len in - forgotten books · -souled leader. ” such a eulogy ﬁts burtzev of the past, but...

L EN INThe Man and HisWork

BY

ALBERT RHYS WiLLIAMS

and the imprcssions of

CO L. RAYMOND ROBINS

and

ARTHUR RANSOME

V

NEWYORKSCO TT :AND SELTZER

CONTENTS

PAGE

AI BERT RHYS WILLIAMS

INTRODUCTION

B IOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

TEN MONTH S WITH LENIN

RAYMOND ROB INS

IMPRE S SIONS , As TOLD TO WILLIAMHARD

ARTHUR RANSOME

LENIN IN 1 9 19

CONSERVATIVE O PINIONS ON LENIN

Two ADVERSE O P INIONS

LENIN . BYANISE

LENIN

THE MAN AND HIS WO RK

INTRODUCTION

BY ALBERT RHYS WILLIAMS

I . The First Wild Tales About Lenin

THEworld knows very little of the man who

for two years has been the Premier of Russia .

The London Times s ays that this is due to the

natural reticence and aloofness of Lenin .

“If

Lenin appears to the average Englishman as

a red- shi rted,high - booted pi rate- chief, the

fault is chiefly of his own making .

”

Hardly. Lenin i s not enti rely to blame .

The blockade and the British censorship have

had cons ide rable share in it . They completely

severed Russi a from the rest of the world .

Even the A ssociated Press could not break

9

10 INTRODUCTION

through that censorship . It has never been

accused of revolutionary leanings, but a large

percentage of its mild cable despatches were

regarded by the Briti sh as dangerous to the

American people . The B riti sh held to be

dangerous any facts that reflected favorably

on the Soviet Government or its Premier.

Consequently, in lieu of facts about Lenin

the public was se rved with fancies and leg

ends by the “speci al correspondents” in Paris ,London, S tockholm and Copenhagan.

In one cabled despatch Lenin would appear

in the morning narrowly escaping ou t of the

clutch of the enemy by leap ing from an ar

mored train in Siberia,while an afte rnoon

despatch would reveal Lenin looking through

the bars of his Moscow prison where he had

been thrown and chained by the terrible

T rotzky. The thi rd , not to be outdone by this

startling piece of news,would have Lenin with

portfolio under his arm walking debonai rly

down the gang-plank of a Spanish steame r,

INTRODUCTION I I

landing at B arcelona . Individually the cor

respondents showed great inventive ingenuity

but collectively they failed f rom lack of team

work. They p rov'

ed too much . To fli t from

S iberi a to Moscow and then to Spain in the

course of a few hours is more than a human

performance . Lenin’ s detractors endowed

him with omnip resence .

Earlie r they had given him another attri

bute of Deity— omnipotence . For they said

that Lenin th rough his coterie had organized

the Soviets,and with them he had distilled

poison into the minds of soldiers

and dis integrated the army. Then his l ittle

group had overthrown the Provisional Gov

ernment and had led by the nose a nation

of up to the Treaty of Brest

Litovsk and made them sign it. Such p rowess

is not Of man—it i s superhuman .

He also seemed to be possessed O f omniscience . There i s more than a hint of i t in the

piti ful plaint of one of the factions pleading

1 2 INTRODUCTION

against going to Prinkipo : We can’t meet

with Lenin. These Bolsheviks a re clever

rascals . They know everything in politics and

economics,and they can out- talk us .” Finally,

immortality was his , too . Scores of times

Lenin had been shot,yet he still l ives . When

devotees in the future set out to p rove Lenin a

god they will find abundant material in the

papers of the last two years .

Our own government took a hand in thick

ening the fog around Lenin by loosing those

Clas sics of off icial stupidity known as the

Sisson documents . It was a lunatic attempt

to p rove that the world’s most powerful enemy

of Junkerism , the one man who had neve r let

up in his war on Imperiali sm,was

,in fact

,

the chief p romote r of Junkerism and Imperi

alism— the Kaise r’ s own hi red agent .Then followed the stories holding Lenin up

to the rep robation of mankind as a cruel mon

ster thi rsting fo r the blood of the bourgeois ie,

callous'

to human suffering . On the one hand

INTRODUCTION 13

the famished Russi ans were pictured attack

ing with knives a horse or a dog dropped dead

upon the streets , and bearing the smoking fleshaway. On the other hand Lenin was picturedas a Mongolian monarch in the Kremlin

su rrounded by his Chinese mercenaries,l iv

ing in Asiatic splendor,his fruit- bill alone

amounting to more than roubles a day.

