![Lenin giving a speech in Moscow in 1920.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/lenin-titelbild-300x225.jpg)
From Zurich’s backstreets to the centre of world revolution
Lenin’s explosive ideology, which would go on to shake the world, was partly concocted in Bern and Zurich. Yet he considered his Swiss comrades social romantics and opportunists.
![Lenin and his wife lived in this room on Spiegelgasse in Zurich from 1916.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/zimmer-lenin-zuerich-300x214.jpg)
Radicalisation in exile
![The first issue of the newspaper Pravda from May 1912.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/prawda-300x229.jpg)
“Soaked in petty-bourgeois dullness”
![Lenin was an avid visitor to the library in Bern. Lending slip dated 1914.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/ausleihschein-lenin-bern-300x262.jpg)
Under the guise of an ornithology society in Zimmerwald
![Postcard of Zimmerwald, 1904.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/postkarte-zimmerwald-300x197.jpg)
An explosive theory made in Zurich
![Cover picture of the Schweizer Illustrierte, dated 15 December 1917.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/2017/03/Lenin-Illustrierte-212x300.jpg)
TV report on Lenin’s return to Russia 1917. YouTube