Lenin

by Victor Sebestyen

  Marxism had a particular appeal to Russian radicals entirely unsuspected by the author himself, who had barely thought of Russia when he was writing it and hardly mentioned the country once in nearly 700 densely written pages. For many Russian intellectuals like Lenin, the idea that Marxism would bring Russia closer to the West was its main attraction. It would shine a ‘path of reason, enlightenment and hope’ according to Martov’s fiercely intelligent sister Lydia, who had married the socialist thinker Fyodor Dan. One of the cleverest of all the Russian Marxists, Pyotr Struve – though he would later abandon socialist ideas and become the kind of ‘bourgeois liberal Lenin so despised’ – said he and others were persuaded because it offered a ‘scientific solution’ to Russia’s two principal problems of liberating itself from autocracy and developing from backward semi-feudalism: ‘let us admit our lack of culture and enrol in the school of capitalism’. It appealed to Jews, not because Marx was Jewish – or, rather, a Jewish atheist – but because ‘populism’ and ‘back to the land’ ideas offered an archaic vision of peasant Russia, with its pogroms and discrimination against Jews. Marxism promised to assimilate Jews, a ‘modern’ and Western vision that preached universal human liberation based on ideas of internationalism.

  A significant difference between doctrinally orthodox Marxists – Martov, for one – and the ‘deviationists’ was whether a primarily agrarian country such as Russia, where 90 per cent of the population were peasants and the industrial working class was growing but still tiny, was ripe for an imminent socialist revolution. This might seem an abstruse point at the time of writing more than a century later. But at the time it divided revolutionary Marxists as a crucial ideological issue. Lenin argued passionately that capitalism was advancing at a fast pace in Russia and the working class was growing, so it was ready for revolution. All that was needed was a push, by a Party organised efficiently, well led and centrally controlled. Others argued that Russia was not yet ready; the country had to wait for the stages of development laid out by Marx. The issue was not merely an abstract argument about the finer points of ideology. Lenin didn’t want to ‘wait and see’. He believed in practical action to make the Revolution as soon as possible. And, in any case, from the limited personal experience he had gained, he agreed wholeheartedly with Marx’s own views about ‘the idiocy of rural life’.

  The German oracle himself was not altogether a help. He admitted that if he had to take his chances as a Russian in the vicious debates on the Left, even he might, as he put it, have ‘been condemned as an indifferent, wavering Marxist’. On the whole, he stuck to his principle that there had to be an industrial revolution first and a lengthy bourgeois phase before any transition to socialism. Towards the end of his life he began to learn Russian specifically so he could look at this thorny theoretical dilemma. But he never could make up his mind about which path Russia was more likely to take.

  After Marx died, Engels grew tired of getting drawn into the dispute, as he continually was by Russian comrades. In 1883 he wrote to Isaac Hourwich, the Russian economist exiled in America: ‘If you have followed the writings of the Russian exiles during the last ten years, you will know yourself how the various groups among them interpret passages from Marx’s writings and letters in the most contradictory ways, just as if they were texts from the classics or the New Testament. Anything I could say on the question…would probably be used in a similar way.’

  Neither side in this doctrinal dispute would have cared to know what Marx really thought about Russians. As he wrote in a letter to Engels, ‘I do not trust any Russian. As soon as a Russian worms his way in, all hell breaks loose.’

  15

  The Great Schism – Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

  ‘Lenin…there is no other man who is so absorbed by the Revolution twenty-four hours a day, who has no other thoughts but the thought of revolution, and who, even when he sleeps, dreams of nothing but the Revolution.’

  Pavel Axelrod (1850–1928)

  Though Lenin had loathed the idea of moving to Geneva, he tried to make the best of it. He missed his regular desk, L13, at the Reading Room of the British Museum, where he had spent so many mornings of satisfying hard work. But he acknowledged that the Swiss city had a couple of decent and well-organised libraries, one of his principal demands wherever he found himself in exile.