A s some Of the truth began to filter through

the blockade these stories were too fantastic

fo r even a credulous public and had to be

reti red .

2 . O ther M isleading S tories Abou t Lenin

In thei r place has a risen a second series .

They come from the too facile pens of writers

l ike John Spargo and the Princess Radziwill .

Some are pure fabrications , others have a

basi s in fact,but the venom of the writer en

tirely discolors the portrait . They make a

Show of being scientific , carrying an ai r O f

authority,bristling with “offici al documents”

14 INTRODUCTION

and the statements of “revolutionary leaders .

The layman,having no way of verifying the

facts in the case,accepts these vers ions as

authentic . But again he has been led astray.

For example , take the man Vladimir Burt

zev. On his statements John Spargo bases a

great part O f hi s Saturday Evening Post arti

cle on Lenin,While anothe r write r hail s

Burtzev as “the old- time Revolutionist, the

ste rn, Whole- souled leader.” Such a eulogy

fits Burtzev of the past, but Burtzev l ike many

others , when the Revolution arrived , turned

reactionary. So reactionary in fact did he

grow, so bitte r did he become in his ass aults

upon the Kerensky government that he wasa rrested . Some time afte r the Bolshevikscame into power he was released and he went

to Pari s breathing out slaughter against hisreleasers . There he allied himself with the

Kolchak crowd and the other reactionary

groups carrying on a campaign to destroy the

Revolution in Russia . Some of his best friends

INTRODUCTION 15

regarded him as insane in his onslaughts upon

the revolutionary leaders . When Kerensky

was the head of the Revolution,Bu rtzev led

a furious attack against men likeVerkhovsky,Kerensky’ s Minister of War . When Leninbecame the leader of the Revolution he led an

even more venomous attack against Lenin .

In Pari s,Burtzev, now blinded by rage, an

open champion of Kolchak and Denikin,as

sembles the lite rary material for the assault

on Lenin . John Spargo enrolls in the mud

slinging brigade and is duly supplied with“facts” and “documents . Consider the long

route by which some O f these facts” have

come

It i s alleged that Lenin did something

which came to the attention of Malinovsky,the agent provocateur . Malinovsky related

this to Beletzky, the Chief of the Czar’ s Se

cret Police,imprisoned in the Fortress of

Peter and Paul . Beletzky related this to

Burtzev,now turned reactionary and im

16 INTRODUCTION

prisoned in Peter and Paul . Bu rtzev goes

to Paris and in a mood of rage and bitte rness

p roduces something which he said B eletzkytold him that Malinovsky told him that Le

nin did . Spargo takes this diatribe , rewrites

it and offers it to the American public as a

t rue picture of Lenin . And yet along this

chain there are at least th ree whose test imony

would be ruled out of court as incompetent

witnesses i f not plain l ia rs .

N0 one would take as trustworthy evidence

the words of this notorious agent of the Czar .

I f I were to bel ieve anything that Beletzkysaid about Lenin I would bel ieve What I got

first - hand .

With two other Americans in an Investi

gation Committee from the Petrograd City,

Duma,I visited Beletzky in his cell in Pete r

and Paul in December,19 17 . For an hour I

listened , while he discoursed on revolutionists

he had known . With -a sneer in his voice

and a lee r in his eye he descanted on the

https://www.forgottenbooks.com/join

18 INTRODUCTION

But the glimpse it offers of the man and his

work is,i t i s hoped

,not without inte rest and

significance .

It Shows Lenin in action,hard at work in

the vortex of the Revolu tion . It reco rds the

imp ression made upon th ree foreigne rs who

came into close relations with him . They

have very distinct advantages over any others

who have written about Lenin . Nearly all the

write rs in the class mentioned above never

spoke with Lenin,never heard him

,neve r

saw him, never came within a thousand miles

of him . They have woven a great p art of thei r

stories out of rumor, phantasies and purefiction .

