Lenin: A Biography

by Robert John Service

  Yet ministers had been confident as they accounted for their activities to the First Congress of Soviets. In their view there was no realistic alternative. Tsereteli at the inaugural session on 3 June had asked whether his audience could imagine any party ‘taking the risk’ of taking power alone in revolutionary Russia. Lenin sat impassively. But Tsereteli had offered him the opening he craved. Next day he was given the platform for fifteen minutes:

  At the moment a whole range of countries are on the brink of destruction, and those practical measures that are said to be so complicated that they’d be hard to introduce and are in need of special elaboration – as was stated by the previous speaker, the citizen Minister of Posts and Telegraphs – those same measures are entirely clear. He said that that no political party exists in Russia that would express a readiness to take power wholly upon itself. My answer is: ‘There is! No single party can refuse this, and our party doesn’t refuse this: at any moment it is ready to take power in its entirety.’

  His Bolsheviks applauded on cue. The greater part of the audience, however, could not take seriously this severe little politician with the rasping voice and the schoolmasterly gesticulations. A wave of laughter swept through the Congress hall.

  But it was not long before mockery gave way to fear. Two self-inflicted problems confronted the Provisional Government. The first was military. The long-awaited offensive was started on 18 June. It was a frightful gamble. For, after initial success, the Russian forces were held up by a spirited defence bolstered by German reinforcements. Kerenski handed propaganda material to Lenin on a plate. The worse the military situation, the better for the Bolshevik party. The second problem was political: the Kadet ministers were so incensed by the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary plan to confer regional autonomy upon Ukraine that the last fortnight of June was spent in intense dispute. The governmental coalition was about to break apart.

  Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee itched to put the Provisional Government to a further test. A grand political demonstration was the most obvious technique. Prevented from organising an armed demonstration of their own during the First Congress of Soviets, they aimed to try again at the end of the month. The idea for this did not originate with Lenin. By then the Bolshevik party had plenty of radical far-left activists who wondered impatiently whether the Central Committee would ever let them take on the Provisional Government on the streets. The main central body in the party where such activists were to be found was the Bolshevik Military Organisation, which co-ordinated the propaganda and organisation of the party in the armed forces. Outside the party there was a growing amount of support for violent mass action. The sailors of the naval garrison on Kronstadt Island, not far from Petrograd, seethed with hostility to the Provisional Government. Soldiers in Petrograd, too, were turning towards the Bolsheviks. More and more factory workers were doing the same. Their calls were frequent for the Bolshevik Central Committee to put its slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ into action.

  Lenin hearkened to this mood. He talked with such ordinary workers, soldiers, sailors and peasants as came his way. In contrast with 1905, he was not marooned in Switzerland. He could see things for himself, and combine his observations with his capacity for intuitive judgement. He had a knack for weighing up the pros and cons of a political gamble. Unlike his party’s enemies, Lenin was incapable of being indecisive. He well understood, moreover, the need to keep a close eye on events as they abruptly developed. It was in this spirit that he came to the Bolshevik Central Committee and upheld the proposal to organise an armed political demonstration. His precise rationale was not committed to paper. Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Kadets nevertheless heard of what he had sanctioned and concluded that his thoughts were focussed on nothing less than a violent seizure of central state power. Such a rationale cannot be excluded. But there is no need to assume that a clear-cut set of plans existed in Lenin’s head. More likely by far is that he was improvising and that he was testing the waters with the aim of discovering the strength of force and determination that the Provisional Government retained.

  This is not to say that he would have been hostile to trying to overthrow the cabinet if sufficient popular support was forthcoming on the streets of Petrograd. Some Bolsheviks felt this unambiguously. Sergo Ordzhonikidze referred to the demonstration as ‘the first serious attempt to finish with the power of the coalition government’;11 and the Military Organisation was behaving like a law unto itself in the Bolshevik party. A conference of the Military Organisation had taken place on 16–23 June. Lenin gave a speech urging that risky adventures should be avoided.12 ‘We must’, he stated, ‘be specially attentive and careful not to succumb to provocation… One false step on our part can bring the whole cause to perdition.’13 But he knew that his words were not taken completely to heart. It was an extremely tense political situation. Anything could have happened.

