Lenin: A Biography

by Robert John Service

  Lenin represented himself as the humble excavator of the foundations of Marxism buried by a generation of interpreters, especially Kautsky, who had rejected not only the need for violent socialist Revolution but also the commitment to the ultimate communist goal of a stateless society. But Kautsky and Martov quickly raised questions about the cogency of Lenin’s case. They pointed out that Marx had used the term ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ only infrequently and had not discounted the possibility of a peaceful socialist transformation. They also indicated that Marx in his later years had acknowledged that advanced capitalist societies were not polarised between a tiny capitalist class and a vast impoverished working class but increasingly included intermediate groups of experts: engineers, teachers, scientists and administrators. Kautsky and Martov criticised his sociology. Did he not understand that any proletarian dictatorship would inevitably involve oppression by a class that was itself a demographic minority? Did he not comprehend that advanced capitalist societies stood in permanent need of training and expertise? Was Lenin not more akin to the nineteenth-century authoritarian revolutionaries opposed by Marx and Engels: Wilhelm Weitling, Louise-Auguste Blanqui and Pëtr Tkachëv?

  All such revolutionaries had espoused terrorist campaigns, and yet in The State and Revolution Lenin had avoided a discussion of state terror. Indeed he wrote only glancingly about it in the rest of the year. Thus he compared Russia in 1917 with France in 1793:17

  The Jacobins declared as enemies of the people those who ‘assisted the schemes of the united tyrants against the republic’.

  The example of the Jacobins is instructive. Even today it has not become outdated, but we need to apply it to the revolutionary class of the 20th century, to the workers and the semi-proletarians. The enemies of the people for this class in the 20th century are not the monarchs but the landlords and capitalists as a class…

  The ‘Jacobins’ of the 20th century would not set about guillotining the capitalists: following a good model is not the same as copying it. It would be enough to arrest 50–100 magnates and queens of bank capital, the main knights of treasury-fraud and bank-pillage; it would be enough to arrest them for a few weeks so as to uncover their dirty deals, so as to show to all the exploited people exactly ‘who needs the war’.

  There must be scepticism as to whether he really expected his projected government’s use of terror to be as soft and short-lived as he was claiming in Pravda. Lenin was capable not only of lying and deceiving: he could also produce phrases of egregious political fudge.

  From this it is clear that Lenin in 1917 did not, as is widely supposed, offer a libertarian vision of socialism.18 He used words such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ pejoratively. He ridiculed concepts such as the division of power among legislative, executive and judicial authorities. Even the public life as such is despised: Lenin expected the socialist Revolution to move society away from ‘politicking’ towards ‘the administration of things’. ‘Parliamentarism’ for him was a tainted objective. He had no time, therefore, for inter-party competition, for cultural pluralism or for the defence of the interests of various social minorities. Individual citizens’ rights were of no concern to him; he wanted his dictatorship to judge everything by criteria of ‘class struggle’. Civil war held no dread for him. He regarded such conflict as a natural and desirable outcome of the advance of the socialist cause. The State and Revolution has been described as dispiriting because of its failure to recognise the benefits of liberal-democratic values of government. This is true as far as it goes. But the analysis can go further: we have also to recognise that the book contains not merely a failure to propound universal civic freedom but in fact a definite, deliberate campaign against such freedoms.

  It was experienced Marxists in Russia and Europe whom he was trying to rally to his side. The State and Revolution was an impenetrable forest of citation and argument for most of the reading public, and anyway the book was not published until 1918. But it reflected his basic strategic assumptions in the making of Revolution. These were assumptions that he shared to a greater or lesser extent with his comrades in the Central Committee, and The State and Revolution helped to narrow the discrepancies between one leading Bolshevik and another and to reinforce the primacy of Lenin’s ideas in the definition of Bolshevism.

