Did Lenin drink cask beer brewed in Tottenham?
Lenin paid a number of visits to London in the years before the First World War, to research in the old British Museum Reading Room and to attend congresses of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party.
Details can be found in Robert Henderson’s The Spark that Lit the Revolution- Lenin in London. The book is published in paperback in February
After 1917 Lenin took a robust view of drinking in Russia- he tried curtail it. Getting drunk on vodka and beer was a massive issue and one Lenin feared could be exploited by counter revolutionary forces. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin from 1925 took a different view and nationalised vodka production so that at least the young Workers State got the profit.
Lenin himself however was known to enjoy a glass of beer and in this he stood in the tradition of Marx and Engels. Both liked Pilsner beer. Marx wrote to Engels from Karlsbad in August 1875 about the difference between craft and commercial versions of the beer. In 1880 Engels was praising the quality of the beer sold on Bridlington Pier.
According to Henderson in 1902/3 Lenin enjoyed a glass of beer with exiles in a German café on Pentonville Rd a short distance from Angel. What was the beer? The demand for Pilsner and lager more generally was considerable in late Victorian London.
One well know purveyor was the Tottenham Lager Beer and Ice brewery. A substantial enterprise located near where Seven Sisters tube station is off Tottenham High Rd it brewed from 1886-1903. It produced lager in bottle and cask.
Its entirely possible therefore that Lenin did drink cask beer brewed in Tottenham
Leave a Reply