The mother of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Maria Ulyanova, died a year before her son put into practice the idea of overthrowing the imperial regime in Russia and creating the world's first socialist state. For a number of political reasons, Soviet historians who were engaged in describing the biography of this woman, did not make all the facts from her interesting past available to the public.
Daughter of a Jew
Kremlin officials, who actively cultivated the myth of the Russian origin of the leader of the world proletariat, carefully concealed from the public that Jewish blood also flows in his veins. He received this component from his mother, whose grandfather, according to the data stored in the archives of the Lenin Library, was a Jew baptized into Orthodoxy, who was born in the Minsk province.
Researching the biography of the leader of the socialist revolution Julian Oksman in the mid-1920s, he discovered among the archival papers a petition from members of one of the Jewish communities to exempt them from paying taxes for a boy with the family name Blank, since he was allegedly the illegitimate son of a serious Minsk civil servant.
Comparing the facts, the historian came to the conclusion that this Blank is none other than Israel Moyshevich Blank - the grandfather of Maria Ulyanova, who, after changing his religion, became known as Alexander Dmitrievich Blank. Together with his father, his sons Israel and Abel accepted Orthodoxy, who became, respectively, Alexander and Dmitry.
On March 6, 1835, a daughter, Maria, was born into the family of Alexander Alexandrovich Blank, who was destined to give birth to a son, Vladimir, who managed to change the course of Russian and world history.
Lenin's sister, Anna Ilyinichna Elizarova (Ulyanova), reported to Joseph Stalin about the Jewish roots of Vladimir Ilyich's mother in 1932, who found out this detail in the course of a deep study of the family genealogical tree. Delighted by this circumstance, she advised the Secretary General to make this fact public in order to prevent the possible growth of anti-Semitism in a multinational country and to show, using the example of her brother, the benefits of “mixing tribes”.
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However, Stalin looked at it differently: he forbade Anna Elizarova to mention this find anywhere, and the archival documents that prompted her to discover were seized and transferred to the Central Committee of the party for preservation.
The writer Marietta Shaginyan contributed to the unraveling of the mystery of the origin of Maria Ulyanova-Blank, from whose pen several books about Lenin were published.
Finding in the archives of the Leningrad region interesting information about the national origin of Vladimir Ilyich's maternal grandfather, she turned to Leonid Brezhnev for permission to publish this information in the book Four Lessons from Lenin. But again there was a refusal with the confiscation of archival copies of documents, which contained sedition. For this reason, by the way, many employees of the Leningrad archive lost their positions then.
Emperor's mistress
In the post-perestroika period, at the suggestion of journalist Alexander Kutenev, a myth arose about the extramarital affair of Maria Blank with the Emperor Alexander III, from the romantic affection of which her eldest son, Alexander, was born.
According to his version, Lenin's mother in her youth served as a maid of honor at the imperial court, where she met the future ruler of the Russian Empire. Upon learning of the birth of his son, the Grand Duke Romanov thought about arranging the future life of his mistress, but while he was planning, Maria started new intimate relationships on the side, and soon gave birth to a daughter, Anna.
Alexander III, who had nothing to do with the second child, ordered the loving maid of honor Blank to be removed away from Petersburg and hastily married off. This is how the teacher Ilya Ulyanov appeared in the life of Maria, who presented his surname to all her children, but who could not hide his high origin from his stepson.
Holding a grudge against the biological priest, Alexander Ulyanov joined the ranks of the revolutionary terrorist organization, and became a participant in an unsuccessful attempt on the emperor's father. Unable to avenge his mother's humiliation, he was executed by hanging, and his brothers and sisters were infected with the idea of overthrowing the emperor in order to get even with the murderer of a relative.
However, this sensational biography of Maria Blank does not stand up to criticism, since it is replete with inaccuracies.
The researches of Galina Borodulina, an employee of the Lenin Museum, help to understand them, asserting that the daughter of a physiotherapist Maria could not serve as a maid of honor at the imperial court, since she did not belong to the aristocratic class.
Even assuming that she, for some special merits, accidentally became her without a noble origin, information about her service had to be entered in a special book, where, starting from 1712, data on all maids of honor were recorded. However, anyone who turns to these records can make sure that no Maria Blanc has ever served at court.
In addition, lovers of conspiracy theories, for some reason, decided to discount the fact that the firstborn of Maria Ulyanova was not Alexander, but her daughter Anna, who was born two years earlier than her brother.
This theory finally collapses with a simple comparison of dates: Maria was born in 1835, and in 1841 she left St. Petersburg with her parents to appear in it next time only in 1887. At the time of her departure from the capital, she was only 6 years old, while her "false lover", the future emperor Alexander III, had not even been born yet - this event happened 4 years later.
Doctor's mistress
Historian Akim Arutyunov adheres to no less sensational point of view of the relatively low moral and ethical appearance of Maria Ulyanova. According to him, in 1957, while on a business trip in Ulyanovsk, he accidentally met with a local old-timer, doctor Leonid Evgrafovich, who mentioned in a conversation that the real father of Vladimir Lenin was a certain Ivan Pokrovsky, who lived in their family as a family doctor. …
As proof of the consistency of this version, Arutyunov cites an entry he discovered while working in the Central Lenin Museum.
It is there that the diploma of the leader of the world proletariat is kept, testifying to his graduation from the Imperial St. Petersburg University. But in the first column, indicating its owner, there is a curious entry "Vladimir Ivanov Ulyanov", in which the second word is crossed out, and above it is the amendment "Ilyin".
Ashkhen Avanesova