In this book the three men met Lenin,

heard him speak, or talked with him person

ally week afte r week through the c ritical

months of the Revolution .

Colonel Raymond Robins,head of the

American Red Cross Mission went to Leninas a diplomat. He probably saw more of Le

INTRODUCTION 19

nin than all the fo reign diplomats of all the

othe r Allied countries combined .

Arthur Ransome w ent to Lenin as a jourmal i st. Knowing the l anguage and the peo

ple , he had a remarkable background for um

derstanding the Revolution and its leader.

He told me that he had performed the not

inconsiderable task of reading all of Lenin’ s

numerous volumes .

For myself, I came to Lenin as a Soci al

i st f rom America . I rode on the same train

with him,talked from the same platform

,and

l ived with him in the National Hotel at Mos

cow for two months . In this book I give a

se ries of contacts I had with him during the

Revolution .

Acknowledgment goes to the editors of

Hsia for the use of my article published in

thei r August number . For the right to re

p roduce Arthur Ransome’ s material on Lenin

I am indebted to B . W. Huebsch . I t i s but

a few pages from that excellent book,“Rus

20 INTRO DUCT IONI

si a in 19 19 . For the right to reproduce

Raymond Robins’ material I am indebted to

Mr . William Hard and to Mr . Carl Hovey,editors of the M etropolitan. The significant

articles which appeared in that magazine are

to be published by Harper St Brothe rs , under

the title “Raymond Robins’ O wn Story .

” It

i s a book that no one who wishes to under

stand the Russi an situation can afford to miss .

It i s not only of the greatest permanent historic

value,but is th roughout as vivid , dramatic

and as vital in its content as i s the sketch of

Lenin in this book.

The facts for the outline of Lenin’ s l i fe were

obtained f rom the a rchives of the Moscow

O khrana. These a rchives of the Czar’ s Se

c ret Police furni sh authoritative reco rds of

the Russian revolutionists . The account of

the execution of Lenin’s brothe r i s taken from“Russia’s Ruin by E . H . Wilcox .

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH


I . H i: Early Days and Education

THE real name Of the Premier of Russia

i s not Nikolai Lenin but Vladimi r Ilyich

Ulianov . He was born April 10, 1870, in

Simbi rsk,a p rovince on the great river affec

tionately referred to by the Russi ans as the

Mother Volga .

In some accounts he is the “son of a peas

ant” ; in others he is the“son of a nobleman .

”

Both statements a re co rrect.

In O ld Russi a a man who became a senior

captain in the navy,a colonel in the army or

a Councillo r of State in the Civi l Service au

23

24 LENIN

tomatically attained the rank of the nobility .

Lenin’ s father came from peasant stock and

rose to the position of Councillo r of State .

So Lenin is referred to as the “son of a peas

ant” or the “son of a nobleman” according to

the animus of the write r. Lenin’ s mother,Maria Alexandrovna

,had a small estate in

the Province of Kazan, and afte r her hus

band’ s death was in receipt of a pension .

H is fathe r was master in a gymnasium and

then inspector of schools . An enthusiast fo r

education,he was eve rywhere foste ring and

encouraging intellectual interests . In his five

children,th ree boys and two gi rls

,he met with

a wonderful response . Thei r home became a

little univers ity in itsel f,in which all were

devoted to art and music and science and

lite rature . This community of interes t begot

a warm and close family sp i rit . All the

brothers and siste rs were deeply attached to

one another and to thei r parents .

Sensitive to the things of the mind,they

26 LENIN

and character. He was a dreamer, a love r of

music,often wandering through the woods o r

drifting in’

his boat down the Volga . He was

also a hard worker and a brill i ant student, al

ways at the head of his class and winning the

gold medal of the gymnasium .

With his si ste r Anna he went to the Uni

vers ity of St . Petersburgh . There he labored

with extraordinary intensity,attending lec

tures, working in the laboratory, writing an

essay on the visual o rgans of worms,winning

a p rize in zoology, devouring books on social

sciences,drawing up a Party p rogram

,trans

lating a work on the philosophy of Marx, or

ganizing societies , agitating among the dock

laborers , helping poor students , even to the

pawning of his gold medal . And his regret

was that he could work but sixteen hours a

day .

