Revolution built of hay
QUESTION When the Bolshevik party was banned in early 1917, Lenin hid in a peasant’s hut. Does it still exist?
THE hut was made of hay and branches, so it disintegrated decades ago. However, to mark the spot, a granite version was built at the site in 1928 and later a hay replica of the peasant’s hut was made. In 1969, a museum was opened nearby.
Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolshevik, Grigory Zinoviev, had hidden in the hut in July 1917 after a Bolshevik-led uprising of workers and soldiers in St Petersburg against the Russian Provincial Government turned violent. The Provisional Government issued an order for the arrest of the Bolshevik leaders.
On July 9, Lenin and Zinoviev were spirited out of the city. To disguise himself, Lenin shaved off his moustache and beard. The pair took refuge in the hayloft of a barn in the small logging village of Razliv.
It belonged to a comrade, Nikolai Yemelyanov, who worked at the nearby Sestroretsk arms factory.
They spent a few days there before rumours reached the authorities that Lenin was working as a fitter at the arms factory. Disguised as Finnish farm workers, Yemelyanov moved Lenin and Zinoviev to the deserted shore of Lake Razliv.
There, the three men built a small shelter from branches covered with hay, where for some weeks Lenin worked on his political ideas, which became the book The State And Revolution.
With the onset of autumn, the cold, mosquitoes and the threat of police dogs tracking them down meant the pair decided to flee to Finland. Lenin later returned to Russia to lead the October Revolution.
After Lenin’s death, Yemelyanov’s barn was declared a historic monument, and a museum was opened in 1925.
In 1970, to mark the centenary of Lenin’s birth, the barn was encased in glass.
Stewart May, Bath, Somerset.
QUESTION Why was the 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State replaced in 1937?
WHEN Éamon de Valera and the Fianna Fáil party came to power for the first time in 1932, they were determined to oust the British monarch – as well as the monarch’s representative in Ireland, the governor- general – from the 1922 Constitution.
They began chipping away at the 1922 Constitution and the first move came in 1934, when de Valera abolished the Senate.
A committee was then set up to see what amendments could be made to the 1922 Constitution, which de Valera wanted to merely amend, rather than abolish, at that stage.
But within two months of that committee reporting, the 1922 Constitution had effectively collapsed. A further complication arose when the Supreme Court ruled in 1934 that the Oireachtas had no powers to amend any of the articles in the 1922 Constitution, even though the Fianna Fáil government had just abolished the requirement that members of the Dáil had to swear an oath of allegiance to the British monarch.
So, the process of drafting a new Constitution began and de Valera played a vital part in its creation, drafting many notes in his own handwriting.
The final draft of the new Constitution was far less confessional than constitutions in other European countries, and the final version was also far less dominated by a Catholic ethos.
The Vatican was less than pleased with the final draft.
The aim of de Valera in the 1937 Constitution was to assert the right of Ireland to be an independent, sovereign nation, governed by a Catholic ethos.
Events in the UK during 1936 helped de Valera in his ambitions.
He used the sudden abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 to pass two Bills; one of those amended the Constitution to remove all references to the king and of his representative in Ireland, the governorgeneral, but the second Bill still allowed Britain to be involved in representing the Irish State abroad at diplomatic level.
When the 1937 Constitution came into force, it declared that the name of the State in Irish was to be Éire, and Ireland in English. It claimed the national territory as the whole of Ireland.
That claim was removed by popular vote in a referendum in the Republic in 1998, on the same day as a referendum in Northern Ireland on the Belfast Agreement.
In the 1937 Constitution, the British king and his representative here, the governor-general, were removed from the Constitution and replaced by a popularly elected President.
Irish was recognised as the first official language and the use of Irish terms such as taoiseach and tánaiste was designed to strengthen Irish cultural and historical identity.
The 1937 Constitution also gave special recognition to the Catholic Church and to the Catholic concept of marriage.
The new Constitution represented a radical departure from its predecessor – and not just with the abolition of the role of the British monarch in Irish affairs.
The new Constitution was approved in a national plebiscite in July 1937, and came into force on December 29, 1937.
The following year, 1938, Douglas Hyde was elected the first President of the country.
Yet the 1937 Constitution still didn’t go far enough for de Valera, who saw it as a halfway house towards the declaration of full national independence.
Ironically, this aim was achieved not by Fianna Fáil, but by the first Fine Gael-led inter-party government, which, when it came to power in 1948, brought to an end 16 years of single-party rule by Fianna Fáil.
The Republic of Ireland Act came into force on April 18, 1949, and made Ireland a fully fledged independent republic.
The south of Ireland travelled far when the 1937 Constitution came into force, but went even further with the declaration of the republic in 1949. Paddy Walsh, Cork.
QUESTION Is there any evidence that the KFC recipe was appropriated from Louisiana slaves?
AS the previous answer outlined, there is no evidence that ‘Colonel’ Harland David Sanders was a racist or a thief.
In fact, he was just happy to sell his brand of fried chicken, of which he was deeply proud.
Greg Dewey, drummer of psychedelic rock band Country Joe And The Fish, tells how he once found himself sitting next to the Colonel on a flight.
He asked Sanders: ‘Hey man, what do you think of hippies?’ The Colonel reflected for a moment and replied: ‘They eat fried chicken, don’t they?’ Jim Elliot, York.
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