Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) was not only the wife of Russia’s main revolutionary, but also a party activist who worked underground and in exile. She came (like many revolutionaries) from a noble family, graduated from a St. Petersburg gymnasium with a gold medal and then taught history, geography and mathematics at a workers' evening school.
After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Krupskaya became involved in public education and upbringing. She fought hard against child homelessness.
There are hundreds of photographs of her in Russian archives. We’ve put together some of the most revealing and lesser-known ones below.
1. Nadezhda Krupskaya as worker Agafya Atamanova during a trip to Finland to visit her husband Vladimir Lenin, who was hiding from the persecution of the Provisional Government, August 1917.
2. Vladimir Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya and Maria Ulyanova in a car after the end of the parade of Red Army units in Moscow on Khodynskoe Field, 1918.
3. Krupskaya at a meeting of the 250th Infantry Regiment of the 28th Division before being sent to the front. Summer 1919.
4. Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya leaving the House of Unions in Moscow after a meeting, 1919.
5. Vladimir Lenin (right), Nadezhda Krupskaya (center) and Anna Elizarova-Ulyanova (left) in Gorki, 1922.
6. Vladimir Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya in Gorki, 1922-1923.
7. Nadezhda Krupskaya with a brick factory worker in Mytishchi, Moscow Region, 1927.
8. Nadezhda Krupskaya meets with workers of the ‘Red Rose’ silk-weaving factory, 1927.
9. Krupskaya and Uzbek Komsomol women, Uzbek SSR, 1936.
10. Deputy People's Commissar of Education of the RSFSR Nadezhda Krupskaya signing a book for a schoolgirl, Moscow, 1936.
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