  He and Nadya found a functional if nondescript set of rooms on two floors near a pleasant park and the lake shore in the middle-class suburb of Sécheron and settled into their new home. They were joined within a few weeks by Elizaveta Vasilyevna. A visitor who saw them at the apartment not long after they moved in, Cecilia Zelikson Bobrovskaya, an old St Petersburg acquaintance of Lenin, noted that the rooms seemed spartan. They used the packing cases for the books they had brought with them from England as makeshift dining tables. ‘On the ground floor, there was a large kitchen, containing a stove on which there was constantly being heated a large enamel kettle, ready for chance visitors. Upstairs the furniture consisted of simple tables, covered with journals, manuscripts and press cuttings…in each room a simple iron bed covered with a blanket and two chairs. In the middle of Lenin’s table a form of abacus, with which he no doubt counted the number of peasants’ properties there were in Russia, or farmers with a horse, for one of his books.’1

  They ate regularly at the nearby Café Landolt, where Russian émigrés habitually went for cheap beer, Social Democratic gossip – and the tastiest sausages and sauerkraut in Geneva. Usually Lenin and Nadya had a table to themselves, number 40 near the window. There were regular Party meetings in a back room which had its own exit to a narrow, winding lane – in case the police came. On the whole the Russians were left alone by the Swiss police, as they were in England. Switzerland, too, had a long and honourable tradition of providing a safe haven for Russian dissidents. But it was a conservative country and the authorities wanted to make sure their guests caused no trouble.*1

  Martov had decamped from England some months earlier; he loathed London, which in those days had no café culture, nowhere an intellectual could while away an entire day reading the papers and chatting with émigrés about the finer points of dialectical materialism. ‘Martov was at our house all the time, talking with Vladimir Ilyich,’ Nadya recorded. At this time they were still good friends, but some frostiness had entered into their arguments about politics and the relationship had lost some of its youthful ardour.2

  The Lenins were ‘at home’ and offered open house to Russian visitors on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, a rule designed to stop comrades dropping by at other times of the day or night. Though Lenin could be stand-offish and aloof, he was an entertaining and generous host when he chose to be. He liked amusing company who could banter cheerfully and pass on funny and useful information. Valentinov, who saw a lot of Lenin in Geneva, said that he ‘delighted’ in high-grade gossip. ‘Lenin disliked boring, gloomy and impassive people. He said about one [comrade], “He is a very good man, that is to say, he is an honest revolutionary and useful to the Party. Unfortunately, as a person, he is as boring as an owl – laughs perhaps once a year, and even then nobody knows why.” Lenin preferred spirited and cheerful people around him.’

  In particular, he sought the company of young RSDLP activists ‘from home’ who had recently arrived in Switzerland and, as Nadya put it, ‘breathed of Russia’. He quizzed them incessantly about conditions in the country and what Party members on the ground there were doing.3

  He enjoyed lively evenings singing old Russian folk songs and revolutionary hymns. Panteleimon Lepeshinsky, who was in Siberian exile with him and in Switzerland, later recalled: ‘Vladimir Ilyich brought into our vocal performances a quite particular passion and verve…though he did order us about on what we should be singing…He would begin in his somewhat hoarse and out-of-tune voice – what can only be described as a cross between a baritone, bass and tenor:

  With courage, Comrades, we go marching

  Battle will temper our souls…
>
  And when it seemed to him that others did not put sufficient emphasis on the more striking passages of the song he would wave his fists energetically, tapping out the rhythm with his foot. Against all the rules of harmony…he would strain his vocal cords to the utmost and render the parts he liked most by pitching the notes either too high or too low.

  And we shall raise over the earth

  The fraternal banner of toil…

  —

  His voice tended to drown all the others.’4

  He could get sentimental about music, but even then there was usually a political edge. He was moved almost to tears when, at a musical evening at his Geneva apartment, he heard a young violinist, Pyotr Krasikov, play Tchaikovsky’s ‘Barcarolle.’ Lenin said that he played the piece beautifully, with passion and feeling, but the important point was his opposition to the autocracy and his bravery: he had recently escaped from Moscow in dramatic fashion, just hours before the Okhrana were about to arrest him. Practically the only thing he had taken with him from Russia was his violin.