All the time his rebellion against the tyranny

of the Czar was growing . Outrage afte r outrage d rove him nearer to the camp of the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 27

revolutionists . He organized a procession to

pay honors to the grave of the poet Dob roliu

bov, but it was broken up on the Nevsky by a

patrol of Cossacks and many students were

a rrested . Alexander thereupon joined “The

People ’ s Will ,” an associ ation of te rro rists .

Thei r p lot upon the Czar was discovered by

the secret police and fifteen members were put

on trial .“At hi s trial ,

” Wilcox says ,“Alexander t e

fused legal aid and denied nothing that was

said against him . Indeed , his chief desi re

seemed to be to shield those implicated with

him . The Crown Counsel s aid of him ,

‘He

admits h imsel f guilty of everything,probably

of what he did not do as well as what he did .

’

It i s said that by thus taking blame O f others

on himself , he saved the life of one of his fel

low- consp i rators . In his speech to the Court

he declared his conviction that, in the con

ditions then existing in Russia , the Terror was

the only possible method of political struggle .

28 LENIN

When the names of the five condemned to

death were read, Alexander Ilyich Ulianov

was among them.

“Whi le awaiting execution, his mothe r

was allowed to vis it him . The first time

she came to see him he flung himself at

her feet in tears and implored her to forgive

him for the sorrow he had caused her. But

he tried to p rove to her that a man had h igher

duties than those that he owed to his parents,and that in Russia one of those duties was to

fight for the political emancipation of the

whole people . When she objected that hismethods were terrible, he replied :

‘But what

i s one to do i f there are no Others ?’ His

mother entreated him to petition fo r mercy ;but this he steadfastly refused to do

,saying

that it would be insincere . ‘I have tried to kill

a human being,’ he said,

‘and therefore they

must kill me . ’

“He showed great anxiety that all hi s outstanding obligations, even the most trifl ing


ones , should be wiped out before he parted

f rom li fe . Remembering that he owed an ac

quaintance thi rty roubles,he asked his mother

to redeem his gold medal and sell it to satisfy

his debt. He also asked her to return to thei r

owners certain borrowed books that were in

his keeping . In his efforts to console her he

reminded her that she would still have her

other child ren, and especially the boy and gi rl

who came after him and who had both just

fini shed thei r school courses with as much dis

tinction as he himself . And in this spi rit he

died on the Schlii s selburg gallows .“The brother whom Alexander designated

as his mother’ s comforter is the p resent Pre

mier of Russi a, at that time seventeen years of$3

3 . Lenin as S tudent, O rganizer and Exile

in S iberia

Lenin attended the Simbi rsk Gymnasium,

whose maste r was Feodor Kerensky, the father

30 LENIN

of Alexander Kerensky,the M inister-Pres i

dent O f the Provisional Government . I t

doubtless never entered the head of this p rovincial schoolmaster that his own son Alexander Kerensky was to rise to the highest post

in all Russ ia . Nor in his wildest dreams

could he have seen that this young member of

the Ulianov family, thi s quiet, serious lad,would some day become Lenin, the man Of

i ron will,the man who was to rise and take

the power from his son and with i ron nerve

guide the destinies of Great Russi a against a

world of enemies .

Afte r graduating f rom the S imbi rsk Gym

nasium Lenin entered the University of Ka

zan . His career here was short. He was

expelled for p reaching Sociali sm and taking

part in a student rebellion . Later he was adm itted to the bar, but pleaded only one case .In 189 1 he turned from the p rovinces to

the great metropolis upon the Neva . While

studying law and economics at the Univers ity

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 3 1

of Pete rsburgh he published a remarkable

t reatise upon Marxism which immediatelyestabli shed him as an authority. Plekhanov,

the Fathe r of Russ ian Socialism, on reading

his manuscript, s aid ,“Some day this young

man will be dangerous .” That was a pro

phetic word . About fifteen years later Lenin

took the leade rship of the Social -DemocraticParty from the old veteran’ s hand and twenty

five years l ate r ousted him from the Great

Soviet Congress .

But the Russi an authorities right then , in

189 I , thought him a very dangerous person

age . For f rom the beginning he was as ar

dent in l i fe as in theo ry and plunged deep

into the activities of the Soci ali st movement .

