Lenin and the Sealed Train

There will be no recovery of any kind in Russia or in eastern Europe

while these wicked men, this vile group of cosmopolitan fanatics, hold the Russian nation by the hair of its head and tyrannizes over its great population. The policy I will always advocate is the overthrow and destruction of that criminal regime.

  Winston Churchill, 1920

Centennial Reenactment of Lenin's Departure from Zurich

Lenin's return to Russia made the October Revolution possible For three long years he had been trapped in Switzerland, as much a prisoner of war as the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops languishing in German, Austrian, and Turkish prison camps. Exiled from Russia prior to the start of World War I, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had found a safe refuge in Switzerland, where he continued to coordinate the underground activities of his small Bolshevik Party. 

The governments of France and Italy, to the west and south of Switzerland, had arrest warrants waiting for Lenin as an enemy of the Allied cause if he should dare to try and set foot across the border. Contact was reduced to occasional courier messages and coded telegrams. So he was stuck, seething with frustration as the hated Czarist government collapsed in March 1917 and was replaced with a republic headed by Alexander Kerensky.

Sealed Train Route

Lenin felt trapped by his circumstances, unable to participate in the opportunity he had plotted more than thirty years for, the establishment of a communist state in Russia. He briefly considered donning a disguise, attempting a crossing of France with forged papers, and trying to take a boat to Russia from there. An absurd plan since it was assumed that Allied intelligence agents were keeping a close watch on him.

Finally, he struck on a plan that had a certain surreal quality to it…. Meeting with the German minister in Bern, Lenin laid out his proposal…that Germany would provide transport across their country and help to smuggle him into Finland. From there he would go into Russia, raise a revolution, seize control of the government, and then pull Russia out of the war, freeing Germany to turn its full power to the Western Front.

Lenin (x) and His Group on a Stopover in Stockholm

The German minister in Bern, along with his intelligence advisors, must have had a difficult time concealing his grin of amusement over this mad, wild-eyed scheme…. Nevertheless the decision was made to approve it. At the very least it would provide a bit of consternation for the Western Allies, who were terrified that Russia might bail out of the war and it might even help to trigger further revolts in the Russian army, which was already disintegrating in the confusion resulting from the overthrow of the Czar.

The plan was authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. In a sealed railway car, Lenin and eighteen cohorts traveled over German-occupied or neutral territory to Helsinki. From Vyborg, then on the Finnish side of the border, they entered Russia. Lenin arrived in Petrograd on 16 April 1917. Read about Lenin's arrival at the Finland Station HERE.

Finland Station

History records what ensued.  Germany gained nothing, and for the rest of the century most of the world paid a high price for what they unleashed. Without their decision there would likely have been no Communist revolution, probably no Nazi Party, and no Cold War to bankrupt half the globe. 

Sources:  Churchill and the Soviet Union, David Charlton; "Lenin as Plague Bacillus Churchill as Munitions Minister," the Churchill Project, Hillsdale College; Photos and Map from Railway Magazine and SwissInfo.com