  But Lenin couldn’t afford too much sentiment. As he grew older, more ambitious and more certain of his powers, he made a deliberate effort to control his emotions and what remained of the softer side of his nature. He made a revealing comment to the writer Gorky, who recalled one evening as Lenin was listening to a sonata by Beethoven. ‘I know nothing greater than the Appassionata. I always think with pride what marvellous things human beings can do! But I can’t listen too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid, nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. And you mustn’t stroke anyone’s head – you might get your hand bitten off. You have to hit them over the head, without any mercy…Hm, hm, our duty is infernally hard…’

  Welcoming and gregarious though he could be, ‘Lenin’s corner was a very extensive one and he allowed almost no one to penetrate it,’ Valentinov said. ‘There was an invisible line dividing Lenin from other comrades – and I never saw anyone crossing it.’5

  * * *

  Despite the musical evenings and comradely bonhomie in Geneva, the first major crisis of Russian Communism was threatening to split the revolutionary movement apart in a vicious conflict.

  There had always been disagreements between the leading figures in the Party, and especially on the editorial board of Iskra. The Plekhanov/Lenin relationship was again almost at breaking point after Lenin moved to Geneva; Plekhanov loathed Trotsky; Zasulich could barely stand to be in the same room as Lenin; Potresov had contempt for Zasulich; the popular Martov tried to get on with everybody, but was becoming increasingly exasperated by Lenin’s intolerance with anybody who argued with him and thought What Is to Be Done? was more a manual for imposing dictatorship than an illuminating guide to building socialism. It was decided to clear the air by holding the first substantial conference of Party members since the RSDLP was founded in 1898. The exiles would be there – as well as Party members working underground in Russia – and they would thrash out an agreed Party programme.

  There were signs of trouble ahead from the start. The original plan was to hold the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Brussels, starting from 30 July 1903. Forty-three delegates turned up on the first day in a flour warehouse in the centre of the city. The central window was draped with a huge red canvas bearing a slogan calling for Unity. As Plekhanov gave the opening address, rats scurried around the delegates’ feet, many of whom soon began to scratch their arms and legs in evident discomfort. The Belgian police were on their trail, forcing the delegates from one drab venue to another. They were followed everywhere, from the conference rooms to the Coq d’Or inn where most of them were staying, rummaging through their luggage when they were out. The Okhrana had given the Belgian authorities a full list of ‘troublemakers’ and the Brussels police decided to co-operate with them. After a few days of heavy surveillance the delegates were anxious to leave Belgium as fast as possible, fearing that some of them might be sent back to Russia if they stayed much longer.

  The Congress was moved to London. The last-minute change meant a lot of extra work for Lenin and Nadya. They had to find discreet meeting rooms where they wouldn’t be disturbed or overheard and lodgings for the delegates, many of whom complained that they hated pubs and why weren’t there any cafés – wasn’t London a civilised city? One of the first meeting rooms they could find was in an anglers’ club where fishing trophies decorated the walls. Others were in trade union halls and the English Club, known more familiarly as the Communist Club, which had recently opened in Fitzrovia.

  The Congress reopened on 11 August, and this was when the schism within the Party was exposed in public and the words Bolshevik and Menshevik first came into use as political labels. The internecine feud would continue with venom for a decade until it was finally admitted that the differences were irreconcilable and for all practical purposes it was better to separate into two parties.

  The main issues were arcane, minuscule. Lenin himself admitted that ‘in substance the differences are unimportant’. They were mainly personal – Lenin now identified Martov as a potential rival leader – and only a little about what kind of revolutionary party the RSDLP would be. Lenin wanted a tightly organised, elite corps of dedicated and professional revolutionaries under a highly centralised leadership that imposed discipline on the membership. Martov had in mind a looser, more inclusive party, less under the control of the leadership, where members had significantly more of a voice.

