November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Here he was, chief conspirator, and he couldn’t wait three or four days for Vorotyntsev. Why? Because before going to the Caucasian Front he had to take the cure at Kislovodsk. Mounting this conspiracy had been an uphill struggle against illness and enfeeblement.

  For four years now he had battled on, and he no longer had the strength for it. He had never recovered from that breach in 1912, from the ingratitude of the public, the way in which it turned its ugly mug away, all the betrayals …

  How many attempts like today’s had he still to make, every one of them mortally tiring? How could he manage, with only a few months in hand? He was not, after all, even at the preparation stage. Only discussing underlying principles.

  There had been a whole year of talk about conspiracy, but there was no conspiracy.

  * * *

  MAY THE DEVIL FLY AWAY WITH YOU—THESE WHEELS AREN’T GREASED!

  * * *

  [43]

  The Ulyanovs lived exactly halfway between the Cantonal Library and the City Library, and it was only slightly farther to the Center for Socialist Literature: all were between five and seven minutes away at average walking speed. They all opened at nine, but today he was driven out of the house forty minutes earlier: stupidly, humiliatingly fleeing from that shock-headed ragamuffin, Zemlyachka’s nephew, so as to spare himself, to avoid impertinent chatter which might enrage him and ruin his whole day.

  Objectively speaking, there was no avoiding such figures in émigré revolutionary circles—slovenly, vacant-looking young men with unformed minds but ever ready to pronounce on any subject, just to show that they had opinions. They were everlastingly hungry and penniless. You might think that they would try to earn a bit by copying—there was a total lack of copyists in Zurich; think of all the trouble he’d had getting his lost Imperialism copied. But no, they could neither spell nor write legibly—and anyway they all wanted nothing less than an editorship, and immediately! Their constant preoccupation was where to find a free meal. On the Ulyanovs’ budget this was an intolerable imposition: Zemlyachka’s nephew was capable of wolfing down two eggs, and four sandwiches for good measure. They had firmly banned him from the dinner table, so he started appearing early in the morning, always with some flimsy excuse—returning or borrowing a book or a newspaper, but really with an eye to breakfast. (“Whatever you do, don’t feed him,” he had told Nadya as he left the house just now. “He’ll soon stop coming.”) It wouldn’t be so bad if he meekly ate and then went away, but no, he thought it necessary to show his gratitude in a gush of pseudo-intellectual drivel, to elucidate fundamental questions and always in the same aggressive, know-it-all fashion.

  These visits, that knowing, superior smile on the face of a milksop, made Vladimir Ilyich ill for the day. In general, any unexpected upset to his daily routine, especially an uninvited and untimely guest, any pointless waste of time, so exasperated and unsettled him that he was incapable of work. Nothing was more vexatious than expending your nervous energy and your cogency in argument, not at a conference, in a pamphlet, in debate with an important party opponent, but, for no good reason, on a lout who didn’t even mean what he was saying. Most émigrés had to count their pennies, but a whole day frittered away was no loss to them. A single wasted hour made Lenin feel ill! Even if in retrospect some unforeseen meeting, conversation, or piece of business proved important and necessary, the unexpected always irritated him at the time.

  But the émigré world has its own code of behavior and you are defenseless against such visitors, you cannot simply show them the door or refuse to let them in: it would set malicious tongues wagging and seriously damage your reputation. You would instantly be accused of arrogance, lordliness, overweening conceit, “leaderism,” dictatorial pretensions … the émigré world was a nest of vicious snakes, forever writhing and hissing. So that whenever one of these impudent rogues saw fit to leave Russia—and even escaping from Siberia was the easiest thing in the world, so that everybody fled abroad, expecting to be kept at the Party’s expense—you must not only welcome him but invent something for him to do. And within a year you might find the swine actually working on some journal, though probably only one number would ever appear.

  Take that born troublemaker Evgenia Bosch. Why didn’t she go to Russia, as she was supposed to? There was absolutely nothing for her to do here, but she would try to invent something, and expected others to think up work for her. One of the plagues of émigré life was having to devise occupations for émigrés.

  Of course, once the revolution began, its ramifications would provide work for every one of these little boys and girls, indeed each of them would be indispensable, there would be only too few of them. But while there was no revolution, cramped and pinched as everyone was, these brats were unbearable.

  It was an exhausting state of affairs. How long had it been going on? Was it nine years since they had fled from Russia, fled from defeat? Sixteen since that first unhappy meeting and clash with Plekhanov? Twenty-one since that stupid bungle in Petersburg? That tormenting state of mind when every sinew craves action, when you feel that you could move mountains or continents with the energy pent up and tense inside you, but there is nothing to exert your powers upon, no fingertip contact with people, when parties, crowds, and continents will not bow to your will but chaotically, senselessly whirl and collide, not knowing where they are bound—you alone know that!—while all your energy, all your plans go for nothing, and you burn yourself out converting half a dozen Swiss youngsters in the Skittle Club. Still, even they were something. Earlier, when no one came to meetings except two Swiss, two Germans, one Pole, one Jew, and one Russian, who sat telling each other jokes, things were really bad, it was pathetic, he was ready to call it a day!

