Part 8 (2/2)

And nevertheless that clumsy revolution instantly and heartily took its leader into its bosom. The soldiers demanded that Lenin climb up on one of the armoured cars, and he had to obey. The oncoming night made the procession especially impressive. The lights on the other armoured cars being dimmed, the night was stabbed by the sharp beam from the projector of the machine on which Lenin rode. It sliced out from the darkness of the street sections of excited workers, soldiers, sailors-the same ones who had achieved the great revolution and then let the power slip through their .ngers. The band ceased playing every so often, in order to let Lenin repeat or vary his speech before new listeners. ”That triumphal march was brilliant,” says Sukhanov, ” and even somewhat symbolic.”

In the palace of Kshesinskaia, Bolshevik headquarters in the satin nest of a court ballerina-that combination must have amused Lenin's always lively irony-greetings began again. This was too much. Lenin endured the .ood of eulogistic speeches like an impatient pedes-trian waiting in a doorway for the rain to stop. He felt the sincere joyfulness at his arrival, but was bothered by its verboseness. The very tone of the of.cial greetings seemed to him imitative, affected-in a word borrowed from the petty bourgeois democracy, declamatory, sentimental and false. He saw that the revolution, before having even de.ned its problems and tasks, had already created its tiresome etiquette. He smiled a good-natured reproach, looked at his watch, and from time to time doubtless gave an unrestrained yawn. The echo of the last greeting had not died away, when this unusual guest let loose upon that audience a cataract of pa.s.sionate thought which at times sounded almost like a las.h.i.+ng. At that pe-riod the stenographic art was not yet open to Bolshevism. n.o.body made notes. All were too absorbed in what was happening. The speeches have not been preserved. There remain only general impressions in the memoirs of the listeners. And these have been edited by the lapse of time; rapture has been added to them, and fright washed away. The fundamental impression made by Lenin's speech even among those nearest to him was one of fright. All the accepted formulas, which with innumerable repet.i.tion had acquired in the course of a month a seemingly unshakeable permanence, were exploded one after another before the eyes of that audience. The short Leninist reply at the station, tossed out over the head of the startled Cheidze, was here developed into a two hour speech addressed directly to the Petrograd cadres of Bolshevism.

The non-party socialist, Sukhanov, was accidentally present this meeting as a guest-admitted by the good-natured Kamenev, although Lenin was intolerant of such indulgences. Thanks to this we have a description made by an outsider half-hostile and half-ecstatic-of the .rst meeting of Lenin with the Petersburg Bolsheviks.

I will never forget that thunderlike speech, startling and amazing not only to me, a heretic accidentally dropped in, but also to the faithful, all of them. I a.s.sert that n.o.body there had expected anything of the kind. It seemed as if all the elements and the spirit of universal destruction had risen from their lairs, knowing neither barriers nor doubts nor personal dif.culties nor personal considerations, to hover through the banquet chambers of Kshesinskaia above the heads of the bewitched disciples.”

Personal considerations and dif.culties-to Sukhanov that meant for the most part the editorial waverings of the Novy Zhizn circle having tea with Maxim Gorky Lenin's con-siderations went deeper. Not the elements were hovering in that banquet hall, but human thoughts-and they were not embarra.s.sed by the elements, but were trying to understand in order to control them. But never mind-the impression is clearly conveyed.

”On the journey here with my comrades,” said Lenin, according to Sukhanov's report-” I was expecting they would take us directly from the station to Peter and Paul. We are far from that, it seems. But let us not give up the hope that it will happen, that we shall not escape it.”

For the others at that time the development of the revolution was identical, with a strengthening of the democracy; for Lenin the nearest prospect led straight to the Peter and Paul prison-fortress. It seemed a sinister joke. But Lenin was not joking, nor was the revolution joking.

”He swept aside legislative agrarian reform,” complains Sukhanov, ”along with all the rest of the policies of the Soviet. He spoke for an organised seizure of the land by the peasants, not antic.i.p.ating ... any governmental power at all.”

”We don't need any parliamentary republic. We don't need any bourgeois democracy. We don't need any government except the Soviet of workers', soldiers', and farmhands' deputies! ' ”

At the same time Lenin sharply separated himself from Soviet majority, tossing them over into the camp of the enemy. That alone was enough in those days to make his listeners dizzy! ”

”Only the Zimmerwald Left stands guard over the proletarian interests and the world revolution” -thus Sukhanov reports, with indignation, the thoughts of Lenin, ”The rest are the same old opportunist speaking pretty words but in reality betraying the cause of socialism and the work ma.s.ses.”

