Thomas Dworzak This photo is taken at the Hotel Goldener Loewe in Zimmerwald, the Swiss municipality where exiled international socialist groups met at a conference in September 1915 in order to unite their strug (...)
gle to end World War I under the Zimmerwald Manifesto.
PHOTO: Between offering the “alternative” facts to the mainstream media about Assad’s poisonous gas attacks, widely showing unrest in pre-election France, criticizing the falsehood of the accusations of Russian meddling in the US elections and reporting from the commemorations for the victims of the 03.04.2017 terror attack on the St. Petersburg ( “the birthplace of Russian terrorism”) metro, Russia Today announces a documentary about the 1917 Russian revolution showing a tweet of Tsar Nicolas II’s abdication quote: “All around me there is treachery, cowardice and deceit.” They ask, “What if Twitter existed 100 years ago?” © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, would accompany him on the 1917 train journey from exile in Switzerland.
Krupskaya was conscious that there was “no outlet for his colossal energy” in Switzerla (...)
nd. This reminded her of a visit they had once made to London Zoo together:
“I remembered a white northern wolf...We had stood a long time outside its cage. ‘All animals, bears, lions, tigers,’ explained the keeper, ‘get used to their cages in time. Only the white wolf from the Russian north never becomes accustomed to the cage and day and night bangs his head against the bars.’"
PHOTO: Zurich Zoo. Switzerland. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Lenin lived in Geneva from 1903. He would regularly cycle to the reading room at the university library and meet with fellow exiles.
Falling over tram tracks and landing violently on his face, i (...)
t was with a cut eyebrow and swollen eye that Lenin would present himself at the Congress of the League of Russian Revolutionary Social-Democracy Abroad at Brasserie Landolt.
PHOTO: Near Geneva University. Rue De-Candolle, Rue du Conseil-General. Geneva. Switzerland. April 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Neutral Sweden offered a feast of food for the starved revolutionaries when they got off the Sassnitz-Trellborg ferry and were treated by the Swedish social democrats in Malmoe’s best hotel.
Karl (...)
Radek, the Polish revolutonary, quipped: "Sweden is distinguished from all other coutries by the fact that at every opportunity a breakfast is organized; when the social revolution comes in Sweden, the first thing they do is give a breakfast in honour of the retiring bourgeoisie, and then a breakfast in honour of the new revolutionary regime.”
Today Lenin’s name features alongside Brigitte Bardot and Henry Kissinger on the gilded board of honorary guests of Hotel Savoy.
PHOTO: Hotel Savoy. Malmoe, Sweden. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Crossing Germany in the 'sealed' train to Sassnitz:
From the moment the train entered Germany, very strict rules of extraterritoriality were enforced. A chalk line separated where the Russians we (...)
re sitting from their German accompanying guards. No-one except the Swiss negotiator, communist Fritz Platten, were allowed to cross that line by either entering or leaving the carriage.
All through Germany the Russians slept, read, discussed, disputed and starved, since the Swiss border guards had confiscated their food.
PHOTO: 4am at Berlin central station. Connecting train to Stralsund and Sassnitz on the Baltic sea. A Russian mother and daughter with a few dogs and a giant wrapped sofa are waiting for the next train. Berlin, Germany. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak At 3.10pm on Easter Monday 1917, Lenin and his entourage boarded a train at Zurich Central Station for Russia.
It was a mixture of Zimmerwaldian internationalism, the aftermath of the February Re (...)
volution and a lot of wheeling and dealing - namely by the illustrious figure of Alexander Parvus - that led to the journey materializing. Parvus, a Russian Jew who had emigrated to Europe, lobbied the German War Ministry to facilitate Lenin's return to Russia, hoping that him coming to power would lead to the peace with Russia that the German Empire so desperately needed.
The revolutionaries under no circumstances wanted to appear to be fraternizing with the German enemy, so they insisted on paying for their own tickets and the train carrier was declared extra territorial.
PHOTO: The Thorgevsky & Wiener theatre ensemble performs a play, 'Lenin's Train Zurich-Petrograd 1917-2017' on a historical train from Zurich to Schaffenhausen. Departing, Lenin gives a speech to his followers. Zurich. Switzerland. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Anxious to cross into Russia, Lenin and his comrades were looking across the frozen river Torne from Sweden towards Finland, then part of the Russian empire.
During World War I, Tornio was one of (...)
the main places for the exchange of tens of thousands of POWs and mail from Western Europa and the Americas to Asia. Being able to cross proved to be the biggest challenge for the revolutionaries.
"The story remains shadowy and quite a few people claim responsibility; in 1919, in a rambling article in the New York Times, an American ex-serviceman Lt. A.W.Kliefoth took responsibility for approving Lenin’s passage."
(Catherine Merridale, ‘Lenin on a Train’)
PHOTO: Tornio, Lapland. Finland. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Waiting for the train north to Swedish Lapland, Lenin and his comrades had a whole day to spend in Stockholm. Swedish Communists insisted on taking Lenin shopping in the bourgeois PUB department st (...)
ore, where he got rid of his boots and bought a new pair of city shoes.
Lenin then told Radek he didn't want to get more, saying: "I am going to Russia to make a revolution, not opening a gent's outfitter".
PHOTO: On Wednesday April 12, 2017 Stockholm is still mourning the four killed and many injured when a few days earlier an alleged ISIS terrorist drove a truck through it's main shopping street. The window of a shoe shop close by, smashed by the truck, has been turned into a memorial and comments are scribbled on post-it notes. Stockholm, Sweden. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak The longest stretch of the journey was the train ride from Stockholm all the way to the Northern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, close to the Arctic circle, with changes in Braecke, Boden and Lulea. (...)
They had left Zurich on a warm spring day. Now they were back in snowstorms and freezing temperatures.
PHOTO: Lulea, Sweden. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak The Lenin Museum in Tampere was the first museum dedicated to Lenin outside of the Soviet Union. The museum is located in the Tampere Workers' Hall, where Lenin and Stalin met for the first time.
(...)
Tampere, North of Helsinki, is close to where the train turned East on its final stretch to Petrograd.
PHOTO: Tampere, Finland. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos
Thomas Dworzak Late at night on April 16, Lenin's train pulled into Finland station, where a jubilant crowd was expecting them.
A woman ran up and handed him a bouquet of flowers, 'a pointless object in his vi (...)
ew and one he did not want... Lenin was irritated by the show, which reeked of bourgeois pageantry and pride.'
PHOTO: 100th anniversary of Lenin's arrival at Finland station. People waiting for passengers arriving on the high-speed train Allegro from Helsinki. St. Petersburg, Russia. April, 2017. © Thomas Dworzak | Magnum Photos