  While writing the book, he also contributed to the party press. Thus his influence reached beyond the Central Committee, and his fellow Bolsheviks across the country were kept aware that Lenin remained active. In July and August he went on demanding that policies should be changed. He based his analysis on a French historical analogy; allegedly Alexander Kerenski, Prince Lvov’s successor as prime minister, was trying to become the Bonaparte of the Russian Revolution, playing off one class against another and rising above the fray to establish a personal despotism. Kerenski’s cabinet, set up on 25 July, had a majority of socialist members; but Lenin argued that there was nothing socialist about the policies. The Provisional Government was a bourgeois class dictatorship. In fact Lenin overstated the cohesion and ‘counterrevolutionary’ nature of the Russian state as run by Kerenski. Nevertheless the cabinet undoubtedly wished to prevent another such outbreak as had occurred on 3–4 July, and among its priorities was the restoration of law and order in the armed forces and in civilian public life. Capital punishment was reintroduced for desertion and other serious military disobedience. The new Commander-in-Chief, Lavr Kornilov, arranged with Kerenski for the imposition of the government’s authority over the soviets, trade unions and factory-workshop committees.

  When the Bolshevik party secretly held its Sixth Congress from 26 July to 2 August, Lenin could not attend. There was too great a chance that the Provisional Government might have caught him. It was a chance for the party to take stock of the situation. Several leading Bolsheviks pondered whether European socialist Revolution was imminent, whether a revolutionary war was practicable and whether the economic decline was quickly reversible. Nevertheless Lenin’s insistent optimism had not faded, and his specific current recommendations of policy were starting to have an impact. In particular, the Congress agreed to drop the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’. After a lengthy debate about slogans, it was decided to replace it with ‘All Power to the Proletariat Supported by the Poorest Peasantry and the Revolutionary Democracy Organised into Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies’. A clumsier slogan can hardly be imagined. Perhaps his Bolsheviks needed the absent Lenin more than they recognised.

  His advice to them in August was angry and impatient. The Kerenski cabinet, he expostulated, had acted as he had always predicted. It was fighting the war to the bitter end. It was silencing opposition in the armed forces and threatening disruptive urban soviets with dissolution. It was keener to rally support from the Kadets and the high command than to make concessions to the socialist parties (and Viktor Chernov resigned in disgust over this). And yet still the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries refused to throw Kerenski out on his heels. The left-wing Menshevik Yuli Martov had the idea of calling for a socialist administration, based on the parties represented in the soviets, to take power, but his colleagues ignored him. The collusion of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries with Kerenski’s ‘military dictatorship’ was complete. Lenin made further progress as the difficulties for Kerenski mounted. Peasants were seizing land, soldiers were deserting the eastern front, workers were taking over factories. Industrial production was dislocated and food supplies sharply declined. And on 21 August the German armies advanced along the northern sector and took the city of Riga. Repeatedly Lenin asked the Bolshevik Central Committee why it was allowing the Provisional Government to survive.

  Then came the ‘Kornilov Affair’. Kerenski and his Commander-in-Chief Kornilov had an agreement for Kornilov to move troops into Petrograd to impose order on the soviets. But Kerenski, noting Kornilov’s popularity in right-wing political and military circles at the State Conference held by Kerenski himself in Moscow on
12 August, became wary of him. Relations between the two men were made worse by the meddling of their aides. On 28 August Kornilov was ordered to put off the agreed movement of frontline troops to Petrograd. Kerenski feared a coup d’état. In the increasing confusion Kornilov concluded that Kerenski was not fit to govern and decided to disobey him. The Provisional Government was at Kornilov’s mercy. Kerenski turned in panic to the parties of the soviets, including the Bolsheviks, to support him by sending out agitators to persuade Kornilov’s troops to obey the Provisional Government and allow Kornilov to be detained in custody. This was duly accomplished, but at the price of the readmittance of the Bolshevik party to the open political arena.

  Lenin was delighted. On 1 September he began an article, ‘On Compromises’, reinstating the slogan ‘All Power to the Soviets’ and suggesting that a peaceful transition to a socialist government was possible. Kerenski was having to be more considerate towards the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, especially as the full extent of secret Kadet encouragement to Kornilov became public knowledge.19

  It is only in the name of this peaceful development of the revolution – in the name of a possibility that is extremely rare in history and extremely valuable, an exceptionally rare possibility – it is only in its name that the Bolsheviks, supporters of world-wide socialist revolution and supporters of revolutionary methods, can and must in my opinion proceed to this compromise.

