Thus Lenin was trying to foment the ‘European socialist revolution’ with a secret financial allowance from people he publicly denounced as German imperialists. The relationship was perfectly logical for him. His aim was to bring about capitalism’s overthrow and the sole criterion for any action was whether it would strengthen the cause of Revolution. The spreading of Bolshevik ideas in Russia and in German POW camps fell into this category. The only snag was that his machinations had to be kept strictly confidential. Indeed any breach of secrecy would have finished him off politically just months before the February 1917 Revolution – and twentieth-century history would have been very different.
Through the rest of 1916 and the beginning of the following year he repeated his song that Revolution was ‘ripe’. It was ‘imminent’; it was ‘growing’. Time was on the side of those who held to ‘orthodox’ Marxist precepts and put them into practice by subverting capitalist governments. Lenin did not think that ‘European socialist revolution’, whenever it occurred, would happen overnight. He stressed that there might be countries whose capitalists would fend off the revolutionary assault. There might be a Second World War and even a Third. This was an unusual idea among his far-left socialists; indeed there was no one else in European politics who expressed it. But Lenin, despite being a firebrand, took Revolution very seriously. He felt in his bones that he lived in a revolutionary epoch. Epochs could be very lengthy. Epochs could involve a tangled sequence of events. Epochs could include setbacks as well as advances. Lenin was preparing himself for the long struggle. He knew that the future, both for him and for his party, would require adaptability, perceptiveness and endurance. Above all, endurance. But about the correctness of his fundamental strategy Lenin had not the slightest doubt.
His firmness of purpose was surprising to acquaintances who did not know his granite-like character. As the year 1916 drew to a close, Lenin was forty-six. He was a man of intellectual and practical talent, and yet he had never had the impact on his country’s affairs that his talent could have facilitated. He was a leading Russian Marxist and was known in the Second Socialist International in Europe as well as in the Okhrana offices in Petrograd. He had written books and pamphlets and was a prolific journalist; Russian encyclopaedias contained brief entries on him. But his followers in the Russian Empire were a dwindling group in the Great War. Even his sister Anna questioned his political judgement. His contact with Bolsheviks in the Russian local committees was getting ever more slender; and the man who had preached Revolution to Marxists at home and abroad was reduced to seeking consolation in Hegel and Aristotle. There was hardly a Russian worker outside the narrow confines of the party who even knew his name. For such a man to emerge as the ruler of Russia the situation had to undergo fundamental change. He needed not only his firmness of purpose and his talent but also an access of good fortune. And this is precisely what occurred in the following year.
PART THREE
SEIZING POWER
Entre nous: if they bump me off, I would ask you to publish my notebook, ‘Marxism on the State’ (it’s held up in Stockholm). A navy-blue bound folder. There’s a collection of all the citations from Marx and Engels as well as from Kautsky against Pannekoek.
Lenin in summer 1917
15. ANOTHER COUNTRY
February to April 1917
At the end of February 1917 the political eruption took place that Lenin had long predicted. Revolution came to Petrograd. Industrial strikes had been occurring for some days, starting with action by women textile workers. The trouble had quickly spread to the labour-force of the Putilov metallurgical plant and the police proved incapable of keeping control. When the guards regiments were called out, the revolutionary groups in the capital – Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries – were reluctant to organise street demonstrations. The Okhrana had crushed strikes in late 1915 and late 1916, and there seemed no reason why this would not happen again.
