Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (16 page)

For the last half decade, before the war that changed everything broke out, Lenin was, in a sense, at his most Leninlike. He was a prominent figure known to other European socialist activists but no more so than Martov, Bogdanov and many others. Plekhanov remained the most widely known among the Russians and was one of the few sharing the prestige and broader recognition of the main leaders of German and French socialism such as Kautsky, Bebel, Jaurès, Lafargue and others. By comparison Lenin was still obscure. His actions seemed likely only to make him even more so. The years were filled with intense squabbles with three opponents – Trotsky, Bogdanov and the Mensheviks. Time after time Lenin announced a complete break with one or other of the groups, only, bewilderingly, to hold out hopes of unity shortly afterwards.

Writing to his sister Anna in March 1909 about
Materialism and Empiriocriticism
Lenin stated ‘We have
completely broken off
relations with them’ [CW 37 414], that is with the Bogdanovites. Even so, only a couple of weeks earlier he had invited them to put their case in
Proletarii
. Lenin continued to attack in uncompromising terms. Recallism was ‘the worst political travesty of Bolshevism’. [CW 15 357] and ‘a caricature of Bolshevism’. [CW 15 393] In late June Lenin and Bogdanov both attended a meeting of the editorial board of
Proletarii
. Lenin persuaded the meeting to exclude Bogdanov from the
Proletarii
group though not from the Party.

That was not the end of disputes by a long way. For the time being, only Plekhanov was exempt from his wrath because he still held out hopes of winning him over. In November 1909 he believed ‘Things [were] moving towards an alignment with the Plekhanovite Mensheviks’ [CW 34 408] but, despite blowing hot and cold for several years, nothing came of it. In the meantime he refused to participate in the Capri Party school set up by Lunacharsky and Bogdanov with the assistance of Gorky whose island home was its base of operations. Lenin also wanted to split Gorky off from Bogdanov and he made several attempts to do so, at times chiding Gorky, at others apologizing for his own rashness. [CW 34 403
–
4 and 405
–
6]

Throughout 1910 and 1911 the arguments went on. Passions began to run so high that, in a Paris café in January 1910, Aleksinsky, a former Bolshevik, and others now close to Bogdanov gatecrashed a Bolshevik meeting. The confrontation degenerated into fisticuffs. Even so, at certain moments resolution appeared to be near. In November 1909 Lenin proposed a draft resolution on unity to the editorial board of
Sotsial Demokrat
. Its rejection caused him to resign, though he withdrew his resignation two days later. More significantly, the Party Central Committee, meeting in Paris from 15 January to 5 February 1910, seemed to have reached a compromise, forced in part by Bolshevik ‘conciliators’ who urged Lenin to reach an agreement. Lenin wrote to his sister Anna on 1 February that he had agreed to close down ‘the factional newspaper
Proletarii
’ and was ‘trying harder to promote
unity
’. [CW 37 451] His article ‘Towards Unity’ was published in
Sotsial Demokrat
(26 February) [CW 16 147
–
55] but by mid-March Lenin was back in attack mode criticizing the position of the Bogdanovite journal
Vpered
and Gorky. In April he told Kamenev in a letter that a ‘Party core’ was needed but could not be built ‘on the cheap
phrases
of Trotsky and Co but on
genuine
ideological rapprochement between the Plekhanovites and the Bolsheviks.’ [CW 43 243
–
4; Weber 70] In autumn his tone was the same. In a letter of 9 October he talked of ‘Martov’s and Trotsky’s most incredible absurdities and distortions’ [CW 36 174] and in another, on 14 October, that ‘We can and should build the Party only with the Plekhanovites’, possibly because he agreed with Plekhanov that ‘nothing can be done with Trotsky.’ [CW 34 430] Remarkably, Lenin had earlier correctly prophesied, in September 1909, that Trotsky ‘will win over some people from the Mensheviks, a few from us, but in the end he will inevitably lead the workers to Bolshevism’. [CW 43 222] None the less, bitter polemic continued until the white heat of the Revolution itself.

In an article, unpublished at the time, written in July 1911 Lenin claimed that at the January 1910 plenum ‘the Bolsheviks dissolved their group
on condition
all other factions would be dissolved. This condition has not been carried out as everyone knows.’ [CW 36 182] Lenin, naturally, blamed everyone else but he was as guilty as any. He did not accept it, even, on one occasion, chiding Gorky for attacking the whole Party for its squabbling without distinguishing right from wrong. [1 August 1912, CW 35 50
–
1] But it was not only principle that was at stake. Quite large sums of money, notably a bequest from a wealthy supporter called Shmidt, meant that whoever could claim to be the legitimate party had the right to the cash. For the time being, however, it was only doled out by the trustees in dribs and drabs to Lenin and the other factions when they were in extremis financially.

