Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (38 page)

While the debate about terror has been the more prominent, perhaps the deeper issue was use of coercion in general because it was born of structural problems of Lenin’s project itself. European left-wing critics were among the first to point out the democratic deficit in Lenin’s ‘democratic centralism’, one-party state, resort to censorship and abandonment of freedom of speech and total inability to tolerate opposition. Kautsky launched a major attack in a pamphlet entitled
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
published in Vienna in 1918.

Lenin’s response was characteristically forthright. In a pamphlet entitled
Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky
(October–November 1918) he accused his old foe of being ‘a lackey of the bourgeoisie’ [SW 3 55 and 119] and indistinguishable from ‘a counterrevolutionary bourgeois’ [SW 3 121]. He said Kautsky was ‘chewing rags in his sleep’ [SW 3 46] and ‘like a blind puppy sniffing at random first in one direction and then in another’. [SW 3 49] There were many such insults. Lenin’s main point of defence was that Kautsky wanted ‘a revolution without revolution, without fierce struggle, without violence’. [SW 3 120] He had underestimated the significance of the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of a
new one
which, in the words of Engels, is “no longer a state in the proper sense of the word.”’ [SW 3 50] ‘The Soviets are the direct organization of the working and exploited peoples themselves’ and, as a result, ‘proletarian democracy is a
million times
more democratic than any bourgeois democracy.’ [SW 3 59] For nearly one hundred pages Lenin raged at Kautsky and used all kinds of insults, traded quotes from Marx and Engels and generally engaged in massive academic polemic. The extraordinary thing is that Lenin, pressed on all sides as the Civil War developed, recovering from the attempted assassination and returning to his round of meetings, conferences and so on, believed it worthwhile to spend so much mental energy on such a target and in such a format. In fact, only his convalescence really opened up the space for him to do it. The professorial Lenin took advantage of the moment to re-emerge at the expense of the revolutionary activist who was, for the moment, on the injured list.

Whatever one might think of his polemic with Kautsky it was another, more radical, figure from the German left, Rosa Luxemburg, who made a more telling critique of Soviet reality as far as she could discern it from Berlin. In his dispute with Kautsky, Lenin had indicated that formal democracy was an extra which would emerge later. In 1921 he was to confirm this mind-set by stating to the delegates at the Tenth Party Congress that, in the conditions of the time, discussion in the Party was an ‘amazing luxury’. [SW 3 560] Rosa Luxemburg had already detected the problem nearly two years earlier. Freedom and democracy were not luxuries, they were essentials. ‘The whole mass of the people must take part … otherwise socialism will be decreed from behind a few official desks by a dozen intellectuals.’ Lenin was ‘completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconic penalties, rule by terror.’ It was this last, ‘rule by terror, which demoralizes’. It opened up an unhealthy cycle:

In place of the representative bodies created by general, popular elec
tions, Lenin and Trotsky have laid down the soviets as the only true representation of the labouring masses. But with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become more crippled. Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which bureaucracy remains as the active element.
³¹

Whether or not it was the case, as Clara Zetkin later claimed, that Rosa Luxemburg had admitted her critique was ‘wrong’ [Weber 184], her words were brilliantly prophetic and, had she lived longer, might well have seen that she had been correct in the first place. Indeed, the essence of her criticisms go back to 1905 when she had accused Lenin of trying to ‘bind’ the creativity of the working class.

Be that as it may, Lenin did not respond to Luxemburg in the way he did to Kautsky and, indeed, until her murder in a Berlin prison, kept her in the forefront of his mind as a key player in the German revolu
tion. Afterwards she was elevated to iconic, martyr status. Lenin remained convinced of the necessity of doing things his way, the revolutionary way. ‘Europe’s greatest misfortune and danger,’ he lamented, ‘is that it has
no
revolutionary party.’ It would need ‘world Bolshevism’ to ‘conquer the world bourgeoisie’. [CW 28 105–13] It required an altogether tougher stance. The Soviet outlook started from a different premise: ‘The Soviet Republic is besieged by the enemy. It must become a single military camp, not in word but in deed.’ [
All Out for the Fight Against Denikin!
, 9 July 1919, SW 3 227] The habit survived the defeat of the White enemy. In April 1920 Lenin reiterated in a speech to a miners’ conference that ‘we continue to be a besieged fortress towards which the world’s workers are turned, for they know their freedom will come from here; and in this besieged fortress we must act with military ruthlessness, with military discipline and self-sacrifice.’ [CW 30 495–501] Protests about ‘formal democracy’ were laughed aside. In
‘Democracy’ and Dictatorship
(December 1919) Lenin wrote that the democratic republic is ‘in practice the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’. [CW 28 368–72] There were only the two dictatorships to chose from, bourgeois or proletarian. In August 1922, in a letter to Myasnikov, who was demanding complete freedom of the press, Lenin put his position bluntly: ‘We laugh at “pure democracy” … We do not wish to commit suicide and we will not do this.’ [CW 32 504–9]

