November 1916

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  This was how Parvus saw it. (His experience with underground work was short—the few months in 1905, between the suppression of the Soviet and his arrest, then between his return from banishment and his departure abroad.) He understood still better that a man’s natural occupation is one for which he has a vocation and talent. So, in May 1915, as he prepared to carry on alone after Lenin’s disastrous refusal to join him in making a revolution, he had decided, with as little conscious thought as he gave to breathing, that he and his collaborators would make commerce their first and chief occupation, and that revolution would run in tandem with business.

  That same summer he set up in neutral Denmark—which retained the main prerogative of all free Western countries, to trade without impediment—an import-export agency, which in present circumstances would naturally be prepared to deal with firms in any country at all—Germany, Russia, England, Sweden, the Netherlands—buying and selling where prices were most favorable. With Lenin’s agreement, Hanecki at once became business manager of Parvus’s new concern. The combination of two such ardent commercial spirits does not merely double their power, but increases it many times over. Then they were joined by a third, who was very nearly their equal—Georg Sklarz. (Not, it must be said, blown along by a whim of fate, but obligingly sent to cooperate with them by the intelligence branch of the German General Staff.) This Sklarz (who achieved notoriety in postwar Germany, among other things in a succession of court cases in which he showed himself to be a remarkable actor) proved to be an indispensable member of the trio—a business genius like his partners, resourceful, quick-thinking, reacting silently and swiftly to any assignment or any twist of events, and always emerging successful. (He had brought with him two other Sklarz brothers: Waldemar, who went to work in the trade-and-revolution agency itself, and Henryk, who, under the pseudonym of Pundik, and in partnership with Romanovich and Dolgopolsky, already ran a secret office in Copenhagen, investigating illicit exports from Germany on behalf of the German General Staff.) The idea of combining business with political activity soon proved its value: Geschäft served politics, and politics smoothed the path of Geschäft. Support from the General Staff made the agency’s transactions easier and its profits greater.

  Within a few months of its foundation the import-export agency was a flourishing business, buying, selling, and shipping, with no thought of narrow specialization, copper, chrome, nickel, and rubber, transferring from Russia to Germany mainly grain and foodstuffs, from Germany to Russia mainly technical equipment, chemicals, medicines, but the range of goods exchanged included also stockings, contraceptives, salvarsan, caviar, cognac, and used motor vehicles (in Russia, they were able to stipulate that these should not be commandeered for military purposes). In trade with Western countries this was one of many such agencies uncomfortably jostling each other, but in trade with Russia, which for him mattered most, Parvus’s agency had a monopoly. Some goods were shipped openly, with legal export licenses, others were shipped under false bills of lading, or even smuggled. This required ingenuity in packing and loading, and there had to be someone to take responsibility if caught, but it was Hanecki and Sklarz who involved themselves in all this, letting Parvus remain quietly in the shade, his favorite place, to deal with matters of high policy.

  What made the combination of commercial and revolutionary activity an idea of genius was that revolutionary agents posing as business representatives, with the Petersburg lawyer Kozlovsky playing the main part, could travel quite legally to Russia, inside Russia, and back again to Parvus. But Parvus’s brilliance was seen still more clearly in his arrangements for sending money. To pass money from the German government quickly and without hindrance into the hands of Russian revolutionaries might seem an impossible task, but the import-export agency performed it with ease. It sent to Russia goods and nothing but goods, and always in excess of what it bought there. The earnings of collaborating firms, such as Fabian Klingsland, were banked in the normal way (in the Petersburg branch of the Bank of Siberia), and it was then entirely a matter for the agency to decide whether or not to withdraw the money from Russia—in fact it was to Russia’s advantage that it stay there. In Petersburg, the Bolshevik lawyer Kozlovsky (“the Sword”) and Hanecki’s people could withdraw any sum at any time and hand it over to the revolutionaries.