But the popular mood was implacable. Workers were aggrieved by the deteriorating conditions in the factories and by the food shortages. The government, moreover, could no longer rely upon the troops in the capital’s garrisons to suppress political protest. Gradually the revolutionaries regained their confidence. Down the Nevski Prospekt in the centre of Petrograd marched the demonstrators: no one any longer dared to oppose them. Out of the shadows came the leaders of the Fourth State Duma, which had recently been prorogued by Nicholas II; they formed a confidential committee and hoped to be able to exploit events before they ran out of control. Nicholas II was not in Petrograd but at military headquarters in Mogilëv and all this information threw him into panic. The Mensheviks meanwhile re-formed a Petrograd Soviet and campaigned for a republic. By then the socialist parties sensed that the moment of Revolution had arrived. The Emperor tried to abdicate in favour of his haemophiliac son Alexei; but it was not to be. On 2 March he saw that the game was up and abdicated in favour first of his son and then of his brother Mikhail. This concession was inadequate for the rebels and power passed to the leaders of the dispersed State Duma. The Romanov dynasty which had ruled Russia since 1613 had been overthrown.
When the news about the seriousness of the situation came through to Zurich, it took the Russian emigrants by surprise. The reports from Petrograd had been turning a spotlight upon the troubles in their country, yet it was impossible for revolutionaries abroad to judge whether the final crisis of tsarism had arrived. Lenin was no different from his fellow émigrés; he waited patiently to see what would happen. Thus it came about that he was prepring to set off for the library in the normal fashion after lunch, leaving Nadya behind to clear the table and do the washing up.1
Hotfoot to 14 Spiegelgasse came a comrade, M. G. Bronski, who had read in the Swiss newspapers that Revolution – the Revolution, the long-awaited Revolution, the glorious Revolution against the Romanovs – was occurring. The telegrams had arrived that morning. Bronski was astonished that the Lenins had not yet heard: ‘Don’t you know anything?!’ Lenin and Nadya hastened to the side of the lake where they would be able to check Bronski’s story against the contents of newspapers pasted on boards for public display. Perhaps, they surmised, Bronski had been exaggerating. All the emigrants wanted a revolutionary eruption so badly that they guarded themselves against casually believing that it was occurring. But this time the story was true. Both the Swiss newspapers and the telegrams from Petrograd had the same message. Stunned and delighted, Lenin and Nadya read the reports several times to themselves.2 There really could be no doubt: Revolution had occurred. This time there were not merely the signs of a monarchy under pressure; the monarchy had been blown away. Nicholas II, whose father had shown no clemency towards Lenin’s brother Alexander and whose whole family was detested by Lenin, had become citizen Romanov.
The rest of the day was spent in a hubbub of meetings with fellow emigrants in Zurich. Hands were shaken, congratulations were exchanged, revolutionary songs were sung – and Lenin loved to exercise his baritone voice on such occasions. Nadezhda Konstantinovna lost herself in the celebrations to such an extent that she could remember nothing about them.
Sharing in the delight, Lenin wanted to supply what leadership he could to the Bolsheviks at work in Russia. This could not be done directly: he had to dispatch messages through Alexandra Kollontai in Oslo, who maintained links with the Central Committee in Petrograd. On 3 March 1917 he composed a telegram affirming the need for Bolsheviks to stick by their old slogans. Lenin warned against any change of party policy on the war. On no account should socialists allow themselves to approve of ‘the defence of the fatherland’. Reunification with the Mensheviks should be rejected. The Bolsheviks needed their own separate party. The objective should be ‘international proletarian revolution and the conquest of power by “Soviets of workers’ deputies”’. He did not fail to mention that no compromise was tolerable with Kautsky.3 This was quite a political summons; it was a gauntlet thrown at the feet of the Provisional Government. Len
in was not going to accept the right of Milyukov, Guchkov and Kerenski (who he had predicted a year previously would try to form a governmental coalition) to govern Russia. His language was unmistakably insurrectionary. Let the soviets assume power! Let the Revolution spread beyond Russia! Let every true socialist promote the revolutionary cause across Europe!
Lenin did not bother to consult with the other Bolshevik emigrants. More than that: he wrote without any detailed knowledge of what was happening in Russia. Quite wrongly, he thought that Nicholas II was organising a counter-revolution; and his preoccupation with Kautsky showed how out of touch he was with the wishes of Petrograd workers. But Lenin was a leader. He offered whatever guidance he could, and Kollontai telegraphed by return of post with a request for further directives. Steadily he clarified his intentions in his messages to her and to the Bureau of the Central Committee, even though he had no idea how they were being received in Russia.
