To the Finland Station in a not-so-sealed Train - European studies blog
Vladimir Lenin's Return Journey to Russia Changed the World Forever | Travel | Smithsonian
Lenin at Spartacus Educational
Born in 1870, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov became a revolutionary political activist in the 1890's, getting exiled to Siberia for three years, and then leaving Russia, living in various places in western Europe. However, he continued to be a revolutionary activist, and he continued to study and write. In London, he spent much of his time in the British Museum, with its excellent library. He argued at length for a centralized, disciplined party, and at one point, he called his faction the Bolsheviks or majority party, and some rivals the Mensheviks or minority party. Both names stuck.
Russian revolutionaries revolted in 1905 and failed. But the Tsarist regime made concessions like setting up a parliament, the Duma.
Then came World War I. Russia got into it, fighting Germany and Austria-Hungary in support of Serbia. But Russia's armies did very poorly, and as the war dragged on, it caused food shortages, with soldiers deserting and mutinying, and with outright revolution early in 1917. Tsar Nicholas II soon abdicated and a Provisional Government succeeded him.
Lenin saw an opportunity in this and he tried to return to Russia. Going through Britain and France was too risky. But Germany had a shared enemy, the existing Russian regime, and Germany was already trying to encourage dissension there with its propaganda efforts. Some German officials decided that sending a big-name revolutionary there would be good for further destabilization, and they made a deal with Lenin.
On April 9, Lenin and some of his fellow revolutionaries departed in a train from Zürich, Switzerland. He told a friend there that “either we’ll be swinging from the gallows in three months or we shall be in power.” Some fellow revolutionaries protested him as some kind of traitor, however.
They changed to a commandeered German military train on the German border, and some German soldiers traveled with them. This train was marked off as sealed, though in a legal and diplomatic sense rather than a physical sense. Lenin and his delegation were stuck inside, though they could talk to people outside of the train, and they received a delegation of revolutionaries during a layover in Berlin. Though those revolutionaries were allowed on board the train, they were not allowed to talk to Lenin himself. The train was given high priority on Germany's railroad network, even more than the Kaiser's son Wilhelm, who was made to wait two hours to let this train pass.
At Sassnitz, north of Berlin, Lenin and his delegation went on a ferry to Trelleborg in Sweden, and they then went by a more ordinary train northward to Stockholm, and then to Haparanda in the far north, arriving on April 15. They crossed the Torne River there, entering Finland at Tornio. Lenin was concerned that he might be arrested by the border guards there, and he was pleasantly surprised to receive a warm welcome there. From Tornio he continued to Tampere, and then to St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, arriving at the city's Finland Station on the night of April 16. Fellow revolutionaries met him there, and cheered and celebrated.
Lenin kept busy during the trip, writing his "April Theses", where he urged no compromise with moderates and supporters of the Provisional Government, calling them hopelessly compromised and worse. He also demanded peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary, ending Russia's participation in the war. He issued these writings when he arrived in Russia, making speeches with his proposals and promising peace, bread, and land.
The Provisional Government continued its part in the war, despite the food shortages and some 2 million soldiers deserting. Lenin continued organizing, though he fled to Finland in the middle of 1917. Late that year, he returned, and he successfully organized the overthrow of the Provisional Government, the Russian "Revolution". But his opponents did not give up, and his followers fought them in the Russian Civil War, finally defeating them in 1921.
While that was going on, Bolshevik officials were negotiating a peace with Germany. On December 15, they agreed to an armistice with the Central Powers, but in February the next year, German officials announced that they would be restarting the war if they did not have a treaty. They settled on one, and on March 3, 1918, they signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germany got control of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian parts of Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.
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Almost a year before, German officials had let Lenin return home through their territory, hoping that he would destabilize Russia. But they now got more than they had likely hoped for back then -- a lot of additional territory to be either annexed or ruled by puppet rulers.
Cloud Lenin's successor Vladimir Putin have done the same with Donald Trump? Bailing him out and supporting his Presidential campaign so as to get dissolution of NATO.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk some months after his successful coup, he agreed to let the Central Powers have what is now Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine.
