Soviet City. London’s role in the Russian Revolution

In August 1903, a group of radical political agitators were gathered to discuss how to overthrow the Russian Tsar Amongst them were Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Fourteen years later, in the October revolution of 1917, their group, the Bolsheviks, took power, Russia became the Soviet Union and the world  was changed. Where did this pivotal meeting take place? The Three Johns pub in Islington.

The congress had actually started in Belgium, but moved to various London where a climate of politcal freedom had allowed Lenin to writing a his revolutionary journal, “The Spark” at the British Museum reading room using books banned in Russia.

It was in London in October 1902, that Lenin had met Trotsky for the first time and showed him the sights. And in 1907 the last Bolshevik congress before the Revolution took place in the Brotherhood Church in Hackney, a Jewish socialist club and a doss house in Whitechapel.  Those present included almost all the future leaders of the Russian revolution, discussing amongst other things whether bank robberies should be carried out to  fund revolutionary activities.

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Illustration by Vephvadze Giovanni