  The ‘compromise’ he had in mind was that the Bolsheviks would stick to non-violent political procedures so long as the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries formed a government ‘wholly and exclusively responsible to the soviets’ and permitted the soviets in the provinces to constitute the official administration while the Bolsheviks would be guaranteed ‘freedom of agitation’.20 These conditions were hardly likely to be fulfilled, and probably he knew this. He wrote an addendum on 3 September in which he stated that recent events meant that the historic compromise was impracticable.21 He was referring to Kerenski’s formation of a five-person Directory and to the reluctance of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries to break ties with the Kadets. The Directory was obviously counterposed to ‘All Power to the Soviets’.22

  He did not cease justifying his case in subsequent articles, but this changed abruptly on 12 September when he started a letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee, the Petersburg Committee and the Moscow Committee. By then the Bolsheviks had majorities in both the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and Lenin urged: ‘Taking power immediately both in Moscow and in Piter [Petrograd] (it doesn’t matter who goes first: perhaps even Moscow can do it), we will absolutely and undoubtedly be victorious.’23 Central Committee members had a right to feel that he was being irresponsible about the party’s security. On 13 September, before receiving this letter, they decided to put the basic notions of Lenin’s article ‘On Compromises’ into the party’s general declaration to be read out at the so-called Democratic Conference of all parties to the left of the Kadets on 14 September. His strategic somersaults were becoming insufferable. He was evidently out of touch with possibilities in Russia and ought to be ignored. But this time Lenin kept undeviatingly to his line. On 13 September he began a second and longer letter, headed ‘Marxism and Insurrection’, in order to drive home his argument. He contrasted the situation of 3–4 July with the current circumstances. The working class was at last on the party’s side. The popular mood was in favour of revolution and the political enemies of the Bolshevik party were trapped by their indecision. Insurrection was crucial.24

  The Central Committee considered Lenin’s letters on 15 September in the presence of Trotski and Kamenev, who had been released from prison. Most members were appalled by what they read. There was no telling what Kerenski might do if he learned of the contents of the letters. The Central Committee agreed to burn all but one copy of the letters.25 Little doubt can exist that the Bolsheviks would have met with disaster if they had complied with Lenin’s demand for an immediate insurrection. Most soviets remained in the hands of the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, and there would have been intense armed strife if the Bolsheviks had taken to the streets. An attempted seizure of power by the Petrograd Soviet would have provided Kerenski with a marvellous pretext for the elimination of the Bolshevik party from public life.

  But Lenin would not be thwarted, and he knew that there were elements in the party, among garrison soldiers and among the working class, that he would be able to call upon. Maria Ilinichna, ever loyal to him, flouted the Central Committee’s orders and conveyed Lenin’s letters to the Petersburg Committee.26 Lenin wanted to be directly involved, and asked Shotman to get the Central Committee to permit his return to Petrograd. The Central Committee overruled the request. Lenin furiously retorted: ‘I will not leave it at that, I will not leave it at that!’27 Shotman found his utopian political thought almost as unacceptable as his insurrectionary impatience, and argued that socialist Revolution was a complex business. Lenin flared up at him:28

  Rubbish! Any workers will master any ministry within a few days; no special skill is required here and it isn’t necessary to know the techniques of the work since this is the job of the bureaucrats whom we’ll compel to work just as they make the worker–specialists work at present.

  Throughout 1917 he implied that the coming socialist Revolution would be an easy one, and he stressed that most workers, peasants and soldiers would support the party. Shotman experienced this directly. Leaning towards to him and squinting with his left eye, Lenin asked: ‘Who will be against us then?’29

