LET US CLEAN RUSSIA AND KEEP IT CLEAN
An operation which shocked the Russian intelligentsia at large was carried out at this time. An operation devised by Lenin. In the last days of 1922 a steamship from Russia put into the port of Stettin in Poland. There was no one waiting to welcome the new arrivals. They found a few horse-drawn wagons, loaded their luggage onto them, and walked behind in the roadway, husbands and wives arm in arm. “They” were the fine flower and pride of Russian philosophy and social thought, all those who had shaped Russia’s social awareness in the early years of the twentieth century: Lossky, Berdyaev, Frank, Kizevetter, Prince Trubetskoy, Ilyin … 160 of them, eminent professors, philosophers, poets, and writers, the whole intellectual potential of Russia cast out at a stroke.
Pravda published an article about the expulsion under the headline “First Warning.” It was just that. Throughout 1922, while he was implementing the New Economic Policy, Lenin was also systematically purging the country of dissidents. With the General Secretary, faithful Koba, at his side. In a dispatch to Koba, he said, “With reference to the expulsion of Mensheviks, Kadets etc. from Russia … several hundred such gentlemen should be mercilessly expelled. Let us make Russia clean for a long time to come.” A special commission attached to the Politburo worked tirelessly. List after list of expellees was drawn up. And Koba’s rough handiwork can be seen in the systematic and unwavering implementation of Lenin’s scheme.
Leaving Russia was a grotesque tragedy for these people.
“We thought we should be returning in a year’s time.… That was all we lived for,” wrote the daughter of the eminent agricultural scientist Professor A. Ugrimov. In Prague in the seventies I met a very old woman, the daughter of the eminent historian Professor Kizevetter. She had lived with her suitcase ready, packed, since 1922. She was still waiting.
Lenin’s illness interrupted the gigantic purge which was getting under way. But the General Secretary had mastered its slogan: “Let us make Russia clean for a long time to come.”
THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL
Lenin also steered General Secretary Koba in the direction of the Comintern (Communist International), which had close links with the GPU. The third Communist International had been set up in 1919, when the dream of world revolution still lived. It was joined by Communist parties obedient to Moscow. When they founded the Comintern, Lenin and Trotsky had written candidly in its manifesto that “the international proletariat will not sheathe its sword until we have created a world Federation of Soviet Republics.… The Comintern is the party of the revolutionary rising of the international proletariat.”
The Comintern offices were on Manège Square. There were several “sections” on each floor, representing, in toto, the whole world. Three Communist universities trained the cadres who should someday set the world on fire. Radek, Zinoviev, Bukharin, and Kamenev all gave lectures there. Koba now began to speak there quite frequently. An old Comintern member, V. Saveliev, wrote me: “I am nearing the end of my ninth decade.… I had some connection with the Comintern. For that I was given an eighteen-year rest cure in Stalin’s camps. The Comintern was a great organization. Stalin utilized it brilliantly. I was just a boy. I remember the head of Comintern, Zinoviev—red-faced, plump.… We taught Western Communists to operate underground, to manage illegal organizations, to organize disorders, etc. The heads of the GPU often came to our meetings. Zinoviev, paraphrasing Trotsky, called the GPU ‘the glory and the pride of our Party.’ The GPU acted in conjunction with the Comintern. In 1920, when we were thinking of helping the German revolution, the GPU blew up an arsenal in Poland, just in case we had to go to the aid of the Germans via Poland.… If Stalin took something on he ‘squeezed hard,’ ‘got a stranglehold’ on it.… Zinoviev didn’t like work, and after Stalin was appointed Gensek [General Secretary] all the most secret business of the Comintern was done through him.”