He did not intend to repeat the mistake of 1905, when he had returned to Russia months after the revolutionary turmoil began. But this time a war cut through the central zone of Europe. He could not cross to Russia through France and the North Sea without the permission of the Allies, and this would never be forthcoming. To have tried to enter Russia via the Mediterranean was similarly unfeasible. The Turks were unpredictable and Russian revolutionaries might not have been allowed free transit. And so Lenin had to contemplate alternatives. His most imaginative thought was to dress up as a deaf-and-dumb Swede and take the train across Germany to Denmark and then make his way to Finland and eventually to Petrograd. Nadya dissuaded him, pointing out that he would inevitably blabber about the Mensheviks in his sleep and be discovered. His other ideas were equally madcap. At one point, for example, he proposed to charter a plane – then an unreliable mode of transport – to the other side of the eastern front. But he would not drop the plan until someone mentioned that no flying machine could yet travel such a distance and that anyway the artillery of the Central Powers would shoot him down.
Yet sound alternatives were few, and indeed there was only one that was worth exploring. This was the idea put forward by Martov that the Russian socialists in Switzerland should seek permission from the German government for their passage across Germany in return for the Russian Provisional Government releasing an equal number of German and Austrian nationals interned in Russia. Robert Grimm negotiated with the German consul in Bern, Gisbert von Romberg, on behalf of the Russians. Quickly Grimm gained a positive response from Berlin. The only further requirement was the Provisional Government’s formal approval, but the problem was that Russian Foreign Minister Pavel Milyukov objected. Martov declined to implement the plan until such time as the Petrograd Soviet had pressed Milyukov into conceding permission.
But Lenin would not be put off. Quite unfairly blaming Grimm for incompetence, he turned to one of Grimm’s Swiss far-left socialist opponents, Fritz Platten, for help. Platten agreed to go and see Romberg with a proposal formulated by Lenin and Zinoviev. Romberg immediately secured his Foreign Ministry’s sanction for any number of Russian political emigrants to cross Germany by train and for such a train to have extraterritorial status during the journey; he also confirmed that his government would make no demand for the release of German prisoners-of-war in exchange.4 Lenin was ecstatic and immediately planned the details with Zinoviev. Thirty-two travellers would make the trip and Lenin and Zinoviev stipulated that all of them should pay their own fares: no subsidy from the Germans would be allowed. The trip would not be restricted to Bolsheviks. For example, a female leading member of the Jewish Bund was welcomed as a passenger with her four-year-old son Robert. The schedule called for the travellers to make their way to Zurich and assemble at the Zähringerhof Hotel on 27 March. From there they would take a local train up to the border. Such was Lenin’s appreciation of Platten’s intervention with Romberg that he asked him to act as the travelling party’s intermediary for the entire journey. Thus Lenin would have no need to talk to a single German between Switzerland and Denmark.
Nadezhda Konstantinovna argued that he would have to travel ahead of her. How, she asked, could she possibly do everything in time? She knew that it would be her responsibility to pack the Bolshevik correspondence archive, gather their suitcases of belongings, organise their bank accounts and make arrangements for people to keep in touch with them in Russia. She was also upset at having to leave her mother’s ashes, and wanted to wait until she had collected them.5 But Lenin would have none of this. Nadezhda Konstantinovna, he insisted, should come along with him. The Revolution awaited them. The main thing was to get on to the train with their basic possessions as well as pillows and blankets for the journey in the traditional Russian fashion. In the meantime the travellers should ignore the jibes made at them by other emigrants.
