In Europe

he could travel through Germany without, at least officially, being infected by the German foe. This request, too, was honoured by the German government.
    And so it was that on 9 April, 1917, the Ulyanovs left the Zähringerhof hotel in Zurich to go home.
    Many of their fellow travellers later wrote accounts of the trip in the ‘sealed train’, and their stories provide an interesting look at the clique that was soon to turn Europe upside down. There were more than thirty Russian exiles on board, as well as a child, the four-year-old Robert. During the farewell lunch, Lenin gave a speech, a pastoral letter ‘to the Swiss workers’ in which he stressed that the socialist revolution would be a long-term affair, particularly in backward Russia. Ulyanov and Nadezhda were the only ones who had a second-class compartment to themselves. The two German officers escorting the exiles remained at the back of the carriage, behind a line drawn in chalk on the floor to demarcate the ‘Russian’ and ‘German’ sections.
    As soon as the train pulled out of Gottmadingen station on the German border, the atmosphere grew livelier. The compartments were filled with talk and laughter. A few of the Russians in the third-class carriage began singing the ‘Marseillaise’. Robert's ‘happy voice could be heard all over the train’, Nadezhda wrote later. The little boy was particularly fond of Grigori Sokolnikov, and kept climbing onto his lap.
    A conflict arose almost immediately between the smokers and thenon-smokers. Lenin, who absolutely despised cigarette smoke, ruled that smoking was to be allowed only in the toilet. A line formed, and soon a second argument arose between the smokers and those who wished to use the toilet for its rightful purpose. Lenin solved the problem by drawing up toilet passes: smokers received a second-category pass, others a first-category pass.
    Meanwhile, Nadezhda sat looking out at the bare German landscape, and was surprised to note the absence of adult males. ‘Only women, teenagers and children could be seen at the wayside stations, on the fields, and in the streets of the towns,’ she wrote. During a stop at a station, Sokolnikov wondered why people were looking so interestedly into his carriage, until he realised that there was a piece of white Swiss bread lying on the windowsill. Lenin spent hours staring out of the window, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his vest, long after it had grown dark and the occasional light flashing by was all there was to be seen.
    That evening brought a new crisis for the exasperated leader to solve. Karl Radek was in the compartment next to the Ulyanovs, along with Olga Ravich, Georgi Safarov and Lenin's great love, Inesa Armand. Radek was a jovial Polish Jew, a squat little pipe smoker with curly hair and thick glasses. He was an excellent organiser and a natural storyteller. Furthermore, he could do a perfect imitation of Lenin. The laughter cut straight through the thin carriage walls.
    The party atmosphere was heightened yet further when Charitonov and the exuberant Grigori Usivitch came to visit the compartment. Lenin had already poked his head in a few times to quieten things down – and received a boisterous welcome from Radek – but when Olga Ravitch's screeches of laughter once again penetrated all the walls and beyond the borders of propriety, he yanked open the door of the compartment, grabbed Olga by the hand without saying a word, led her down the corridor and pushed her into a compartment far away from his own. In the end, Lenin had to order lights out, ‘as a disciplinary party command’. But even that did not help.
    The next morning, at Stuttgart station, the German social democrat Wilhelm Janson tried to make contact with the revolutionary travellers. The Bolsheviks played deaf: any contact, after all, would have ruined themyth of the ‘sealed train’. In addition, the Russian and German socialists had had a parting of the ways. During the war, the unions and the social democrats had become respected negotiating partners for the German government. The Russians had known only exile and a covert existence. All their hopes were fixed on a revolution, in whatever form, not on evolution or compromise. ‘If Janson tries to enter our train, we'll throw him out on his ear,’ Lenin shouted in a rage. ‘Tell him to go to hell.’
    As the train approached Mannheim, the Russians in the third-class compartment began singing again. When