November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  All this lacked the grandeur of Parvus’s Plan, but in its quiet little way it was politically sound. And Lenin had kept his nose clean.

  Parvus had now begun to show impatience. (Another of his faults.) Seeing that the conversation was not going as he wished, that he was not making a sale, he said bitterly and contemptuously (which could do no good at all), “So you are like all the rest? Afraid of getting a smudge on your nose? Waiting for something?”

  He had placed such hopes on Lenin! He at least, he had thought, is with me! If I can’t get together with him, who else is there?

  In some agitation, losing his millionaire’s complacency altogether, he haltingly produced his last arguments. “Vladimir Ilyich, you must not fall behind the times. With other people it doesn’t matter, but in you it would be unforgivable. Surely you must see that the age of revolutionaries with parcels of illegal literature and homemade bombs has gone, never to return. The new type of revolutionary is a giant, like you and me. He counts everything in millions—people and money alike—and he must be able to get his hands on the levers by which states are overthrown or established. Getting at those levers is not easy, and at times it is even necessary to join the chauvinists.”

  Also true. True enough. But …

  (Should he ask what price the Russian revolution would pay for German help? He refrained from doing so, but kept the question in mind for the future. It would be naïve to expect such help for nothing.)

  When you enter into an alliance the first rule is not to trust your ally. On the treacherous ground of diplomacy always regard every ally as, above all, a potential cheat.

  Lenin had not been dozing at all. He had been weighing things in his mind. If anyone had been dozing, it was probably Parvus in his Berlin negotiations. Lenin finally opened his eyes and radiated anxious inquiry, rattling off his questions like a drumroll.

  “Will Wilhelm’s government really want to overthrow the Russian monarchy? Why should they? All they need is peace with Russia. They would happily go on living in friendship with the Russian monarchy. They only need our strikes to scare the Tsar and force him to make peace, that’s all.”

  As though Parvus needed to be told! No one should be deceived by the way he looked—rich, well fed, with a carefully groomed imperial on his pendulous double chin. To speak frankly (and sometimes, with some people, he would go so far), the shadow of separate peace had troubled all his negotiations with the German government. Peace between Russia and Germany would be the graveyard of the Great Idea. All the while there was a suspicion that, although the Germans were giving money for revolution, in their hearts they thought only of separate peace with the Tsar, and were surreptitiously sending people to make contact.

  These muffled secret tunnelings must be detected, and frustrated by timely ridicule. The Tsar is no longer in a position to make peace! If he suddenly decides to make peace with you, power in Russia may pass to a strong right-wing nationalist government, which will not respect the Tsar’s undertakings—and you will only have reinforced their position! … It must be drilled into Prussian skulls that only a government having the people’s confidence could sign a real peace with Germany. Let “Peace” be the revolution’s first slogan, the first concern of the new government! That government would find it easier to make concessions because it would bear no guilt for the war. From such a government Germany could expect much more …

  He could already see the treaty, and was ready to sign it himself in advance.

  And he caught a gleam in Lenin’s eyes which meant that he could see it too.

  You couldn’t go into every detail (nor should you). There were various schools of thought among the Germans. The majority were inclined to view England as the main enemy, and were prepared to make peace with Russia. And unfortunately Secretary of State von Jagow, the most Prussian of Prussians, although he considered the onslaught of Slavdom a greater danger than England, did not, you know, much like the plan to break up Russia by revolution. (It was impossible to understand him fully: with his aristocratic mannerisms and his effete skepticism, he did not conceal his distaste for the diplomacy of secret agents, hommes de confiance, dubious middlemen. It was, of course, a great hindrance that such a man should be the head of the German Foreign Office.)

  Parvus, however, in spite of his exquisite ugliness, could be captivating. The German ambassador in Copenhagen, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, enchanted by Parvus’s incomparable intelligence, was his already.

  All arguments must be used to prevent the catastrophe of a separate peace with the Tsar. They must strenuously try to convince the Germans that revolution in Russia was inevitable, that the whole country, and the army with it, was in ferment, that educated society was seething with discontent, not to mention the workers, including those in arms production—a single match would be enough to blow everything up! Why, it was even possible to set an exact date—and keep to it!

  But the sharp little man with the big head, the bald brow, and the grin which hardly ever left his lips seemed even less convinced than von Jagow, and showed no mercy. “So you have in fact no agreement with them? Just the semblance of one? Still just talking?”

  The eternal privilege of those who never act themselves: to interrogate, be dissatisfied, find fault.

  Paddling with both hands to prevent his body from collapsing backward like an overstuffed sack, Parvus straightened up. “Not on crested paper, of course! It’s all very fluid. And you have to keep its contours in view at every moment and determine its direction.”

