On the Correspondence between V.I. Lenin and N.E. Fedoseyev in 1892-1893: Conditions and Circumstances of Restoring Contacts

The article examines the process of the emergence and spread of Marxism in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Based on documents from the Police Department and materials of from the central and local gendarmerie departments, the author reconstructs the complex process of restoring contacts between the leader of the Kazan revolutionary circles of the 1880s, N.E. Fedoseyev, who served his sentence in the Kresty prison and lived in Vladimir from the beginning of 1892, with the Samara revolutionary underground and V.I. Lenin, who had previously been a member of Fedoseev’s circle. The author pays attention to the circumstances that preceded the correspondence between N.E. Fedoseyev and V.I. Lenin, reveals some previously not fully clarifi ed historical facts associated with it, and traces the involvement of a number of comrades in the social democratic movement in the correspondence. Previously unknown details allow us to more clearly imagine the conditions of N.E. Fedoseyev’s imprisonment, the opportunities for scientifi c work determined by the prison regulations, to clarify the list of books he read and the statistical data that interests him. The study makes it possible to assess all the diffi culties and problems of establishing connections and carrying out correspondence in these conditions between Fedoseev and his Samara correspondents, the role of his comrade M.G. Gopfenhaus in its implementation, the participation of other comrades of N.E. Fedoseyev and V.I. Lenin in restoring and strengthening of their contacts.