THE life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the world’s first socialist state, has been documented in more detail than perhaps any other historical figure — as proof, one need only cite the remarkable 13-volume Biographical Chronicle, compiled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s Institute of Marxism-Leninism between 1970 and 1985. But even that meticulously compiled work is not exhaustive — for example, comparatively little is recorded there concerning the six visits Lenin made to Britain between 1902 and 1911.

Fortunately, in recent years some exciting archival discoveries have been made which throw more light on both the political and private life of Lenin during that period, and it is fitting that on the centenary of his death some of these discoveries should be published here.

There were two political figures in particular who featured prominently in Lenin’s life during his early visits to London whose names have been all but ignored by historians. These are the Russian social democrats Apollinariya Yakubova and her husband Konstantin Takhtarev, a young couple, previously known to Lenin from his time in St Petersburg, who had settled in the British capital three years before his first arrival in April 1902. 

The two warmly welcomed Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya to their home in King’s Cross and helped them find their first flat in Holford Square. (During his subsequent visits to the capital Lenin would invariably seek out lodgings either in the boroughs of Camden or Islington.) 

It was Takhtarev who took him to Clerkenwell Green, who introduced him to Harry Quelch, manager of the 20^th Century Press, and who acted as interpreter, allowing the two to draw up plans for the publication of Lenin’s journal Iskra (The Spark). Indeed, in her reminiscence of her husband, Krupskaya does briefly allude to their intimacy with the young couple, recalling that during this period she and Lenin were constant visitors to Takhtarev’s flat in Regent Square.

When Lenin made his second visit to London in 1903 for the famous 2^nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), it was Takhtarev, again aided by his wife, who organised the conference venues in such a way as to ensure that proceedings were conducted in total secrecy. Sadly, shortly thereafter, due to political (or perhaps personal)  differences, the paths of the two couples diverged, never to cross again.

When Lenin next arrived in London two years later for the 3^rd Party Congress, measures were again put in place to safeguard the delegates’ privacy and, indeed, this congress has often been offered up as proof of the Bolshevik leader’s uncanny ability to move freely around Europe, rarely letting his cloak of invisibility slip. However, as a recent discovery in the archives of the Hoover Institution shows, his every movement and those of his associates during this stay were, in fact, tracked by a Russian police spy whose meticulous reports not only named most of the delegates, but also pinpointed the location of all six of the congress venues scattered across the capital.

The next meeting of the RSDLP in London would be its 5^th Congress, which was held in a Christian socialist church in Islington from May 13 to June 1 1907. With almost 400 individuals in attendance, any attempt on this occasion to avoid the attentions of the press or police would have been in vain. Yet, despite this, until recently, almost nothing was known about where this vast number of revolutionaries was accommodated, nor, indeed, where Lenin himself had lodged.

One delegate recalled only that most of her comrades had been billeted in some rather uncomfortable, disused army barracks. It is more than likely that the accommodation in question was the former home of the 7^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade at 155 Shrubland Road, Dalston — some 15 minutes’ walk from the congress venue. 

As for Lenin, the exact address of his lodgings has been variously (and wrongly) given as “Kingston Square” and “Kensington Square.” In fact, we can now say with some certainty that during this period he lived in a flat in King Square, Islington (possibly no 10), which was situated a mere 20-minute walk from the congress venue.

Lenin would return to London on two more occasions; first, in the summer of 1908 when he would spend a month at the British Museum Library conducting research for his book Materialism and Empirio-criticism, and, lastly, in November 1911 when he arrived to deliver a lecture on “Stolypin and Revolution” at a hall in London’s East End. Shortly afterwards he crossed the Channel and returned to Krupskaya in Paris.

Lenin had arrived in Britain for the first time in 1902 and nine years later, had left never to return. One cannot help but wonder what impressions the country and its capital had made on him over these years. As detailed in the reminiscences of his colleagues and of Krupskaya, Lenin, long before his arrival, had formed firm opinions on the inequities of such bourgeois capitalist conurbations as London — the yawning divide between rich and poor — the “two nations” that he brought to the attention of Trotsky and others. His various visits to the capital merely served to reinforce these pre-existing beliefs.

Max Beer, a German socialist friend, would later make an interesting and appropriate comparison. To him, Lenin was “a socialist Peter the Great who took from Western learning just as much as he needed for the transformation of Russia” and “though living and studying for years in central and western Europe and admiring much of what he found there, his heart and his spirit would always reside in his Russian land, in the midst of its workers and peasants.”

Robert Henderson is author of The Spark that Lit the Revolution: Lenin in London and the Politics that Changed the World (Bloomsbury).