  Yet it was precisely then that Lenin, for the first time since he had arrived at the Finland Station in April, took himself away from Petrograd. He was exhausted, and looked forward to having a break in the countryside. For this purpose he accepted the long-standing invitation of Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich to join him and his wife at their dacha in the Finnish village of Neivola near to the Finland Railway a dozen miles north-west of Terijoki. Lenin had been complaining of ill health for weeks. At the First Congress of Soviets he was designated by the Bolshevik fraction to reply on its behalf to Chernov’s report on the agrarian question. Two hours before Lenin was scheduled to speak, he was phoned by Nikolai Muralov to remind him. In breach of party etiquette Lenin advised Muralov to do the job himself, and put down the phone.14 On 29 June he set off from the Finland Station with his sister Maria and the Bolshevik poet Demyan Bedny, who led the way from the little country railway stop to Neivola village. Nadya did not come along; she no longer operated at Lenin’s elbow and was enjoying her involvement in the politics of the Vyborg district.15 Their marriage had been loosened by his relationship with Inessa, and Nadya did not need the holiday – and the fact that the terrier-like Maria would be accompanying him was not exactly an attraction for her. Having walked to Neivola and surprised the Bonch-Brueviches with the sudden visit, Lenin spent the following days relaxing. They walked, took saunas and swam. Steadily Lenin’s health was being restored.

  His decision to take a holiday has led to the accusation that he was trying to cover himself in the event of a failed uprising.16 This is not impossible, but it was not in Lenin’s personality to let important things happen without his guidance, and Neivola was only a couple of hours from Petrograd by train. Yet no evidence has been produced to demonstrate that he went there with such a conspiracy in hand. Perhaps he should have conquered his lassitude and pain for the duration of the growing crisis. But he did not do this. Probably he was genuinely exhausted. This had happened before, in summer 1904, when Lenin went on vacation despite the probability that his rival V. A. Noskov would take political advantage; he needed above all to put his mental and physical faculties back in order.

  He was all the more astounded early on Tuesday morning, 4 July, when awoken by an emissary from the Bolshevik Central Committee. Out to Neivola by train had come Maximilian Savelev, who worked on the Pravda editorial board and was closely linked to the Bolshevik radicals of the Military Organisation. Savelev broke the news that the demonstrations against the Provisional Government were about to get out of hand and that ministers were planning stern counter-measures. Whatever his state of health, Lenin would have to terminate his holiday and return to Petrograd. There might well be an insurrection, and it might well be a fiasco. Bloodshed was almost inevitable. Lenin’s place was not in Finland but alongside his Bolshevik Central Committee comrades. Bags were quickly packed and the little group – Lenin, Maria Ilinichna, Savelev and Bonch-Bruevich – took the first train back across the Russo-Finnish administrative border at Beloostrov and on to the Finland Station. They were travelling on legal passports and Bonch-Bruevic
h worried lest they run into trouble with fellow passengers; but there was no incident. From the Finland Station they hurried to the Kseshinskaya mansion to join the Central Committee around midday.

  The strikes and demonstrations had been taking place for a couple of days; a crowd of workers, soldiers and sailors had frequently gathered outside the mansion in expectation that the Central Committee would instigate a decisive push against the Provisional Government. The same happened shortly after Lenin’s return. He was asked to come out on to the balcony to address the crowd. At first he demurred, but local Bolshevik leaders from Kronstadt prevailed upon him. By then he was in no doubt that the crisis was becoming overheated and that the Military Organisation leaders had been acting irresponsibly. Turning to those of them who were in the Kseshinskaya mansion, he exclaimed: ‘You ought to be given a good hiding for this!’17 Out on to the balcony he went, and told the crowd to stay calm. He asserted that the anti-governmental demonstration should above all be peaceful. This did not go down well. The crowd had assumed that Lenin, who had written powerfully about the necessity of removing the Provisional Government, would be on the side of immediate, violent action. But his judgement held sway, and in the early hours of 5 July the Bolshevik Central Committee completed its retreat by calling off the demonstration that had been planned for later in the day.

