Moscow - The founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, had not only a wife and a French mistress, but also an aristocratic lover, a recently published book claims. The Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported yesterday that Armand and Krupskaya, the Chief's Women goes beyond describing Lenin's complicated relations with his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya and French mistress Ines Armand.
The book also traces a passionate affair between the "international proletariat's spiritual guide" and a writer of aristocratic origin who signed letters to him with the pseudonym "Elisaveta K."
The author, Boris Sokolov, says Lenin's "third woman" was not a Bolshevik, but lived in France thanks to party funds. Lenin ended the affair because of the aristocrat's indifference to the Russian revolution, according to the book.