Although it did not stop the infighting, in January 1912 Lenin took the most decisive steps so far towards forming his own separate party at a conference in Prague attended by eighteen Bolsheviks and two Mensheviks. Lenin dominated the conference and was elected to the Party Central Committee and as its representative on the International Socialist Bureau. None the less, the squabbles continued more or less unabated. The disputed funds remained undistributed and struggles with Bogdanov and others continued. The most famous newspaper in Party history,
Pravda
, was established in May 1912 as a legal Bolshevik publication. It appeared until June 1913 and then, under a variety of names, until July 1914. Lenin contributed a massive 280 articles to its 636 issues. [Weber 82] But even so it was the object of Lenin’s wrath for not pursuing the fight against the liquidators with sufficient energy and even ‘stubbornly and systematically cut[ting] out any mention of the liquidators both in my articles and in the articles of other colleagues.’ [CW 35 47] Just as bad, if not worse, Bogdanov collaborated with
Pravda
and Lenin, from exile, could do no more than complain. Only in February 1914 was Bogdanov forced out and even then thirteen ‘Left Bolsheviks’ wrote a letter of complaint about it.

A few months later the mirage of unity made its last pre-war appearance. In June 1914 Lenin wrote an article entitled ‘On Unity’ which more or less said unity could only be achieved on his terms. The issue had come up because the International Socialist Bureau in Brussels had called a meeting to try to unify the Russian groups. Lenin used all his charm and influence to persuade Inessa Armand to represent him because, he said, her French was so much better and, not least, she was more tactful than Lenin who admitted afterwards that she had handled the affair better than he would have done. ‘Language apart I would probably have
gone up in the air
. I would not have been able to stand the hypocrisy and would have called them all scoundrels.’ [CW 43 423] Even relations with Plekhanov had taken a turn for the worse. In May 1913 Lenin had defended him to colleagues in
Pravda
saying they should write ‘kindly and mildly’ to him because he was valuable as he was fighting the enemies of the working class. [CW 35 99] However, in June Lenin referred to him in a letter to Kamenev as a ‘sly boots, Ignatius Loyola, the master shuffler’. [CW 43 357] It was only the outbreak of war which ended the round of infighting and began a major realignment which, as we shall see, found Lenin and Plekhanov on completely opposite sides while Martov, and to some extent Trotsky, came closer together.

While the Prague Conference did not end the squabbling it did have one important effect. From that time on Lenin had gathered around him many of the figures who made up the team with which he was to conduct the Revolution. The Kamenevs and Zinovievs followed him in his wanderings. Bukharin, living in Vienna, Rykov and Radek all took Lenin’s side. At no point would anyone have predicted that these people would eventually become victims of another group that was already forming within the wider team. Stalin, with whom Lenin began to get better acquainted, not least because Stalin was one of the few Bolsheviks who was interested in questions of nationality from a socialist point of view, became editor of
Pravda
. The secretary of the paper was a young, well-connected, rising star of the Party Vyacheslav Molotov (whose real name, Scriabin, revealed his kinship to the composer) who had the most extraordinary career of all. He returned to Petrograd in 1917 before Lenin and was still in the Soviet leadership in 1957, four years after Stalin’s death. He served as Stalin’s right-hand man. Stalin’s industrial chief, Ordzhonikidze, a fellow Georgian, was elected to the Central Committee at the Prague Conference. At another level Demian Bednyi, churner-out of Stalinist doggerel in the 1930s, also emerged and was defended against criticism by Lenin himself. [CW 35 99
–
100, May 1913] All remained fiercely loyal to Lenin. With a few exceptions, notably Trotsky, the core of Bolshevism had formed even though it was to split disastrously after Lenin’s death.