Here was a central dilemma of Leninism. Was Lenin correct? Was it just sentimental to believe that there were democratic norms beyond direct class rule? His supporters would claim any relaxation would only allow the counterrevolution, capitalism, with its enormous worldwide resources, to get leverage on the situation and begin to undermine it. Critics would say that the very absence of democracy was a feature which did more to discredit the Revolution than anything the capitalists could do. In Lenin’s dismissive laughter, they could hear the death knell of true revolution.

The years of warfare, internal struggle and attempted construction against a background of ever-more unbelievable social and economic collapse had taken their toll on Lenin. He had been shot at twice and still had a bullet lodged in his body. He had maintained a fearsome schedule of meetings, writings and speech-making. 1920 had brought a watershed in the flow of history. How did Lenin deal with it? How had he handled the personal transition from revolutionary conspirator to ruler of Russia?

LENIN’S LIFE IN THE YEARS OF REVOLUTION

Lenin had never been lazy but the maelstrom of work into which he threw himself in 1918 was unprecedented. The core of his activity was chairing meetings of Sovnarkom (Soviet of People’s Commissars), the Soviet ‘cabinet’.
¹
At first it tended to meet three or four times a week, though over the years the number of meetings slowly declined. Equally important though less frequent were meetings of the Party Central Committee. More important were meetings of the sub-committees and steering committees of these two. From November 1918, as the Civil War gathered pace, the main government organ became the Defence Soviet (renamed the Labour and Defence Committee in April 1920) composed of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others. Annual events like Party conferences and congresses were very demanding and Lenin often had to be at his best to win over doubting delegates. Until 1921, at least, these fora were scenes of real discussion within the Party. They were also places where the professorial Lenin met up with the politician. As we have seen, he once compared early meetings of the Central Committee to an academic seminar at which all the great minds of the country exchanged ideas. By 1920 he was fed up with the exchange of ideas and, as we have seen and will see again, he put a premium on action rather than words.

The relentless pace left little room for the breaks that had kept him together in exile. Even his 1918 New Year break in Finland had not allowed him to recuperate. Theatre visits and similar pleasures and relax
ations continued but were few and far between. Ironically, the assassination attempt in August 1918 brought a little relief. Immediately after the shooting Lenin had been pessimistic. Krupskaya interpreted his demeanour, as he lay pale and silent on the hospital bed, to be saying ‘It is almost over.’ [Weber 131] A week later, however, he sent a telegram to Trotsky saying his recovery was proceeding excellently. [CW 35 359] Another week and he was back chairing Sovnarkom. However, to aid his recovery he retired to the estate at Gorky, where he found the peace, tranquillity and contact with nature that had meant so much to him before. Usually, it was only snatched weekends but later he spent longer vacations there. Gorky was the greatest personal pleasure of his last years and he was keen to invite friends. In July 1919 his brother Dmitrii and sister Anna stayed with him. He wrote to Nadezhda, whose own responsibilities contributed to keeping them apart more than ever, that ‘The limes are in bloom. We had a good rest. I embrace you fondly and kiss you. Please rest more and work less.’ [CW 37 546] A few days later he invited Maxim Gorky: ‘Come here for a rest – I often go away for two days to the country where I can put you up splendidly.’ [CW 35 409]

However, Gorky was not enough. The pace of work was taking its toll. Lenin continued to fall ill when under pressure and the cycle continued. He complained more and more frequently. On 10 August 1919, ‘I am unwell. I have had to go to bed.’ On 30 May 1920 he complained of being ‘exhausted’. From then on the frequency increases fast. In November 1920 Clara Zetkin painted a grim picture of him: ‘his face before me was all shrivelled up. Countless wrinkles, great and small, furrowed deep into it. And every wrinkle spoke of a heavy sorrow or a gnawing pain. A picture of inexpressible suffering was visible on Lenin’s face.’ [Weber 175] In December he mentioned his insomnia in a letter. After the Tenth Party Congress (March 1921) he said he was ‘very tired and ill’. In April he said he was overworked. Retreat to Gorky in July for a holiday was not enough to arrest the decline. In August he was worse. In October he was ‘too ill to write’. He was given increasing periods of sick leave in late 1921 and early 1922. He was barely able to attend the Party Congress in March 1922. The following month it was decided things were so bad that it was worth undertaking a risky operation to remove a bullet from the August 1918 assassination attempt. However, a month later he had his first stroke, on 26 May 1922. After that, the hope that he might recover was slim indeed.

