The ultra-cautious Lenin had several such lines of communication.
Last summer, after meeting Parvus in Bern, Lenin had released Hanecki to join him in Scandinavia, as director of his agency for trade and revolution. However, the line between Copenhagen and Zurich was down, so they had chosen a new intermediary—Sklarz, a Berlin businessman, who also had shares in Parvus’s agency and could travel freely both to Denmark and to Switzerland. They had, however, agreed that when he came to Zurich he should follow the rules about intermediate links and not meet Lenin personally, but use Bronski’s lady friend, Dora Dolina, as his go-between. The fact that he had come to Lenin’s lodgings in person meant either a breach of conspiratorial discipline or that something extraordinarily important had happened.
How untimely it was, though! Lenin was exhausted, he could not think clearly, his heartbeat was irregular. But since Sklarz had come, since he had been seen on the street, on the stairs, at the door, it was too late to turn him away.
To greet Sklarz he had not merely to rise from the bed but, with his enfeebled legs, to project his hollow body upward from the bottom of a well. And only then, with his head thrust forward, could he see the energetic little Galician Jew.
Very conscious of his own importance he was, too, more expensively dressed than ever—that overcoat, that hat (he had placed it on the one and only desk-cum-dining table, but still, there was nowhere else), and he was holding a light traveling salesman’s case made of crocodile skin or maybe hippopotamus hide.
At least he refrained from the ritual German “Wie geht’s?” and the forced how-nice-to-see-you smile. He gave a businesslike bow and extended his little hand with dignity. He looked around to see that it was safe, that there were no witnesses. Nadya had left the room, and they were alone.
Why, though, had he come straight there and in person?
Here it came. From a deep inner pocket he produced an envelope.
Expensive pale green paper, with an embossed crest. A fat envelope, a positively obese one.
How shamelessly Parvus displayed his wealth even in little things! This envelope, for instance. And on his visits to Zurich he stayed in the most expensive hotel, Baur au Lac. In Bern he had ambled about a cheap student canteen (dinner sixty-five rappen) in search of Lenin, puffing the most expensive of cigars.
To think that this was the man with whom in Munich long ago he had started Iskra.
All right, he had a letter. But why couldn’t he have sent Dora with it? These lightning visits had to be explained to comrades.
Sklarz was surprised to find Herr Ulyanov so ill educated. That was no way to do business. He had been told to destroy the letter before leaving.
His finger went through the motions of striking a match and holding it to the envelope.
Tell me something I don’t know. What d’you think we do? The letters we’ve burned in our time! …
All right, let’s read it. A familiar situation for anyone in the underground. Lenin too would have to ensure that his reply, once read, was not preserved. One such scrap of paper could destroy a whole political career.
Neither knife nor scissors was handy. The table was bare. And Nadya was in the kitchen. Tearing off one corner, Lenin inserted his thick index finger and used it as a paper knife. It left jagged edges like dog’s teeth on both sides of the tear. So much for you and your blasted money! How much pleasanter to handle the cheapest of envelopes, to write on the cheapest paper.
He took out the letter. That’s why it was so fat, because the paper was even thicker and more opulent than the envelope. And the letter was written in bold capitals, with wide spaces between the lines, and on one side only. Now here was the way not to do business. Parvus had forgotten how they used to send Iskra into Russia on super-thin paper.
Careful. He must pull himself together, clear his mind. (He had eaten nothing since breakfast time.) Must examine it thoroughly.
Sklarz made himself unobtrusive. He was not troublesomely familiar. Without superfluous talk, without even removing his coat, he went over to the other chair, by the window, leaving, however, his soft gray hat with its elegantly dented crown on the table.
He did not carry his case over to the window either but put it down on the floor in the middle of the room.
Polite of him, of course, but on a dull day the best place for reading was over by the window. Sklarz, however, had already occupied the other chair, taken a crumpled illustrated magazine out of his pocket, and solemnly unfolded it.
Should he light the lamp? No matches in sight. And Nadya was in the kitchen.
