter, a man of advanced views. He bore an obviously non-Russian name, Blank – as to his nationality, unfortunately we know nothing – and was married to a German woman who reared her children in German traditions, The family lived always, it seems, in the country. The father gave careful attention to the physical education of his children. His daughter Maria enjoyed a healthy childhood and a tranquil youth, was never restless, and loved her native village of Kokushkino. Things were less favourable with matters educational. Pedagogical considerations, and perhaps certain prejudices, deterred the parents from sending their daughters away from the village to boarding schools. Tutors were brought in for the older ones. But by the time Maria was grown up, the family finances had become shaky, there was no money for a tutor, and the youngest daughter received the so-called 'home education’ common to many provincial young ladies of that time. Under the guidance of a German aunt, she received some training in foreign languages and music, and for the rest was left to her own devices. Later, observing the studies and progress of her own children, she grieved often over the fact that she had not in her time managed to obtain an education.

Maria married at twenty-eight; her husband was four years her senior. Ilya Nikolayevich had a modest but solid social position. The bride’s dowry consisted of a fifth of her father’s estate. The marriage was founded, most likely, upon mutual attraction, if not stronger feelings. The 1860s, with their slogan of woman’s emancipation, dealt a serious blow to parental control over their children’s love lives. Moreover, Ilya Nikolayevich was independent, and the father of Maria Alexandrovna was inclined to progressive ideas.

The first years of their family life in Nizhni Novgorod were wholly auspicious. The apartment in the high-school building was sufficiently well appointed, according to the standards of Russian provinces of old. Other teachers’ families lived nearby. The young wife made women friends with whom she could read and enjoy music and intimate conversation. They subscribed to Petersburg journals in which beat the pulse of the libertarian movement of the times. Ilya Nikolayevich spent his free hours with his family, sometimes reading aloud in the evening. It was just at that time that Tolstoy’s epic, War and Peace, was being serialized.

With the move to Simbirsk, Maria Alexandrovna being pregnant at the time with the future Vladimir, the conditions of her life changed sharply. The town was far behind Nizhni Novgorod, which was no real gem of culture either. They had to settle on the outskirts of the Crown, apart from society, without friends, without ‘their own circle’. An inspector, of townsman origin and married to a half-German wife, could not, of course, be received in noble society as one of their own. Furthermore, relations with the little world of the gubernia bureaucracy, which was sulkily adjusting to the consequences of the reforms, were not harmonious. The pedagogical circles of Simbirsk were possibly the most musty and rotten section of the bureaucracy. The mere fact that Ulyanov zealously attended to the business of establishing schools made him a stranger in that circle of bribetakers and sycophants. His approachability and unaffected manner earned him the malicious and partly ironical nickname ‘The Liberal’. The merchant milieu was too crude, and moreover no less shut-in, after its own fashion, than the aristocracy.

On the other hand, a government official, paterfamilias, and loyal citizen could not, of course, form ties with the suspected circles of the radical intelligentsia.

This isolation was an especially heavy blow to Maria Alexandrovna, because her husband’s new duties kept him away from home. The young woman pined and languished, until gradually she lost herself in her children and her housekeeping. The family was growing. Her husband’s modest salary was the sole income. There was no actual want, but every kopek had to be accounted for. The rules of thrift instilled in her by her German mother came in very handy. Ilya Nikolayevich often told his older children in later years that only thanks to the frugality of their mother was the family able to make both ends meet.

The mother gave the older children their first lessons in letters. But this was inevitably interrupted by many other tasks. In 1873, when the fifth child was born, a tutor was employed, a teacher from the parish school, Kalashnikov, who long outlived his principal pupils, Alexander and Vladimir, and subsequently published vivid recollections of them. Ilya Nikolayevich, who had the last word in matters of education, considered it advisable to send his children off to high school as early as possible. As an official of the ministry of education, he did not have to pay tuition in the state schools, and moreover he feared the permissiveness of the family, preferring masculine guidance, a steady course of study, and school discipline.