The years from 1918 to April 1922 were tough on Lenin in many ways. The pain observed by Clara Zetkin had many sources beyond the physical shortcomings of his own body. According to Gorky, the methods of rule he was forced into caused him great anguish. In an article, he wrote that for Lenin ‘the terror is unbearable and is very painful even though this is very skilfully concealed.’
²
There was nothing in Lenin’s background to suggest it might have been otherwise. It was also the case that the rigours of the period touched those close to him. In addition to colleagues like Sverdlov who died in 1919 at the age of 34, members of his close family also died. His brother-in-law Mark Elizarov, with whom he and Krupskaya had lodged in 1917, died in March 1919. More poignantly, Inessa Armand went to the south to try and recover her health in August 1920. Lenin wrote asking the regional sanatoria administration to do everything to look after her and her son. Not content with that, he charged Sergo Ordzhonokidze, the leading Bolshevik in the Caucasus, with supervising their care and, in the event of capture by the Whites, Lenin asked him to execute them! Sadly, she caught cholera en route and died on 24 September 1920. Angelica Balabanoff described Lenin at Inessa’s funeral in Moscow on 12 October: ‘Not only his face but his whole body expressed so much sorrow that I dare not greet him, not even with the slightest gesture. It was clear he wanted to be alone with his grief … his eyes seemed drowned in tears held back with effort. As our circle moved, following the movement of the people, he too moved without offering resistance, as if he were grateful for being brought nearer to the dead comrade.’
³
That was not the end of the touching story. Lenin discovered six months later that the grave was being neglected. No one had taken responsibility for looking after it. Lenin wrote to Kamenev asking him to arrange for flowers to be put on it and for a stone slab or gravestone to be set up. [Weber 181]

Lenin’s critics have suggested that, in the words of Richard Pipes, ‘as far as his personality is concerned, we note first and foremost, his utter disregard for human life, except where his own family and closest associates were concerned. Of them he was very solicitous’ and again ‘For humankind at large Lenin had nothing but scorn’.
⁴
Lenin may have had many faults but it is hard to see how one could reach such a conclusion. We have already seen many occasions on which Lenin expressed concern for individuals as well as for groups, not least the victims of the war. The fact that Leninist historiography painted an over-rosy picture of his concerns doesn’t mean the opposite is true. Stories of him meeting and discussing with workers are not all fiction. Before adopting the New Economic Policy (NEP) he had several informal meetings with groups of peasants in the Gorky area, for instance, and he also consulted locals while he was on a rare hunting trip in September 1920. He frequently diverted gifts sent to him by soldiers and workers’ delegations, to children’s hospitals and sanatoria. On several occasions he asked for special consideration to be afforded to ‘defective adolescents’ as he called them, or special-needs teenagers as we would call them today. He even, on one occasion, called for an individual’s commandeered bicycle to be returned to its rightful owner! While one would not want to set too much store by acts of ‘official’ generosity, there is nothing in Lenin’s background to suggest he was as misanthropic as he is sometimes painted. All was done within the stern confines of Bolshevik morality, of course, which required duty before sentimentality, but there are no grounds to charge Lenin with utter disregard for human life.

There were two other outstanding aspects of his personality which came to the fore in these years. First, any sign of what was later called a cult of personality was knocked on the head; and second, he developed a characteristic way of handling relations with colleagues.

During Lenin’s life the trappings of a cult of personality – ubiquitous posters; constant quoting of the great leader’s thoughts; flattering speeches and ceremonies organized by sycophantic courtiers; claims of near-supernatural powers – none of these existed. Only a few photos of Lenin were published. He hardly ever appeared on the propaganda posters of the day. In fact, when he heard that a woman named Valentina Pershikova had been imprisoned in Tsaritsyn for defacing one of the relatively infrequent portraits of him Lenin ordered her release saying ‘Nobody should be arrested for defacing a picture.’ Indeed, the cult of Lenin only really took off with his funeral and associated rituals – lying-in-state; processions; preservation of his body in the mausoleum – largely masterminded by Stalin. Stalin also gave a series of lectures entitled
Problems of Leninism
, to all intents and purposes inventing the term. Lenin would have been nauseated by it all. He never promoted himself and did not like others doing so. On one occasion on 31 July 1920, he even had Gorky censured by the Politburo for being too glowing in his praise of Lenin. He called Lenin a saint which no doubt sparked off Lenin’s visceral dislike of Gorky’s tendency towards ‘Godbuilding’. [Weber 172] He was, of course, well known in the Party and received cult-of-personality-style standing ovations on major occasions like Party congresses, but then so do many politicians.