Raskolnikov supplements Sukhanov: ”He decisively a.s.sailed the tactics pursued before his arrival by the ruling party groups and by individual comrades. The most responsible workers were here. But for them too the words of Ilych were a veritable revelation. They laid down a Rubicon between the tactics of yesterday and to-day,” That Rubicon, as we shall see was not bid down at once.

There was no discussion of the speech. All were too much astounded, and each wanted a chance to collect his thoughts. I came out on the street,” concludes Sukhanov, ”feeling as though on that night I had been fogged over the head with a .ail. Only one thing was clear: There was no place for me, a non-part man beside Lenin!”

Indeed not!

The next day Lenin presented to the party a short written exposition of his views, which under the name of Theses of April 4 has become one of the most important doc.u.ments of the revolution. The theses expressed simple thoughts in simple words comprehensible to all: The republic which has issued from the February revolution is not our republic, and the war which it is now raging is not our war, The task of the Bolsheviks is to overthrow the imperialist government. But this government rests upon the support of the Social Revolu-tionaries and Mensheviks, who in turn are supported by the trustfulness of the ma.s.ses of the people. We are in the minority. In these circ.u.mstances there can be no talk of violence from our side. We must teach the ma.s.ses not to trust the Compromisers and defensists. ”We must patiently explain.” The success of this policy, dictated by the whole existing situation, is a.s.sured, and it will bring us to the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, and so beyond the boundaries of the bourgeois rgime. We will break absolutely with capital, publish its secret treaties, and summon the workers of the whole world to cast loose from the bour-geoisie and put an end to the war. We are beginning the international revolution. Only its success will con.rm our success, and guarantee a transition to the socialist rgime.

These theses of Lenin were published in his own name and his only, The central insti-tutions of the party met them with a hostility softened only by bewilderment. n.o.body-not one organisation, group or individual-af.xed his signature to them. Even Zinoviev, arriving with Lenin from abroad, where for ten years his ideas had been forming under the imme-diate and, daily in.uence of Lenin, silently stepped aside, Nor was this side-stepping a surprise to the teacher, who knew his closest disciple all too well.

Where Kamenev was a propagandist populariser, Zinoviev was an agitator, and indeed, to quote an expression of Lenin, ”nothing but an agitator.” He has not, in the .rst place, a suf.cient sense of responsibility to be a leader. But not only that. Lacking inner discipline, his mind is completely incapable of theoretical work, and his thought dissolve into formless intuitions of the agitator. Thanks to an exceptionally quick scent, he can catch out of the air whatever formulas are necessary to him-those which will exercise the most the most effective in.uence on the ma.s.ses. Both as journalist and orator he remains an agitator, with only this difference-that in his articles you usually see his weaker side, and in oral speech his stronger. Although far more bold and unbridled in agitation than any other Bolshevik, Zinoviev is even less capable than Kamenev of revolutionary initiative. He is, like all demagogues, indecisive. Pa.s.sing from the arena of factional debate to that of direct ma.s.s .ghting, Zinoviev almost involuntarily separated from his teacher.

There have been plenty of attempts of late years to prove that the April party crisis was a pa.s.sing and almost accidental confusion. They all go to pieces at .rst contact with the facts.