  Now that he had reached the Limmat Embankment without meeting Zemlyachka’s nephew he could assume that he was safe. His self-defensive irritation gradually subsided.

  Ragged gray clouds with whitish edges gave the day a cold, severe light.

  Big plate-glass windows encroached upon the lakefront, blatantly displaying on a background of silk and velvet all the ingenious handiwork of idleness—jewelry, perfumes, haberdashery, linen. The lackeys’ republic was flaunting its luxury, untouched by the war, as provocatively as it knew how.

  Moving away in disgust from these perverse fantasies in gold, satin, and lace (he hated the things themselves, and still more the people who loved them) Lenin waited for a tram to pass (a dog ran right in front of it but reached the other side unhurt), then crossed the road and set out along the riverbank.

  By the Münster Bridge he let a car, a hansom, and a cyclist with a long basket on his back go by. The City Library was right in front of him, and he would have liked to go in at once, but it was still closed.

  If he went on, he would have to make a detour: there was no way between the library and the water. The library building was the former Wasser-Kirche, so called because it jutted out into the water. Four hundred years ago, the resolute Zwingli had taken it away from the priests and handed it over for civic use.

  There he stood in person, before the requisitioned church, on a black marble pedestal several steps high, with his snub nose, his book, and the point of his sword resting in the space between his feet. Lenin always spared him an approving glance. True, his book was the Bible, but, all the same, for the sixteenth century he had shown splendid resolution, today’s Socialists could take a lesson from him. An excellent combination, the book and the sword. The book, with the sword as its extension.

  Clausewitz: war is politics, with the pen finally exchanged for the sword. All politics lead to war, and that is their only value.

  The river added dampness to the cold of the morning air. They said that it never froze. Somehow he always associated Russia with winter, and emigration with perpetual winterlessness. He leaned over the railings. Here, where the river mouth widened, there was an array of boats several rows deep along both banks—boats masted and unmasted, boats with cabins and
boats with tarpaulin covers. The masts were swaying.

  Kesküla was complaining that someone close to the Central Committee had stolen the money intended to pay for the publication of a pamphlet. It would have to be paid again. Outrageous!

  The water was dark, but quite clear. Gray stones could be seen on the bottom.

  The three aspects of war according to Clausewitz: the operations of reason fall to the government, free spiritual activity to the commanders, and hatred to the people.

  The neat square stones of the embankment pavement were thickly strewn with maple leaves (it was the custom not to sweep them up). That tree there—what was it?—had not yet lost its spiky cones.

  Everything was getting wildly expensive. They would soon have nothing to live on. The price of paper was rising faster than anything! Shlyapnikov was no good at all at extracting money from Gorky and from Bonch. He should wrench it out of them with pliers! Let them pay up and pay handsomely.

  All his life his mother had helped him out from family funds. On his foreign travels or in Petersburg, however much he overspent, he had never had to think of earning money. He had been able to afford a balanced diet in jail, to shorten his journey to Siberia, to avoid transit prisons. In emigration he could ask for money at any time, and by some miracle she had always managed to send it. But since the summer he had had no mother, and he would never be able to ask again.

  A flock of black ducks with white heads bobbed on the lake, suddenly took off, scuffing the water, flew low over the surface, and settled. Then they flocked together again and swam sedately back to their old place.

  But although Clausewitz seemed to have explained the basic laws of war in general, it was impossible to understand the law of the war now in progress. Or that of the war which must be started.

  Surely the Swedes at least could make him a loan! Shlyapnikov must drop a hint to Branting: it would come more naturally from him, as Russia’s representative.

  A professional revolutionary ought to be relieved of the need to worry about his livelihood. Party funds should guarantee the leading members of the Central Committee a maintenance allowance for some time to come.

  The wives of solid Swiss citizens were crumbling bread and dropping it from the big bridge.

  The ducks quickly gathered, and others—with green heads and yellow beaks—joined them. And yet others, with blue-gray plumage.

  If we are to publish in Letopis, the alliance between the Machists and the Menshevik Organizing Committee must be split. People around Gorky are intriguing against us.

  Two or three ducks skimmed the lake, chasing each other and churning the water with wings and feet.

  To think that he must look to Gorky for money and, what was more, humble himself before that incredibly spineless shilly-shallier, beg his forgiveness for assailing Kautsky, discard the most telling and enjoyable knocks in the whole book just to please him.

  What would be nice now would be to go for a brisk row. They’d often talked about it, but never gotten around to it. Now it would have to wait till spring. Walking and scrambling about in the mountains or tramping the streets of Zurich were the only ways Lenin had of dissipating and soothing the ache of unused muscles. But he still felt it in his shoulders and the best thing for that was rowing.

  Another great worry was the loss of his Imperialism, sent off in manuscript last summer. The most mysterious thing about it was that a responsible post office could find no clue as to how it had vanished. The British censorship had become ridiculous, and the French had lost all shame, so that it was not surprising if Imperialism had attracted attention—its author was no longer an ordinary émigré, one of the thousands here in Switzerland whom the police ignored. Perhaps he was already under surveillance? Perhaps he was being watched at this very moment, here on the embankment? His position was precarious. At the first—or anyway the second—hint from the Russian or the French ambassador he might be hauled before a military court or deported from Switzerland for infringing its neutrality. They would only have to listen in from a neighboring table to one speech at the Skittle Club.