It is, however, a moot point as to the degree of what would today be called ‘face recognition’ that he enjoyed. Certainly, he was not a familiar figure, to the embarrassment of some Red Guards who shot at his car and a patrol of young communists who arrested him by mistake in July 1918 during the uprising. Upon showing his identity card as V. Ulyanov, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, the patrol reacted with scepticism. Only when the group arrived at the police station was Lenin recognized and released. [Krupskaya 533] He was somewhat better known by January 1919 when, on the way to spend the Russian Christmas (6/7 January) with Krupskaya, his car was stopped by bandits who were somewhat taken aback when they discovered who was in it. They none the less jumped in and stole it, leaving Lenin, his sister Maria, the chauffeur and the bodyguard, who never let go of the jug of milk he was carrying, to get help. Once again, the unlikely band of ‘bedraggled’ crime victims was not immediately recognized when they tried to raise the alarm. [Krupskaya 533] Incidentally, the name on the identity card mentioned above, V. Ulyanov, reminds us that the name by which we know him, Vladimir Lenin, was a hybrid he rarely used. It was a mixture of his most frequently used conspiratorial name, Nikolai Lenin, which he used right to the end to sign most of his articles and pamphlets, often in the form N. Lenin, and his real name, Vladimir Ulyanov.

Lenin was the kind of person who would not have enjoyed surprise parties in his honour. On his fiftieth birthday he received many letters and telegrams of congratulation and, at a celebration on the following day, 23 April 1920, he thanked the organizers for sparing him congratulatory speeches. He refused a proposal to open a museum in his honour and confided to a colleague, M.S. Olminsky: ‘You have no idea how unpleasant I find the constant promotion of my person.’ [Weber 169] He also described Kamenev’s proposal to collect and reprint Lenin’s works as ‘completely superfluous’ and only changed his mind when he was asked if he preferred the young to read Menshevik and Economist authors instead. Incidentally, later, when some items were published, Karl Radek mentioned to Lenin that he had been reading his writings of 1903, Lenin replied mockingly with a crafty smile: ‘It’s interesting to read now how stupid we were then!’ On another occasion he claimed that, in exile, his thought had been too left-wing, a characteristic he believed to be typical of émigré thought in general. [Weber 168] One could speculate endlessly over the implications of such throwaway remarks!

Finally, it is worth saying a few words about the principles Lenin kept to in dealing with colleagues, since the issue looms very large in his last years and we will have to return to the question. The fundamental point remains, as we have seen earlier, that political expediency dominated Lenin’s relations. The extreme examples of Martov, a friend for whom he retained feelings throughout his life but cut off ruthlessly for political reasons, and Trotsky, whom he welcomed back unconditionally after a decade of bitter political enmity, still held true. In January 1918, for example, Lenin refused to meet an old friend from Paris, Charles Dumas, because of political differences. Even close friends, like Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, were not beyond being scolded, as Lenin did when, without warning, he raised Lenin’s salary from 500 to 800 roubles a month, one of the few cases of an official being reprimanded by someone for giving that person a pay rise. The same principles held for his main associates, like Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. None was above criticism and everyone was supposed to take it with discipline. In 1919, Lenin supported Trotsky against Stalin over the incorporation of a military specialist with Stalin’s staff. Discipline was paramount. It also became a regular Party practice that a leading figure in a defeated group would be called upon to draft the finally agreed resolution or equivalent. Despite being a prominent figure in the Left Communist group Bukharin, along with another leftist, Preobrazhensky, was entrusted with the task of producing the vital propaganda piece
The ABC of Communism
in 1919 which was supposed to reflect consensual rather than leftist views of the Party programme. In any case, by 1919, Lenin was getting fed up with the multitude of arguers in the Party and beginning to put a premium on the doers, of whom Stalin was his ideal type, who could be entrusted to get a job done with the minimum of discussion.