Past Event

In July 1916 V.I. Lenin and his wife left on their annual holiday in the Swiss Alps. For eight weeks they stayed in the remote Kurhaus Tschudiwiese high in the St. Gallen Oberland in a region now known as Heidiland. Lenin’s interest was in hiking, certainly not in Heidi nor in plotting the revolution that was to topple Nicholas II less than six months after his return to civilization. As a result, this interlude has been ignored by virtually all Russian writers and most Western biographers. This illustrated talk, based in part on a personal visit to Heidiland this past summer, seeks to fill that lacuna by discussing Lenin’s little-known holiday pursuits and the limited work he pursued in his mountainous retreat.