Lenin’s Places in London

Since I found myself near the British Museum, I couldn’t resist walking through some of the historic Bolshevik landmarks. Surprisingly, this rather respectable part of London still bears quite a few traces of Lenin and his comrades.

Lenin and Krupskaya visited London several times in the early 20th century. Their first trip was in 1902, when they settled on Holford Square, not far from King’s Cross Station. At the time, Clerkenwell was considered an industrial area, with rather poor working-class neighborhoods. It was heavily damaged during the Second World War bombings and completely rebuilt. Today, the square and house no longer exist, and the area has turned into a fairly upscale district.

During this period, Lenin often worked in the British Museum Reading Room — which is where my route begins. The museum still holds a page from the visitor log with the signature of “Jacob Richter” — the alias Lenin used when he arrived in the British capital. Secrecy!

Just a few minutes’ walk from the museum, you can find two memorial plaques dedicated to Lenin. In a nearby house on Tavistock Place, Lenin lived in 1908. That same building also has a plaque noting that Jerome K. Jerome — the author of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) — lived there too, though two decades earlier.

The second plaque is located at Percy Circus and marks the house where the "founder of the USSR" lived in 1905. Lenin stayed there when he came for the 3rd Congress of the RSDLP. The house no longer exists, but the plaque was still installed.

As with all roads in London, my route eventually led to a pub — the legendary Three Johns. Part of the 2nd RSDLP Congress in 1903 was held here. The congress initially opened in Brussels, but Belgian police forced the delegates to move to London. The first session in the UK took place at the Communist Club on Charlotte Street, also near the British Museum. After that, the delegates met in back rooms at the Three Johns pub. It’s said that this is where the decisive vote took place — the one that split the party into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

A perfect moment to pause for half a pint of Guinness. The interior probably hasn’t survived from those days, but the atmosphere still invites long discussions.

The next stop is the small Islington Museum, where you can get a sense of what the area looked like in the early 1900s. There’s also an actual bust of Lenin!

It originally stood in Holford Square before the 1942 redevelopment by Berthold Lubetkin, an architect born in the Russian Empire. During the war, allied sentiments fostered British-Soviet closeness, but by the late 1940s, the memorial was increasingly vandalised. In 1951, the statue was dismantled. It spent some time stored in Finsbury Town Hall and was eventually transferred to the museum in the 1990s.

The final stop: the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green. In 1902, this building housed the headquarters of the British Social Democrats. Harry Quelch, one of the editors of the socialist weekly Justice, let Iskra (Lenin's newspaper) use his printing press. Under Lenin’s editorship, 17 issues were printed and then smuggled into Russia.

Inside the building, you can visit what is supposedly Lenin’s preserved office. Well, “preserved” is a stretch. In a small room, you'll see a desk with an Iskra newspaper, a 1920s poster, and five Lenin figurines. It's unlikely the creators of the memorial room aimed for historical accuracy.

Just steps from the Marx Memorial Library is the Crown Tavern pub. According to a local urban legend, this is where Lenin supposedly met Stalin in 1905. The pub owners do their best to promote this theory, though there’s no serious evidence for it. I decided to skip it — a second pub in one evening? Even Lenin wouldn’t approve.