But the lamp was already lit! It was half hidden by the hat, and its wick was turned all the way down. Had Nadya lit it? He didn’t remember her doing so. Perhaps Sklarz really had struck a match? Could he have …? Strange.
Thick vellum, crested. Three pages of writing altogether. And a fourth, empty except for one line.
There was nothing special about Parvus’s handwriting—it was not noticeably hostile, or imperious, or impertinent, and his signature, “Dr. Helphand,” was unrevealing.
But Parvus’s hippopotamus blood spurted from the letter into Lenin’s feverish hands, poured into his veins, swirled threateningly in his bloodstream. To prevent it from rising above his elbows Lenin dropped the letter on the table as though it were heavy. And flopped down helplessly on his chair.
In twenty years of life and struggle Lenin had experienced every kind of opponent—the haughtily ironical, the sarcastic, the sly, the base, the obstinate, the persistent, not to mention the spluttering-rhetorical, the quixotic, the effete, the slow-witted, the lachrymose, and other miscellaneous shits. With some of them he had been engaged for many years on end, and not all of them had he sent flying, laid out with a blow, but he had always been aware of the immeasurable superiority given to him by his clear view of the situation, his firm grip, his ability to floor any of them sooner or later.
With this man alone he felt unsure of himself. He did not know whether he could stand up to Parvus as an enemy.
But there had hardly been a day of enmity between them. He was Lenin’s natural ally, had offered an alliance many times in his life, insistently, importunately, last year in particular, and now of course was doing it again.
But alliance with Parvus was something which Lenin had hardly ever been able to accept.
He read. His eyes moved along the lines, but somehow his head would not take in the meaning. He was too unwell.
Lenin knew the key to open every Social Democrat in the world, knew the shelf to put him on. But Parvus would not open, would not be put anywhere, and he stood across Lenin’s path. Parvus did not fit into any classification. He had never joined either Bolsheviks or Mensheviks (and had even naïvely attempted to reconcile them). He was a Russian revolutionary, but at nineteen he had come here to Switzerland from Odessa, and immediately chosen the Western path, decided to become a purely Western Socialist and never return to Russia. He had said jokingly, “I’m looking for a homeland which doesn’t cost too much.” All the same, he hadn’t found himself a cheap one, but had knocked about Europe for twenty-five years like the Wandering Jew, never acquiring citizenship. It was only this year that he had finally become a German subject—but at too high a price.
His eyes happened to fall on Sklarz’s case. It was so heavy, so tightly packed. How did he lug it about? He was so small himself. Why did he need it?
Ah, that was why he didn’t seem to be able to read—there wasn’t enough light.
Two points at the end were clear enough. Both complaints. One against Bukharin and Pyatakov for their overzealous investigation of the German network in Sweden: these silly little boys must not be allowed to get out of hand. The other against Shlyapnikov: he is very self-willed, refuses to collaborate, goes his own way, although unity is essential to our forces in Petersburg. Write and tell him not to rebuff our representatives.
He called himself Parvus—"little”—but was indisputably big. He had become one of t
he outstanding publicists in the German Social Democratic Party. His capacity for work was no less than that of Lenin. He had written brilliant Marxist articles, which had delighted Bebel, Kautsky, Liebknecht, Rosa, and Lenin himself (how he had lambasted Bernstein!), and had brought the young Trotsky under his sway. Then he had suddenly abandoned his newspapers and the position he had won for himself in the journalistic world, and fled, first to peddle Gorky’s plays (and of course rob him), then to sink out of sight altogether. His vision was keen and far-reaching. He had been the first, back in the nineteenth century, to start the fight for the eight-hour day, the first to hail the general strike as the main method of struggle for the proletariat. But it could hardly be said that any proposal of his had started a movement, won him followers: instead of organizing them he would detach himself and drop out after a while. He had to be first, and alone, on the road he followed.
Lenin had now read the letter all the way through, without even noticing whether it was written in Russian or in German. It alternated between the two from sentence to sentence. There were spelling mistakes in the Russian.
