Robert Henderson has crafted another engaging account of a topic he has made his own—the Russian revolutionary emigration in London. Before World War I, its financial, cultural, and political tentacles held much of the world in its grip. For Vladimir Lenin, the city itself was a textbook of Marxism. “Two nations” Lenin muttered to Nadezhda Krupskaia after a bus ride from affluent Bloomsbury to impoverished Seven Dials. Class society at its most raw. But for all its value as an exemplar of capitalism, London provided other unmatched sources for understanding the system, of which the jewel in the crown was the British Museum Reading Room, an institution to which, in its later guise as The British Library, Henderson himself was attached. This gave him unparalleled opportunity to delve into its more obscure corners and produce vivid, original accounts of the turbulent lives of the Russian emigration. He superbly captures their earnest intensity, even when means of material support and living conditions were very bad for many of the participants. In the spirit of Vissarion Belinskii the question of God came first, dinner second.

As the title suggests, Lenin and his efforts to get Iskra (The Spark) published in London are a central theme. Lenin refused to have anything to do with any publisher who did not come from the same political space as Lenin, such as the Independent Labour Party, which put him in the hands of Harry Quelch and the Social Democratic Federation Press on Clerkenwell Green (currently the Marx Memorial Library). Lenin and Quelch had a difficult relationship but the latter was one of few British figures with whom Lenin had significant contact. Lenin and the emigres largely consorted with one another rather than their hosts. Henderson recounts many stories reflecting the tumult and hothouse atmosphere which resulted. One can feel oneself attending a meeting or reading intensely in the Free Russian Library in the East End, walking through the Jewish dominated Little Russia or turning up at one of the many “communes” where the nominal renters had a relatively open house for anyone without an alternative roof over their heads. Although Lenin is center stage, some of the less well known characters and episodes revolve around Konstantin Takhtarev, who was a longer term resident than many of the other revolutionaries and a keystone for many of them to get in contact with each other and/or find a flat to rent. Although Takhtarev was one of the tiny Economist group (they were the ones who consistently argued the true Marxist should wait until capitalism had developed and decayed before a revolution was possible, not the Mensheviks whose views shifted to and fro on the issue) his help was available to all, including Lenin, who later denounced him as an arch-enemy. Indeed, Henderson raises the question, perhaps not entirely convincingly for himself, that Lenin had proposed to Takhtarev's future wife Apollinaria “Lirochka” Yakubova in 1895, only turning to her best friend Nadezhda Krupskaia once Yakubova had turned him down.

The strength of Henderson's account lies very much in the focus on such personal entanglements. The book is very rich in this respect. Even though Lenin and Lirochka's relationship, whatever it was, foundered on political rather than personal differences Henderson does not take us into the much better known realm of organizational, ideological, and philosophical disputes. Oddly, this even applies to the two greatest set-piece events: the 1902 and 1905 Bolshevik Party Congresses which, ironically, were only able to take place under the relatively tolerant protection of British legal liberties. Henderson spends more time on the network of personal relationships and the buzz of rumors surrounding the Congresses, even revisiting Vladimir Burtsev's fantasies that Lenin was working with the Russian police chief Sergei Zubatov, rather than analyzing the issues on which the Congresses had a considerable impact. However, in its unique way, Henderson's approach helps in entering the complex and contradictory world of real people in real situations than the perusal of party resolutions and press polemics, even though it was these that weighed more heavily in the scales of history. Henderson's book is an easy-to-read, valuable, and fascinating collection of snapshots of the main actors living through these times. The appendices, one expanding Lirochka's story and one documenting Lenin's interactions with the Reading Room of the British Museum in terms of items he donated to it and what he read there are also very helpful.