The day came, and Lenin and the rest of the travellers walked from the Zähringerhof Hotel to Zurich railway station. Then followed the trip to Schaffhausen on the Swiss side of the border. The German train already stood there for them. After getting on board, they travelled on to the customs point at the hamlet of Thayngen. There they were deprived of some of the food they had brought with them since the amount was greater than the legal limit; the Swiss officials allowed them to send the confiscated chocolate and sugar to relatives and friends. Thereafter they moved across the Alps and over the border to Gottmadingen in Germany. The train halted there and an order was given for the Russian emigrants to be isolated from the rest of the travelling public and escorted to a waiting room. Two German army officers introduced themselves before instructing the Russian emigrants to form separate groups of men and women. The emigrants panicked at this, thinking that something awful was about to happen to the men. A protective ring was formed around Lenin as the Bolshevik leader. But German officers explained that they simply wished to accelerate the business of form-filling before the train could leave the station.6 The travellers then boarded the train and took their reserved places in the II–III-class carriage, and the train left Gottmadingen on its momentous journey.
The protocol for the journey had been drawn up beforehand. The two German officers were instructed to stay in the rear of the carriage behind a line drawn in chalk dividing ‘German’ from ‘Russian’ territory. Seals were affixed to three of the doors to the carriage; but the fourth, which was adjacent to the sleeping compartment of the German officers, was left unlocked. Thus the passengers were not really barred off from the world as they travelled and the famous ‘sealed train’ is a misnomer. Indeed they spoke to people who came into the train en route. This happened because Platten got off in Frankfurt to buy beer and newspapers and asked some soldiers to take them on board for him. Several railway workers joined the soldiers, and the irrepressible Radek had a rare old time inciting them to make a revolution in Germany. What was less acceptable to Lenin was the permission given by the German government for the German trade union leader Wilhelm Janson to get on board in Stuttgart. The emigrants held a brief discussion and told Platten to tell Janson that they would not meet him. They had taken quite enough risks already and did not want reports to reach Russia that they had spoken to enemy citizens on enemy territory.7
All this increased the tension. Lenin’s nerves – never very relaxed at the best of times – were tautened by the behaviour of his fellow passengers. He and Nadya had been prevailed upon to take a separate coupé so that he could get on with his writing. The problem was that the neighbouring coupé was occupied by Radek, Grigori Safarov, Olga Ravich (Safarov’s young wife) and Inessa Armand. The din they made was incessant. When they were not singing, they were laughing at Radek’s jokes. Lenin could bear it no longer and, late into the night, burst into their coupé and hauled out Olga Ravich.8 This was the first case of Bolshevik revolutionary injustice in 1917, for the real noise-maker was not Ravich but Radek. But Lenin could pick on her with greater licence because of her youth, gender and lack of political influence; and it is no surprise that he refrained from laying hands
on Inessa: too many deep waters of emotion would have been disturbed. Anyway, Lenin had overstepped the mark: the coupé’s occupants defended Ravich and Lenin had to back off.
Lenin refused to retreat, however, on the question of toilet usage. Radek and the other cigarette smokers avoided lighting up in their compartments out of consideration for fellow passengers who did not smoke. They smoked instead in the toilet. This had the effect of creating a queue down the corridor and, to put it delicately, induced considerable physical discomfort. On Lenin’s initiative a system of rationing was introduced for toilet access. For this purpose he cut up some paper and issued them as tickets on his authority. There were two types of ticket, one for the normal use of the toilet and the other for a discreet puff on a cigarette. This compelled smokers to limit the number of times they smoked, and quickly the disputes in the queue subsided. It was a comic little episode. Yet, without overdoing the point, we might note that Lenin’s intervention was typical of his operational assumptions. He thought that the socialist way of organising society required above all a centrally co-ordinated system of assessing needs, allocating products and services and regulating implementation. Lenin after the October Revolution went further and banned those activities of which he disapproved. But on the journey across Germany he reined himself back. Smokers could indulge themselves so long as they did it rarely and confined themselves to the toilet.
Lenin: A Biography Page 34