In the recollections of Anna, which are full of filial piety, it becomes clear that the father did not always give sufficient attention to the individual peculiarities of his children, and was guilty perhaps of being somewhat over-demanding, especially toward his eldest son, who was already too demanding of himself. The authoritarian personality of the father was further reinforced by his religious beliefs. Ilya Nikolayevich, the mathematician and physicist who wrote a university thesis on computing the orbit of the comet Klinkerfuss by the Oibers method, kept inviolate the orthodox faith of an Astrakhan burgher: he attended vespers, confessed, and received the sacraments, not only as part of the duties of a tsarist official, but through inner conviction.

Undoubtedly the mother’s influence upon the children was the greater. She bore seven children in fourteen years, one of them dying soon after birth, the rest surviving, and each demanding care and attention. This mother had, it seems, an inexhaustible life force – labouring and bearing, nursing, bringing up, and again bearing, always at work, always serene, happy, and cordial. She was the authentic model of a mother, the continuer and protector of the species. The two eldest children never had a nurse. But, for the others, too, the mother was the source of nourishment, the playmate, always there, always at hand, the author of all blessings, the source of all joys, the angel of justice in the nursery. The depth of her influence rested, however, not only on her constant closeness to her children, but on the exceptional richness of her personality.

What little we know of them both justifies the conclusion that the mother was of a higher spiritual quality than the father. From her issued those invisible rays which warm the heart of a child and give him a reserve of warmth throughout his life. She did not caress her children stormily and kiss them to death, but she also never pushed them away, never lit into them. From their first day, she surrounded them with self-sacrificing love – without pampering, but also without nagging. Years later, the daughter, by then an old woman herself, recalled with tenderness her mother’s music, and their rides together on chairs that they converted by their creative imaginations into sleighs on snowy roads amid pines and fir trees.

The evenness of the mother’s temper was not rooted in a self-preserving egotism, as it sometimes is, but on the contrary in a fervent self-sacrifice. A woman of deep feeling, she experienced with equal passion her rare moments of joy and more frequent ones of grief, and even her petty everyday vexations, But a special modesty of nature made any sharp outbursts of feeling impossible for her. She suffered the cruelty of life not only for herself but for others, for her husband, her children; and that alone saved her from irascibility, from flaring up and making scenes – that is, from trying to work off a share of her suffering upon those near to her. An inexhaustible spring of moral fortitude enabled her after each new blow of fate – and there was no lack of them – to recover her inner equilibrium and support those who needed support. A moral genius not armed with any second-rate gifts is unnoticeable to the outside: its light shines only at close range. But were there not in this world such generous women, life itself would not deserve the name. Maria Alexandrovna found an active external expression for her precious powers only through her children. She lived to almost within a year of her son’s historic victory.

Born and reared in a family that was not of the Russian Orthodox faith, Maria Alexandrovna, although wholly Russified, nevertheless possessed, in contrast to her husband, no firm church traditions – except, indeed, for the German Christmas tree – and was not distinguished in the least by religious observance. In the words of her daughter, she ‘went as rarely to the Russian church as to the German church’. It is not even clear whether she remained a Lutheran or went over at marriage to the Orthodox faith. But Maria Alexandrovna never broke with religion entirely; in the most trying moments, she resorted to it with all the hidden passion of her nature. Once, when the life of her four-year-old son hung by a thread, the mother, frantic with grief, whispered feverishly to her six-year-old daughter: ‘Pray for Sasha!’ And she herself fell to her knees in despair before the icon. That time, the danger passed. Sasha was saved, and the bright-eyed mother again taught her convalescent boy to walk. Seventeen years later – after how many alarms and labours and hopes! – through the bars of a Petersburg prison the mother repeated to her daughter the same admonition: ‘Pray for Sasha!’ But this time she spoke only of the saving of his soul, for the tsar’s noose had already strangled her beloved eldest son, the pride and hope of the family.