Lenin's railway journey from Switzerland to Russia

choi

The Russian revolution | Missed Connection; Vladimir Lenin's railway journey from Switzerland to Russia changed history. Economist, Oct 8, 2016
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... nged-history-missed
(book review on Catherine Merridale, Lenin on the Train. Allen Lane, 2016)

Note:
(a)
(i) February Revolution: Women's Day (Mar 8; Gregorian calendar) or Feb 23 (Julian calendar), 1917
(ii) October Revolution: Nov 7 (Gregorian calendar) or Oct 25 (Julian calendar), 1917
(iii) Russia used Julian calendar until 1918.
(b) "She made her name in 2000 with 'Night of Stone,' a book about victims of Soviet violence.

Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone; Death and memory in twentieth-century Russia. Penguin, 2002.

(c) The book contains "references to John Buchan's madcap wartime thriller, 'Greenmantle,' whose plot neatly matches Lenin’s adventures."
(i) Greenmantle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenmantle
(first published in 1916 by Hodder & Stoughton, London)
(ii) This Wiki page does not allude to Lenin.

(d) "The central thread of the book is the journey itself, which took eight days and stretched over more than 2,000 miles (3,200km). * * * A mischievous Estonian called Alexander Keskula was the first to suggest to Germany’s spy service that bringing Lenin home could serve a vital strategic goal. Strengthening the anti-war camp there would raise the chances that Russia would stop fighting, giving Germany time to beat Britain and France before America entered the war. Germany was soon convinced. The deal took just two weeks to negotiate: * * * It [train] was not to stop, and its passengers (a motley 32 in all) were not to be checked."

Alexander Keskula
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksander_Kesküla

(e) "It was not a jolly journey. * * * The workaholic Lenin imposed strict Bolshevik discipline, including a sleep rota and two classes of tickets for the only lavatory. This was accompanied by much wrangling about the relative importance of smoking and using the toilet * * * The trickiest part was crossing from Sweden to Russia. * * * But the authorities in Petrograd (soon to be Leningrad and now once again St Petersburg) believed that a democratic country should not ban its own citizens from entry. For that mistake, millions died."
(i) rota (n; Latin, literally wheel): "British a list showing when each of a number of people"
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rota
(ii) Saint Petersburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg
(In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, and in 1991 back to Saint Petersburg)