ABSTRACT
The scene was at once romantic and resonant. The train left Zurich on 27 March 1917. It contained the exiled Lenin, Nadezhda Krupskaya, and a handful of others. Thanks to the help of the German authorities, who had powerful reasons of their own for the exiles making the trip, Lenin and the others were going to the Finland Station to incite the Great Proletarian Revolution. Indeed, the Germans gave the return to Russia such a priority that they were prepared to delay for two hours a journey by the Crown Prince (Salisbury 1977: 407). Clearly, nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of Lenin and History. Throughout the journey, the returning exiles kept to themselves; legend has it that the train was sealed so that the seeds of Revolution could not be planted beside the railway lines. The locked doors also meant that intruders or pretenders could not enter the rarefied atmosphere in which lived the Makers of History.
