It is interesting to speculate on the career V. I. Lenin would have chosen had he not lived in a time and a place where most intellectual professions were closed to men and women of non-conformist thought. It has been suggested that he had the makings of an admirable university teacher: his mind was well-disciplined, his speech was articulate and his knowledge was impressive. Only once, however, did the pressures of revolutionary and governmental leadership allow him to practice his pedagogical talents. During the summer of 1911, while living in the small French town of Longjumeau, he organized a little-known school for underground party workers. This chapter is primarily an account of that school. It is also a study of Lenin's schismatic approach towards two earlier schools established by his factional opponents in Capri and Bologna.

The unsuccessful Revolution of 1905 had two deleterious effects on the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDRP). Inside Imperial Russia, the revolutionary intelligentsia – who had borne the burden of organizing, agitating and propagandizing the urban masses – were now disillusioned with the underground and went into emigration, retired from revolutionary activity, or found themselves in tsarist prisons. This meant that the tasks of leading and organizing the workers' movement had to be assumed by the workers themselves who lacked their predecessors' theoretical training and practical experience necessary for revolutionary propagation and underground survival.