However, there was one member of Lenin’s entourage who was not what he seemed, the leader of the Duma delegation, Roman Malinovsky, Party spokesman in the Duma and member of the Central Committee since 1912, who was eventually exposed as a double agent. Lenin had already been alerted to suspicions about Malinovsky by Elena Rozmirovich and Bukharin among the Bolsheviks, but Lenin had rejected them as an SR or Menshevik plot to slander a redoubtable Bolshevik. In the end, in an irony typical of the complex situation of late tsarism, it was the government itself which exposed its agent after tipping him the wink to get out of Russia first, which he did in May 1914. Why such a bizarre turn of events? At the time Malinovsky was exposed, Bolshevik support was rising and it was an excellent opportunity for the tsarist authorities to undermine this by exposing one of the best-known figures in the Party as a government agent. The scandal did, indeed, rock the Party and damage its standing. In a Dostoevskian coda to his story, after the war and revolution Malinovsky returned to Russia to make amends for his treachery and turned himself over to an astonished Cheka who, at first, had no idea who he was. After checking the records they summarily tried and executed him.

While intense squabbles and recovery from the nervous strain they caused occupied most of Lenin’s time and, with the dubious exception of
Materialism and Empiriocriticism
, he produced no major works of theory until the war itself approached, there were a number of interesting observations on current developments which help us round out our picture of Lenin’s ideas at this time and refute one or two myths.

The early twentieth century was a time of rapid economic and social change based not least on the arms race and the scramble for colonial territory. Lenin was aware of the pace at which capitalism was developing. While its growing strength discouraged many on the left Lenin was not at all downcast. Writing to Gorky in January 1911 he argued that wherever capitalism went it devoured the workers and it was the task of socialists to point it out. ‘We say: capital devours you, will devour the Persians, will devour everyone and go on devouring until you overthrow it. That is the truth. And we do not forget to add: except through the growth of capitalism there is no guarantee of victory over it.’ Even more interestingly he went on to say that:

Resistance to colonial policy and international plundering by means of organizing the proletariat, by means of defending freedom for the proletarian struggle, does not retard the development of capitalism but accelerates it, forcing it to resort to more civilized, technically higher methods of capitalism. There is capitalism and capitalism
… The more we expose capitalism before the workers for its ‘greed and cruelty’, the more difficult it is for capitalism of the first order to persist, the more surely is it bound to pass into capitalism of the second order. And this just suits us, this just suits the proletariat. [CW 34 438–9]

Lenin went on to say that crude capitalism had been almost completely replaced in Europe by ‘democratic capitalism’ forcing crude capitalism out into the wider world, a process which ‘enlarges the base of capital
ism and brings its death nearer’. [CW 34 439]

He echoed the theme in public in May 1912 in an article about the approaching elections to the Fourth Duma entitled ‘Political Parties in Russia’
.
[CW 18 44
–
55] In it he defended participation in the parliamentary process. ‘In the absence of representative institutions there is
much more
deception, political lying and fraudulent trickery of all kinds, and the people have much fewer means of exposing the deception and finding out the truth.’ He continued: ‘The greater the degree of political liberty in a country and the more stable and democratic its representative institutions, the easier it is for the mass of the people to find its bearings in the fight between the parties and to
learn politics
,
i.e.
to expose the deception and find out the truth.’ [CW 18 45]

In a short but key article on ‘The Awakening of Asia’, published in
Pravda
on 7 May 1913, he exulted in how quickly Asian countries were being drawn into the struggle against capitalism. ‘Was it so long ago that China was considered typical of the lands that had been standing still for centuries? Today, China is a land of seething political activity, the scene of a virile social movement and of a democratic upsurge. Following the 1905 movement in Russia the democratic revolution spread to the whole of Asia – to Turkey, Persia, China. Ferment is growing in British India.’ [CW 19 85] The Asian ‘liberation movement’ would link up with ‘the advanced proletariat of Europe’ in order to ‘take the place of the decadent and moribund bourgeoisie’. [CW 19 86] He also praised migration for its ‘progressive significance’ in drawing ‘the masses of the working people of the
whole
world, breaking down the musty, fusty habits of local life, breaking down national barriers and prejudices, uniting workers from all countries in huge factories and mines in America, Germany and so forth.’ [CW 19 454] Here Lenin was, in a sense, predicting globalization. He believed it would benefit the revolution in the long run. It would bring workers from all over the world ‘face to face with the powerful, united, international class of factory owners’ [CW 19 454] and, optimistically, create internationalism among them. ‘Class conscious workers, realizing that the breakdown of all national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organize their fellow-workers from the backward countries.’ [CW 19 457] The multitude of ways in which capitalism has prevented the realization of this vision has exercised many Marxists and other radicals. Far from uniting the working class of the world, ethnicity and nationality have become weapons to divide the masses, to such an extent that Lenin’s perspective looks hopelessly naive.