  This was where Parvus showed his genius: the import of goods which Russia badly needed to wage war provided funds for knocking Russia out of the war.

  Parvus’s method of selecting the agency’s revolutionary staff showed the same insistence on combining the overt and the covert. He set up for this purpose yet another subsidiary organization in Copenhagen—the Institute for Research into the Consequences of War. To recruit its personnel he frequently and openly sought the acquaintance of Socialists and met them for discussions. Whenever a candidate was eager, and qualified, to plunge into the depths, he did so and became a secret agent. Those who proved unsuitable or intractable were kept in the dark—the conversation followed its natural course, and they might be kept on as overt members of the legal institute. The institute itself was not fictitious, but gratified Parvus’s besetting passion for economic research, just as the heavily subsidized Bell, published in Germany, gratified his passion for socialism. (One who longed to join the institute was Bukharin—and there could have been no better place for him, nor could the institute have found a more useful member—but the fastidious and puritanical Lenin forbade his young comrade to associate with the shady Parvus, just as he forbade Shlyapnikov to go near the dubious Hanecki.)

  All this Parvus managed brilliantly, because here he was in his element. But what came next was more difficult. To whom should this money be given in Russia? And how could you bring about a revolution in that huge country with a dozen business representatives and a few Western Socialists like Kruze? It was easiest in Petersburg, where he had many contacts, where the lawyer Kozlovsky could receive clients without arousing suspicion and recruit the necessary people in the factories, and where the fanatical Interdistrict group was active—following what had always been Parvus’s own line—recognizing neither Bolsheviks nor Mensheviks, and readily accessible to him through one of their members, Uritsky. Although the socialist forces in Petersburg were split, Parvus had put together a strong group of activists, especially in the Putilov plant. But although it has been truly said that revolution in any state succeeds or fails in the capital, there was no assurance that the initial shock would be effective in such a large country without disturbances in the provinces. Parvus, however, had live connections of his own only in Odessa, and through Odessa with Nikolaev. There was no one to stir up this inert, mute country as a whole. A few agents, however freely they spent, could not create a network in the few remaining months. Whereas Lenin had a ready-made network—and had treacherously concealed it.

  But Parvus, from his memories of 1905, understood very well how disturbances begin. To start a strike, or a riot, to bring the people out on the streets, you do not need the unanimous consent of the majority, or even one in four; indeed, it is wasted effort to try to prepare even a tenth of them for action. A single shrill cry from the thick of the crowd, a single orator at the factory gates, two or three toughs brandishing fists or sticks are often enough to keep a whole shift from their workbenches or bring them into the streets. Then there are neighborly conversations condemning the government, the transmission of alarming rumors (which with no further effort can be left to strike at a distance like a charge of electricity), the scattering of leaflets in factory rest rooms and smoking rooms, under workbenches—for each and any of these preliminary blows you need no more than five men to a factory, and if you cannot find five who will do it out of conviction, you can buy help in the nearest tavern—what tavern scrounger refuses money?

  In any other circumstances sporadic troublemaking in factories would not have been enough, but now, in the second year of a war which had already devoured so many, with hunger suddenly threatening, with the army los
ing battle after battle, with the whole country in ferment, with revolution still fresh in the minds of the present generation, a few such jolts—Parvus was convinced of it—could set off a landslide. That was his strategy—to start an avalanche with a few light snowfalls. Without Lenin’s help in the remaining months he could do no more. But the date itself was fraught with menace for Tsarism: even if there were no agents at work, if not a single ruble was spent, 22 January could still not pass quietly. All the same, it would be as well to give a helping hand. So Parvus, who had Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau completely under his spell, and practically dictated his dispatches from Copenhagen to the German Foreign Ministry, confidently promised revolution in Russia on 22 January 1916.

  He hoped, at least, that it would be so. Lavishly endowed with the gift of far-reaching and penetrating prophecy, he was nonetheless a creature of earth, and could not always distinguish a flash of prophetic insight from the uprush of desire. He longed so violently for a devastating revolution in Russia that he could be forgiven for misinterpreting his emotion.