What we already know of the activity of the party in March reveals the deepest possible contradiction between Lenin and the Petersburg leaders.h.i.+p. This contradiction reached its highest intensity exactly at the moment of Lenin's arrival. Simultaneously with the All-Russian Conference of representatives, of 82 soviets, where Kamenev and Stalin voted for the resolution on sovereignty introduced by the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, there took place in Petrograd a party conference of Bolsheviks a.s.sembled from all over Russia. This conference, at the very end of which Lenin arrived, has an exceptional interest for anyone wis.h.i.+ng to characterize the mood and opinions of the party and all its upper layers as they issued from the war. A reading of the reports, to this day unpublished, fre-quently produces a feeling of amazement: is it possible that a party represented by these delegates will after seven months seize the power with an iron hand? A month had already pa.s.sed since the uprising-a long period for a revolution, as also for a war. Nevertheless opinions were not de.ned in the party on the most basic questions of the revolution. Ex-treme patriots such as Voitinsky, Eliava, and others, partic.i.p.ated in the conference alongside of those who considered themselves internationalists. The percentage of outspoken patri-ots, incomparably less than among the Mensheviks, was nevertheless considerable. The conference as a whole did not decide the question whether to break with its own patriots or unite with the patriots of Menshevism. In an interval between sessions of the Bolshe-vik conference there was held a united session of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks-delegates to the Soviet conference-to consider the war question. The most furious Menshevik-patriot, Lieber, announced at this session: ”We must do away with the old division between Bol-shevik and Menshevik, and speak only of our att.i.tude toward the war.” The Bolshevik, Voitinsky, hastened to proclaim his readiness to put his signature to every word of Lieber. All of them together, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, patriots and internationalists, were seek-ing a common formula for their att.i.tude to the war. The views of the Bolshevik conference undoubtedly found their most adequate expression in the report of Stalin on relations with the Provisional Government. It is necessary to introduce here the central thought of this speech, which, like the reports as a whole, is not yet published.” The power has been de-cided between two organs of which neither one possesses full power. There is debate and struggle between them, and there ought to be. The roles have been divided. The Soviet has in fact taken the initiative in the revolutionary transformation; the Soviet is the revolution-ary leader of the insurrectionary people; an organ controlling the Provisional Government. And the Provisional Government has in fact taken the role of forti.er of the conquests of the revolutionary people. The Soviet mobilizes the forces, and controls. The Provisional Government, balking and confused, takes the role of forti.er of those conquests of the people, which they have already seized as a fact. This situation has disadvantageous, but also advantageous sides. It is not to our advantage at present to force events, hastening the process of repelling the bourgeois layers, who will in the future inevitably withdraw from us.”

Transcending cla.s.s distinctions, the speaker portrays the relation between the bour-geoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labour. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov ”fortify” it. We recognize here the traditional con-ception of the Mensheviks, incorrectly modelled after the events of 1789. This superinten-dent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshe-vism, this handing out of instructions to various cla.s.ses and then patronisingly criticising their ful.llment. The idea that it is disadvantageous to hasten the withdrawal of the bour-geoisie from the revolution, has always been the guiding principle of the whole policy of the Mensheviks. Inaction this means blunting and weakening the movement of the ma.s.ses in order not to frighten away the liberal allies. And .nally, Stalin's conclusion as to the Provisional Government is wholly in accord with the equivocal formula of the Compro-misers: ”In so far as the Provisional Government forti.es the steps of the revolution, in so far we must support it, but in so far as it is counter-revolutionary, support to the Provisional Government is not permissible.”

Stalin's report was made on March 29. On the next day the of.cial spokesman of the Soviet conference, the non-party social democrat Steklov, defending the same conditional support to the Provisional Government, in the ardor of his eloquence painted such a pic-ture of the activity of the ”forti.ers” of the revolution-opposition to social reforms, leaning towards monarchy, protection of counter-revolutionary forces, appet.i.te for annexation-that the Bolshevik conference recoiled in alarm from this formula of support. The right Bol-shevik Nogin declared: ”The speech of Steklov has introduced one new thought: it is clear that we ought not now to talk about support, but about resistance.” Skrypnik also arrived at the conclusion that since the speech of Steklov ”many things have changed, there can be no more talk of supporting the government. There is a conspiracy of the Provisional Gov-ernment against the people and the revolution.” Stalin, who a day before had been painting an idealistic picture of the ”division of labour” between the government and the Soviet, felt obliged to eliminate this point about supporting the government. The short and super.cial discussion turned about the question whether to support the Provisional Government” in so far as,” or only to support the revolutionary activities of the Provisional Government. The delegate from Saratov, Va.s.siliev, not untruthfully declared: ”We all have the same att.i.tude to the Provisional Government.” Krestinsky formulated the situation even more clearly: ”As to practical action there is no disagreement between Stalin and Voitinsky.” Notwithstanding the fact that Voitinsky went over to the Mensheviks immediately after the conference, Krestinsky was not very wrong. Although he eliminated the open mention of support, Stalin did not eliminate support. The only one who attempted to formulate the question in principle was Kra.s.sikov, one of those old Bolsheviks who had withdrawn from the party for a series of years, but now, weighed down with life's experience, was trying to return to its ranks.