The gigantic resources of the country, seized by the Bolsheviks who so hated money, were lavished on the preparation of world revolution. In March 1922, for instance, 4 million lire were allocated to the Italian Communist Party, 47 million marks to the Germans, 640,000 francs to the French. The list was endless. Starving Moscow was feeding the Communist Parties of the whole world. People were swollen with hunger, but never mind, the world revolution was at hand. The Comintern spent money without counting, squandered it recklessly. Money often disappeared together with Comintern agents. When Koba became Gensek he set about introducing some system of auditing expenditures. A report from G. Safarov informed Koba that 200,000 gold rubles had disappeared in Korea. Koba also looked into the millions spent on Germany, and tried to make Zinoviev account for them. In 1921 alone, 62 million marks had been paid out to fund a revolution. The payment was made partly in currency, partly in jewelry, some of it taken from the imperial family when they were executed. It included, for instance, a pearl necklace belonging to Russia’s last empress. All those millions of marks had been kept in the apartment of a Comintern agent, stuffed into files, cupboards, suitcases, boxes. The commission of inquiry set up by Koba uncovered total chaos and a complete absence of accountability. Koba now began to oversee not only the expenditures but the whole life of the Comintern.
Studying the (invariably top-secret) documents of the Comintern Commission for Illegal Work in the Party Archive, I saw how Koba’s shadow hangs over all subversive activity the commission organized in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the United States, Lithuania, and Latvia. Safe houses, clandestine printing presses, sabotage—the former terrorist knew all about such things. He tied in Comintern activities more and more closely with those of the secret police. Terrorists were to be planted in every country of the world. The Comintern’s most secret business was now referred to the Gensek.
THE COMRADES HAMMER
At the beginning of the nineties I managed to obtain a photocopy of what was still a secret document, held by the Party Archive. Penciled on the document were the words “Strictly Secret—from Lenin to Comrade Stalin.” This was a “report from Boris Reinstein” on Comrade Dr. Julius Hammer and the American company run by him and his son Dr. Armand Hammer, which had obtained concessions in Soviet asbestos workings, among other things. (Boris Reinstein, a Russian Jew, had emigrated to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and returned to Russia in 1917 to take part in the Revolution. He became an influential Comintern official and, needless to say, later disappeared in Stalin’s camps.) Reinstein’s note reads:
Dear Vladimir Ilyich
Herewith some information on Comrade Julius Hammer and his company, but I beg you to ensure that this report does not fall into the hands of people who are not entirely reliable, since if a copy falls into the hands of the American government it could have a disastrous effect on Julius Hammer’s situation, which is already very difficult. Having worked for 25 years (1892–1917) in the American Socialist Workers Party I know Comrade Julius Hammer intimately as a sincere and self-sacrificing Marxist.… Having built up a profitable medical practice he has always given generous financial help to the socialist movement.… After America’s entry into the war it was impossible for him to make a dash for Russia so he decided instead to play the bourgeoisie at their own game, i.e., to make a lot of money but use it to support revolution. He succeeded brilliantly.… He and his family are said to have amassed a great deal of money. At the beginning of 1919 Narkomindel [the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs] sent money to Comrade Martens. [Martens, a New York resident, had been appointed Soviet Russia’s first ambassador to the United States, although that country refused to recognize the Soviet government at the time.] When Martens’s funds ran out, Comrade Hammer saved his office from liquidation with a loan amounting in total to $50,000. Later … when Russia needed to obtain machinery for the oil fields, he loaned $11,000 for that purpose.… After the foundation of Comintern he broke with the Socialist Workers Party because of its ambiguous attitude to the International.… In September 1919, wi
