The Plan was to concentrate all their potential, all their forces, all their resources under a single command, to control from a single headquarters the activities of the Central Powers, the Russian revolutionaries, and the border peoples. (He knew the strength of this ox, and he had chosen his ax to match it.)
No uncoordinated, private improvisations. The Plan was insistent that German victory could never be final without a revolution in Russia: until it was carved up, Russia would remain an unabated menace. The Russian fortress, however, could not be destroyed by any one of these forces in isolation, but only by a single-minded alliance of all three. There must be a simultaneous explosion of social revolution and national revolution, with German financial and material support. His experience with the 1905 revolution—as its author he should know, and what induced the imperial government to take their adviser seriously was that he was no mere footloose businessman but the father of the first revolution—made it clear that all the symptoms were recurring, that all the conditions for revolution were still in being, and that it would indeed proceed more quickly in conditions of world war, but only if it were given a skillful push, only if the catastrophe were speeded up by action from outside. The Putilov, Obukhov, and Baltic plants in Petersburg and the shipyards at Nikolaev would be made ready to serve as centers of social revolution (the author had particularly strong links with southern Russia). The date was set—one which already had a painful significance in Russia, the anniversary of Bloody Sunday—in the first place for a one-day strike in memory of the victims, and a single street demonstration in support of the eight-hour day and a democratic republic. But when the police began to disperse the demonstrators they would resist, and if there was the slightest bloodshed, the flame would race along all the fuses! The one-day strikes would merge into a general strike “for freedom and peace.” Leaflets would be distributed in the biggest factories, and weapons would be ready for use in Petersburg and Moscow. Within twenty-four hours a hundred thousand men would be set in motion. The railwaymen (also primed in advance) would join them, and all traffic would be halted on the Petersburg–Moscow, Petersburg–Warsaw, Moscow–Warsaw, and Southwestern lines. To ensure a total and simultaneous stoppage, bridges should also be blown up at several points along the Trans-Siberian trunk line, and a team of skilled operatives should be dispatched for this purpose. Siberia was dealt with in a separate section of the Plan. The forces stationed there were extremely weak, and the towns, under the influence of political exiles, were in a revolutionary mood. This made it easier to organize sabotage, and once the disorders began the exiles should be transferred en masse to Petersburg, so as to inject into the capital thousands of practiced agitators, and bring millions of conscripts within range of propaganda. Propaganda would be carried out by the whole Russian left-wing press, and reinforced by a flood of defeatist émigré leaflets. (It would be easy enough to get them printed in bulk in Switzerland, for instance.) Any publication which sapped the Russian will to resist and pointed to social revolution as the way out of the war would be useful. The main target for propaganda would be the army in the field. (Parvus also envisaged a mutiny in the Black Sea Fleet. He had established links with the Odessa sailors on his way through Bulgaria long ago. He had always strongly suspected that the Japanese were responsible for the Potemkin mutiny. It would certainly be possible to blow up one or two battleships.) Experienced agents would also be sent to set fire to the Baku oil wells, which presented no difficulty since they were so inadequately guarded. The pace of social revolution must be further accelerated by financial means: counterfeit rubles would be showered on the Russian population from German planes, while banknotes with identical serial numbers would be put into simultaneous circulation abroad, in Petersburg and in Moscow, to undermine the exchange rate of the ruble and create panic in the capitals.
For all their Clausewitzes, Elder Moltkes, and Younger Moltkes, for all their self-confident strategy, for all the haughty precision of their staff work, limited Prussian brains had never risen to a concept of such grandeur!
Germany had never had such an adviser on Russia and its weaknesses. (So much so that even now she did not fully appreciate him.)