Organizing the Union for the Liberation of

the Artizan Class , he became a p rominent

workingmen’s leader.

But he took no lead in terrori st plots as had

his brothe r Alexander, but devoted himself

to instruct ing the workers in politics and eco

32 LENIN

nomics. But to the Czar any champion of

the people was perforce an enemy of the gov

ernment. Its heavy fist at last came down on

Lenin . He was arrested,and by Imperial

ukase, on J anuary 29 , 1897, was exiled to

Eastern Siberi a .

With thousands of others , bravest and best

of the children of Russia, he took the long

trail that reaches out across the vast wastes of

Asia . However,he did not let Siberi a mean

to him simply Si lence,snow and stagnation .

It meant to him a rich opportunity to think

and to study . In the Village O f Sushenskoy he

gave himsel f to incessant work with brain and

pen . Out of this came numerous works which

appeared over the names of “Ilyich,

” “Ilin,

“Tylin” and “Lenin .

”

5 . A P ropagandist and O rganizer in E urope

On the expi ration of his sentence he wasforbidden to reside in any of the large C ities

,

34. LENIN

0. Lenin B ecomes Leader of the B olsheviks

The Russian Social -Democratic Party was

organized in 1898 . At the Second Congress

held at B russel s and London in 1903 came the“ L L—d

famous breach in the Party. Lenin fought

for a central ized party with a central body di

recting all activities . On thi s and other

points he was bitterly opposed by a determined

minority. Agreement was imposs ible, and the

congress split into two factions : the Menshe

viki, which means l iterally“members O f the

minority,” and the Bolsheviki ,

“members of

the majority.

”

!It must be remembered that

to - day there i s no such p arty in Russi a as a

Bolshevik party . In 19 18 the name of the

party was officially changed to Communist.

In this book the two names a re used interchangeably. !Lenin became the leader of the Bolsheviks .

All the old- time celebri ties,including Plekha

nov, voted with him . Afte rwards they went


over to the Mensheviks and became his ao

tagonists. Although alone in a strange land,

without a pape r,with no means of action,

Lenin did not lose courage . He published a

book called “Economic Studies,

” which had

a large success in Russia . With the money

which this book brought him and with the

help of Lunacharsky,Bogdanov andVorovsky

he founded a new paper,Forward.

At the congress of 1904, when the revolu

tionary movement was re- awakening in Rus

si a,Lenin introduced all the questions which

he was to solve later as chief of the Soviet

government—dictatorship of the prp lgtariat,confiscation of capitalist property, tthe devel

opment of revolutionary action even to itsex

treme limits,p reparation of the Russi an

Revolution as ap relude to the l nternational

Soci ali st Revolution .

In 1905 , when the first Russian Revolution

broke out, Lenin , receiving amnesty, returned

to his country. When the forces O f reaction

36 LENIN

were again in the saddle he fled to Finland

then to Switzerl and and to

Pari s He brought out two papers ,The S ocial D emocrat, a propaganda paper,and The Proletariat, a more theoretical jour

nal . He settled with his co-workers at Cracow ,

near the Russian frontie r, where he

could keep in touch with the revolutionists

and direct thei r movements .

7. Lenin As a S cholar and Author

Besides these p ropaganda activities Lenin

did a man’s work in many other fields . Wil

cox,the English write r

,says of him,

“Like

Karl Marx, he was never happi er than when

exploring the treasures of the B ritish Mu

seum . This institution , one of his f riends has

told us, he regarded with enthusi astic admi ra

tion . His eyes always shone when he spoke

of i t, and it was his fondest d ream to live near

it. It was here that he found his favo riterecreation .”

B IOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 37

He made an excellent translation of S idneyand Beatrice Webb’s “Industri al Democra

cy. H is own original works may be num

bered by the score . The following are im

portant :“D evelopment of Capitalism in Russia,

”

“E conomic S ketches and E ssays,

” “What I sTo B e done? The Painful Problems of O ur

M ovement,” ”O ne S tep Forward, Two S teps

B ackward The Crisis in O ur Party,”

“Twelve Years: Two Trends in Russian

Marxism; The Agrarian Prob lem ,

” “M ateri

alism and Empirocriticism : CriticalRemarks

to a Reactionary Philosophy,” “I mperialism

as the Last S tage of Capitalism,

” “The S tate

and Revolu tion.