  Yet the crisis was not over. The Provisional Government had sanctioned lengthy enquiries into the sources of the Bolshevik party’s finances, and the Counter-Espionage Bureau had reason to believe that the Bolsheviks were in receipt of a subsidy from the German government. Some of the Bureau’s materials were passed to newspapers despite the wish of most ministers to wait for conclusive proof. The Petrograd garrisons were also informed. On 5 July the newspaper Zhivoe slovo duly denounced Lenin as a German spy.18 The offensive against Bolshevism was in full spate. A raid on Pravda’s offices took place the same morning. A similar action against the Kseshinskaya mansion was carried out next day. The Bolsheviks had to lie low throughout the capital.

  Through all these days, fortuitously, the Provisional Government had been buffeted by internal dispute over Ukrainian regional autonomy. Prince Lvov had resigned as premier, and on 7 July his place was taken by the Socialist-Revolutionary Alexander Kerenski. An official investigation was ordered into the events of 3–4 July and into the degree of responsibility for the trouble to be assigned to members of the Bolshevik Central Committee and its Military Organisation. Arrest warrants had been issued for Lenin, Zinoviev and Kamenev on 6 July, and a detachment of troops had gone in quest of Lenin at the apartment of Mark and Anna Yelizarov. Although he had already fled, the apartment was thoroughly searched. Nadezhda Konstantinovna, Maria Ilinichna and Mark Yelizarov were at home at the time and were asked about Lenin’s whereabouts. Krupskaya let slip that he had been staying at Neivola.19 But this did not matter since by then he was hiding in Petrograd: first he stayed with M. L. Sulimova, then with N. G. Poletaev. The search was anyway pretty incompetent. The soldiers mistook Yelizarov for Lenin and took him and Krupskaya into custody. Yelizarov was tall and bulky; his brief detention was yet another sign that Lenin was not visually familiar to the general public.

  There was every reason for Lenin to keep things this way. He and his comrades decided that he should not give himself up to the authorities. Initially he had not been unwilling to sit in prison, and Bolshevik leaders negotiated with the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets about the terms under which he might surrender himself.20 Several party figures felt that a trial was the sole means whereby the party could clear its name. The personal danger to Lenin should not in their opinion take precedence. This horrified Maria Ilinichna, who thought that no risk should be taken with the party’s leader and that he should be spirited away to Sweden.21

  Opinion then turned against Lenin’s surrender since the Central Executive Committee gave only weak assurances. Moreover, the atmosphere of vengefulness thickened as most newspapers picked up the allegation that the Bolshevik party had carried out the commands of the German government. The possibility arose that Lenin might be assassinated, and he resolved to stay in hiding and to damn the consequences. Poletaev’s flat was thought inappropriate: too many visitors came to the building.22 Another safe-house had to be found with urgency. Lenin and Grigori Zinoviev, accompanied by Zinoviev’s wife Zinaida Lilina but not by Nadezhda Konstantinovna, moved secretly again on 7 July. This time their haven was provided by the veteran Bolsheviks Sergei and Olga Alliluev in their comfortable apartment on Tenth Rozhdestvenka Street – it even had a smartly dressed concierge. The Alliluevs had only just rented the place and so the police were unlikely to look for Lenin there. Lenin moved into the room being readied for their regular lodger Stalin; he stayed in contact with the Central Committee members by scribbling notes that Sergei Alliluev and others conveyed. Most of the time he worked in his own room. The Alliluev children remembered the noise of a ‘scraping of the pen day and night’ behind his door.23

  But Lenin and Zinoviev wanted to get out of Petrograd, if only temporarily; to both of them it seemed best to leave for the countryside and wait on events. They had to let others decide where they might best find refuge. No longer were Lenin and his companion the makers of a revolutionary situation.

