Krupskaya’s psychiatric concern for Lenin
anecdote · history ·
retold in 3 talks
Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, reportedly wrote that Lenin looked like he needed psychiatric help because he was 'going crazy' with his call for a proletarian revolution while others censored his writings.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“it looks that Vladimir Ilyich will look psychiatric help, that he is getting crazy.”
“his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya wrote to I don't know whom, is Vladimir Ilyich getting confused with leading psychiatrist and so on.”
“Lenin's answer I quote Dear Alexey Maximovich Gorky what are you doing then really it's terrible why are you doing this? It's painful take care of yourself more seriously.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Maxim Gorky1John Langshaw Austin1Bruno Dostils1Robert Redford1Terrence Deacon1Grigory Zinoviev1Nadezhda Krupskaya2Lev Kamenev1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, reportedly wrote that Lenin looked like he needed psychiatric help because he was 'going crazy' with his call for a proletarian revolution while others censored his writings., illustrating revolution-violence
Even Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, alarmed by the April Theses, wrote to a leading psychiatrist asking whether Vladimir Ilyich was becoming confused, illustrating how radical even to his comrades Lenin's position appeared., illustrating Lenin's April Theses,radical opportunism,non-dogmatic Marxism
When Gorky wrote to Lenin about god-building, Lenin's reply was not an ideological critique but purely medical concern, 'you must be ill, go see German nerve specialists.' Žižek uses this to illustrate objectivizing medicalization as an ideological form., illustrating medical-ideological objectivization,Bogostroitel'stvo