Inessa Armand (born
Inès Stéphane;
May 8, 1874–September 24, 1920) was a
French-born Communist who spent most of her life in
Russia. She was rumored to have had an affair with
Vladimir Lenin.
She was born in
Paris as the daughter of Théodore Stéphane, an opera singer, and Nathalie Wild, a comedian. Her father died when she was only five and she was brought up by an aunt living in
Moscow.
At the age of nineteen she married Alexander Armand, the son of a wealthy Russian textile manufacturer. Together they opened a school for peasant children. She also joined a charitable group helping destitute women in Moscow.
In
1903 she joined the illegal
Social Democratic Labour Party. Armand distributed illegal
propaganda and after being arrested in June
1907, she was sentenced to two years' internal exile in
Mezen in Northern Russia.
In November
1908 Armand managed to escape from Mezen and eventually left Russia to settle in Paris where she met
Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in foreign exile. In
1911 Armand became secretary for the Committee of Foreign Organizations established to coordinate all
Bolshevik groups in Western Europe.
Armand returned to Russia in July
1912, to help organize the Bolshevik campaign to get its supporters elected to the
Duma. Two months later she was arrested and imprisoned, only to be released against bail in March
1913. Once again illegally leaving Russia, she went to live with Vladimir Lenin and
Nadezhda Krupskaya in
Galicia. She also began work editing
Rabotnitsa.
Armand was upset that many
socialists in Europe chose not to fight against the war effort during
World War I. She joined Lenin in helping to distribute propaganda that urged Allied troops to turn their rifles against their officers and start a socialist revolution. In March 1915, Inessa Armand went to
Switzerland where she organized the anti-war International Conference of Socialist Women.
On
1 March 1917, Tsar
Nicholas II abdicated, leaving the
Provisional Government in control of the country. The Bolsheviks in exile were now desperate to return to Russia to help shape the future of the country. The
German Foreign Ministry, who hoped that their presence in Russia would help bring the war on the
Eastern Front to an end, provided a special train for Armand, Vladimir Lenin and 26 other revolutionaries to travel to
Petrograd.
After the
October Revolution Armand served as an executive member of the Moscow
Soviet. Armand was a staunch critic of the Soviet government's decision to sign the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On her return to Petrograd, she became director of
Zhenotdel, an organization that fought for female equality in the
Communist Party and the
Soviet trade unions. She also chaired the First International Conference of Communist Women in
1920. Soon afterwards she contracted
cholera and died at the age of forty-six.
Inessa Armand has been portrayed in the movies
Lenin in Paris (1981, played by
Claude Jade), Le Train (1987, played by
Dominique Sanda) and
All My Lenins (1997, played by Janne Sevchenko).
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