SHE was described admiringly by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s wife as the “primeval force of the black earth,” a young revolutionary fireball with sparkling brown eyes whose natural aroma was of “fresh meadow grasses.”

It is no wonder then that the search for an image of Apollinariya Yakubova, considered by some to be the communist leader’s true love, has captured the imagination of generations of historians and academics for almost a century.

Her complex relationship with Lenin and their explosive disputes over party policy while both were living in London’s King’s Cross are well documented.

Until now, a photograph of Yakubova has proved elusive. But now the face of Lenin’s “Lirochka” can be revealed after a researcher dug deep into forgotten vaults in Moscow.

Dr Robert Henderson, a Russian history expert at Queen Mary University, made an unexpected discovery in the state archive of the Russian Federation early last month while researching the life of another young revolutionary from the same era.

Concealed in a string-tied bundle of papers was a black-and-white photo taken while Yakubova was in a Siberian prison camp, where she had been incarcerated for political activity.

“It must be said, she is quite a beauty,” says Dr Henderson. “Yakubova possessed numerous qualities that would attract even the most stony-hearted individual. She was a young revolutionary valued and loved by everyone.

“A fair bit is known of her career but surprisingly no photograph of her was thought to exist. Finding the photo was a delightful and unexpected bonus.”

For decades, historians have debated whether Lenin ever recovered from being rejected by her after she spurned a supposed marriage proposal. Academics have chewed over their intimate letters to each other and scrutinised the scorn that would later be heaped on her by Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who at first was one of her closest allies.

The love triangle was played out a stone’s throw from the British Museum reading rooms that attracted many Russian exiles early last century when Yakubova, then aged 27, lived in a now-demolished building nearby.

Records show that after being imprisoned in a Siberian camp for political activity, she escaped and travelled 7,000 miles by foot to London, where she met up with Lenin and Krupskaya and became a central cog in the party machine.

The newly discovered photo shows Yakubova as a withdrawn figure following her stay in the Siberian camp, although Henderson describes her as still striking.

Letters show that to Krupskaya she was “a marvellous, intelligent person, staunch, decisive and unusually truthful.” Lenin was also transfixed.

He was known to give pet “party names” to his leading female comrades — Zinaida Nevzorova was known as the “pastry” for her plumpness, while Krupskaya was called “Ryba” — the fish — because of an unfortunate squint caused by an eye disease.

But Henderson says Lenin called Yakubova the “charming, diminutive Kubochka and later by the yet sweeter Lirochka.”

Neither can be directly translated but the words conjure up an image of loving tenderness. “It’s a bit like ‘Bobbykins,’” says Henderson.

Yakubova is celebrated for orchestrating politically charged debates in London’s East End, where the finer details of communist doctrine were contested by poor, working-class Russians living in London.

Her role as a key member of the group running Lecturing Society debates in Whitechapel came to an “acrimonious end” after ideological differences split the tight-knit group.

While living in Russia she had clashed over political theory with Lenin, who lived intermittently in London between 1902 and 1911, with Yakubova preferring a brand of “organised democracy” where working people were more involved in the party machine compared with Lenin’s favoured centralism, where a small group of professional revolutionaries called the shots.

“In the heat of the argument Lenin accused her of anarchism, which indictment affected her so strongly that she felt physically ill,” Henderson writes in his essay.

But the tempestuous relationship would later sour as divisions grew, with Krupskaya penning “bitter missives” about her former comrade. “To me Lirochka is now an X,” she wrote. “To tell the truth, I cannot reconcile myself to her marriage.”

She was married to party organiser Konstantin Takhtarev and lived with him while in London.

What became of Yakubova on her return to Russia is not known. The last-known historical trace of Lenin’s lost love came from Takhtarev who, in 1924, described Yakubova as “my selfless friend who magnanimously sacrificed her life for the cause of the emancipation of labour.”

She is believed to have died between 1913 and 1917.

“Like so many others whose names have been erased from the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, Yakubova deserves some belated recognition,” says Dr Henderson.

• Robert Henderson’s essay will be published in Revolutionary Russia later this year. This article first appeared in the Camden New Journal.