  The proximate cause of the split was of a ‘how many angels can dance on a pinhead?’ type. Lenin and Martov each proposed a list of membership criteria for the Party. Lenin’s stated that a member was someone who ‘accepted the Party programme and supports it by material means and by personal participation in one of the Party’s organisations’. This was too authoritarian for Martov. After quickly looking over Lenin’s resolution he told him, ‘but that’s dictatorship you’re proposing’. Lenin replied, ‘Yes, there’s no other way.’ Martov proposed an amendment. A member ‘recognises the Party programme and supports it by material means and by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the Party’s organisations’.

  Martov won the vote by twenty-eight votes to twenty-three. At this point he had the support of one of the largest groups within the Party, the organisation of Jewish socialists known as the Bund (the name means ‘Union’ in Yiddish). There followed a series of divisive votes on smaller matters. At one point the five Bundist delegates walked out, as did the Union of Russian Social Democrats, which had two votes in the Congress. The balance had shifted, and Lenin seized his opportunity. The next vote was on removing some members of the ‘old guard’ from the board of Iskra – Axelrod, Zasulich, Potresov, all of whom had voted with Martov. This time Lenin won the vote and, with his characteristic mastery of tactics and presentation – spin in present-day language – he branded his followers ‘bolchintsvo’, the majority, and his opponents ‘menchintsvo’, the minority. For the following decades, up to the Stalin era, the Russian Revolution was played out amid the rivalries of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

  Mayhem broke loose at the Congress. One young delegate, Alexander Shotman, was on the verge of beating another who had changed sides on one of the votes and had to be restrained by Lenin himself: ‘Only fools use fists in a polemic,’ Lenin told him. Axelrod brought the well-known revolutionary from Moscow Nikolai Bauman, who had supported Lenin, to tears by alluding venomously to his late mistress, who had recently died. Nadya was shocked by an altercation between the veteran Leo Deutsch, a friend of Plekhanov, and the ardently Leninist Vladimir Noskov, when the latter told the elderly man, ‘You just keep your mouth shut, you old dodderer.’ With each insult the atmosphere became more venomous.

  Without doubt Lenin was the main cause of the bitterness. He was spoiling for a fight and he got one. He was constantly on the offensive, cajoling, hectoring and abusing delegates, then
noting down their reactions and where their loyalties lay to keep for future reference. He admitted to Gleb Krzhizhanovsky, one of his oldest comrades, that his manner had been frenzied: ‘I realise that I behaved and acted in a state of frightful irritation. I am quite willing to admit this fault of mine to anyone, if it can be called a fault…but [my behaviour] was a natural product of the atmosphere, the reactions, the interjections, the struggle.’ Krzhizhanovsky, Krasin, Potresov and several others who Lenin believed would stick with him went to the other side, though some drifted back.

  But Lenin was full of excitement and seemed energised by the fray. On the final day he had a conversation with one of the other delegates which summed up his enjoyment of a political brawl. He loved the combat. His comrade had said, ‘What a depressing atmosphere there has been in the Congress. All this bitter fighting, this agitation one against another…this uncomradely attitude.’

  Lenin replied, ‘No, no. What a splendid Congress…A free and open struggle. Opinions expressed. Tendencies revealed. Groups acquiring shape. Hands raised. A decision taken. A stage passed through. Forward! There’s something I understand.’6

  * * *

  Lenin instantly understood the importance of the words Bolshevik and Menshevik. He never gave up the name for the group that followed him, or the psychological advantage it won. For long periods over the next few years the Mensheviks in fact far outnumbered the Bolsheviks, in Russia and among the revolutionaries in exile, and they were the majority in a series of future votes at various congresses and conferences. Yet they still accepted the name that Lenin had given them and they referred to themselves as Mensheviks. It was their ‘brand’, and Lenin knew how to exploit it. ‘A name he knew was a programme, a distilled essence, more powerful in its impact upon the untutored mind than dozens of articles in learned journals,’ one of his comrades said. It was foolish of the Mensheviks to allow themselves to keep that name permanently. It showed how tactically inept they were. Martov was a decent, erudite, highly clever man but a hopeless politician, no match for Lenin. If Lenin had been the minority he would have changed the name at once to something else – True Iskrists, Real Marxists, Orthodox Marxists, Revolutionary Wing of Social Democracy – anything but ‘the Minority’.