Inessa
Armand, the daughter of an actor, was born in Paris on 8th May, 1874.
Her father died when she was only five and she was brought up by an
aunt living in Moscow.
At the
age of nineteen she married Alexander Armand and together
they opened a school for peasant children. She also joined a charitable
group helping destitute women in Moscow.
When the
authorities refused her permission to establish a Sunday School for
working women, Armand began to question what social reformers could
achieve in Russia. In 1903 she joined the
illegal Social Democratic Labour Party. Armand
distributed illegal propaganda and after being arrested in June, 1907,
she was sentenced to two years internal exile in Siberia.
On her
release Armand left Russia and settled in Paris where she met Vladimir
Lenin and other Bolsheviks
living in exile. In 1911 Armand became secretary for the Committee
of Foreign Organizations established to coordinate all Bolshevik groups
in Western Europe.
Armand
returned to Russia in July, 1912, to help organize the Bolshevik
campaign to get its supporters elected to the Duma.
Two months later she was arrested and imprisoned for six months. On
her release in August, 1913, she went to live with Vladimir
Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya in
Galicia. She also began work editing Rabotnitsa
(Women Worker).
Armand
was upset that many
socialists in Europe to support the war effort.
She
joined Lenin in helping to distribute propaganda that urged Allied
troops to turn their rifles against their officers and start a socialist
revolution. In
March, 1915, Armand went to Switzerland where she organized the anti-war
International Conference of Socialist Women.
On
the 1st March, 1917, the Nicholas II abdicated
leaving the Provisional
Government in control of the country. The Bolsheviks
in exile were now
desperate to return to Russia to help shape the future of the country.
The German Foreign Ministry, who hoped that there presence in Russia
would help bring the war on the Eastern Front
to an end, provided a special train for Armand, Vladimir
Lenin and 26 other revolutionaries to travel to Petrograd.
After
the October Revolution Armand served
as an executive member of the Moscow Soviet. Armand was a staunch
critic of the Soviet government's decision to sign the Brest-Litovsk
Treaty.
In
February, 1919, Armand was part of the Russian
Red Cross Mission to repatriate Russian prisoners of war.
On
her return to Petrograd, she became director of Zhenotdel, an organization
that fought for female equality in the Communist Party and the trade
unions. She also chaired the First International Conference of Communist
Women in 1920. Soon afterwards she contracted cholera
and died at the age of forty-six.
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