Editing Vladimir Lenin (section)

=== Siberian exile: 1895–1900 ===
Imprisoned at the House of Preliminary Detention in Shpalernaya Street, Vladimir was refused legal representation, so denied all of the charges. His family rallied round to help him, but he was refused bail, remaining imprisoned for a year before sentencing. Fellow revolutionaries smuggled messages to him, while he devised a code for playing chess with the neighbouring inmate. Spending much of his time writing, he focused on the role of the working-class in the coming revolution; believing that the rise of industrial capitalism had led large numbers of peasants to move to the cities, where they became proletariat, he argued that [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_consciousness class consciousness] would develop, leading them to rise up in violent revolution against the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. By July 1896 he had finished ''Draft and Explanation of A Programme for the Social Democratic Party'' and had commenced work on his book ''The Development of Capitalism in Russia''.

Vladimir was sentenced without trial to 3 years exile in eastern Siberia. Given a few days in St. Petersburg in February 1897 to put his affairs in order, he met with fellow revolutionaries; the Social-Democrats had been renamed the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Struggle_for_the_Emancipation_of_the_Working_Class League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class], and with many of its leading intelligentsia imprisoned, workers had taken over a number of senior positions, a move that caused rifts but which gained Vladimir's cautious support. In 1896–97, strikes hit St. Petersburg, aided by the Marxists; believing his predictions to be coming true, Vladimir was unhappy at having to abandon the movement. The Tsarist government made use of a large network of prison camps and areas of exile on the verges of its empire to deal with dissidents and criminals; by 1897 there were 300,000 Russian citizens in this system, and Vladimir was now one of them.<sup> </sup>Permitted to make his own way there, the journey took 11 weeks, for much of which he was accompanied by his mother and sisters. Considered a minor threat, Vladimir was exiled to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shushenskoye Shushenskoye] in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minusinsky_District Minusinsky District], a settlement that Vladimir described as "not a bad place". Renting a room in a peasant's hut, he remained under police surveillance, but corresponded with other subversives, many of whom visited him, and also went on trips to hunt duck and snipe and to swim in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yenisei_River Yenisei River].

In May 1898, Nadya joined him in exile, having been arrested in August 1896 for organizing a strike. Although initially posted to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ufa Ufa], she convinced the authorities to move her to Shushenskoye, claiming that she and Vladimir were engaged; they married in a church on 10 July 1898. Settling into a family life with Nadya's mother Elizaveta Vasilyevna, the couple translated [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Webb Sidney] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Webb Beatrice Webb]'s ''The History of Trade Unionism'' (1894) into Russian, a job obtained for them by Struve. Keen to keep abreast of the developments in German Marxism – where there had been an ideological split, with [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revisionism_%28Marxism%29 revisionists] like [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Bernstein Eduard Bernstein] advocating a peaceful, electoral path to socialism – Vladimir remained devoted to violent revolution, attacking revisionist arguments in ''A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats''. Vladimir also finished ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Development_of_Capitalism_in_Russia The Development of Capitalism in Russia]'' (1899), his longest book to date, which offered a well-researched and polemical attack on the Social-Revolutionaries and promoting a Marxist analysis of Russian economic development. Published under the pseudonym of "Vladimir Ilin", it would be described by biographer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Service_%28historian%29 Robert Service] as "a ''tour de force''", but received predominantly poor reviews upon publication.