Lenin the Nudist ? smiles
http://stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/lenin-the-nudist/
Lenin the Nudist
Posted by stalinsmoustache under anatomy, Another world is possible,
hairy creatures of God, swimming | Tags: nudism, reading Lenin |
[3] Comments
A lesser known aspect of the Russian Revolution is the flourishing of
… nudism. After the revolution, the famous actress, Ida Rubenstein,
played naked on stage. The poet Goldschmidt would appear naked on the
streets. A movement called ‘Down with shame’ would walk the streets in
Soviet cities, catch trams, go about their daily lives wearing nothing
but a red sash over their shoulders. A White Army newspaper joked in
1919 that the price of suits must have skyrocketed, since so many
people were going around naked. At international nudist conferences in
the 1920s, the Soviet delegates far outnumbered those from other
countries. Over the summers, rivers, beaches and lakes witnessed
millions of old people, children, families, singles in the prime of
their life gathered to play games, picnic or enjoy the sun – all
naked.
How did it begin? It appears that during his long exile before the
Revolution, Lenin visited a nudist beach in Austria and was favourably
impressed. It was not so much the naked bodies everywhere, but the
emphasis on healthy living. Given that Lenin was – as many noted – a
muscular man with a love of outdoor activities, nudism was a natural
extension of that passion. Soon enough both he and Krupskaya were
regularly tossing their clothes in a corner and diving into the
nearest river, lake or sea completely starkers. I’m not sure whether
they also hiked and rode their bicycles naked (ice-skating might be a
little tricky), but in this light one of Lenin’s favoured phrases,
‘tearing off the fig-leaf’, takes on a whole new meaning.
As do regular observations in the letters concerning swimming. For
instance, Krupskaya writes about their stay at Pornic in France in the
summer of 1910, ‘He went sea-bathing a lot, cycled a good deal – he
loved the sea and the sea breezes – chatted gaily with the Kostitsins
on everything under the sun’. Of course, one can enjoy the breeze much
more when naked, even while chatting away with all and sundry. It
mattered not where they were, for they would swim naked – in
Longjumeau or in Pornic on the French coast, or in Stjernsund in
Sweden, or in swimming pools in Munich, or in Poronino or in the
Vistula River in Krakow. Nor were they alone, for other Bolsheviks
were also given to stripping down whenever possible, among them
Anatoly Lunacharsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexander Bogdanov.
After his return to Russia in 1917, Lenin bemoaned the fact that
people still gathered in summer and swam in costumes, so he asked why
they couldn’t do so without clothes: ‘We have much work to do for new
forms of life, simplified and free’, he observed.
Why? As one of those early communist nudists observed, ‘In nudity
class distinctions disappear. Workers, peasants, office workers are
suddenly just people’. An image of a classless society, perhaps.
Lenin addressing a nudist convention in the Kremlin.
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