In September 1913 he was even more explicit about the value of reforms but not of reformism. He explained his position thus: ‘Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognize struggle for reforms,
i.e.
for measures that improve the conditions of the working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a resolute struggle against the reformists, who directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms.’ [CW 19 372] The crucial point was that reforms were fine as a means but not as an end.

It is clear from the above quotations that Lenin was not, as many suggest, a person who believed in ‘the worse, the better’, that is that the worse the situation of the workers the more likely they were to support revolution. Rightly or wrongly, Lenin believed the opposite. Only politically conscious, relatively sophisticated workers could form the backbone of a revolutionary movement and it was only advanced, democratic, relatively civilized capitalism that could produce them. Lenin’s frequently expressed scepticism about Russian workers stemmed from his belief that they had not, under oppressive tsarist conditions, had the opportunity to rise to the required levels.

Lenin touched on many other points in these years. Marxism was not to be understood as a dogma. ‘Our doctrine – said Engels referring to himself and his famous friend [Marx] – is not a dogma but a guide to action.’ [CW 17 39] Nor was it utopian – ‘Marxists are hostile to
all and every
utopia.’ None the less, they can extract what is valuable from utopian ideologies, notably populism (
narodnichestvo
). ‘The Marxist must extract the sound and valuable kernel of the sincere, resolute, militant democracy of the peasant masses from the husk of Narodnik utopias.’ [CW 18 359] Although not yet entering the argument about imperialism in a major way, he criticized Rosa Luxemburg for having ‘got into a shocking muddle’ in her book on
The Accumulation of Capital
. [CW 35 94]

He also showed awareness of the latest developments of capitalist industry. On one hand, he had no illusions that the Taylor system of so-called scientific management which had developed production-line assembly was anything other than ‘the latest method of exploiting the workers’ and showed that ‘In capitalist society, progress in science and technology means progress in the art of sweating’ (that is of super exploitation of labour). This, he argued, is what the European bourgeoisie would borrow from America, not its ‘democratic institutions … nor political liberty, nor yet the republican political system, but the latest methods of exploiting the workers.’ [CW 18 594] On the other hand, he remained an enthusiast for big industry. The automobile industry, he argued in 1913, had enormous potential. He noted that in Germany, for example, the increase in production ‘of motor vehicles of all kinds, including motor cycles, was 27,000 in 1907 and 70,000 in 1912’. Nonetheless, under capitalism this potential could not be realized because motor cars ‘are available only to a relatively narrow circle of rich people’ whereas ‘industry could produce hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles’ to serve the people by, for example, replacing ‘a large number of draught animals in farming and carting’. This would mean vast tracts of land would be liberated from producing fodder for horses and could be converted to improving food supplies for humans. [CW 19 283
–
4] Clearly, although Lenin’s mind was primarily on Party struggle, he was still observing what was going on in the wider world.

THE ULYANOVS ON THE EVE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR – FROM FINLAND TO GENEVA – PARIS – KRAKOW

The years of bitter infighting took their toll on Lenin’s health. The cycle of increasingly intense activity producing illness and the need to withdraw and recuperate soon reasserted itself. In June 1907, after the contentious Fifth Party Congress, he and Krupskaya moved to a house near the lighthouse at Styrs Udde (Stjernsund) in Finland. Lenin told his mother, ‘I came back terribly tired. I have now completely recovered.’ According to Krupskaya, ‘We have all put on so much weight it’s not decent to show ourselves in public … Here there is pine forest, sea, magnificent weather, in short, everything is excellent.’ [CW 37 366] Writing to Maria at about the same time, Lenin claims: ‘I am having a rest such as I have not had for several years.’ Krupskaya wrote that ‘We are bathing in the sea, cycling … Volodya plays chess, fetches water.’ [CW 37 368 and 369]

The convenience of Finland was not to last. It had only been made possible by the granting of autonomy to the Finnish province by the tsar in 1905 and the increasingly reactionary atmosphere of 1907 meant that it was no longer safe for revolutionaries to use Finland as a half-way house between Russia and exile. In December, in the guise of ‘Professor Müller’, he crossed to Sweden, almost, as we have seen, at the cost of his life.