Parvus was full of contradictions. A desperate revolutionary, whose hand would not tremble while overthrowing an empire; and a passionate trader, whose hand trembled as it counted out money. At one time he went around in broken shoes and shiny trousers, but back in Munich in 1901 he was forever dinning into Lenin the need to get rich, the immense power of money. Earlier still, back in Odessa, while Aleksandr III was still on the throne, he had come to the conclusion that the liberation of the Jews in Russia was impossible until Tsardom was overthrown—and immediately lost all interest in Russian affairs, left for the West, returning clandestinely only once, as the companion of a doctor specializing in the study of famine, after which he had published Starving Russia: A Traveler’s Impressions. Then he seemed to have immersed himself completely in German Social Democracy. But at the very beginning of the Japanese war, which was almost ignored in Geneva émigré circles, Parvus had been the first to declare it “the bloody dawn of great events.”
There was not enough light. He kept screwing up the wick, but it only smoldered and smoked. Of course, it was empty, she’d forgotten to put kerosene in it.
There and then, in 1904, Parvus had prophesied that the industrial states would end up waging a world war. Parvus invariably leapt or, rather, with his unwieldy bulk, stepped forward to prophesy earlier, and farther into the future, than anyone else. Sometimes his predictions were very accurate, as, for instance, that industry would destroy national boundaries, or that in the future revolution would be the inseparable companion of war, and world revolution of world war. He had, in essence, said before Lenin all that there was to be said about imperialism. Sometimes, though, he talked the wildest nonsense: about Europe as a whole declining and being caught in a vise between America and Russia; about Russia needing only schools and freedom to become a second America. Another time, showing scant respect for the central tenets of Marxism, he had suggested that private industry should not be nationalized, because it might prove unprofitable. Then there was his grotesque fantasy about the possibility of a socialist party winning power and turning it against the majority of the people, suppressing the trade unions. But, right or wrong, his massive, elephantine figure always moved to a position so distinctive that he half blocked the Social Democratic horizon: though he had never wholly blocked the true path, he had always been so much in Lenin’s way that there was no passing him without collision. Never an opponent, always an ally, but one who, if you were not careful, might crush your ribs. He was, uniquely, incomparably, Lenin’s rival—and more often than not successful, always ahead. Yet in no way his enemy, always extending the hand of an ally—but it was quite impossible to take it.
What did Sklarz want with that case? It looked as big as a pig.
Things might have gone very differently between them, but for 1905. Lenin had taken no part at all in the 1905 revolution, done absolutely nothing—entirely because of Parvus: Parvus with his heavy and unerring tread, never straying for a moment, had filled the road ahead, and robbed Lenin of the will to go forward, of all initiative. At the first thunderclap of Bloody Sunday, Parvus had made his proclamation: Set up a workers’ government! His quick-sightedness, his impetuosity had taken even Lenin’s breath away: surely decisions could not be taken so swiftly and simply! And he had retorted in Vperyod that Parvus’s slogan was premature and dangerous, that they must act in alliance with the petty bourgeoisie, with the revolutionary democrats, because the proletariat was too weak! But Parvus and Trotsky had scrawled a hasty pamphlet and flung it at the Geneva émigrés, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks alike, as a challenge: Russia had no experience with parliaments, the bourgeoisie was feeble, the bureaucratic hierarchy was insignificant, the peasantry was ignorant and unorganized, so that the proletariat had no alternative but to take command of the revolution. Those Social Democrats who recoiled from the initiative of the proletariat would become an insignificant sect.
The whole Geneva émigré community, however, had stayed lethargically where it was, as though to make this prophecy come true—all except Trotsky, who rushed to Kiev, then to Finland, drawing closer to make his jump, and Parvus, who charged in at the first signal of the October general strike, which, once again, he had been prophesying back in the last century. Neither Bolsheviks nor Mensheviks, these two were free from all discipline, and fellows in audacity.