  This was not, however, something which the German government, and especially Secretary of State Gottlieb von Jagow, would readily forgive. Always the ironist, always contemptuous of this grubby Socialist millionaire, von Jagow now concluded that Parvus had been deceiving the German Reich all along, that he had never seriously tried to bring about a revolution, that he had most probably simply pocketed the millions given to him. Intelligence services have a rule that such expenditure is not subject to audit. But for the rest of 1916 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid Parvus not a pfennig more.

  This didn’t mean total defeat, and outwardly it was not a defeat at all. The wheels of the import-export agency went on turning and making money. The General Staff compassionately filled the gap left by the Foreign Ministry. The research institute continued collecting information and studying it. Parvus took an active hand in supplying Denmark with cheap coal, won over the Danish trade unions, was treated as their friend and equal by the Danish and later by the German Socialist leaders. He finally obtained German citizenship, which he had been begging for since 1891, and there seemed to be no doubt that at the first postwar elections he would take his place among the leaders of the Socialist group in the Reichstag. His Bell continued to appear, exhorting Germany to patriotic socialism. His exorbitant personal wealth grew and grew, and he had holdings in almost all neutral countries, as well as, of course, in Turkey and Bulgaria, where he had founded his fortunes. His house in the aristocratic quarter of Copenhagen was furnished with the flamboyance of the nouveau riche, guarded by savage dogs, and an elegant Adler carried him from his door. He even managed to preserve intact his influence on Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, and to impress on this constant partner-in-conversation the full complexity of the revolutionary’s task, the intricate mechanics of his difficulties. Through Brockdorff, too, as far as tact allowed, he tried to obstruct the renewed German quest for a separate peace with Russia.

  You might suppose that the long procession of successes which came to meet him would have more than satisfied him. Not so! His uneasy consciousness of a mission unfulfilled—although he no longer had any intention of returning to that country—secretly teased and tormented him. In his leisurely suppers with the Prussian aristocrat he expounded a variant, adapted to the German outlook, of what was now not so much a program as his political testament, a hazy outline of the future. How the revolution, once begun, must quickly broaden its scope, like the Great French Revolution, by trying and executing the Tsar: only such an inaugural sacrifice could show the revolution that it need recognize no boundaries for itself. How the peasants must feel free to take the redistribution of land into their own hands—which alone would open the floodgates of anarchy. And when anarchy was at its height, in full flood, that was the very moment when Germany, by military intervention, with minimal losses and enormous advantages, could rid itself forever of the threat from the East: sink Russia’s fleet, take away her arms, raze her fortifications, forbid her ever again to form an army or establish war industries, or, better still, any industry at all, cripple her by amputating all that could be amputated—leave her, in short, a tabula rasa, so that she could forget her ten centuries of nastiness and begin her history all over again.

  Parvus never forgot an injury.

  But he could not see at present what more he could do.

  Meanwhile the government of the German empire was disgracing itself by seeking a separate peace with this still undestroyed power.

  But Secretary of State von Jagow’s health was steadily declining, and in the late autumn of 1916 he was happy to retire, giving up his post to the more active Zimmermann, who did not take over with it his predecessor’s Old World distaste for secret agents and political hucksters. New plans of action soared into view! And Parvus’s old grudge against Lenin raised its head. Why had he done it? What did he mean by it?

  The bed hit the shoemaker’s floor with all four feet, and Parvus was catapulted upright on his fat columnar legs. Painfully stretching, he shuffled across the room, carrying his pampered body like a heavy sack. He went around the table and sat on the other side, taking no care not to soil his snow-white cuffs on the Ulyanovs’ dirty oilcloth.

  His smile now was not for a man of power and an equal, but for a pathetic little animal in a hole.

