Nadezhda Krupskaya

Russian revolutionary and politician (1869–1939)

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Lived 1869–1939, aged 70

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68 languages
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Era
1869–1939
Aged 70
Known for
Three Songs About Lenin
1934

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

Lenin's wife and a Bolshevik power in her own right. She shaped Soviet education for a decade, sat on the Central Committee, and died under circumstances murky enough that Stalin's own circle whispered poison.

Biography

About

Born in 1869 to a Saint Petersburg aristocratic family fallen on hard times, Krupskaya turned her anger at poverty into Marxism. She met Lenin at a discussion group in 1894; both were arrested two years later, and she joined him in Siberian exile in 1898 on the condition they marry. They lived in Munich and London before slipping back for the 1905 Revolution. After 1917 she moved to the center: Central Committee member in 1924, deputy education commissar from 1929 until her death, her hand all over Soviet schools and libraries. She died in Moscow in 1939, a day past seventy, and the whispers s…

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