Yes, it was the size of a large pig. Its swelling bulk blocked the whole room. While Sklarz, by the window, seemed surely to have grown smaller?
It’s not something I could put on paper, or say at the most restricted conference—but yes, I did make a mistake. Belief in yourself, political maturity, skill in assessing situations, all come to you gradually, with age and experience. (Though Parvus was only three years older.) Yes, I made a mistake, I was shortsighted, and I wasn’t bold enough. (But you must not talk like that even to your closest supporter, or you may rob him of his faith in his leader.) Yet how could he have avoided making this mistake? The months had dragged by in that year of turmoil and confusion, everything was in ferment, there was thunder in the air, but it never looked like real revolution was going to break out. There in Geneva, still unable to travel, he was filled with indignation: couldn’t those dolts back home get a move on, couldn’t they start a proper revolution? He wrote letter after letter to Russia: energy is what is needed, frantic energy! You’ve been babbling about bombs for half a year now and haven’t made a single one! Let everyone arm himself at once as best he can—with a revolver, a knife, a gasoline-soaked rag for starting fires, anything! The combat groups should not hesitate, there would be no special military training. Let each group begin training itself—if only by beating up policemen! Or by killing a plainclothesman! Or blowing up a police station! Or attacking a bank! These attacks, of course, might degenerate into reckless extremism, but never mind! A few dozen casualties would be handsomely repaid if the Party gained hundreds of experienced fighters!
No, his tired mind would not take in this untimely letter. He read on, understanding nothing.
… It had all seemed so obvious. Knuckle-dusters! Clubs! Gasoline-soaked rags! Spades! Guncotton! Barbed wire! Nails (for use against mounted police)! These were all weapons, and good ones! If one Cossack is accidentally cut off from the rest, attack and take his sword from him! Climb to the upper stories of buildings and rain stones down on the troops! Pour boiling water on them! Keep acid up there to pour on the police!
Parvus and Trotsky had done none of these things, but merely arrived in Petersburg, issued a proclamation, and convened a new organ of government: the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. They asked no one’s permission, and nobody hindered them. A pure workers’ government! Already in session! Although they had arrived a mere two weeks before the others, they had taken control of everything. The chairman of the Soviet was their man of straw, Nosar; its outstanding orator and general favorite, Trotsky; while its inventor, Parvus,
directed it from behind the scenes. They had taken over the struggling Russian Gazette, which sold for one kopeck and was popular in style and tone, and suddenly its sales rose to half a million and the ideas of the two friends flowed out to the masses.
Over by the window, Sklarz had slid lower in his chair, shrunk till he looked like a little bird with its beak buried in a picture paper.
During those last days in Geneva, Lenin’s pen had raced to spell out the whole theory and practice of revolution, as he had learned it in libraries from the best French authorities. He had kept up a rapid fire of letters to Russia. They needed to know how large a combat group should be (from three to thirty people), how to maintain communication with Party military committees, how to choose the best places for street fighting, where to store bombs and stones. They must find out where the arsenals were, and the working routine in government offices and banks, get to know people who could help them to infiltrate and take over … To begin an attack under favorable conditions was not just the right but the direct duty of any revolutionary. Fighting the Black Hundreds would be a splendid baptism of fire: beat them up, kill them, blow up their headquarters!
He had gone to Russia on the heels of his last letter, and found things there very different. No combat groups were being formed, no one was laying in acid, bombs, or stones. He found instead that even the bourgeois came to listen to the Soviet, with Trotsky on the platform spinning and whirling and coruscating like a Catherine wheel. He and Parvus, as though born for a life in the public eye, dazzled all Petersburg—the editorial offices, the political salons—they were invited everywhere and received with applause. There was even a group of people calling themselves “Parvusites.” Instead of sneaking around corners with gasoline-soaked rags, Parvus was preparing a collected edition of his works, Parvus was buying up tickets for satirical shows and distributing them to friends. A fine revolution, if in the evening there was no measured tread of patrols on deserted pavements and theater doors were open wide …
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