  Try even to determine the direction of strategic offensives. Explaining, urging, insistently advising that whatever happens they should not advance on Petersburg! That would cause an upsurge of patriotism, Russia would unite, and the revolution would lose steam. At the same time, the Tsar must be denied any success in the field, and in particular must not be allowed to reach the Dardanelles, which would irreversibly reinforce his prestige. The best place to strike was on the southern flank: make the Ukraine your ally, detach the Donets coalfields, and Russia is finished.

  Then again, they were afraid that the earthquake might set up tremors in Berlin. So that he also had to persuade them that revolution in Russia would not spread to Germany.

  The little man jumped. “What’s that? What did you say?” Steadily pushing his obese companion away, and winning more room for himself on the bed. “What do you mean? Have you reconciled yourself to the idea that the revolution will not go beyond Russia? Do you really think that?” His eyes were hard and inquisitorial. Suddenly—he would never mince his words when a principle was threatened—he burst out indignantly: “Why, that’s treason!”

  (No, Parvus was simply not a Socialist. He was something quite different.)

  He, who never ventured outside Switzerland, never set his hand to anything practical, had been proved right again, must attack, must denounce.

  “How shortsighted! What poverty of vision! How could the revolution survive in a single country?”

  It was the same old permanent revolution all over again, the enchanted carousel on which they were doomed to circle forever, eternally following and fleeing, hurling yesterday’s or tomorrow’s reproaches at each other, neither of them ever in the right.

  Did Parvus not want revolution in Germany? Was it really not his aim? Was it true what they wrote about him, that he had become a German patriot?

  Parvus, though, was no longer a child, to go on riding that carousel. A revolutionary of the new type, a millionaire revolutionary, a financier and industrialist, can afford to express himself more frankly.

  “World revolution is not at present feasible, but a socialist revolution in Russia is. Tsarism is the enemy against which all workers’ parties everywhere must unite!”

  More frankly does not mean frankly. It was a ticklish problem, one which you could not put into so many words in public discussions among Socialists. Even tête-à-tête you wouldn’t mention it to every fellow Socialist.

  You never knew w
here you had him—this mercurial creature with the bullet head and the sharp tongue. You could hardly ever tell what his next slogan would be—he always surprised everybody. You could never discover at all what he was thinking. Did he not understand that Russian socialism had special tasks to perform? Did he not accept them?

  It was easier to discuss this problem with Brockdorff, even. (Indeed Parvus had noticed that you could discuss anything more straightforwardly and simply with diplomats than with Socialists.)

  All he could do now was emphasize the elementary.

  “It is Tsarism which must be destroyed here and now, by any means possible, and that’s all we must think of!”

  And so to the main question—how do you destroy it? The whole point of his visit and of this conversation was to find out what underground organizations in the capitals and in the provinces Lenin was willing to assign immediately to the preparation of a rising. Who and where were these people, with their iron unity and their invincible battle-readiness? Parvus knew what he was doing when he recommended this man to the German government as the most fanatical of Russian revolutionaries! He knew why he had come now to enlist him as an ally! For decades Lenin had seemed merely a mad sectarian. He had cast off all allies, fragmented all his forces, refused to hear of a “party of professors,” would have nothing to do with “smooth economic development,” cared for nothing but the underground, always the underground, and his party of professional revolutionaries! In peacetime Parvus and everyone else had thought this absurd, but now that there was a war on they began at last to see clearly how provident, how farsighted, and how clever he was! The time had finally come to use his powerful, well-trained secret army! Now at last it would prove its worth. Parvus was counting on this army in his negotiations in Berlin, he was counting on it when he had drawn up his Plan.

  But Lenin was not to be diverted, not to be thrown off his stride like that. He had his own end in view and stubbornly pursued it.

  “And how can you equate the revolutionary situation of 1905 with the present situation in such a primitive fashion?”

  Well, obviously this war was more destructive and more protracted, the masses incomparably more exhausted and embittered, the revolutionary organization stronger, the liberals also stronger, while Tsarism had utterly failed to reinforce itself.

  Lenin, however, persisted. His eyes seemed never to look directly at the other man, but to zigzag around him.

  “Very well. But how can you so confidently set a starting date from outside?”

  “Well, Vladimir Ilyich, we must have some date to aim at, if we are to concert our actions. Suggest a different one, if you like. But 22 January is best, because it is symbolic, everybody remembers it, and many will begin without any signal from us. It will be easier to bring them out into the streets. And once the first few are out there’ll be no stopping it!”

  Lenin was being very difficult. Understandable, though: to uncover his beloved underground would be like handing it over to someone else. Of course he didn’t like the idea.

  If Parvus was so ardently persistent, it meant that he was trying to take advantage of you.

  “So what do you say, Vladimir Ilyich? The time has come to act!”

  (Oh yes, I understand your Plan! You will emerge as the unifier of all the Party groups. Add to that your financial power and your theoretical talent, and there you are—leader of a united party and of the Second Revolution? Not again?!)

