Rank-and-File Bolshevik: A Memoir

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In 1921, Vladimir Lenin wrote a letter to a comrade, asking him to ensure that Cecilia Bobrovskaya (1873-1960) be provided with housing. ‘I have known Bobrovskaya since the epoch before 1905, ’ Lenin wrote, ‘and know that she is capable of living in great hardship and be reticent about it excessively.’ Bobrovskaya was a member of the Society of Old Bolsheviks, a revolutionary from her youth. She was one of the thousands of committed radicals who helped build the organisations of the working-class across Russia in the decades before the Russian Revolution of 1917. In this book, Bobrovskaya tells her story of material deprivation and spiritual elevation. A dedicated Bolshevik, she worked hard to build her party and to raise the confidence of Russia’s working-class and peasantry. She worked quietly and tirelessly, helping build the momentum towards both the 1905 and the 1917 Revolutions. This book reproduces two texts by Bobrovskaya: her own memoirs and her short biography of Lenin. Bobrovskaya describes what it took to make the Revolution - not one push in 1917 but tens of thousands of pushes produced by people like herself, one of the many rank-and-file Bolsheviks