  17. POWER FOR THE TAKING

  July to October 1917

  Lenin and Zinoviev were secretly escorted out of Petrograd on 9 July by Bolshevik activists supplied by the Central Committee. For reasons of security they travelled without their wives. Just before the trip, Lenin decided that he needed to change his appearance. Olga Allilueva, who had recently qualified as a nurse, wrapped his face and forehead in a bandage. But when Lenin looked in the mirror, he knew that he would attract rather than evade attention. He might not even get past the concierge of the apartment block.

  His own idea was simpler: he would shave off his moustache and beard. For some reason he decided that he would not do this himself. Instead Stalin, who was visiting the flat, lathered up the soap and performed the task.1 ‘It’s very good now,’ said Lenin, ‘I look like a Finnish peasant, and there’s hardly anyone who’d recognise me.’2 Just to make sure, however, he borrowed Sergei Alliluev’s coat and cap instead of his own.3 And so people who had seen him in the suit and headwear that he had bought in Stockholm at Radek’s instigation would have no clues to who he was. Then, leaving the Alliluev flat, Lenin made his way on foot to the Sestroretsk Station together with Zinoviev and the Bolshevik metalworker Nikolai Yemelyanov. This station was the terminus of the little coastline railway running along the Gulf of Finland from Petrograd to Sestroretsk. It was the peak of the summer season and the trains were packed with middle-class passengers leaving the capital and going off to enjoy the seaside and the fresh air. Lenin, Zinoviev and Yemelyanov planned to get off the train before Sestroretsk and stay at the village of Razliv, where Yemelyanov owned a house and land and could offer his roomy and comfortable hayloft as a hiding place.

  The three Bolsheviks arrived at Razliv late at night and went straight to bed. Next day Lenin got back to work; his first task was to expound his strategic ideas for the benefit of the Central Committee. The armed demonstration in Petrograd had been suppressed. Kerenski had become the Minister–Chairman of the Provisional Government and, although he was trying to include socialists in his cabinet, his police were rounding up leading Bolsheviks. Already Trotski, Kollontai and Kamenev were behind bars. Since the party’s acceptance of the April Theses, Lenin had suggested that his comrades should be engaged mainly in getting Bolsheviks elected to the soviets and in denouncing the Provisional Government and the Mensheviks and Socialist–Revolutionaries who had served in it. But what now? What precisely should the Bolshevik Central Committee adopt as its strategy of survival and advance?

  Obviously Lenin’s flight from the capital was not going to stop him from trying to impose his ideas upon comrades in the Central Committee. Absence made him still more strident than usual. Sketching out his st
rategic notions, he stated: ‘All hopes for the peaceful development of the Russian revolution have definitively disappeared.’ Kerenski, according to Lenin, had established a ‘military dictatorship’ and the soviets had become ‘the figleaf of the counter-revolution’. Lenin urged Bolsheviks to withdraw the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ and dedicate themselves to the organisation of an ‘armed uprising’ and the formation of a revolutionary government.4 The problem was that he was asking for the overturning of a policy that had been at the core of party strategy since April 1917. Lenin had insisted on this and Bolsheviks had got used to the notion that when they seized power, they would rule through the agency of the soviets. The Central Committee was aghast at his latest thinking. Lenin had not even taken the trouble to explain how the party’s activists could set about justifying the change in policy in their propaganda to workers and soldiers.

  A lengthy meeting of the Central Committee started in Lenin’s absence on 13 July and was resumed next day. The Bolshevik leaders had much to sort out. The ‘July Days’ in Petrograd had brought the party near to disaster and a debate on strategy was urgently required. But the result was never in serious doubt: Lenin’s July theses were firmly rejected.5 Lenin responded furiously with an article ‘On Slogans’, but the Central Committee would not budge. Stalin summarised its position as follows: ‘We are unambiguously in favour of those soviets in which we have a majority, and we shall try to establish such soviets.’ The slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ was retained. Absence from Petrograd was already weakening Lenin’s influence on the central leadership of his party.