And that is by no means all! The national revolutions will begin simultaneously. Our most important lever is the Ukrainian movement. Without the Ukraine to buttress it the Russian edifice will soon topple over. The Ukrainian movement will spread to the Kuban Cossacks, and the Don Cossacks too may prove shaky. There will naturally be collaboration with the Finns, who are the most mature of the empire’s peoples and almost free already. It will be easy to send weapons to them, and through them to Russia. Poland is always just five minutes away from rebellion against Russia and only awaits the signal. With Poland and Finland in revolt the Baltic lands in between them will be stirred to action. (In another version of the Plan, Parvus provided for the voluntary union of the Baltic provinces with Germany.) The Georgian and Armenian nationalists are already actively collaborating with the governments of the Central Powers and in their pay. The Caucasus is fragmented and will be more difficult to rouse, but with Turkey’s help, by means of Muslim agitation, we’ll stir them up to a gazawat, a holy war. And with that all around them the Terek Cossacks will scarcely want to lay down their lives for the Tsar rather than break away themselves.
So the highly centralized Russian empire will collapse, never to rise again! Internal struggles will shake Russia to its foundations! Peasants will start taking the land from its owners. Soldiers will desert the trenches in droves to make sure of their share when the land is divided up. (They would mutiny against their officers, shoot all the generals! But this part of the prospect must be tactfully concealed—it might stir unpleasant forebodings in Prussian breasts.)
Wait a bit, though (catching his breath), that’s not all! That’s not the end of it! Shaken by destructive propaganda within, Russia must simultaneously be besieged by a hostile world press. An anti-Tsarist campaign will be mounted by socialist newspapers in various countries, and the excitement of Tsar-baiting will spread to their neighbors on the right, the liberals—that is to say, to the dominant section of the press throughout the world. A newspaper crusade against the Tsar! In this connection it is particularly important to capture public opinion in the United States. And by exposing Tsarism we will simultaneously unmask and undermine the whole Entente!
This, then, was Parvus’s proposal to Germany: instead of the desperate butchery of infantry and artillery warfare—a single injection of German money, and, with no German losses, the most populous member of the Entente would be torn away in the space of a few months! Not surprisingly, the German government jumped at the program!
Parvus, indeed, had never doubted that they would. He was, however, anxious about the reaction of others in Berlin: the Socialists. How would his project be received by his stepmother party? His ideas had always been too deep for use in their mass agitation, and too far in advance of his time to seem practical even to the leaders of the party in which he had been knocking his head against the wall and wasting his ideas for nineteen years now, without ever holding office or voting rights at a single congress. He had, for a short time, been one of its heroes—when he had just returned from Siberia and everyone was devouring his memoirs, In the Russian Bastille. Then he had dirtied his hands in the unfortunate Gorky affair, a secret party commission had condemned him to expulsion, and five years of excommunication had still not wiped out the stain. Worst of all, though, was his legendary and inexplicable rise to riches in a single year—something people in general, and democratic Socialists in particular, are too narrow-minded to forgive. (It was a psychological puzzle: had his wealth been inherited no one would ever have reproached him with it.) His wealth alone was bound to make them hate and reject him, but they had also found nobler grounds for indignation: he had become a henchman of imperialism! Klara and Liebknecht he could understand, but Rosa! Rosa, with whom he had once been on intimate terms (though even then she had been ashamed
of him—because of his appearance perhaps—and always concealed their relationship), Rosa too had shown him the door. In the meantime, Bebel had died, Kautsky and Bernstein had split up and impaired their authority, and a complacent new leadership was looking for weaknesses in the position of this Socialist drifter. How, they asked, would the Prussian government behave after victory? Why should revolution in Russia make Prussia look more tolerantly and kindly on socialism? Would it not see its chance to put the lid on English and French democracy?
Of course, there was some truth in their objections, there were grounds for doubt—but there was nothing here of that bold and perfect vision that can shake and remake a world! No one, or hardly anyone, in Europe could lift himself far enough out of his rut to see that the destruction of Russia now held the key to the future history of the world! All else was secondary.
Meanwhile the Socialists of the Entente were mounting a campaign to expose Parvus.
