Lenin: A Biography
Page 15
Martov, who was a Jew, argued that Jewish socialists should bind themselves into the general socialist organisations of the Russian Empire. He opposed the idea of forming an exclusively Jewish party. He was very bright and had already acquired a formidable knowledge of the texts of Marx and Engels. His ability to write quickly was rivalled by no one in Ulyanov’s circle except Ulyanov himself. The two of them immediately got on well. Their friendship was so close because they agreed on the foundations of their world-view. But another factor was probably the contrast in their personalities. Whereas Ulyanov was neat and self-restrained, Martov – at least in private – had a chaotic, bubbly side. As so often happens with friends, they appreciated each other for their differences.
Martov’s experience gave him an edge in the debates held in St Petersburg after his arrival there in October 1895. The Marxists had a larger number of groups and adherents. More to the point, they had proselytised among the largely Jewish industrial workers and formed further groups of their own. The problem soon arose, however, that the workers whom they attracted tended to move out of the working class once they had received an education at the hands of Marxist activists. Martov’s mentor Alexander Kremer had the answer to this. In his pamphlet On Agitation Kremer argued the need for Marxists to maintain their study circles but also to include agitation among local factory workers in their immediate tasks. His hypothesis was that Marxism would be spread more widely and quickly by practical leadership of industrial strikes over grievances held by workers than by laborious expositions of Capital. While the Radchenko–Klasson–Ulyanov fraternity was investigating agrarian economic statistics, Kremer and Martov had been involved in industrial conflicts between owners and workforces which involved tens of thousands of workers. Martov put the point that the ‘Vilnius Programme’ should be adopted by the existing Marxist groups of St Petersburg.36
Several members of these groups – the so-called Elders (stariki) were unconvinced by Martov, and it would seem that Ulyanov was among them. For Ulyanov, a large part of Marxism’s attraction had been its emphasis on scholarship and science. He insisted that Marxists had something to teach the working class and that, if Revolution was to be successful, there had to be a widespread dissemination of Marxist doctrines. His intellectual solemnity made him well named as an elder. In fact, as his friend Alexander Potresov was to recall, ‘Old Man’ was his nickname:37
But he was young only according to his identity document. Face to face you would not be able to give him anything below thirty-five or forty years. The pallid face, the baldness that covered his whole head except for some sparse hair around his temples, the thin, reddish little beard, the screwed-up eyes that looked slyly at people from under his eyebrows, the old and harsh voice… It was for good reason that in the St Petersburg Union of Struggle of the time, that primary cell of the future party, this young man in years was called ‘the Old Man’, and we often joked that Lenin even as a child had probably been bald and ‘old’.
But Martov and the Youngsters (molodye) gained the upper hand at the joint negotiations. A Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class was formed and a five-person committee elected. The burden of Marxist activity was shifted from intellectual discussion-circle debate to economic and political agitation among industrial workers. Vladimir Ulyanov, whatever his early misgivings, moved with the times. In November 1895 he wrote a leaflet appealing to the five hundred striking textile workers of the Thornton Factory in St Petersburg.38 He visited strike leaders and handed over forty rubles for the relief of workers arrested by the police. In line with the Union of Struggle’s fresh policy, he wrote a lengthy booklet on the current legislation about the fines exacted from workers by factory owners. It was printed by an arrangement with St Petersburg supporters of People’s Freedom and had a fake announcement about its place of publication (Kherson in southern Ukraine) and about official permission obtained from the censors. Three thousand copies were prepared. Vladimir Ulyanov, the ‘red’ theorist of action of the most extreme nature, was at last engaging in political activity outside the confines of studious discussion-circles.
7. TO SIBERIAN ITALY
1895–1900
At last the Ministry of the Interior took a hand in the affairs of Russian Marxist organisations. Vladimir Ulyanov and his comrades had stayed out of prison because the Okhrana had thought them too studious to cause much trouble. The rise of the Russian labour movement put an end to this official indulgence. The Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class had to be arrested. Ulyanov had no presentiment of the change of policing policy. On 5 December 1895 he wrote chattily to his mother that his cousin Dmitri Ardashev, by now a qualified notary, had asked him to take on a legal case on his firm’s behalf. He went to see another cousin Dr Alexander Zalezhski in the city, but Zalezhski was unavailable. Life continued normally; the only trouble Ulyanov experienced was the noise made by his neighbours, who played loudly on their balalaikas: he had never been able to tolerate extraneous sounds when he was trying to read or write.1
It was an unpleasant shock for him on 9 December when the police turned up at the apartment and took him into custody. His friend Yuli Martov was detained a month later. By then Ulyanov had been placed in cell no. 193 in the House of Preliminary Detention. Since this was not his first offence, he knew that he was unlikely to be released, as he had been in Kazan in 1887. Ulyanov’s first interrogation took place on 21 December. Adjutant Dobrovolski posed the questions scrupulously, avoiding any psychological or physical pressure. Ulyanov, who had trained as a lawyer, easily offered formal compliance to the authorities while divulging no information to them. He phrased himself with precision: ‘I do not acknowledge myself guilty of belonging to the party of social-democrats or to any party. Nothing is known to me about the existence at the present time of any anti-governmental party.’2 In a strict sense he was correct. A social-democratic party had indeed not been created. Ulyanov dearly wished to form just such a party; but he had not yet succeeded. The confrontation between Adjutant Dobrovolski and the prisoner in cell no. 193 was brief and not unpleasant.
