Nadezhda Krupskaya developed her political work through teaching adults in St. Petersburg's workers' evening schools during the 1890s. In Marxist circles she met Vladimir Lenin and helped organize revolutionary activity. Arrest and internal exile took her to Siberia, where they married. Her early pamphlet The Woman Worker examined the circumstances of women as wage earners and mothers, connecting education with political emancipation.

From 1901 she worked abroad as an organizer and editorial secretary for Iskra and other revolutionary publications. She maintained correspondence, linked activists across borders, and helped sustain the party's underground network. She also studied educational theory and wrote about schools and coeducation. After returning to Russia in 1917, she entered the People's Commissariat for Education, developing adult education and political instruction alongside the new government's educational program.

Krupskaya promoted literacy, public libraries, and access to books, while also taking part in a system that restricted material considered politically unsuitable. She helped direct political education and supported youth organizations and practical schooling. Following Lenin's death in 1924 she initially opposed aspects of Stalin's leadership before yielding publicly to the party majority. She became deputy commissar for education in 1929 and remained in that role until her death in 1939, while publishing educational works and recollections of Lenin.