Inessa Armand

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Inessa Armand (1916)

Elisabeth Pécheux d'Horbenville, Inessa Armand , actually Inès Elisabeth Armand (born May 8, 1874 in Paris , †  September 24, 1920 in Nalchik ) was a Russian revolutionary of French origin.

Life

Armand was the daughter of the French opera singer Théodore Stéphane, actually Théodore Pécheux d'Herbeville, and his wife, the actress Nathalie Wild . Armand had two sisters. The father, who enjoyed great success, died early. To relieve the family, Inès - this is how she was called in France - was given to an aunt who went to Moscow as a music teacher .

Ines (Russian nickname Inessa) spent a sheltered childhood in Moscow. At seventeen, Armand successfully passed her exams as a tutor. Two years later, on October 3, 1893, she married the merchant and factory owner Alexander Armand in the Nikolaikirche in Pushkino . The marriage had four children.

In 1894 the son Alexander was born. At that time the family lived on the Armandschen estates in Jeldigino near Moscow, where the Armands set up a school for peasant children, which Inessa taught as a teacher. In 1896 the son Fyodor was born. Armand joined the Association for the Improvement of the Lot of Women in Moscow and in 1900 became its chairman.

Inès and Alexander Armand had two other children, the daughters Inna and Varvara. A personal crisis occurred when Inès fell in love with her brother-in-law, Volodia Armand, her husband's brother, who was nine years her junior. The couple separated amicably, but never divorced. Inès and Volodia lived in Naples for a while. Her son Andrei was born in 1903 in Baugy-sur-Clarens above Montreux (Switzerland). Armand then settled in Moscow with the lover and their children. There she was arrested on February 6, 1905 after the " bloody Sunday " on the occasion of a raid.

The charges were dropped on June 3, 1905, but Armand has been under police custody ever since. With effect from October 18, 1905, women were admitted to study in Moscow. Armand applied for a law degree on October 19 and was a guest student until 1907.

On April 9, 1907, she was arrested on "suspicion of conspiracy against the all-Russian military union of soldiers and sailors". She was released a few days later, and arrested again on July 7th of the same year. On September 30, 1907, Armand was found guilty and exiled to Mesen in the Arkhangelsk governorate for two years .

Volodia Armand voluntarily went into exile with her. They settled in Mesen. Inessa Armand earned her living teaching French. When Volodia Armand contracted life-threatening tuberculosis after a while , he left Inessa Armand and went to a hospital in Switzerland .

When on November 22, 1907 there were strikes in various Armand factories and there was unrest, husband Alexander Armand was arrested. After his release shortly afterwards, he went to France with his sons Alexander and Fyodor .

When the banishment of some Polish revolutionaries in Mesen was lifted, Inessa secretly joined them and fled on October 20, 1908. For the first time, she lived illegally in Moscow under false names. When the authorities became suspicious, Armand evaded St. Petersburg. The first all-Russian women's congress took place there in 1908.

In the meantime, Volodia Armand was already dying in Switzerland. In January 1909 Inessa traveled illegally via Finland to his hospital. After a few days, Volodia died in her arms. Inessa Armand stayed in Western Europe for the time being. In October 27, 1909, she enrolled at the University of Brussels for the subjects of sociology, economics and law and graduated from the latter the following year.

From autumn 1910 she lived in Paris to begin research for her doctorate at the Sorbonne . But she did not get beyond marginal preparatory work, since she had worked mainly for the party since summer 1910.

Armand probably met Lenin personally in Paris as early as 1909 . In Longjumeau , about 15 km from Paris, Lenin found a hall that could easily be converted into a training center. This party school was then in operation from May to August 1911. During this time Lenin, his wife Nadia Krupskaja , his mother-in-law, Armand with her son Andrei and some students lived and worked in Longjumeau.

It was through this work that Lenin learned to appreciate and love Armand. Sometimes they met in the cafes at Porte d'Orléans, where Lenin's sympathizers also gathered. An affair developed between the two that lasted for several years. The relationship is documented, among other things, by numerous letters that contain not only revolutionary topics but also intimate confessions. Lenin got her an invitation to the International Socialist Congress , which took place in Copenhagen in August / September of that year . There she met Karl Kautsky , Victor Adler , Jean Jaurès , Clara Zetkin , Rosa Luxemburg and Julius Martow personally.

From the summer of 1912 Inès Armand was again illegally in Saint Petersburg on behalf of Lenin, where she was to hand over his instructions to the editorial staff of Pravda . Shortly before, Lenin had moved to Krakow with Krupskaya and Armand to be closer to the Russian border. But Armand was soon discovered and arrested on September 14, 1912. Her husband Alexander Armand, who had meanwhile become a member of the Duma , got her released on March 20, 1913 on bail. Until the summer of 1913 she spent time with her family and recovered. At the end of August she fled to Lenin in Krakow via Finland. But Lenin wanted nothing more to do with a ménage à trois . Nadia Krupskaja was seriously ill and Lenin took her to Bern to see Theodor Kocher , who had just received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

After a short stay in Paris and Lovran (near Trieste), where she saw her children again, Armand took part in the Socialist International in Brussels at Lenin's insistence. In the meantime Lenin, who was free after his arrest in Krakow, lived with his wife in Bern. He called Armand there because of party work. She still loved him. In 1916 Lenin moved to Zurich. At that time Inès Armand was in Baugy, a district of Montreux . She wasn't doing well. She suffered from exhaustion. Lenin wrote and called often. At the beginning of 1917 he tried to win her for a new mission, but she did not get involved. Then, in March 1917, the February Revolution took place . In Zurich, the Swiss Fritz Platten arranged everything to get Lenin and his entourage to travel to Russia by train . On April 9, 1917, the train started in Zurich. On board were Lenin, Nadia Krupskaja, Grischa Zinoviev and his wife, Grigori Sokolnikow, Alexander Abramowitsch, Karl Radek and Inès Armand. They reached Petrograd on April 16, 1917 via Sassnitz and Sweden .

In the following time Armand was entrusted with the most diverse work and tasks for the party. For example, in February 1919 she was in Dunkirk with Dmitri Manuilski and a delegation from the Soviet Red Cross to prepare for the repatriation of interned Red Army soldiers . Armand and Manuilski were arrested for contacts with the Third International, but released after difficult negotiations. In 1920 Inès Armand was at the height of her political career. In the Bolshevik Central Committee, she headed the women's section. Women made up about half of the party members at the time. She also assumed important functions in the propaganda apparatus. In 1920 she was exhausted after an agitation trip through the Soviet Union and was sent by Lenin with her son Andrei to the Caucasus to relax . As soon as they arrived in Kislovodsk , civil war broke out there. They were evacuated under chaotic conditions and arrived in Nalchik near Beslan after a strenuous journey . There Armand became infected with cholera .

Inès Elisabeth Armand died on September 24, 1920 in Nalchik at the age of 46. On October 11th, her body was taken from the Kazan train station in Moscow to the city center in a cart pulled by two white horses . Lenin followed the hearse. At his instigation, Nadia Krupskaya wrote an obituary for Pravda . On October 12, 1920 Inès Armand was buried in a communal grave on the Kremlin wall between the journalist John Reed and the pediatrician Ivan Russakow .

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personal data
SURNAME Armand, Inessa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Armand, Inès Elisabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1920
Place of death Nalchik