Kra.s.sikov did not hesitate to seize the bull by the horns. Is this then a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat you are about to inaugurate? he asked ironically. But the conference pa.s.sed over his irony, and along with it pa.s.sed over this question as one not deserving attention. The resolution of the conference summoned the revolutionary democracy to urge the Provisional Government toward ”a most energetic struggle for the complete liquidation of the old rgime”-that is, gave the proletarian party the role of governess of the bourgeoisie.

The next day they considered the proposal of Tseretelli for a union of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Stalin was wholly in favour of the proposal: ”We must do it. It is necessary to de.ne our proposal for a basis of union; union is possible on the basis of Zimmerwald-Kienthal.” Molotov, who had been removed from the editors.h.i.+p of Pravda by Kamenev and Stalin because of the too radical line of the paper, spoke in opposition: Tseretelli wants to unite heterogeneous elements, he himself calls himself Zimmerwaldist; a union on that basis is wrong. But Stalin stuck to his guns: ” There is no use running ahead and trying to forestall disagreements. There is no party life without disagreements. We will live down petty disagreements within the party.” The whole struggle which Lenin had been carrying on during the war years against social patriotism and its paci.st disguise, was thus casually swept aside. In September 1916 Lenin had written through Shliapnikov to Petrograd with special insistence: ”Conciliationism and consolidation is the worst thing for the workers' party in Russia, not only idiotism but ruin to the party.... We can rely only on those who halve understood the whole deceit involved in the idea of unity and whole necessity of a split with that brotherhood (Cheidze Co.) in Russia.” This warning was not understood. Disagreements with Tseretelli, the leader of the ruling Soviet bloc, seemed to Stalin petty disagreements, which could be ”lived down” within a common party. This furnishes the best criterion for an appraisal of the views held by Stalin at that time.

On April 4 Lenin appeared at the party conference. His speech, developing his ”theses,” pa.s.sed over the work of the conference like the wet sponge of a teacher erasing what had been written on the blackboard by a confused pupil.

”Why didn't you seize the power? ” asked Lenin. At the Soviet conference not long before that, Steklov had confusedly explained the reasons for abstaining from the power: revolution is bourgeois-it is the .rst stage-the war, etc.” That's nonsense,” Lenin said. ”The reason is that the proletariat was not suf.ciently conscious and not suf.ciently organised. That we have to acknowledge. The material force was in the hands of the proletariat, but the bourgeoisie was conscious and ready. That is the monstrous fact. But it is necessary to acknowledge it frankly, and say to the people straight out that we did not seize the power because we were unorganised and not conscious.”

From the plane of pseudo-objectivism, behind which the political capitulators were hid-ing, Lenin s.h.i.+fted the whole question to the subjective plane. The proletariat did not seize the power in February because the Bolshevik Party was not equal to its objective task, and could not prevent the Compromises from expropriating the popular ma.s.ses politically for the; bene.t of the bourgeoisie.

The day before that, lawyer Kra.s.sikov had said challengingly: ”If we think that the time has now come to realize the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat, then we ought to pose the question that way. We unquestionably have the physical force for a seizure of power.” The chairman at that time deprived Kra.s.sikov of the .oor on the ground that practical prob-lems were under discussion, and the question of dictators.h.i.+p was out of order. But Lenin thought that, as the sole practical question, the question of preparing the dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat was exactly in order. ”The peculiarity of the present moment in Russia,” he said in his theses, ”consists in the transition from the .rst stage of the revolution, which gave the power to the bourgeoisie on account of the inadequate consciousness and organization of the proletariat, to its second stage which must give the power to the proletariat and the poor layers of the peasantry.” The conference, following the lead of Pravda, had limited the task of the revolution to a democratic transformation to be realized through the Con-st.i.tuent a.s.sembly. As against this, Lenin declared that ”life and the revolution will push the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly into the background. A dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat exists, but n.o.body knows what to do with it.”

The delegates exchanged glances. They whispered to each other that Ilych had stayed too long abroad, had not had time, to look around and familiarize himself with things. But the speech of Stalin on the ingenious division of labour between the government and the Soviet sank out of sight once and for ever. Stalin himself remained silent. From now on he will have to be silent for a long time. Kamenev alone will man the defences.