The Ulyanovs returned to Geneva in January 1908. A little Bolshevik community formed. Krupskaya’s mother joined them, as ever, plus Lenin’s sister Anna, the Zinovievs and Kamenevs. The consolation of Geneva was the proximity of the mountains. Lenin continued to enjoy walks and excursions, and even tried to tempt his brother Dmitrii to come from Russia so that ‘we could go for some splendid walks together’. [CW 37 390] But even so its attractions palled. Lenin described the city in letters to Lunacharsky and his sister Maria as ‘accursed’ [CW 43 179] and ‘damned’. ‘It is an awful hole but there is nothing we can do.’ [CW 37 372] Even the usually positive Krupskaya wrote that ‘Geneva looked cheerless.’ [Krupskaya 147] When they had settled down there once more, however, they were persuaded to move to Paris in December 1908 but it had also lost its charm. It, too, was ‘a rotten hole’ as Lenin described it in another letter to Anna of February 1910. [CW 37 451] Lenin’s second period of exile in western Europe was much harder for him to bear than the first. Places which had been tolerable were no longer attractive.

The reason for the disillusion is obvious. The prospects of 1905 had raised expectations to undreamed of heights. Then they had been totally dashed. Emigration was a more bitter pill to swallow in the atmosphere of defeat compared to the hopes before 1905. According to Krupskaya, ‘in Paris we spent the most trying years of exile.’ [Krupskaya 166] Writing to Gorky in April 1910 Lenin said: ‘Life in exile is now a hundred times harder than it was before the revolution.’ [CW 34 421] The new exile was no less prone to the old disease. Describing the January 1910 Central Committee Plenum to Gorky, he said it was ‘three weeks of agony, all nerves were on edge, the devil to pay’. [CW 34 420] However, on this occasion, the squabbling was purgative: ‘Life in exile and squabbling are inseparable. But the squabbling will pass away; nine-tenths of it remains abroad; it is an accessory feature … The purging of the Social-Democratic from
its
dangerous “deviations”, from liquidationism and otzovism (recallism)
goes forward
steadfastly.’ [CW 34 421]

Once again, holidays helped Lenin maintain his equilibrium, starting with ten days in Nice – ‘the place is wonderful – sunny, warm, dry and a southern sea’ [CW 37 412] – with his brother-in-law in March 1909 and, after the showdown with Bogdanov in July, six weeks in Bombon near Clamart where the walking and cycling began again.

However, not all Lenin’s encounters with the bicycle were happy ones. In January, on the way to watch an air display at Juvisy-sur-Orge near Paris, an expensive motor car driven by a viscount ran him down and smashed his bike. Lenin was barely able to jump clear. However, the episode did enable him to reactivate some of his legal training. He brought a suit against the driver. By the end of the month, thanks to the help of witnesses, he was able to report to his sister Maria that ‘My bicycle case ended in my favour.’ [CW 37 450] It did not put Lenin off. Cycling remained one of his favourite recreations. He and Krupskaya frequently took rides at the weekend, pedalling out of Paris into its wooded and rural suburbs they loved so much.

Illnesses and constant travel from meeting to meeting – San Remo, London, Liège, Brussels, Copenhagen, Stockholm – continued to punctuate Lenin’s life. His philosophical research in 1909 had been badly disrupted by illness, which even endangered the whole project. On 13 July 1909 he wrote to Maria: ‘My illness has held up my work on philosophy very badly. I am now almost well again and will most certainly write the book.’ [CW 37 386] In July 1910, despite his earlier hostility to the Party School there, he visited Capri for a fortnight, meeting not only Gorky but Bogdanov, Lunacharsky and Bazarov as well. The visit was recorded in a series of photos. The summer of 1910 also saw Lenin and Krupskaya departing on 22 July for a month’s holiday in Pornic, near Nantes, in South Brittany. Lenin told his mother he was having a wonderful holiday. However, immediately it ended he was on the way to Copenhagen for the Congress of the Socialist International. He took advantage of being in the Baltic region to arrange for his mother, now 75, and his sister Maria to take the steamer from St Petersburg to Stockholm where he met them and they spent almost a fortnight together. His mother even attended one of his public meetings which, according to Maria, ‘made her very excited’. After ‘she listened quite attentively’, she commented that he spoke ‘so impressively and skilfully but why does he exert himself so much, why does he speak so loudly, that is so harmful’ adding, like innumerable mothers, ‘He is not looking after himself.’ [Weber 72] It was Lenin’s last direct contact with her. She lived on until 1916 but Lenin’s exile did not end, of course, until 1917. He was clearly aware that he might not see her again and, according to Krupskaya, when the time came for Maria and their mother to return, ‘it was with sad and wistful eyes that he followed the departing steamer.’ [Krupskaya 182]