  From the inscrutable eyes, from the set lips, through the impenetrable bald dome, Parvus, himself extraordinarily percipient, seized Lenin’s thoughts, opened them out, read them, and answered at a tangent.

  “My reason for suggesting that you go to Stockholm is so that you can be in charge from beginning to end. You need give me no names, tell me no secrets—just take the money, the leaflets, the weapons, and send them on! I’m not, you know”—Parvus sighed weakly; so exhausting, these political discussions—"I’m not the man I was ten years ago. I won’t be going to Russia. I consider myself German these days.”

  (All the more suspicious. Why in that case did he think of nothing but Russia?)

  “I only want to see the Plan carried out.”

  … But perhaps we see the Plan too in different ways?

  He was quicksilver: no argument could hold him. “You mean that I too should be seen dirtying my hands, like you, on the German General Staff? A revolutionary internationalist can’t afford that.”

  Two more pulls at his invisible oars brought Parvus alongside his armor-plated companion.

  “You needn’t get dirty! Why should you? I’ll take all the dirty work on myself—I already have. The millions I give you will be clean. Just show me how to pipe them in. Once we’ve tied in your subterranean, submarine, secret connections with mine we’ll touch off the Second Russian Revolution! Well??”

  The eyes, which at the expense of color in the iris, lashes, and brows were pellucid concentrations of pure intelligence, tried to understand. Why this refusal?

  But Lenin’s eyes themselves were piercing gimlets. There was no way into them.

  With his gimlet eyes and his crooked little grin—suspicious, shrewd, derisory—Lenin resisted these enticements.

  “And for this purpose, you say, we need a conciliation conference in Geneva?” His voice was silky and venomous. “We must make peace? With the Mensheviks?” And he recoiled, as though from a shock, as far as the bedstead would permit. “What are you thinking of? What does making peace mean? Giving in to the Mensheviks???” He tossed his head violently, as though he was butting someone. “Never! Not for the world! Peace with the Mensheviks? I would sooner see Tsarism survive another thousand years than give a millimeter to the Mensheviks!”

  And anyway—was he or wasn’t he a Socialist?!

  Lenin went on butting the air after he had stopped speaking, as though he was finishing someone off. As though he was finishing what he had to say soundlessly, with frenzied pantomime.

  Parvus didn’t understand a thing. This, after all, was not what he had come for. The greatest, most indefatigable, and most extreme of revolutionaries—in the most favorable of situations, with assistance lavished upon him—would not make a revolution?

  Parvus, losing hope by now, asked point-blank, “So why have you spent thirty years on theoretical battles and border disputes? Where is your logic? You built up an underground, didn’t you? Here is the best possible occasion for using it, there’ll never be another like it as long as you live! Surely you weren’t just playing a part?”

  Lenin was never stuck for an answer.

  “If we’re going to accuse each other of inconsistency … You used to say that a handful of people cannot revolutionize the masses. Do you still say so?”

  Parvus’s chin was suddenly too heavy for his head, his head for his neck, and his neck for his body, his hands drooped between his knees.

  “We-e-ell …”

  With Lenin’s refusal the Great Plan was almost in ruins.

  “All right then … Good … Or not so good … There’s so little time … I’ll have to create my own organization.”

  Lenin has miscalculated! He’ll be sorry someday.

  “You might at least let me have one of your men, our mutual friend perhaps?”

  (No good burning bridges, no good quarreling, Parvus might turn out to be very useful.)

  “Whom do you mean?”

  “Hanecki.”

  “He’s yours.”

  “I’ve already got Chudnovsky and Uritsky. What about Bukharin?”

  “No, that’s not for him.”

  “All right. But you yourself, will you go to Scandinavia? I can get you there quickly.”

  Lenin’s eyes were gimlets. “No, no, no!”

  Parvus was helpless under the burden of his own weight. He heaved a deep sigh. “Ah, well … There’s one other thing I’ve dreamt of all my life and can now afford: to bring out a socialist journal of my own.” He tried to throw back his swollen head proudly, in i
mitation of the bold and ardent spirit who had first thought of it. “The Bell I’ll call it.”

  Four feet felt a jarring bump as the bed landed on the shoemaker’s floor.

  [50]

  The revolutionary who succeeds underground is not the one who hides like a mouse under the floorboards, shunning the light of day and social involvement. The successful and resourceful underground worker takes an active part in the everyday life of those around him, he shares their weaknesses and passions, he is in the public eye, in the hurly-burly, with an occupation which everyone understands, and he may spend much of his time and strength on his daily routine—but his main, his secret activity goes on side by side with his out-in-the-open daily round, and all the more successfully if they are organically connected. The wisest way is also the simplest: to combine your secret and your out-in-the-open activity easily and naturally.