th [John] Reed and others, he initiated the Communist movement in America. Besides actively participating in the Communist Congress he gave the Party generous financial support, advancing more than $250,000 for that purpose. The American government suspected that Comrade Hammer was subsidizing Martens’s Soviet bureau and the Communist movement, and tried to find an excuse to get rid of him. Deporting an American citizen occupying a prominent social position was, however, impossible.… An excuse finally presented itself … a woman patient of his, on whom he had been forced for clinical reasons to perform an abortion, died. The government seized on this, induced the dead woman’s husband to prosecute, and forced the jury to bring in a verdict of guilty at all costs. As a result, he was sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor for a term of from 3½ to 15 years. This means that he could be released after a little over a year (he has been in Sing Sing jail, near New York, for over two years now) but even after that the government could make his political behavior the excuse for throwing him in jail again and keeping him there for the full 15 years.… He and his sons are the main shareholders in a big firm … and are now set to work from behind bars to induce his company to support Soviet Russia. In summer 1921 he sent his son Armand, who had recently qualified as a doctor, to Moscow. Armand is their company secretary. Armand Hammer brought with him as a present from his father a full set of surgical instruments, large enough to equip a whole hospital, and worth a great deal of money. Following in his father’s footsteps, the young man—on learning that there was a scheme to set up in Moscow a model American hospital, with funds furnished by friends of the Soviet Union,… gave $25,000 toward it. Making a tour of enterprises in the Urals last year he saw that well-equipped factories were at a standstill because the workers were short of food, and offered—after consulting his father—to provide one million poods [18,000 tons] of grain in return for Russian goods. The contract was made through Vneshtorg [the Soviet Foreign Trade Agency], and one shipment of grain (about 150,000 poods) arrived, but then there was a holdup, partly because our caviar, for which there was a brisk sale at $10 a pound, was found on analysis to contain chemical preservatives in quantities not permitted by American law.… Since the Russian goods were threatened with confiscation the ship had to be diverted first to a Canadian port. A safe way has now been found to deliver the caviar directly to the more profitable United States market.… A large joint American company, with several financial bigwigs, has now been set up on young Dr. Hammers initiative specially to develop Russian enterprises.… It is clear from all that has been said here that we have in the two Comrades Hammer and their company a connection of great value to us, and that it is in our interest to remove all obstacles from their path.
In a secret report (the original was in English) the GPU noted that “on his return journey, at the request of Comintern, Hammer carried $34,000 in cash, which he delivered to the Communist Party in the USA. During this period the USA had placed an embargo on all exports to Russia, and Hammer’s success in getting grain and machines through was unprecedented.”
THE LEADER’S ILLNESS
Throughout 1921 Lenin was plagued by the same excruciating headaches and by neurasthenia. Koba advised a trip to the sunny Caucasus. But to Lenin, just thinking about the fatigues of travel was daunting, as it might be to anyone approaching his end. Lenin wrote to Ordzhonikidze, “I’m afraid a long journey might result in exhaustion by all the nonsensical fuss and bustle rather than a cure for my nerves.”
Lenin spent less and less time in the Kremlin, and more and more in Nizhny Novgorod, near Moscow, on the estate of that enigmatic person, the late Savva Morozov. He was persuaded to call in the doctors, although he had little confidence in Bolshevik “Doctor-comrades.” As he once wrote to Maxim Gorky, “Ninety-nine out of a hundred of our doctor-comrades are asses.” In the old Russia which Lenin had destroyed, German doctors were regarded as the best. And sure enough, doctors were summoned from capitalist Germany to diagnose the Leader’s strange condition. Professor F. Klemperer and his colleagues found nothing particularly alarming, just a slight neurasthenia. They explained his headaches by the bullets left in his head after the assassination attempt. They removed the bullets. But …
Morozov’s country home brought him no luck.
At Gorky, on May 26, Lenin suffered a stroke. His right-side extremities were partly paralyzed and his speech was affected. As he confided to Trotsky later, “I could neither speak nor write. I had to learn all over again.”
This was the beginning of the tragic period in Lenin’s life, his losing battle with sickness which ended with his death two and a half years later.
The communiqué on “The Illness and Death of V. I. Ulyanov (Lenin),” published in Pravda, lists the eminent Russian and German doctors and the junior medical personnel, some forty names in all, who treated Lenin, or were called in for consultation, in the course of his illness. Among them we find F. Klemperer, O. Förster, V. Kramer, V. Osipov, F. Gautier, S. Dobrogayev, all of whom subsequently published reminiscences, and Dr. Kramer, whose unpublished notes on Lenin’s illness are in the President’s Archive.
There is a well-known story that Koba’s immediate reaction to the stroke was “Lenin’s kaput.” That is a lie—he could never have said that. Not faithful Koba. Cautious Koba. He was never in a hurry, never rash.
