It’s difficult of course. Standing at a factory bench for ten years, occasionally thumbing through a pamphlet or two. Or if you live your life on the run, in hiding, forever coming and going, when do you have time to read? When do you have time to think? The smarty-pants émigrés can afford that luxury, they needn’t fear a knock on the door. Yet they’ve been studying the “theory” of the workers’ movement in their discussion groups for twenty-odd years, quarreling and splitting all the time, never able to agree on anything. Then we came along and showed them right off how to put it into practice.
Because you can’t put it to the test just in your head, you have to find out whether it gives your hands work to do, or is it just something that slips off one tongue to be taken up by another? Those bigheads, however hard they struggled to wedge themselves into the workers’ movement, you would never in your heart be at one with them. You would always be strangers.
Only … don’t forget Sashenka Kollontai. She it was who had educated Sanka Shlyapnikov when he was an uncouth youngster unused to wearing a shirt, let alone debating, helped him with his French, which he had just started learning in a self-education group. Sashenka—a member of the upper class, an intellectual, dazzlingly beautiful! Such clothes, such hairdos! Yet so sound, and so bold, so trenchant! At Larvik, lying beside her on warm stones at the water’s edge, lying there for hours on end, listening and listening, storing up every word …
And what about Lenin?
No-o, until you had absorbed what they had to offer, you would never be really clever.
But now you can steer a straight course without help from anyone. Shlyapnikov—what they call a “Central Party official,” isn’t he? He is. And among the few so called he occupies a special position. Lenin writes to him with what looks almost like respect: “You are in charge of the situation. I will not interfere, let the proper authority decide.” And how have you risen so high? By using your hands and your feet, that’s how, but also by missing no opportunity to work with your head, to read, to write, to educate yourself. So all these things can be managed at once? Evidently they can. And the title “Central” hasn’t dimmed your wits or puffed you up. Above all, you aren’t out of practice, you still love more than anything using your own hands, machining weighty, distinctively shaped, precisely measured, darkly gleaming metal parts. And, what’s more, getting money for it, and using it to buy a little extra food for all those émigré sages, as if they were your little brothers, all those other Central Party workers on their uppers without a kopeck to their name, struggling to make enough for four dinners, wondering which article to translate for which distant editor, transferring lines from one bit of white paper to another just as indecipherable.
And—if he admitted what his memory knew to be true—when he was overtaken, with no one else beside him, by the events of July 1914 in Petersburg, wasn’t it Shlyapnikov who sized up the situation accurately and unaided? Had he not instinctively understood—at once and unambiguously—that working-class solidarity would never give way to patriotic hooliganism, that we would never basely and slavishly bow down to it as the intellectuals did? Where was the logic of it? Why, after showing your contempt for the Japanese war, support war against Germany? Is it the Dardanelles you want? And when the Mensheviks invited him to a late-night banquet at Palkin’s restaurant, in honor of the visiting Belgian socialist Vandervelde, undaunted by the fact that he was in a hopeless minority, in fact all alone, he had lambasted—in excellent French—those always in the majority at such banquets and always stubbornly determined not to submit to the true majority in the factories. “Who started it?” they asked. What a bogus argument! As if it mattered who had attacked first. The blame for the war rested on the world bourgeoisie, and on the Belgian just as much as the German bourgeoisie. Instead of talking about “poor little Belgium” or “poor little Serbia” they should be saying “Down with the war!” “Long live the Revolution!” “Amnesty for political prisoners, martyrs for freedom!” (He had written the leaflet himself.)
