In 1918 the Council of People's Commissars allotted Lenin and his family a flat and a study in the Senate Palace within the Kremlin

In 1918 the Council of People's Commissars allotted Lenin and his family a flat and a study in the Senate Palace within the Kremlin. More precisely, the layout of the third floor in the south-western part of the palace, on the side facing Senate Square, where the Tsarist procurator had formerly lived, was remodelled to serve as the flat.

The flat was permanently occupied by Lenin, his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya and his younger sister Maria Ulyanova, Manyasha. The elder sister, Anna Yelizarova-Ulyanova, came on occasional visits and sometimes stayed the night in the drawing room; she lived separately, on Manezhnaya Street.

The flat was on the third floor, with a total area of about 560 sq. m according to some sources and about 300 sq. m according to others. The discrepancy is, in all likelihood, explained by what one chooses to count as the flat: the living quarters alone, or everything together with the working rooms, corridors and halls for meetings. The study measured 50 sq. m, the drawing room about 55 sq. m, while Lenin's bedroom itself was about 18 sq. m plus a vestibule.

Besides the living rooms, the neighbouring premises included a reception room, the meeting hall of the Politburo and a switchboard room with telephone operators. The living part comprised Lenin's bedroom, Krupskaya's room, Maria Ulyanova's room, a drawing room, a dining room, a kitchen, a maid's room, and a combined bathroom with bath, shower and water closet. The corridors were packed tight with bookcases. It was precisely the books that were the chief feature: they stood everywhere, in the study, in the corridors, in the rooms. The library numbered more than 40,000 volumes.

The furniture was, of course, very modest, even commonplace.

In December 1918 the first lift in the Kremlin was installed specially for Lenin: after the attempt on his life by Fanny Kaplan in August of that year he found it hard to climb to the third floor. A second lift led straight to the roof, where there was a gazebo.

In the spring of 1923, after a severe stroke, he was taken away for good to Gorki, and he never returned to the Kremlin. On 21 January 1924 he died there.

Krupskaya remained in the flat and lived there until her death in 1939; no one dared to evict the leader's widow. Maria Ulyanova also stayed, and likewise lived in the flat to the end of her days; she died in 1937. Thus the family occupied the flat from 1918 to 1939. In 1955 a museum was opened here. In 1994, when the Senate Palace began to be rebuilt as a presidential residence, the whole interior, more than 42,000 authentic items, was removed to Gorki Leninskiye, where it remains to this day.