Lenin’s coat.
Europe. 1910s
Drape
Length: 116cm

The museum funds contain the coat and jacket of Vladimir Ilyich, which he wore on the day of the assassination attempt on August 30, 1918. On August 30, 1918, the Social Revolutionaries organized two successful attempts on the life of the Bolshevik leaders at once. In Petrograd, Moisey Uritsky was shot. And in the evening of the same day in Moscow they organized an attempt on Lenin’s life. Vladimir Ilyich spoke to the workers of the Michelson plant. He ended his speech with an ardent appeal: “We have one way out: victory or death!” When, after the speech, the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars left the shop and was getting into his Renault-40 car, three shots rang out. Lenin was wounded by two bullets.
In this demi-season coat V.I. Lenin returned from his last emigration in April 1917. Four tears in the fabric of his coat are associated with this wound.
One – on the back, just above the left scapula (red cross) was made by a bullet, which, entering above the left scapula, breaking the inner part of the left scapula bone, penetrated the chest cavity, damaged the upper lobe of the left lung, passed through it, causing a pleural hemorrhage, and stuck in the soft parts of the right half of the neck. It was removed on April 23, 1922. Another tear in the fabric of the coat, (red cross on the left sleeve), at the top almost at the shoulder joint, just above the back seam on the sleeve, was made by a bullet, which entering the left shoulder broke the humerus at the border of the middle and upper third, i.e., almost at the very shoulder joint, hit the bone, by ricochet changed its direction and stopped in the soft parts of the upper arm. Here two small fragments bounced off it. The third and fourth tears in the fabric of the coat (white crosses) – on the back under the left shoulder blade, were made by a bullet that only touched the clothes of V.I. Lenin without hurting him. This bullet wounded a woman, M.T. Popova, a castellan from the nearby Peter and Paul Hospital, who without malicious intent detained Vladimir Ilyich in a conversation with him.
The bullet holes in the fabric were neatly darned by Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. From the memoirs of N.K. Krupskaya: “I myself mended these holes. After all, Ilyich had only one coat. I used to darn it in those days when Ilyich was very ill and no one could tell whether he would have to put this coat on again … I was darning at night. I do not know what was more on these darns, stitches or my tears, which kept dripping and dripping … “