Love of Worker Bees, written by one of the most famous and gifted Russian women of our century, was greeted on publication in 1923 as sexually too explicit. The book collects three works of fiction, ‘Vasilisa Malygina’, ‘Three Generations’ and ‘Sisters’, and offers a graphic and rare portrayal of Russian life in the 1920s. the three stories unfold against a backcloth of the ‘ordinary’ Russian people of the time - the Party workers, entrepreneurs, prostitutes, manipulators, idealists. A Great Love is remarkable for its frank exploration of sexual feeling. These moving love stories depict loneliness, vulnerability, the power of the sexual appetite to distort judgement - the tragic element in love itself. In A Great Love, we follow the course of Natasha’s love affair with the married Senya, and her disillusioning search for friendship and equality as well as passion for the man she loves. The story is now known to be based on Lenin’s love affair with the beautiful and talented Inessa Armand.