The bitterness of their reproaches poisoned the pleasure that his success should have given him, although the majority of European Socialists were neither well versed in theory nor effective in practice. They could not rise to a general view of the terrain, they lacked the skill to match each turn of events with a tactical twist. They were merely bureaucrats of socialism, stuck fast, coffined in the corridors of dogma: they no longer moved, no longer crawled along these corridors, but lay down in them, not even daring to imagine a turning ahead. When Parvus first openly called on them to help Germany he had filled them with maidenly horror. How nice it would be for them to sit the war out as innocent neutrals, salving their consciences with moral indignation, both against war and against those who dared to interfere with it.
But the decisive role belonged to the Russian Socialists, and they were the subject of careful analysis in the Plan as submitted to the German government. They were broken up into scattered groups, and thus impotent—but not one of these groups must be neglected, each must be turned to use. It was therefore necessary to lead them along the road to unity—arrange a unification congress, for which Geneva would be a suitable venue. Some groups, such as the Bund, the Spilka, the Poles, the Finns, would certainly support the Plan. But unity could not be achieved without reconciling Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. And that would depend entirely on the Bolshevik leader, who was at present in Switzerland.
Various difficulties might arise, and it might even turn out that some Russian Socialists were patriots and did not want to see the Russian empire dismembered. But there were grounds for confidence: these beggarly émigrés had been short of money for decades, both for everyday needs—they had never known where their next meal was coming from, and they were quite incapable of earning a living—and for their incessant journeys and congresses, and their endless scribbling of pamphlets and articles. They would not be able to resist if a fat purse were held out to them. Why, even the strong, legal Western parties and trade unions rose readily to offers of financial help, for their workers, of course, but still—who in this world does not want to eat well, be better dressed, live in a warmer and more spacious house? (Discreet help for leaders who live modestly also greatly reinforces our friendship with them.) How, then, can the émigrés refuse?
On his way to Switzerland, Parvus had anticipated with particular relish a successful meeting with Lenin. Their collaboration in Munich was a thing of the past, they had not seen each other in years, but Parvus’s keen eye had never lost sight of this unique Socialist, who had no equal in all Europe: uninhibited, free from prejudice and squeamishness, ready in any new situation to adopt whatever methods promised success. The only hard-nosed realist, never carried away by illusions, the greatest realist in the socialist movement except for Parvus himself. All that Lenin lacked was breadth. The savage, intolerant narrowness of the born schismatic harnessed his tremendous energy to futilities—fragmenting this group, dissociating himself from that, yapping at intruders, petty bickering, dogfights, needling newspaper articles—wasted his strength in meaningless struggles, with nothing to show except mounds of scribbled paper. This schismatic narrowness doomed him to sterility in Europe, left him no future except in Russia—but also made him indispensable for any activity there. Indispensable now!
Now that Parvus’s younger comrade-in-arms, Trotsky, whom he had so dearly loved, had abdicated once and for all, now that Trotsky’s vitality and clarity of vision had deserted him—the cold gleam of Lenin’s star summoned him irresistibly to Switzerland. Quite spontaneously, Lenin had been saying the same things; that it did not matter who was the aggressor, that Tsarism was the stronghold of reaction and must be shattered first, that … Nuances in parenthetic remarks, buried in subsidiary clauses and noticed by hardly anyone else, told Parvus that Lenin had not changed, that he was still as demanding in some matters and as undemanding in others as he had always been, that he would not balk at an alliance with the Kaiser or the devil himself if it helped to crush the Tsar. Parvus had therefore warned him in advance to expect interesting proposals: there was no reason to doubt that an alliance would be concluded. The only trouble was those miserable artificial disagreements with the Mensheviks, about which Lenin was particularly stupid and stubborn. Still, a million marks in subsidies should carry some weight. In his memorandum to the German government Parvus had specifically mentioned Lenin, with his underground organization throughout Russia, as his main support. With Lenin at his right hand, as Trotsky had been in the other revolution, success was assured.