Ulyanov treated his stay in the House of Preliminary Detention as a political sabbatical. He got on with his treatise on Russian economic development (which appeared in 1899 as The Development of Capitalism in Russia). He could read virtually any legally printed book, and he quipped to his sister Anna Ilinichna: ‘I’m in a better position than other citizens of the Russian Empire: I can’t be arrested!’3 He had also taken the precaution of agreeing a code for communication with Nadezhda Krupskaya in the event of arrest He had prepared himself pretty thoroughly.4
Anna Ilinichna and their mother moved to St Petersburg from Moscow. Vladimir had a number of demands: good-quality lead pencils, food and linen. Above all, good-quality lead pencils. His family overdid the provision of food and Vladimir complained that a single day’s delivery was as large as one of the Easter cakes described in Ivan Goncharov’s comic novel Oblomov.5 Vladimir reminded his relatives of the diet prescribed for his stomach problem. They procured bottles of mineral water and even an enema tube for him after the doctor ordered regular bowel clearances.6 Vladimir got thinner and his complexion turned yellowish;7 but he also increased his muscular fitness through press-ups and sit-ups. His brother Dmitri recalled:8
Vladimir Ilich told that in the preliminary prison he always polished the cell floor himself since this was a good form of gymnastics. And so he acted like a real old floor-polisher – with his hands held behind him, he would begin to dance to and fro across the cell with a brush or a rag under his foot. ‘Good gymnastics, and you even get a sweat up…’
Physical exertion was uncongenial for most revolutionaries of that generation, but not for Vladimir Ilich.
While he was in the House of Preliminary Detention, he sketched out a Marxist party programme.9 He wrote it in invisible ‘milk ink’ which could be read only when the paper was heated and held over a bright lamp. He exclaimed to his sister
: ‘There’s no trickery that can’t be out-tricked!’10 Vladimir Ilich’s treatment in prison had its ludicrous side. As he and Anna Ilinichna talked to each other through the cell grille, they used several Russian words of German or French origin. A guard interrupted them on the assumption that they were speaking a foreign language in order to engage in subversive activity.11 Brother and sister had to adopt a simpler vocabulary in order to avoid further trouble. And much as Vladimir Ilich enjoyed making use of the time to get on with his writing, he was frustrated by his inability to join in the debates among Russian Marxists. He wrote in a political void.
Did he also miss contact with women? In his earlier life there is no sign that he had girlfriends, but this may be the result of the prudery of his relatives when they wrote their memoirs about him. Nevertheless it is remarkable that no woman came forward in the 1920s claiming to have been paid court by Vladimir Ilich in his adolescence. But this absence might have resulted from the official discouragement given to any accounts that described him in terms other than those of political hagiography. Perhaps, however, he was anyway too upset by the deaths of his father and brother to become involved with women outside the family for several years. Perhaps, too, he had to leave home for St Petersburg before he could explore this new side of his emotions. Two female members of the Union of Struggle, certainly, were attracted to him. These were Apollonaria Alexandrovna Yakubova and Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, who both planned to catch his eye by standing on the street corner which was observable by prisoners taking their daily walk from the House of Preliminary Detention. Yakubova was unable to be present when the attempt was made, and, although Krupskaya took up position for several hours, she failed to catch sight of Vladimir. Subsequent attempts were no more successful, but Krupskaya and Yakubova at least had tried. They were unable to continue the experiment for very long because both were taken into custody by the Okhrana in August 1896.
On 29 January 1897, the authorities sentenced nearly all the arrested members of the St Petersburg Union of Struggle to three years of ‘administrative exile’ in eastern Siberia. This was a Russian punishment that involved a convict being sent, without recourse to the courts and their juries, not to prison but to a designated place of banishment. A graded system of banishment had been developed. The more dangerous the convict, the more distant the place of exile. Permission for individual convicts to live in particular houses, to take paid employment and to make trips to nearby towns was granted in accordance with the Ministry of the Interior’s assessment of risk. Local officialdom in Siberia had large residual authority. The convicts knew that the conditions of their exile might be worsened if they did not behave themselves.
