Clerkenwell’s hidden communist history

DEEP inside the Moscow Institute lie thousands of layers of Lenin’s brain. They were dissected and analysed by Soviet scientists in the 1930s who were ordered to discover the source of the revolutionary leader’s genius.

Unsurprisingly, they deduced that it “operated on a very high level” but, sadly, they made no mention of any influence from his time in Islington.

Clerkenwell served as a base for early Russian communist parties because, unlike other European states, the British were reluctant to expel communist political émigrés.

Lenin and his wife arrived at 37a Clerkenwell Green in April 1902, on the invitation of Harry Quelch, manager of the Social Democratic Federation. From this grand Edwardian house, sixteen issues of Iskra, the pre-Bolshevik newspaper, were printed and shipped down the Thames to be read by thousands of Russians.

The house is now home to the Karl Marx Memorial Library. Inside, Lenin’s original office is lined with his complete works, and several preserved original prints of Iskra are on display. Several statues of the Soviet leader are also there, including one by Clare Sheridan, Churchill’s cousin, Trotsky’s lover and Hitler’s acquaintance.

“Lenin hated London at first,” says Malcom Polfreman, head librarian. “But he soon grew to appreciate the city and used to drink in the pubs on Clerkenwell Green and ride around on open top buses with his wife.”

Lenin’s distaste for London is revealed in several entries of his wife’s diary. “We found that the Russian stomach is not easily adaptable to the ‘ox-tails,’ skate fried in fat, cake and other mysteries of English fare,” she wrote.

The exiles’ favourite spot was Primrose Hill because it was close to Karl Marx’s grave and “commandeered a view of almost the whole of London – a vast smoke-wreathed wilderness of houses.” Lenin also spent a lot of his time at the British Library and at Speakers’ Corner listening to British socialists wax lyrical.

Malcom shows tourists, academics and “politically passionate” visitors around Lenin’s perfectly preserved office every day. “Most of the librarians here are communists, but I do it just because I find it really interesting,” he says.

On 10 May 1907, a roguish young Georgian named Soso Djugashvili, better known as Stalin, alighted from a train with a group of communists at Liverpool Street Station. A throng of British reporters snapped photos of these increasingly powerful Russian ‘anarchists’. The Mirror’s headline that day read: “History is being made in London – they are a most picturesque crowd”.

Stalin, only 28, had already lived a life of brutal violence as the commander of a syndicate of hit men and bank robbers. He was in London ostensibly to attend the seventh annual congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, though it is alleged that he also intended to discuss a proposed bank robbery to fill the coffers of the growing Communist Party.

Stalin met Trotsky, his future political nemesis, when Lenin took his Bolshevik guests on a tour of London. Stalin would later have Trotsky murdered with an ice-pick, but on this occasion they enjoyed beer and sandwiches together and were even treated to fish and chips by Lenin at his favourite restaurant outside King’s Cross station.

Throughout history, Clerkenwell has served as a refuge for dissidents of all political persuasions. The free thinking Lollards of the fifteenth century, the nineteenth century Tolpuddle Martyrs and later, the founders of British trade unionism, all operated from Clerkenwell. Its fascinating history still lurks just beneath the surface.

Image credit – Arron Merat

Arron Merat

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