  He stretched himself and trudged on downstream along the railings, near the water’s edge, looking like the neediest of Zurich’s inhabitants with his shabby bowler hat, his threadbare coat, and his waterproof shopping bag (his, though, held notebooks, abstracts, clippings). Reaching the big bridge, he patiently let pass someone’s opulent phaeton, a slow four-horse dray, and a one-horse tram with three big plate-glass windows and a uniformed driver up in front.

  He would, therefore, have to burn dangerous drafts, give all important documents to respectable Swiss citizens for safekeeping, start signing himself “Frei” again, or something like that, and on occasion use invisible ink, even for letters between Zurich, Bern, and Geneva. All this in a neutral country! Just like at home, under the noses of the police … And Imperialism, written out all over again, must be done up in the covers of a book so that it would get through.

  He crossed the big bridge and came out on the broad paved path along the lake, which was also unswept and carpeted with brown maple leaves.

  The air from this wider water was stronger, fresher, colder.

  Swans, white and gray, were floating there. Or rather, not floating but sitting statuesquely on the water. In the shallows, now one, now another of them dipped its head to peck at something in the depths, its white behind sticking up, its feet treading the air. Then it lengthily shook the water from its snaky neck.

  Behind, to the left, a pale sun was peeping from beyond the Opera House. But it was a cold sun, its light held no warmth.

  It was soothing, all this water. All this space. The pressure in his chest eased. It was only when it released him that he realized how hard pressed and harassed he normally was.

  The broad expanse of the lake. Scattered about it, fishermen rode at anchor. On the other side, and to the left, the elongated, gently sloping wooded bulk of the Uetliberg stretched to the far end of the lake. There were white spots on it in places: a light snow had fallen on the high ground and had not melted.

  A spacious lake, reminding him of Geneva.

  The fresh, lapping waves of Lake Geneva would stay in his memory as long as he lived. That was where he had suffered the greatest disaster in his life: the shattering of his idol.

  How young he had been, how full of youthful rapture, how infatuated when he had come to Switzerland for that first meeting with Plekhanov, to seek his recognition. It was then, sending “Volgin” (Plekhanov) his declaration of friendship before leaving Munich, that he had first thought of signing himself “Lenin.” All that was needed was that the old man should control his vanity, that one great river should acknowledge the other, so that together they could encompass all Russia.

  Young men full of vigor, who had served their time in Siberia, escaped great dangers, and broken out of Russia, were bringing these elderly, distinguished revolutionaries their plans for Iskra, for a journal, for working side by side together to fan the flames of revolution! It was incredible in retrospect, but he had still believed in a general reunification, including the Economists, had even defended Kautsky against Plekhanov. It sounded like a bad joke! They had naïvely supposed that all Marxists stood for the same things and could work in harmony. They had seen themselves as bearers of glad tidings: we, the young, are continuing what you began.

  They had run up against something different: a calculating concern with retaining power, remaining in command. The Iskra plan and the fanning of flames in Russia were matters of complete indifference to Plekhanov: all he wanted was to be sole leader. So he had cunningly represented Lenin as a comic conciliator, an opportunist, and himself as a rock-hard revolutionary. And he had taught Lenin where the advantage lay in a schism: the one who calls for a split is always on firmer ground.

  How could he ever forget that night in the village of Vésenaz, when he and Potresov had disembarked from the Geneva steamer like whipped schoolboys, smarting and humiliated, when they had pac
ed the village from end to end in the darkness, shouting their resentment, seething, ashamed of themselves—and all around them over the mountains and the lake an electric storm had walked the night sky, without breaking out in rain. They were so outraged that at moments they almost burst into tears. And an infernal chill had descended on his heart.

  On that bitter night Vladimir Ulyanov was born again. Only since that night had he become what he was, become his true self.

  This harsh lesson Lenin took to heart, never to forget it. He would never believe anyone again, never let sentiment tinge his dealings with others.

  Somebody nearby started feeding the gulls, and they shot up from the water, greedily, impatiently swooping and wheeling, catching the bread in midair, screaming, fighting, even venturing onto the parapet, flying almost into the faces of Lenin and his neighbors. He waved one of them away and walked on.

  How memory catches at chance coincidences, sentimental associations. Lake Geneva again, nothing more, had been between them before they had known each other, when he was beginning to come into his own, receiving the delegates to the Second Congress, carefully studying each one, testing him out, making a bid for his support, and she was bearing her fifth child, to a husband younger than herself, and also reading for the first time The Development of Capitalism by somebody named Ilin, with no idea of what lay ahead.

  Five years went by, and they still did not know each other, although she had been in Geneva several times. It was in Geneva too, at an unforgettable performance of La Dame aux Camélias, that he had been pierced with anguish, had first doubted the meaning of his life. At that very time her husband lay dying in Davos. Then, only a few months later, in Paris, she had come to him.