But he did, of course, realize that the Leader was walking with death. It could happen at any minute. A few years before it would have spelled the end for Koba. But now … now he would remain just where he was, with the terrifying power which he had amassed. He had done what neither Sverdlov nor Lenin himself had managed to do—made the Party manageable. Add to that a docile GPU …
While Lenin was learning to talk the doctors argued over the precise diagnosis. They even mentioned the possibility of hereditary syphilis. They journeyed to Astrakhan, where Lenin’s forebears had lived, to make inquiries, but discovered nothing definite. In the meantime Lenin began to show signs of recovery. He was forbidden to read the newspapers, he still had attacks, he could not receive visitors. But he was already asking for faithful Koba. Throughout July, August, and September Koba regularly visited Lenin at Gorky. Lenin was feeling better all the time, and he decided to escape from the doctors’ tutelage. He appealed to Koba—as was only right; the Gensek, faithful Koba, was monitoring the Leader’s treatment. Lenin wrote to him in July 1922: “The doctors are evidently creating a legend which cannot go unrefuted. They lost their heads completely after my severe attack on Friday, and did something utterly stupid—tried to forbid political discussion.… I got extremely angry and sent them packing.… I want you here most urgently to tell you in time what to do if my illness gets worse. I can say it all in 15 minutes.… Only fools can blame ‘talking politics.’ If I ever get agitated it is for lack of sensible conversation. I hope you’ll understand that, and send the doctors packing.”
On July 13 Koba was at Gorky with the Leader. In Pravda, he himself would give a humorous description of this idyllic meeting: “ ‘I’m not allowed to read newspapers,’ Lenin remarked ironically. ‘I’m not allowed to talk politics. I steer clear of any scrap of paper lying around on the desk, for fear it might be a newspaper.’ I laughed and praised Comrade Lenin’s self-discipline to the skies. Then we both laughed at the doctors, who cannot understand that when professional politicians meet they can’t help talking politics.” This article was part of an ideological stunt thought up by the resourceful Koba: a special issue of Pravda to tell the world that the Leader had recovered. There were several photographs of Lenin, and among them one of Lenin and Stalin sitting side by side on a bench.
Koba also described their conversations on that sunlit bench. Lenin “complained that he was out of touch with events … he was interested in everything: the harvest prospects, the trial of the SRs.” (Thirty-five right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries, including eleven prominent members of the Party’s Central Committee, who had distinguished themselves in the struggle against the Last Tsar, were
standing trial at the time. The trial had been extremely well prepared, and Koba’s hand, with which we are familiar from the Stalinist trials of the future, is clearly visible in this one.
(The records of the case, still held by the Central Archive of the KGB, run to several volumes. I was able to consult some of them.
(The “star” of the trial was a certain G. Semyonov, who had commanded the SR “fighting squad.” He had been arrested by the Cheka back in 1919, and would have been sentenced to death had he not “honestly repented,” “sincerely broken with his past,” and joined the Bolshevik Party while in jail. Semyonov had then been planted in the SR Party as an informer. Later he was given still more serious tasks. The records contain a letter from Trotsky testifying to Semyonov’s “devotion to the revolution,” as evinced by his work as a Soviet agent in Polish territory in 1920.
(In 1922 Semyonov carried out a new assignment: he appeared as one of the accused in the trial of right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries. He made statements on a number of subversive actions secretly planned by the Right SR Party’s Central Committee and on their links with foreign agencies. He claimed that Fanny Kaplan had been briefed for her attempt on Lenin’s life by the Right SR Central Committee and was a member of its terrorist group. However, his statement that he regarded Kaplan as the “best person to carry out the attack on Lenin” showed that he can never even have seen that half-deaf, half-blind woman.
(Nikolai Krylenko, who had exchanged the post of commander-in-chief for that of public prosecutor of the republic, demanded the death penalty for the SR leaders.
(Bukharin and Radek spoiled everything. Eager to be seen as “civilized socialists” at the Third International, they promised that the Socialist Revolutionaries would not be executed. This misreading of the situation of course infuriated Lenin. The pacification of the Party and the country was proceeding. That was why rebellious intellectuals had been deported. Why Lenin had made Koba General Secretary. And why the SRs had to be executed.)
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