A World War was, of course, a hard nut to crack. Neither humanity at large nor the working class had been prepared for anything of the kind. No wonder they were at a loss! Those whirlwind months confused minds, threw them off balance, robbed some people of their wits altogether. It wasn’t only the worldwide Workers’ International that split, the closest of friendships collapsed in the general madness. When they managed to get to Sweden in October, how happy he and Sashenka had been to find themselves at one in their loyalty to the cause! The war had caught them far apart but their thoughts about it all were identical! How eagerly he had listened, how readily he had understood her account of the first days of the war in Berlin. The German socialists had voted for war credits!! After a lifetime of ramming their exemplary social democracy down our throats, they had stupidly blundered into a blind alley! The German women workers, tried and tested activists, were a dead loss too: with their bourgeois “help for the wounded,” their concern for orphans, they didn’t understand that it was nobler, braver, and indeed cheaper—to revolt! To lose thousands on the streets, rather than millions at the front! But then there were outbreaks of chauvinism among Russian socialists caught by the war in Germany and interned: a malicious glee at the thought that “our side” would break through from East Prussia to Berlin. Our side? Meaning the Russian generals? The Cossacks? What is Russia anyway? Russia thought of as somehow “our own”? What does it mean, “the defense of our unfortunate fatherland”? “If there’s one thing that doesn’t move me at all it’s the fate of Russia. The fate of the Revolution is my burning passion!” Sashenska said fervently, “If there’s one thing I don’t want it’s victory for Russia! Who’s going to get killed on the other side? Aren’t they proletarians, just the same as ours? Certainly not the spoiled sons of the bourgeoisie. No, no, there are no Russias for us, no Germanys. We want nothing to do with your defeats or with your victories, it’s all the same to us. What the proletariat needs is peace!!”
They had been so pleased with themselves, yet the two of them together had not gone far enough. It was, as always, Lenin, with his trenchant mind, who had surprised them, convinced them, dazzled them with the last and most important word. What do you mean, it’s all the same? There’s no comparison. Tsarism is a hundred times worse than Kaiserism!! We are not just indifferent to patriotism—we are anti-patriots! The “peace” slogan? Incorrect! That’s for the hoi polloi. For the priests. What the proletariat needs is civil war!!!
Sanka was, secretly, taken aback. Why civil war? Why yet worse devastation? But Sashenka, eyes shining, grasped it at once. Of course, of course! Civil war! she cried, and covered him with kisses.
Yes, but what about now? What would Lenin have done? In Petersburg, on 8 November?
I somehow think, no, I feel sure that Lenin would say just the same: hit them with a general strike! And don’t take three minutes over it—make it fifteen seconds! Lenin has that incredible characteristic—his ability to see everything at a glance, in a flash of lightning. And not to vacillate at the critical moment, nor feel regret later.
Yes, but how would he respond to a lockout?
Lucky you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, because it all depends on you—the fate of all those workers, 120,000 of them. You’ve never in your life had to make such a far-reaching decision. You’ve got maybe five seconds to think about it. If you wait for the next issue of the Party newspaper, with its comments on today’s events, to reach Petersburg—assuming it comes out at all, and the editorial board hasn’t finally been wrecked by its petty squabbles—and instruct you how you should have proceeded, four months will have gone by. Anyway, the bale containing that issue of the paper won’t sneak through unaided, you’ll have to make the effort to get there and give it a helping hand.
But why talk about 8 November when it’s already 13 November? Whether you should have or not you’ve already placed the plank over the stream and stepped onto it, it’s already threatening to break under yo
ur weight … and the decision you have to make now is a different one. Which way to jump? Back where you came from—or do you go forward? That’s all you have to decide. Which way to jump (with responsibility for 120,000 workers on your shoulders).
There’s no one you can turn to for advice. Neither at the “Center,” in Switzerland. Nor here in Petersburg. It all depends on you. On one single person.
And you have only till the end of the day. You haven’t slept, you haven’t eaten, you haven’t sat down for a minute, but you have to make up your mind which way to jump. Forward? Or back again?
