Leonid Krasin

Krasin was born in Kurgan, Tobolsk Governorate in Siberia. His father, Boris Ivanovich Krasin, was the local chief of police. The young Leonid was a star pupil at school, and met the American explorer George Kennan when he visited Siberia.[1] Krasin joined the Social Democratic Labor Party during the 1890s. Arrested towards the end of the 1890s, he was sent to internal exile in Siberia where he worked as a draughtsman on the Trans-Siberian Railway. He graduated from Kharkov Technological Institute in 1901.

Leonid Krasin Baku around 1903

In 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions; Krasin supported the latter, and was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee the same year.

On his release from exile in 1900 he had moved to Baku on the Caspian Sea, where "Koba" Jughashvili (later known as Joseph Stalin) was also active at the time. In Baku, Krasin used his financial contacts to help establish an illegal printing-press; this Nina Printing House became for a period the main vehicle for Vladimir Lenin's newspaper Iskra. Krasin left Baku in 1904 to work as the chief engineer of Savva Morozov.

His activities during the 1905 Revolution primarily involved sourcing finance for the Bolshevik revolutionaries, including organizing bank robberies. Krasin helped plan the 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, a bloody crime that took place in the middle of Yerevan Square, killing forty and injuring 50.

Krasin enjoyed the excitement of terrorism. His home was the main laboratory in which were manufactured the bombs used to attack Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin (in office: 1906-1911).[2]

The quest for excitement caused a break with Lenin. Lenin, who was usually acerbic in such circumstances, remained complimentary towards Krasin, and continued to exhort him to rejoin the Party.[3]

In 1908 Krasin left Russia and in 1909 collaborated with Alexander Bogdanov in the launch of the Vpered faction of the RSDLP. Later he withdrew from political activities for many years. He had a successful career as an electrical engineer, working for Siemens in Germany and in Russia and becoming a millionaire. After the February Revolution of 1917 he returned to the fold and rejoined the Bolsheviks.[4] In the Russian Bolshevik government Krasin served as People's Commissar of Foreign Trade from 1920 to 1924.

Role in project of Lenin's tomb

Leonid Krasin (on right) with Alexander Shliapnikov, photo taken in 1924.

Krasin, in the tradition of Nikolai Federov, believed in immortalization by scientific means. At the funeral of Lev Karpov in 1921, he said:

I am certain that the time will come when science will become all-powerful, that it will be able to recreate a deceased organism. I am certain that the time will come when one will be able to use the elements of a person's life to recreate the physical person. And I am certain that when that time will come, when the liberation of mankind, using all the might of science and technology, the strength and capacity of which we cannot now imagine, will be able to resurrect great historical figures- and I am certain that when that time will come, among the great figures will be our comrade, Lev Iakovlevich.[5]

Lenin died in January 1924. Shortly afterwards Krasin wrote an article on "The Immortalization of Lenin" and proposed a monument containing Lenin's corpse that would become a center of pilgrimage like Jerusalem or Mecca. Krasin, along with Anatoly Lunacharsky, announced a contest for designs of the permanent monument/mausoleum. Krasin also attempted - unsuccessfully - to preserve Lenin's body cryogenically.[6]

With his wife, they were the parents of three daughters, including:[7]

• Liubov Krasin, who married French politician and diplomat Gaston Bergery, founder of the Frontist Party, from whom she was divorced in 1928. After the war she married French politician and journalist Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie.[8]
• Ludmilla Krasin, who was reportedly engaged to the Duc de La Rochefoucauld in 1927.[9] She married John Mathiessen Mathias (1906-1963), a son of Robert Moritz Mathias.[10]

While Krasin was negotiating formal recognition of the Bolshevik government by the United Kingdom and France, and despite remedies proposed by his old friend, the physician Alexander Bogdanov, he died from a blood disease. Krasin's funeral procession three days later included 6,000 mourners, many of them Bolshevik sympathizers; he was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium before being buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow.

• "Our Trade Policy", Labour Monthly, Vol II, No.1, January 1922
• Archive of Leonid Borisovič Krasin Papers at the International Institute of Social History

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Leonid Krasin.

• Newspaper clippings about Leonid Krasin in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Leonid Borisovič Krasin Papers