Lenin had already given warning in letters from Geneva that he was ready to break with anybody who made concessions on the question of war, chauvinism and compromise with the bourgeoisie. Now, face to face with the leading circles of the party he opens an attack all along the line. But at the beginning he does not name a single Bolshevik by name. If he has need of a living model of equivocation and half-wayness, he points his .nger at the non-party men, or at Steklov or Cheidze. That was the customary method of Lenin: not to nail anybody down to his position too soon, to give the prudent a chance to withdraw from the battle in good season and thus weaken at once the future ranks of his open enemies. Kamenev and Stalin had thought that in partic.i.p.ating in the war after February, the soldiers and workers were defending the revolution. Lenin thinks that, as before, the soldier and the worker take part in the war as the conscripted slaves of capital. ”Even our Bolsheviks,” he says, narrowing the circle around his antagonists, ”show con.dence in the government. Only the fumes of the revolution can explain that. That is the death of socialism.... If that's your position, our ways part. I prefer to remain in the minority.” That was not a mere oratorical threat; it was a clear path thought through to the end.

Although naming neither Kamenev nor Stalin, Lenin was obliged to name the paper: ”Pravda demands of the government that it renounce annexation. To demand from the government of the capitalists that it renounce annexation is nonsense, .agrant mockery.” Restrained indignation here breaks out with a high note. But the orator immediately takes himself in hand: he wants to say no less than is necessary, but also no more. Incidentally and in pa.s.sing, Lenin gives incomparable rules for revolutionary statesmans.h.i.+p: ”When the ma.s.ses announce that they do not want conquests, I believe them. When Guchkov and Lvov say they do not want conquests, they are deceivers! When a worker says that he wants the defense of the country, what speaks in him is the instinct of the oppressed.” This criterion, to call it by its right name, seems simple as life itself. But the dif.culty is to call it by its right name in time.

On the question of the appeal of the Soviet ”to the people of the whole world ”-which caused the liberal paper Rech at one time to declare that the theme of paci.sm is developing among us into an ideology common to the Allies-Lenin expressed himself more clearly and succinctly: ”What is peculiar to Russia is the gigantically swift transition from wild violence to the most delicate deceit.”

”This appeal,” wrote Stalin concerning the manifesto, ”if it reaches the broad ma.s.ses (of the West), will undoubtedly recall hundreds and thousands of workers to the forgotten slogan 'Proletarians of all Countries Unite! ' ”

”The appeal of the Soviet,” objects Lenin, ”-there isn't a word in it imbued with cla.s.s consciousness. There is nothing to it but phrases.” This doc.u.ment, the pride of the home-grown Zimmerwaldists, is in Lenin's eyes merely one of the weapons of the most delicate deceit.”

Up to Lenin's arrival Pravda had never even mentioned the Zimmerwald left. Speaking of the International, it never indicated which International. Lenin called this ”the Kaut-skyanism of Pravda.” ”In Zimmerwald and Kienthal,” he declared at a party conference, ” the Centrists predominated. . . . We declare that we created a left and broke with the centre. . . . The left Zimmerwald tendency exists in all the countries of the world. The ma.s.ses ought to realize that socialism has split throughout the world ......

Three days before that Stalin had announced at that same conference his readiness to live down differences with Tseretelli on the basis of Zimmerwald-Kienthal-that is, on the basis of Kautskyanism. ”I hear that in Russia there is a trend toward consolidation,” said Lenin. ”Consolidation with the defensists -that is betrayal of socialism. I think it would be better to stand alone like Liebknecht-one against a hundred and ten.” The accusation of betrayal of socialism-for the present still without naming names-is not here merely a strong word; it fully expresses the att.i.tude of Lenin toward those Bolsheviks who were extending a .nger to the social patriots. In opposition to Stalin who thought it was possible to unite with the Mensheviks, Lenin thought it was unpermissible to share with them any longer the name of Social Democrat. ”Personally and speaking for myself alone,” he said, ”I propose that we change the name of the party, that we call it the Communist Party.” ” Personally and speaking for myself alone ”-that means that n.o.body, not one of the members of the conference, agreed to that symbolic gesture of ultimate break with the Second International.

”You are afraid to go back on your old memories?” says the orator to the embarra.s.sed, bewildered and partly indignant delegates. But the time has come ”to change our linen; we've got to take off the dirty s.h.i.+rt and put on clean.” And he again insists: ”Don't hang on

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