  “That’s it, then, is it? Zimmerwald? … Kienthal? … Getting the leftists to vote correctly? … And what has the great Party done at home in Russia these past two years? … Why isn’t there a single bubble to be seen on the surface?”

  Lenin just sat there, sinking into the bed, and bent his heavy head without answering.

  “Didn’t you say you had no need of money?”

  Lenin was embarrassed and almost inaudible. “We never said that, Izrail Lazarevich. We need money very, very badly. Desperately.”

  “But I offered you money! And you refused!”

  Lenin’s voice was parched and strained. “What do you mean, refused? A sensible offer of help, without strings, we never refuse. We’re only too glad …”

  “You’re just playing children’s games here in Switzerland.” The fat hulk would have liked to gloat, but there was nothing to gloat over. Russia was not losing the war, Germany was not winning it, Germany’s main ally, and his own, was giving up the fight.

  Lenin’s words seemed to stick in his throat.

  “For serious games you have to pay a serious price.”

  He looked sick. His eyes, less secretive than usual, were full of pain, and his next words were spoken without vehemence, with no other motive, it seemed, than to distract himself from his pain.

  “After all, Izrail Lazarevich, your revolution too was a will-o’-the-wisp, a soap bubble. It was naïve to expect anything else.”

  Parvus heaved indignantly, and the lamp flame flickered, leapt, and smoked as his breath played on it.

  “We had forty-five thousand on strike in Petersburg! Do you think you, sitting here, could bring forty-five thousand out?”

  He forestalled Lenin’s retort that the forty-five thousand included some of his people.

  “… The Putilov workers got the date wrong—but they were marvelous! What a rumpus they kicked up! But the Nevskaya Zastava let me down—why didn’t you bring them out? I staged a splendid strike in Nikolaev—ten thousand came out! With impossible demands, so that a rising was certain! But they too were four days late. It’s not so easy from this distance to tie them all to the same day. But how is it that Moscow never stirred? What was your Moscow committee doing?”

  (Lenin only wished that he knew!)

  Parvus warmed to his theme, crooking a finger for each of his successes, as though he was boasting about his wealth.

  “I brought out the Ekaterinoslav ironworks! And the Tula copper plant! And the Tula cartridge factory! …”

  All these strikes had indeed broken out in January, though not on the 22nd—but who had started them, who had led them there on the spot? It wa
s not clear at this distance, and everybody claimed credit, including the Mensheviks.

  “We came very close—but where were your people? The Interdistrict group gave me wholehearted support, they’ve got fire in their bellies, but they’re a mere handful. While you and the Mensheviks are still tossing balls to each other! Russia is flooded with leaflets—are you going to tell me they’re yours, not mine? It was I who blew up the Empress Maria—or didn’t you notice it?” Parvus thundered on, his eyes staring wildly. “The Black Sea battleship—didn’t you notice it???!”

  He threw up his manicured white hands—look at the hands that blew up a battleship!

  “Why wouldn’t you join us, Vladimir Ilyich? Where are your strikes? Where are your riots? Which factories can you bring to a standstill at a predetermined date? Which of the nationalist organizations are you working with?”

  Does he really not understand? … For all his cleverness? My façade is a success, then! I must keep it up!

  Why hadn’t he joined in! … Of course, he could have gotten around the Mensheviks somehow. Made some arrangement to share the leadership (although this, yes, this, was the most painful and difficult thing of all). Only …

  Only—everyone’s abilities are limited. Lenin was—a writer of articles. And pamphlets. He gave lectures. He made speeches. He carried on agitation among young leftists. He trounced opportunists everywhere in Europe. He believed that he had acquired a thorough knowledge of problems connected with industry, agriculture, the strike movement, trade unions. And now, after reading Clausewitz, of military matters too. He understood now what war was, and how an armed uprising should be carried out. And he could explain it all, with tireless clarity, to any audience.

  There was only one thing of which he was incapable—action. The one thing he could not do was—blow up a battleship.