Lenin in London

England in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was more hospitable to political exiles and refugees than perhaps any other European country of the time. It gave shelter to fallen emperors, such as Napoleon III, and to communist revolutionaries, such as Marx and Engels; to Russian aristocrats such as Herzen, and to Italian nationalists such as Garibaldi and Mazzini.

But it would be difficult to challenge the view that the hospitality extended to Lenin was the most pregnant in its consequences for the future. It was at London, in 1903 and 1907, that Lenin dominated the two most important pre-war conferences of the Russian Social-Democrats.

Moreover, such English social thinkers as the Webbs and J. A. Hobson gave Lenin crucial insight into Western European theories of society and foreign policy that contributed much to his own thought, both positively and negatively.