A drowning on the Karelian Isthmus, July 1917

From Michael Pearson's The Sealed Train:

"And it was with [his sister] Maria, not Nadya, that Lenin traveled by train on July 12 to visit Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich’s dacha in the village of Neyvola on Finland’s Karelian Isthmus. They left the train at Mustiamiaki and cautiously, to mislead police agents, took a droshky to the home of Demyan Bedny, a celebrated poet who lived in Neyvola. From there, they walked.

"The Bonch-Brueviches were not expecting them, though they had often invited Lenin to the dacha. They were surprised, therefore, when Demyan Bedny, a burly, jovial character with thick ginger hair, “clambered up the rickety stairs of the balcony,” as Bonch recorded, “and said : ‘Look who I’ve brought you.’ ”

"Bonch and his wife, Vera, had been among the twenty-two people who had formed the nucleus of Lenin’s Bolshevik faction in Geneva after the split of 1903. Ever since they had been staunch supporters, which was perhaps why he now chose their invitation from the many that had been proffered to him. "They sat on the balcony late in the fine, misty evenings and listened to the crickets. During the day Lenin rested on a rug underneath the shade of Bonch’s lilac trees. Sometimes, he read books—nothing political, mainly novels in English. He went for walks with Maria beside the nearby lake. He bathed with Bonch and, though “a magnificent swimmer,” caused his host concern by swimming “far far out.”

"The lake was deep, and Bonch warned him of the cold currents that created whirlpools, but Lenin laughed. “People drown, you say?” he called out.

"“Yes, they drown,” answered Bonch, “and not long ago.”

"“Well, I’m not going to drown,” answered Lenin, disappearing under the water “like a dolphin.” He swam inshore, stood up in shallow water waist high, shook his head and smoothed back his hair with his hands. “It’s wonderful here,” he shouted. “Wonderful.”

http://www.heritech.com/yam…/library/pearson/pearson_12.html

(BTW, apparently Pearson took Finnish place names written in Cyrillic and transliterated them back to the Roman alphabet as if they were Russian names. In Finnish, the places Pearson mentions are Neuvola and Mustamäki, according to a Finnish friend of mine.)

OK, sometimes whirlpools can be fatal even to "magnificent swimmers"...

Obviously, there are huge long-run consequences of Lenin drowning. See https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ober-who-do-you-kill-lenin-or-trotsky.396645/ for my discussion of whether there could have been an "October" led by Trotsky without Lenin (I think it's possible but as I note in that post Trotsky himself later exoressed doubts). And even if it happens, the consequences of a Soviet Russia led by Trotsky instead of Lenin and (to really get far ahead of ourselves) then Stalin are of course huge.

But we don't even have to discuss October and what came after it. The July Days were about to begin in Petrograd (or Petersburg as the Bolsheviks preferred to call it). How would the Bolsheviks have handled the situation without Lenin? "Sukhanov in his book relates that Lunacharsky told him that there was a definite plan for a Bolshevik triumvirate of Lenin, Trotsky, and Lunacharsky to take over, and that only Lenin's indecision prevented its being put into effect." https://books.google.com/books?id=dN5V8WX5WP0C&pg=PA346 (Lunacharsky denied saying this.) Maybe even without Lenin the Bolsheviks would have realized that the pro-Bolshevik mob might be able to storm the Tauride Palace and take power from the moderate socialists and the "capitalist ministers" but would hardly be capable of fighting effectively against the front-line troops being rushed to the capital. But I am not sure of this...
 
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(BTW, apparently Pearson took Finnish place names written in Cyrillic and transliterated them back to the Roman alphabet as if they were Russian names. In Finnish, the places Pearson mentions are Neuvola and Mustamäki, according to a Finnish friend of mine.)

The Mustamäki railway station was in the Kanneljärvi parish. The lake in question is probably Vammeljärvi (today Gladyshevskoye ozero). The village of Neuvola, in the former Uusikirkko parish, is today called Gorkovskoye.

uusikirkko.jpg
 
The Mustamäki railway station was in the Kanneljärvi parish. The lake in question is probably Vammeljärvi (today Gladyshevskoye ozero). The village of Neuvola, in the former Uusikirkko parish, is today called Gorkovskoye.

uusikirkko.jpg

Thanks very much! Here's confirmation that was indeed the lake:

"Fem dagar tidigare – torsdagen den 29 juni (12 juli) – hade Lenin och systern Maria med tåg begivit sig norrut över gränsen till det finländska storfurstendömet. Lenin hade i ett par veckor känt sig sjuk och utmattad. Halvvägs till staden Viborg, steg de av i Mustamäki och tog en droska till den lilla byn Neuvola, som utvecklats till en koloni för konstnärer och intellektuella, bl a med Maxim Gorkij [1]. Där hade Lenin vänner och där kunde han koppla av med att spela schack och simma i den lilla sjön Vammeljärvi." https://www.lindelof.nu/1917-nr-37-kerenskijs-offensiv/

I lnow hardly any Swedish, but through the miracle of Google translation: "Five days earlier - Thursday, June 29 (July 12) - Lenin and his sister Maria had traveled by train north across the border to the Finnish Grand Principality. Lenin had felt sick and exhausted for a couple of weeks. Halfway to the city of Viborg, they got off at Mustamäki and took a cab to the small village of Neuvola, which has developed into a colony for artists and intellectuals, including Maxim Gorkij [1]. There Lenin had friends and where he could relax playing chess and swimming in the small lake Vammeljärvi."
 
BTW, there was a previous Lenin-drowns-in-Finland what-if (from a decade earlier, 1907) about which I once posted in soc.history.what-if. To quote Krupskaya's “Reminiscences of Lenin”:

"While I was running about in St. Petersburg, Ilyich very nearly lost his life on his way to Stockholm. He was being so closely shadowed that to go the usual way, that is, by embarking at Abo, would have meant being arrested for certain. There had already been cases of our people being arrested when boarding the steamer. A Finnish comrade advised boarding the steamer at one of the nearby islands. This was safe as far as avoiding arrest was concerned, but it involved a three-mile walk across the ice to the island, and although it was December the ice was not very strong in some places. No guides were available, as no one cared to risk his life. At last two tipsy peasants in a pot-valiant mood undertook to escort Ilyich. Crossing the ice at night, all three nearly drowned when the ice in one place suddenly started to give way under them. They barely managed to jump for safety.

"I learned afterwards from Borgo, a Finnish comrade (he was eventually shot by the White Guards), with whose help I crossed to Stockholm, how dangerous had been the path Ilyich had chosen and what a narrow escape he had had. Ilyich afterwards told me that when the ice began to give way, his first thought had been: "Ah, what a stupid way to die."..." https://www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol11.htm
 
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