Colonistics

On a gloomy May day in 1887, Alexander Ilyich Ulyanov, the organizer of the failed attempt on Tsar Alexander III, was executed in the gloomy walls of the Shlisselburg Fortress . The next night his younger brother Volodya, a member of an illegal student circle, was arrested. Thanks to the petition of the influential sister of the mother - Lyubov Alexandrovna Ardasheva, in the girlhood - Blank, the detention was replaced by reference. Volodya was sent to the village of Kokushkino of the Laishevsky district of the Kazan province, where he settled in the Ardashevs' house.

There, in the house of his aunt, a young Ulyanov met another exiled revolutionary - only recently graduated from the institute and arrested in Ukraine, Leia was slightly older than Vladimir and had Blankam some distant kin. The painful time of exile was brightened by communication between the young revolutionaries. Overflowing with the desire to change the world for the better, they spent whole days in conversations, and more often - disputes about ways of reorganizing the social system. And then the night.

By the end of 1888, according to "the highest permission" Ulyanov and several other revolutionaries were allowed to return from exile. Volodya went to Kazan, Leia went home to Ukraine, but soon found herself pregnant. Leaving Ekaterinoslav, she moved to the small village of Smidovichi, where she married an elderly and good-natured Menahem Rubicheva, who understood everything and accepted everything. And a few months later they had a son. He was called Nehemia.

[показать]In 1896, Menachem Rubichev died. Leia was left alone with Nehemiah, who was barely eight years old. The boy grew intelligent, affable and inquisitive. And he knew the secret of his birth. By this time period and probably refers to his first meeting with the real father. In 1900, Lenin, along with two revolutionary comrades and future Mensheviks, Martov and Potresov, illegally roamed the Russian cities and provinces, establishing links with local party cells.

The first meeting, apparently, occurred in Dvinsk. Lenin saw Leia at the workers' meeting and immediately recognized him, and then with amazement he became acquainted with Nehemiah. By that time, the future leader of the world proletariat had already been married to Nadezhda Krupskaya, who was waiting for him in exile in Ufa. Nevertheless, Lenin did not renounce paternity and, on the contrary, accepted his son enthusiastically.

[показать]Enchanted by his charisma, a small Nehemiah enthusiastically begins to study revolutionary literature.And three years later, already a 15-year-old son gladly accepts Lenin's invitation and, leaving the dull world of the town, moves to Geneva. A young man settles in the house of Lenin and Krupskaya. Kind-hearted Nadezhda Konstantinovna, perhaps already conscious that she will not have her children, accepts Nehemia as her own. And he works in the editorial office of Iskra first courier, and then an assistant editor, more and more involved in the serious activities of adult revolutionaries.

However, in parallel, Nehemia converges with the Zionists in Switzerland. He, who is well acquainted with the hardships of Jewish life in the Pale of Settlement, is increasingly encouraged by the idea of creating an independent Jewish state. It's just that Lenin does not like the new hobbies of his son at all. He categorically rejects the "substitution of the idea of a national struggle for the idea of class struggle".

[показать]The tension between them is growing, reaching a peak, when Nehemiah, despite Lenin's will, goes to Basel to the Sixth Zionist Congress that opened there. Meeting with a delegate from Odessa, Vladimir Zhabotinsky finally changes his views. There is a tragic break with my father."I do not need a Zionist in my house!" - shouted Lenin.Nadezhda Konstantinovna is struggling to reconcile her father and son, but all is in vain.

With a heavy heart, Nehemia leaves the house in Geneva and, having attributed to his age two years, leaves for the United States. There, in Chicago, he becomes an active participant in the Poalei Zion Party, which combines Zionist and socialist ideas in its program. At the same time, he changes his name from Rubichev to Rabin - the latter, of course, much more convenient for living in America. But who knows if there is an end in the chosen name of the attempt to preserve the memory of a man, the love for which he continues to carry in his heart.

[показать]Lenin also experiences a very difficult break with his son, blaming "Zionist reactionaries" and "patented representatives of the Jewish nation" for everything.Apparently, it is from this moment on that he becomes a fierce opponent of the Jewish national movement. Lenin erases from his life all the memory of Nehemiah, who has departed from his ideas. Including strictly forbids Krupskaya to maintain contact with him, and generally mention it.

Having struck Nehemiah out of his life, Lenin goes headlong into the revolution. Comes in 1917, and the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars with an iron hand builds a new state on the ruins of the Russian Empire. And on a gloomy July morning in 1918 in Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the Ipatiev House, Nicholas II was executed - the son of the one who, three decades earlier, had ordered his brother to be hanged.

Nehemiah's life, meanwhile, is also changing dramatically. He knows about the perfect father of the revolution in Russia, but he joins the "Jewish Legion" created by Jabotinsky and arrives in Egypt, and then, as the British units advance, he lands in Eretz Israel and participates in the battles for the liberation of Jerusalem and Jericho. After the war, Nehemia sought from the British authorities for themselves the right to remain in mandated Palestine.

[показать]In 1919-1920, a series of Jewish pogroms spread over the Holy Land, and Nehemia enters into the self-defense committee of the Haganah, organized by his friend Jabotinsky. There he meets his future wife Rosa for the first time. And in a year the last meeting of Vladimir Lenin and Nehemiah Rabin will take place.

In April 1921, the head of the RSFSR receives the leaders of the party Poalei Zion. It is not excluded that Nehemiah, who arrived at the meeting, tried to convince his father to forgive and accept him. But he was waiting for failure. Following the meeting, Lenin wrote his famous program article "Zionism and the class struggle in Palestine." From that moment the Jewish national movement in Soviet Russia was sentenced. And a year later Nehemia and Rosa will have their first-born, Vladimir Lenin's only grandson. He will be called Isaac.

Did Yitzhak Rabin know, with the years that led the Jewish state, the secret of his origin? Did Father tell him about this? Did you manage to get acquainted with the documents and memoirs of the old Bolsheviks found in the declassified Soviet archives at the end of the20th century? The answers to these questions will remain a mystery forever.