The figure of V. I. Lenin in the Soviet Union was cult. Meanwhile, in the biography of the leader of the proletariat there are many blank spots that still remain so.
Lenin's origin
Lenin himself allegedly claimed that he comes from a Russian family with Orthodox roots. However, the writer Marietta Shaginyan in the book "The Ulyanovs Family" ascribes to him Kalmyk origin - at least by his father.
According to another version, there were Germans and Swedes in the Ulyanov family. His grandfather, Alexander Dmitrievich Blank, according to sources, was married to Anna Grossshopf, daughter of Johann Grossshopf, who moved to St. Petersburg from Northern Germany at the end of the 18th century, and a Swede named Estedt. By the way, the Grossshopfs were related to the famous writers Heinrich and Thomas Mannami.
But the most popular is the Jewish version of Lenin's origin, based on his mother's maiden name - Blank.
Already in post-Soviet times, archival documents surfaced that Lenin's great-grandfather on the maternal side was a Jew baptized into Orthodoxy. At birth, his name was Israel Moishevich. His sons Abel and Israel in baptism received the names of Dmitry and Alexander. The latter became the physician and father of Maria Blank.
In fact, opponents of the "Jewish" version say, there were two Alexander Dmitrievich Blanks. One of them was indeed a baptized Jew, but the other belonged to an Orthodox merchant family. He was also a physician by profession and in the 40s managed to rise to the rank of court counselor, which gave him the right to hereditary nobility (Blank the Jew never was in the public service and had no right to nobility). So he was the father of Maria Ulyanova.
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Lenin's illegitimate children
According to official data, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya never had children. However, there is a hypothesis that the youngest son of the revolutionary Inessa Armand from her second husband Vladimir Armand - Andrei - was in fact the son of Lenin. And he knew about it very well. Allegedly, the youngest son of Andrei Armand and his wife Hiena were even named Volodya in honor of his grandfather. As a child, the boy was very similar to Volodya Ulyanov from a gymnasium photo …
In fact, Andrei Armand could never have been Lenin's son: he was born in 1903, and Lenin and Inessa Armand met only in 1909. At least, the descendants of Armands completely deny kinship with the leader.
In 1998, Berliner Alexander Steffen was interviewed by journalist Arnold Bespo. He told that he is the son of Lenin and again Inessa Armand …
According to Steffen, he was born in 1913, when Inessa Armand was already a widow. At the age of seven months he was given to the family of an Austrian communist. In the spring of 1920, Alexandra was visited by her own mother in Salzburg. She brought with her a letter addressed to Lenin, which she wrote in 1913 in Paris, and asked to keep it as a keepsake.
In 1928, some unknown people took Alexander to America. Subsequently, Steffen came to the conclusion that Stalin had sent these strangers. Alexander obtained American citizenship, volunteered for the army in 1943, and served at the Portland naval base until 1947.
In 1959, Steffen's wife died, and he moved to the GDR, where he was willingly granted citizenship and a good apartment. Later, Steffen was invited to a reception with Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany, and he said that he knew about the origin of Alexander. And in 1967 he met in Berlin with Brezhnev, who presented him with the Order of Friendship of Peoples and kissed him hard.
But how true is this "German" version? Firstly, there is no record of the birth of Inessa Armand's child at the specified time. Secondly, none of her entourage mentions the baby. Finally, in 1920, Armand was in Moscow and never left there. And Brezhnev's visit to the GDR did not take place in 1967, but in 1971!
Lenin's death
Lenin passed away at 53 after a serious illness. According to the official version, his illness was the result of an attempt on the life of the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan, who allegedly fired a poisoned bullet at him. True, the shot took place six years before his death.
It is known for sure that death occurred as a result of pathological changes in the vessels of the brain. The leader survived three strokes, his brain literally turned into a clot of lime …
Only in the 90s of the last century did other versions appear. One of them was that the real cause of Lenin's death was common syphilis, which he contracted at 32, while in exile in Paris. The symptomatology was quite consistent with the clinical picture of this disease. True, there are data from a survey conducted back in 1923 by the outstanding German neurologist M. Nonne. He claimed that he had not found any signs of neurosyphilis in the Soviet leader.
They also talked about heredity. The fact is that Lenin's father, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, also died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and at about the same age - 54 years old.
The most scandalous hypothesis is that Lenin was killed by order of Stalin - probably poisoned. This was allegedly hinted at in the second half of the 50s by N. S. Khrushchev. But was there any point in physically eliminating a sick, helpless person? After all, Stalin was actually in power even then …
There are always a lot of rumors and myths around every public figure. And, of course, the first head of the Soviet state was no exception. Probably, unsolved mysteries will excite descendants for a long time.
