Razliv

Razliv

 

a settlement 32 km northwest of Leningrad. It has a railroad station. Razliv is located on the bank of the Sestra River, which is spanned by a dam at the city of Sestroretsk, creating the Sestroretsk Reservoir (Lake Razliv).

After the July days of 1917, the Central Committee of the RSDLP (Bolshevik) concealed V. I. Lenin in Razliv and its surroundings from the persecution of the bourgeois Provisional Government. Arriving in Razliv on July 10 (23), Lenin spent a few days in the hayloft of a barn in the yard of the Bolshevik worker N. A. Emel’ianov and then moved to the other shore of the Sestroretsk Reservoir, where, disguised as a Finnish mower, he lived in a hut near a haystack.

Lenin continued to direct the party’s work from Razliv and maintained constant contact with the Central Committee of the RSDLP(B) through G. K. Ordzhonikidze, V. I. Zof, A. V. Shot-man, and E. A. Rakh’ia. He also worked on major problems of the theory and practice of the revolution. Important works of this period include the article “The Political Situation,” the pamphlet On Slogans, and the articles “A Reply,” “On Constitutional Illusions,” “The Beginning of Bonapartism,” and “Lessons of the Revolution.” While at Razliv, Lenin began writing State and Revolution and directed the work of the Sixth Congress of the RSDLP(B). In view of the approaching autumn cold and the danger that his whereabouts would be discovered, Lenin, on the decision of the party Central Committee, left Razliv for Finland not later than Aug. 6 (19), 1917.

In 1925 the barn where Lenin had been hiding was designated a museum. In 1927 a granite hut was built on the site of the hut; the original hut and its surroundings were left intact. A memorial museum comprising the V. I. Lenin Barn Museum and the V. I. Lenin Hut Museum was opened in 1927. The Hut Museum includes the granite hut (architect A. I. Gegello) and a pavilion of granite, marble, and glass (1964, architect V. D. Kirkhoglani). As of 1974 more than 5 million people had visited the Barn Museum and about 13 million people, the Hut Museum.