Another fear was that prisoners were sent in transport supplied by the government or even had to make the trip on foot along with other manacled prisoners. Trudging through the snow and living off inadequate rations, sometimes such convicts died before reaching their destination. The alternative was to get approval to pay privately for the trip to Siberia and travel in comfort. Vladimir Ulyanov successfully made such an application and on 14 February, along with other members of the Union of Struggle, was given three days outside prison to make preparations for the journey. A planning session took place in the house of Martov’s family.12
They agreed to sit out their term of exile without attempting to escape.13 Yet political questions divided them. The linkage of the Union of Struggle with anti-tsarist industrial workers was commonly desired; but there was disagreement as to what role should be played in the Marxist political movement by these workers. The experienced Marxist Stepan Radchenko, who was an ex-adherent of People’s Freedom and a founder of the Union with definite pro-terrorist proclivities, argued that no worker would be able to do better than a well-read, committed intellectual. His faction became known as the Veterans. Others felt differently. K. M. Takhtarëv and Apollonaria Yakubova – the so-called Youngsters – wanted working-class Marxists to have enhanced opportunities to run the various organisations of Russian Marxism. Vladimir Ulyanov’s intellectuality drew him closer to Radchenko than to Takhtarëv and Yakubova. But, unlike Radchenko, he was not absolutely hostile to the working class taking over the Marxist movement. Indeed, he wanted workers to assume such authority, but he insisted that they should have a basic intellectual grounding before they did so. This particular opinion of his, which marked him off from both the Veterans and the Youngsters, was to make an interesting reappearance when ‘the worker question’ was raised again after the turn of the century.14
All this lay in the future. At the time the Department of Police was considering the requests of the mothers of Ulyanov and Martov for their sons to travel to Siberia on their own financial account. Official permission was granted. Maria Alexandrovna could easily afford the train fare and politely declined the offer of a subsidy from the publisher and Marxist sympathiser Alexandra Kalmykova.15
Ulyanov was a mite embarrassed that several of his arrested comrades lacked his own family’s resources. But he conquered the temptation to travel with them; neither then nor later did he let comradely sentiment get in the way of his material comfort. On 17 February he set out for Moscow on the first stage of his journey. His mother accompanied him and petitioned the authorities that, in view of her ill health, Vladimir should be allowed to stay a few days in the family apartment in Moscow before heading off to Siberia.16 He finally left Moscow on 23 February, after studying for a few days in the Rumyantsev Museum Library. But he was not in the best mental shape since he was afflicted by the ‘nerves’ that were to bother him till he died. Like his sisters Anna and Maria as well as his parents,17 he was highly strung. Bouts of emotional instability frequently occurred when he was stepping into the unknown. Exile was a turning point in his life. For years he had had no serious intention of becoming a full-time lawyer. But his arrest and conviction put him permanently into the bad books of the authorities. Now he could hardly take up the profession even if he wanted to.18
He told his mother of his feelings; the act of communication seems to have helped him through his nervous bouts. He signed off letters to his sisters with a perfunctory ‘I press your hand. Yours, V.U.’; but when he wrote to his ‘dear Mama’ he often added: ‘I give you a big kiss.’19 That he genuinely loved his mother there can be no doubt; once he said about her: ‘Mama… you know, she’s simply a saint.’20 But he deliberately made the most of her saintliness: the constant references to his state of health kept him at the forefront of the family’s attention.
The prospect of exile was worse than the eventual reality; but before he left Moscow he had not been informed – indeed the authorities had not yet decided – exactly where in Siberia he would be ordered to stay. Although he was generally calm, there continued to be moments of extreme tension. At Kursk Station in Moscow he bade farewell to his brother Dmitri. His mother, sisters Anna and Maria and brother-in-law Mark boarded the train and accompanied him southwards to Tula.21 At Tula the Trans-Siberian Railway took an eastward switch of direction, and it was there that he said goodbye to his family and travelled onwards to Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia. Suddenly he again became thoroughly agitated. A problem had arisen on the platform in Tula when it transpired that there were too many passengers for the train. Ulyanov refused to accept this even though he had been lucky in getting permission to use the railway at all. He strode down the platform and angrily upbraided the nearest official. He showed all the confidence of an hereditary nobleman and a practising lawyer by insisting that the authorities fulfil their obligations and attach an additional carriage to the train.22 The complaint was passed to the station master, and after a flurry of negotiations the convicted revolutionary got his way. The repressive tsarist administration was capable of indulgence in a way that was wholly absent in the Soviet period under Lenin. The passengers proceeded comfortably to Krasnoyarsk.
Some days later they arrived in Krasnoyarsk in mid-Siberia, where Ulyanov was halted for two whole months because the river Yenisei re
mained frozen until the spring. Ulyanov took the opportunity to have a tooth pulled out by the town’s dentist; he also visited the renowned library of the vodka distiller and bibliophile Gennadi Yudin.23 It says much about the widening disenchantment of middle-class entrepreneurs with the Romanov monarchy that Yudin gave the young Marxist the run of his library.24 In the meantime Ulyanov wrote to the Irkutsk Governor-General citing his medical problems and asking to stay in Krasnoyarsk for the three years of his sentence.25 He did not really expect a positive reply, and proposed Minusinsk district as a second choice. The area was known among revolutionaries as the ‘Siberian Italy’ because of its congenial climate. If he could go to Minusinsk or some village near by, he would have no great difficulty in seeing out his term in comfort. Camaraderie prevailed among revolutionary sympathisers regardless of their specific political orientation. Thus the doctor and agrarian socialist Vladimir Krutovski, who argued against the Marxists in favour of retaining the peasant land commune, helped Ulyanov the Marxist to acquire certification on his stomach complaint.26