In the meantime, an outlay of ten kopecks and his trusty legs had taken Shlyapnikov as far as Lanskaya Street, to a region of cart tracks and vegetable gardens, ten minutes late. His boots strode through sticky mud and hopped over ditches to where on this damp, misty day, before the first frost came, workmen who owned plots occasionally made their way by narrow paths skirting boundary stones or stands of young trees, to dig up what remained of their crop. No one was shadowing Shlyapnikov now. He was “clean” when he reached the plank shed which was his rendezvous. Inside the shed two firm hands, his and Lutovinov’s, met with a loud smack.
“I’m clean. What about you? Haven’t come straight from Shurkanov have you?”
“No.”
“Thanks.”
If you’re underground it’s no good being the only one of many to follow the rules strictly. He’d taken all these precautions, but if Lutovinov had come straight from Shurkanov’s he might easily have brought a tail. Shurkanov’s apartment was “a lantern for the Okhrana,” a fine young fellow from the Aivaz factory had told Shlyapnikov the last time, but other people had shown up before he could explain, and he had been arrested shortly afterward. So Shurkanov had remained an enigma. True, Shlyapnikov himself did not suspect the man, and that was what mattered: you can always smell treachery, in fact that’s the only way you ever find out who the traitors are. Shurkanov had even been a member of the Third Duma, though he was nobody much, just an average metalworker. His place had been searched more than once, he was under open surveillance on the streets, but nobody had been trapped as a result. He was fond of drink, liked to get the “old hands” together and reminisce about the revolutionary days, and one of the old hands, also a former Duma deputy, had whispered in Shlyapnikov’s ear that “he lives beyond his means, there’s something funny about it.” (Suspicion creeps like a serpent from one worker’s heart to another—that’s what they’ve brought us to!) Shurkanov’s house was conveniently situated, many people used it as a contact point, and Lutovinov actually lived there. Shlyapnikov had been offered a room too, but said no, thank you, I can manage. Shurkanov had also procured a Russian passport for Shlyapnikov, a “safe one.” Fine, let it wait a while.
Your discipline means your freedom, and freedom means you can work. If you’ve taken on the leadership of the Party’s All-Russian Center you mustn’t get caught. When you’re the one and only plenipotentiary of the Central Committee at large in Russia you have to be a bit careful how you tramp around Petersburg.
The upturned peak of Lutovinov’s cap shaded a yellow forelock, a sloping brow, and a rugged, naïvely honest face framed by big ears. His jaw was one you wouldn’t dislocate with a single punch but his huge brow made it look small. His size was impressive—but he had used up all his strength growing, you couldn’t see him as a blacksmith’s striker.
He says they’ve managed to get an old copying machine written off at the factory, then stolen it and dispatched it to Yuzovka.
“Good work! And what are they printing there?”
“What’s her name … Kollontai, Who Needs the War.”
“Good!”
“And old revolutionary songs.”
“That’s a bit of a luxury.”
“Well, people don’t know them, Gavrilovich. Revolutionary songs aren’t very well known these days. They turn out for a demonstration, and don’t know what to sing.”
“Maybe you’re right … But be sure to send them the leaflets. Current tasks, what needs doing today …”
Lutovinov himself was from Lugansk, and was responsible for liaison with the provinces. When Shlyapnikov was going abroad in February he had left them his connections with the whole provincial network—with Nizhny, Nikolaev, Saratov, and Rostov. When he got back things had changed beyond recognition, all the contacts had been lost, and the provinces were crying out for literature, for information, nobody was explaining to them what was happening and what they should do about it. Moscow—Moscow of all places!—had no oblast committee of its own, they were either afraid to establish one or didn’t know how. Smidovich, Skvortsov, Nogin, and Olminsky were all sitting in their own small corners, working at something or other—so they said. But how on earth could you expect to see any work done at the national level when they couldn’t manage to set something up in Moscow? So much of the network was in ruins, so many contacts had been lost—he might as well not have worked all last winter to build it up for them, and now he had to begin all over again. What a helpless group they were! The only contacts were those Lutovinov had with the Donbass. The Petersburgers were no better. If a batch of literature got stuck on the Swedish border, or somewhere nearer in Finland, instead of going to rescue it they’d wait for it to crawl home itself, or for Belenin (Shlyapnikov) to make the trip and chase it down. (You’d die laughing! Last year in the far north of Norway he’d found bales of literature dumped there in 1906 and never sent on, just forgotten. Who would want to read it now? It was so out of date it would addle your brains just trying to understand who was against whom and where everybody stood.) The Petersburgers hadn’t even managed to preserve their printing press at Novaya Derevnya. But when it came to bellyaching about the Central Organ, and how late it was in sending instructions, they all joined in the chorus.