”

Unfortunately at the p resent time there are

ve ry few transl ations of Lenin’ s works in

Engl i sh . A number of his recent speeches

and papers have been gathered into a well

edited volume,entitled ”

The Proletarian

by The Communist

38 LENIN

Press, New York. A pamphlet called The

Soviets at Work, published by the Rand

School,New York

,gives an insight into the

constructive genius of Lenin’ s mind .

8 . H is Return to Russia Through Germany

The outbreak of the great war found Lenin

in Austri a trying to sti r the workers to rebel

l ion . He was imprisoned but released,thanks

to the action of the French Soci alists . He re

turned to Switze rland,and there took up the

fight for peace and the International . He

took a very active part in the o rganization of

the Zimmerwald Confe rence . In Apri l—May,

19 17, afte r the fall of Czari sm,he wished to

return to Russia . The Allied governments

opposed this . He then accepted the p roposal s

of the Swiss Soci alist Party. The Federal

Councillo r Pl aten and others made the noces

sa ry plans, and he was allowed to pass through

Germany accompanied by one hundred revo


lutionists of all factions . This fact has been

cited as p roof that the Bolsheviks were Ger

man agents . I t should be remembered that in

this same train went scores of Sociali st Revo

lutionists and Mensheviks,notably Axelrod

and Martov , the bitte r opponents of Lenin

and the Bolsheviks . On his arrival at Petro

grad,the people

,the army and the navy gave

him a triumphal reception .

From that time the story of Lenin blends

with that of the Russian Revolution itself .

TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN


I . Young D isciples of Lenin

I SAW Lenin first not in the flesh but in the

minds and spi rits of five young Russian work

ingmen. They were part! of the great tide of

exiles flowing back into Petrograd in the

summer of 19 17 .

Americans were drawn to them by thei r

energy,intell igence and their knowledge of

Engli sh . They soon informed us that they

were Bolsheviks . “They certainly don’ t look

it,

” s aid an American . For a time he would

not bel ieve it. He had seen in the pape r the

picture of the Bolsheviks as long-bearded ,

43

44. LENIN

ignorant, indolent ruffians. And these men

were Clean- shaven,polite

,humorous, amiable

and alert. They were not afraid of responsi

b ility, not afraid to die, and most marvellous

of all in Russia,not afraid to work . And

they were Bolsheviks .

Woskov hailed from New York, where he

had been the organizer of the Carpenters’ and

Joiners’ Union,Number 1008 . Yanishev, a

mechanic , the son of a vill age priest, bore on

his body the marks of labor in mines and mills

all a round the world . Niebut, an artizan, al

ways carried a pack of books and was always

enthusi astic ove r h i s latest find . Volodarsky,

working day and night like a galley slave,s aid

to me a few Weeks before he was assassinated,

“Oh , what of i t ! Supposing they do get me !

I have had more joy working these last six

months than any five men ought to have in all

thei r l ives .” Peters,a foreman

,who late r

appeared in the press reports as a bloody

tyrant s igning death -warrants until his fingers

TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 45

could no longer hold the pen, was often sigh

ing fo r his English rose- garden and the poems

of Nekrasov.

These men quietly as sured us that, in brains

and character, Lenin led not only all the B01

sheviks, but everybody else in Russia, in Eu

rope and in all the world .

For us who daily read in the papers of

Lenin, the Ge rman agent, and daily heard the

bourgeoisie outlaw him as a scoundrel , a

traito r, and an imbecile, thi s was indeed

strange doctrine . I t sounded fantastic and fa

natical. But these men were neithe r fools nor

sentimentali sts . Knocking about the world

had hammered all that out of them . Nor were

these men hero-worshippers . The Bolshevik

movement was elemental and passionate, but

it was scientific,real istic , and uncongenial to

he ro -worship . Yet here was this quintette of

Bolsheviks declaring that there was one Rus

si an , great in integrity and in intelligence, and

his name was Nikolai Lenin, at that time an

46 LENIN

atlaw hunted by the P rovisional Govern

ment .

The more we saw of these young zealots

the more we desi red to see the man they ack

nowledged as thei r maste r . Would they take

us to his hiding- place ?“Wait a little while

,

” they would reply,laughing

,

“then you shall see him .