  Although he exaggerated for effect, he probably meant what he said at least in a general fashion. We cannot be absolutely sure about this since he seldom confided his innermost calculations to anyone. And obviously he wanted to reassure his party that all would be well after power had been seized. Perhaps, furthermore, other possibilities were already taking shape in his mind. Like other Bolshevik leaders, he had read a lot about the French Revolution and was always looking for French precedents for contemporary Russian developments. He admired Robespierre, the Jacobins and their forceful efforts to consolidate the revolutionary regime even though they were ultimately unsuccessful. It is hard to believe that it never crossed his mind that, if his own party seized power, the international and domestic resistance might result in protracted carnage. Indeed there is documentary evidence that he deliberately downplayed this admiration in public for fear of weakening the party’s popularity. For example, he was furious with Trotski for threatening the opponents of Bolshevism with the guillotine. But he did not object to terror as such. His notion instead was that ‘the guillotine should not be joked about’.30 And yet simultaneously he reassured himself that a Bolshevik-led socialist revolution would be unlike any previous revolution. The mass of the people would be on its side, at first in Russia and then in Europe as a whole. Repression, then, would not have to last so long or cut so deep.

  Undoubtedly Lenin did not care that the middle classes would oppose the Bolshevik party. He thought that Russia faced a choice between two extremes: a bourgeois dictatorship and a proletarian dictatorship. For the first period since his return from Switzerland he wrote openly of his dictatorial intentions in the central party press. The country, he declared, was simply ungovernable by the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and Kadets. Their strategy had been exposed as irremediably frail by the putsch attempted by Kornilov. Now it was time to agree on the supreme priority: the insurrection against the Provisional Government.

  Disregarding party discipline and bypassing Alexander Shotman, Lenin turned to Gustav Rovio for help with arranging a safe-house for him in Vyborg, the Finnish town near the Russo-Finnish administrative border. A farce took place with the fitting of a new wig. Rovio took him to a theatrical specialist, who required several weeks to make up an item for any customer. Lenin asked for a ready-made item that would fit his head even approximately. The only such wig was silvery grey and the wigmaker was reluctant to sell it since it made his c
ustomer look to be in his sixties. Lenin, naturally, did not reveal that he wanted a wig not to adorn but precisely to disguise his appearance.31 At last the transaction was made, and Rovio produced a false passport and found him a place to stay in Vyborg with yet another Finnish comrade.32 Arriving there at the beginning of the last week in September, he immediately sought ways to proceed to Petrograd. Within a few days he was off. Again he bypassed Shotman. Again he commissioned a wig, this time adopting the disguise of a Finnish pastor of the Lutheran Church.33 Lenin the militant atheist returned to Petrograd as a man of God. His travelling companion was the metalworker Eino Rahja; the train driver was the same Hugo Jalava who had carried him in the opposite direction across the Russo-Finnish border in August.34

  He stayed in Petrograd with a young Bolshevik agronomist Margarita Vasilevna Fofanova, who lived in Serdobolskaya Street overlooking the Finland Railway in the Vyborg district. Fofanova had to comply with ‘his firm regime’:35

  He told me to obtain on a daily basis, no later than at half-past eight each morning, all the newspapers appearing in Petrograd, including the bourgeois ones. Times were laid down for breakfast and lunch. Then Vladimir Ilich added: ‘It will be difficult for you, Margarita Vasilevna, in the first week. Everything will fall on you.’

  Rahja helped with the errands; the only other visitors to the apartment were Nadezhda Konstantinovna and Maria Ilinichna. Lenin spent most days locked inside while Fofanova was out.

  But he still needed to argue his case directly at the Central Committee if he was to secure its assent to an immediate armed uprising. On 10 October a session was organised, in the Petersburg Side flat of Galina Flaxerman, who was married to the left-wing Menshevik Nikolai Sukhanov. Sukhanov discreetly spent the night in his office: such were the inter-party politesses of the period. Flaxerman brewed up tea in the samovar and kept the participants supplied with biscuits. The meeting began around ten o’clock in the evening. In the chaotic revolutionary conditions, when communications and transport were unreliable, only twelve Central Committee members managed to be present. What they heard was to have a gigantic influence over events. The main item on the agenda was the question of the party’s seizure of power. It took the rather obscure form of a ‘report on the current moment’ by Lenin. The room was softly lit. For most participants this was the first occasion they had seen Lenin for months. It was quite a surprise for them since he was still dressed as a Lutheran pastor. Unfortunately he had not learned the knack of stopping the wig from falling off, and had developed the nervous habit of smoothing it down with both hands. His fellow leaders found his mannerisms comic.