That’s how it was; “there” was one thing, “here” another. In the two and a half years of the war, life here had diverged so far from life out there, the two sides had drifted so far apart that it was impossible to imagine from there what things were like here … Out there people were surprised and angry. What, they asked, are they all doing in Russia? Are they still alive or aren’t they? Why have they clammed up? Why no reports from them? What work are they doing, if any? They aren’t sending any money either, how are we supposed to carry on our work abroad, where can we get money from if not from Russia? “You are to go there, Comrade Belenin, but all you’re to do is establish connections, get some money out of them, and then come back as quickly as you can, you can’t stay there long without coming to grief yourself and damaging the cause.” So—you get here, and what do you see? You see that workers are striking after all, that they’re gradually wising up, that there’s no trace of the crazy patriotism we saw in 1914, but: “We’re short of literature! Why aren’t they sending up-to-date articles, their latest thoughts? Why are they so closemouthed? Why do they sit there doing nothing, with no surveillance, no emergencies to worry about? You mean to say they can’t rustle up some money in wealthy Europe, and we’ve got to pitch in our hard-earned coppers?”
It was almost impossible for the two sides to understand each other. Shlyapnikov alone divided his time between both places, carrying the vital concerns of each as if in two heavy wicker baskets from Murom, suspended from a yoke on his shoulders, careful never to take his mind off either (neglect either for a moment and the whole contraption would topple over), plodding steadily on, whatever the ground underfoot was like.
Lutovinov was goggling at him like a bumpkin who comes to town and sees an automobile for the first time, wondering if this can be the same Belenin who was here before, gave his instructions, and vanished. The same Belenin back again? From over the sea, with such a war on—and with not a scratch on him? How is it possible? They all looked at him in amazement, not just Lutovinov. It was hard to believe that the man sitting here with you in a garden shed had been in Christiania two weeks back, and in September returning from America on
an ocean liner (second class, not third), admiring the ocean waves to the cheerful strains of a brass band.
You couldn’t tell the whole story in detail, no one must know more than was necessary. Some things you could tell them, but once you got started …
Crossing the river Torne at Haparanda, walking under the bridge to avoid the police watch, with your feet sinking through the ice … Then, with Finnish guides and disguised as a Finn yourself, taking roundabout ways through the forest to bypass the gendarmes’ checkpoints.
Or jolting over snowdrifts on a Finnish peasant sledge for eight nights on end, resting up in woodcutters’ huts by day. The virgin snow. The silence. The aurora borealis. Forest paths with overarching trees. The trees dwindle to dwarf size and you are crossing a mossy bog on skis, though you have never learned to use them. Long detours to bypass the checkpoints …
It helps, of course, that the whole Finnish population is hostile to the Russian authorities, ever ready to transport our literature, provide guides for our revolutionaries, spy on the Russian army, and help German POWs return to their homeland … while the Finns themselves volunteer for the German army by the thousand.
Lutovinov pulled out of his pocket a crust of rye bread and half a dozen tomatoes. The bread had rested in his pocket unwrapped and the tomatoes were unripe and a muddy green in color, but very welcome, since Shlyapnikov had spent a hungry night, not wanting to eat his hosts out of house and home.
“This is great! Any salt?”
There was salt too. They both had knives. There was no paper to serve as a tablecloth, but the bench was clean anyway. They moved to opposite ends of it, and arranged the food in the middle.
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