Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya[1] (Russian: Надежда Константиновна Крупская, IPA: [nɐˈdʲeʐdə kənstɐnʲˈtʲinəvnə ˈkrupskəjə]; 26 February [O.S.

Krupskaya was born in Saint Petersburg to an aristocratic family that had descended into poverty, and she developed strong views about improving the lives of the poor.

Both were arrested in 1896 for revolutionary activities and after Lenin was exiled to Siberia, Krupskaya was allowed to join him in 1898 on the condition that they marry.

Following the 1917 Revolution, Krupskaya was at the forefront of the political scene, becoming a member of the Communist Party's Central Committee in 1924.

Yelizaveta's parents died when she was young and she was enrolled in the Bestuzhev Courses, the highest formal education available to women in Russia at the time.

[13] Having parents who were well educated and of aristocratic descent, combined with first-hand experience of lower-class working conditions, probably led to the formation of many of Krupskaya's ideological beliefs.

"[14] One of Krupskaya's friends from gymnasium, Ariadne Tyrkova, described her as "a tall, quiet girl, who did not flirt with the boys, moved and thought with deliberation, and had already formed strong convictions .

These were peaceful, law-abiding ideas, which focused on people abstaining from unneeded luxuries and being self-dependent instead of hiring someone else to tend their house, etc.

Tolstoy made a lasting impression on Krupskaya; it was said that she had "a special contempt for stylish clothes and comfort.

This piqued her interest as a potential way of making life better for her people[20] and she began an in-depth study of Marxist philosophy.

This was difficult since books on the subject had been banned by the Russian government, meaning that revolutionaries collected them and kept them in underground libraries.

She was briefly interned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, but was released after another female convict burned herself to death.

Krupskaya's political life was active: she was anything but a mere functionary of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party from 1903.

"The secretary of the editorial board [of Iskra] was [Lenin's] wife [...] She was at the very center of all the organization work; she received comrades when they arrived, instructed them when they left, established connections, supplied secret addresses, wrote letters, and coded and decoded correspondence.

In her room there was always a smell of burned paper from the secret letters she heated over the fire to read..."[29] Krupskaya became secretary of the Central Committee in 1905; she returned to Russia the same year, but left again after the failed revolution of 1905 and worked as a teacher in France for a couple of years.

Hilda Ageloff reportedly traveled to interview Krupskaya in 1931 for the newspaper Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

[31]Before the revolution, Krupskaya worked for five years as an instructor for a factory owner who offered evening classes for his employees.

[37] Krupskaya also desired that librarians possess greater verbal and writing skills so that they could more clearly explain why certain reading materials were better than others to their patrons.

She believed that explaining resource choices to patrons was a courtesy and an opportunity for more education in socialist political values, not something that was required of the librarian.

[38] In December 1922, just after Lenin had suffered a second stroke, Krupskaya had a violent quarrel with Stalin, who was demanding access to Lenin, when she argued that he was too ill. On 23 December, she wrote to Kamenev complaining that the "vile invectives and threats" that Stalin had directed at her were the worst abuse she had suffered from a fellow revolutionary in 30 years.

After the death of Vladimir Lenin in January 1924, Krupskaya grew closer to the political positions of Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in Party debates.

"[41] In relation to the debate around socialism in one country versus permanent revolution, she asserted that Trotsky "under-estimates the role played by the peasantry."

[42] But in a major boost for the leadership, Stalin announced at the end of his speech to the Fifteenth party congress in December 1927 that she had abandoned the opposition.

"[43] Khrushchev also claimed that Stalin threatened to remove Krupskaya's status, and nominate another woman as "Lenin's widow".

[45] Krupskaya was present at the plenum of the Central Committee in February 1937 which decided the fate of Nikolai Bukharin and Alexei Rykov, and voted in favour of expelling both from the Communist Party.

[47][failed verification] Krupskaya died to peritonitis in Moscow on 27 February 1939, the day after her seventieth birthday, and her ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

[48][6] Lazar Kaganovich, a former Politburo member and Stalin's associate, also suggested Lavrentiy Beria may have been involved with Krupskaya's poisoning and was quoted in 1991 as saying "I can't dismiss that possibility.

[50] Arkadi Vaksberg argued that the delayed medical attention for several hours prompted suspicions rather than the rumours of a poisoned cake.