Inessa Armand: muza Lenina

From the acclaimed author of The Sealed Train & Those Damned Rebels comes the definitive biography of Inessa Armand: revolutionary, tactician, & mistress confidante of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Tho little known today, after the October Revolution in '17, she became the most powerful woman in Moscow. The illegitimate daughter of a Parisian opera singer, she was fortunate to marry into a wealthy Moscow family, yet she left home after 10 years & 4 children to live openly with her husband's much younger brother, thru whom she became deeply embroiled in Russia's growing anti-tsarist underworld. By the time she met Lenin in Paris, she'd been imprisoned 4 times & had escaped Arctic exile, making her a fugitive in her homeland. Lenin soon recognized her talents. She became his lieutenant, organizer & lover. Thru 7 years of exile, she helped him hone the Bolshevik Party, despite bitter internal strife, into the disciplined unit that would gain immense power. Following the February Revolution in '17, she supported him in his greatest gamble. She accompanied him from their latest exile in Switzerland thru Germany--still at war with Russia--to St Petersburg via sealed train--a journey that would shape the 20th century. She was appointed chief of the Woman's Section of the Central Committee, with unique access to Lenin & the power to make legislative decisions. Her relationship with Lenin was profound yet volatile. The demands of revolution were great on both of them. An attempt on Lenin's life in '18 brought a renewed closeness. In '20, she died of cholera after taking a holiday in the Caucasus at his insistence. At her state funeral, an extremely rare honor for a woman, his visible distress shocked his comrades. Michael Pearson, with access to family papers (including 150 letters from Lenin to Armand), previously censored materials from Russian archives & interviews with Armand's descendants, brings her to life with precision & insight--as a wife & devoted mother, political standard-bearer & woman in love.