I, Krupskaya

Résumé du livre

"I got the idea for this book while reading Krupskaya's real memoirs. It was inconceivable to me that anyone could be as literal and serious, as dully civic minded as she seemed to be in her reminiscences. I felt she must be suppressing the "non-Socialist" truth about her life and, as I read, I began to invent the unwritten story of her personal feelings and motives. Students of the Soviet state are familiar with the story of how Stalin told Krupskaya he would get someone else to be Lenin's widow if she didn't cooperate with his policies. I have taken the liberty of writing Krupskaya's story as if this had actually happened, as if she'd been "retired" (giving her the chance to write freely about her marriage). As far as anyone knows Stalin did not carry out his threat and, except for this variation, I have not altered the recorded facts. I have added conversations and psychological detail, but I have not changed known history (only unknown history). The characters all do the things they do in history books, but they do them (in this book) for reasons not previously attributed to revolutionaries."--