Sure of success, Parvus had traveled to Bern, paced the student canteen, cigar in mouth, and been surprised at first by Lenin’s resounding refusal, but quickly appreciated the other’s prudence and tact. Sitting on the cramped bed, he had used his bulk to squeeze the lightweight Lenin into a corner.
“But you must have capital! What will you use to seize power? That’s the unpleasant question.”
Tha-a-a-a-at was something Lenin understood very well! That bare ideas will get you no further forward, that you cannot make a revolution without power, that in our time the primary source of power is money, and that all other forms of power—organization, weapons, people capable of using those weapons to kill—are begotten of money. All very true, nobody would deny it!
With his incomparable mental agility which made reflection unnecessary, his expression changing from one moment to the next—Parvus even glimpsed a smiling hint of complicity—Lenin coolly shifted his ground and answered in his burring voice.
“Why unpleasant? When people take the right Party attitude toward money the Party is pleased. It is displeased when money is turned into a weapon against the Party.”
“That’s all very well, but you can’t help giving yourself away.” Parvus spoke with friendly irony. “Social Democrat costs something to publish. Or maybe”—his Falstaffian belly shook with laughter—"maybe you tell the Swiss tax inspectors that on the contrary you live on your fees from Social Democrat?”
Lenin often wore a mocking look, but very rarely smiled: instead he screwed up his naturally deep-set eyes, hiding them completely. He chose his words carefully. “Philanthropic donations keep coming from somewhere. It is perfectly correct from the Party’s point of view to accept charity—why shouldn’t it be?”
(Money, in fact, was not so short as all that, they could all have lived more easily if they were as shameless as some of those through whose hands it flowed. Bagotsky threw money about in a scandalous fashion, and nobody would think of checking the Austrian money held by Weiss. It was no use putting pressure on them, that might spoil everything. But it ran through their hands like water.)
Parvus’s eye found no comfort anywhere—not in Lenin’s frayed jacket, nor in his patched collar, nor in the worn-out tablecloth, nor in the bare room, where two boxes, one on top of the other, served as a bookcase. But Parvus felt not in the least apologetic about his diamonds, his cheviot coat, his English shoes: this parade of poverty on Lenin’s part was all a game, the Party line, intended to set the tone and serve as an example of a “
leader beyond reproach.” In this adopted role, faithfully performed for years on end, could be seen the narrowness and drabness of his mind. But this could be corrected, and even Lenin could be taught to cut a figure.
(But no! No! A deep antipathy, an instinctive protest made Lenin spontaneously always shut himself off from any luxury, however easily available. To have sufficient was a different matter, that was reasonable. But luxury was the beginning of degeneracy, and Parvus had been caught that way. Let the money pour in by the million, but for the revolution, while he himself kept within the limits of the necessary, counting every rappen and proud of it. It was not at all a pose, and only partly by way of example to those whom he could not coerce.)
Glancing swiftly sideways and upward, Lenin spoke without hostility or resentment. “Izrail Lazarevich! Your undying faith in the omnipotence of money is what has let you down. You know what I mean.”
(If your expenses are small it is like being in a locked room, your secrets are safe: nothing leaks, you feel secure, you will never recklessly let yourself go, all is firm and fast. But riches are like uncontrolled chatter. No! There must be discipline in this as in everything. Only self-limitation makes it possible to build up a powerful drive. Thus, although he could afford to put down the 1,200-franc security for permission to reside in Switzerland—which was essential to his safety and his work—he just wouldn’t pay, but chose instead to make a fuss, write letters, declare himself destitute, beg for a discretionary reduction to one-tenth, waste precious time calling on the chief of police, sometimes accompanied by Karl Moor, who had a well-stuffed wallet in his pocket, so that he need only hold his hand out and extract a banknote from him. When he was finally granted a reduction to three hundred, he still paid only a hundred, and went on haggling. Then when he moved to Zurich he wouldn’t pay at all, but wrote begging to be excused, and corresponded with Bern, requesting the transfer of his hundred francs to his present canton. Lenin was good at this: good at lacing himself tight: only tight-laced did he breathe freely.)
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