”

Impatiently we waited through the summer

and into the fall of 19 17, watching the Ker

ensky Government grow weaker and weaker.

O n November 7 the Bolsheviks p ronounced it

dead and at the same time proclaimed Russi a

to be a Republic of Soviets with Lenin as its

Premier.

2 . First I mpression of Lenin

While a tumultuous,s inging throng of

peasants and soldie rs,flushed with the triumph

of their revolution, j ammed the great hall at

Smolny, while the guns of the Aurora were


heralding the death of the old order and the

bi rth of the new, Lenin quietly stepped uponthe tribunal and the Chai rman announced

,

“Comrade Lenin will now address the Congres s .”

We strained to see whether he would meetour image of him , but f rom our seats at the

reporters ’ table he was at first invis ible .Amidst loud c ries

,cheers

,whistles and stamp

ing of feet he crossed the platform,the demon

stration ris ing to a cl imax as he stepped upon

the speake r’ s rostrum , not more than thi rty

feet away. Now we saw him clearly and our

hearts fell .

He was almost the opposite of what we

had pictured him . Instead of looming up

large and impress ive he appeared short and

stocky . H is beard and hai r were rough and

unkempt .

Afte r still ing the tornado of applause he

s aid,

“Comrades,we shall now take up the

fo rmation of the Socialis t S tate .” Then he

48 LENIN

went into an unimpass ioned,‘

matter-oi-fact

discussion . In his voice there was a harsh,dry note rather than eloquence . Thrusting

his thumbs in his vest at the arm-pits , he

rocked back and forth on his heels . For an

hour we listened,hoping to discern the b id

den magnetic qualities which would account

fo r his hold on these free, young, sturdy sp i r

its . But in vain .

We were disappointed . The Bolsheviks

by thei r sweep and daring had captured our

imaginations ; we expected thei r leade r to do

likewise . We wanted the head of this party

to come before us,the embodiment of these

qualities,an epitome of the whole movement,

a sort of super- Bolshevik. Instead of that,there he was

,looking like a Menshevik, and

a very small one at that.“I f he were sp ruced up a bit you would

take him for a bourgeois mayor or banke r of

a small French c ity,” whispered Julius West

,

the English correspondent.

50 LENIN

posing set of credentials . But Lenin didn’ t.

! uite as i f they came from the Union League

Club he handed them back with a laconic ,“No .

This was a trivial incident, but indicative

of a new,rigorous attitude now appearing in

the councils of the p roletarians . Hitherto, to

thei r own dest ruction, th e masses had been indulging thei r excessive amiability and goodnature. Lenin set out fo r discipl ine . He

knew that only strong, ste rn action could save

the Revolution, menaced by hunger, invasion

and reaction . So the Bolsheviks drove thei r

measures through without ruth or hes itation,while thei r enemies ransacked the arsenals of

invective for epithets to assail them . To the

bourgeoisie Lenin was the high-handed,i ron

fisted one. At this period they referred to

him not as Premier Lenin,but as “the Tyrant

Lenin ,” “Lenin the Dictato r .” And the Right

Socialists said, the Old Romanov Tsar, Nicholas I I , has given place to the new Tsar, Niko

TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 5 1

l ai Lenin, and in deri sion shouted ,“Long

live our new Tsar Nichol as I I I !”

They seized with joy upon the humorous

incident of the peasant. I t was the night

when the Soviet of Peasants’ Deputies , throw

ing its support to the new Soviet government,celebrated with a glo rified love- feast in the

halls of Smolny. The intelligentzia had

Spoken fo r the village ; there was a demand

that the village Should speak for itsel f . An

old fellow in peasant’ s smock came to the plat

form . His face Show‘

ed rosy through his

white beard ; he had twinkling eyes, and spoke

in the village dialect .“Tovarishchi, how happy I was tonight as

we came here with banners flying and mu

sic playing . I didn’ t come walking on the

ground . I came flying through the ai r. I am

one of the dark people, l iving in a dark vil

l age . You gave us the l ight . But we don’ t

unde rstand it all, so they sent me here to find

out . But, Tovarishchi, we are all ve ry happy

52 LENIN

over the wonderful change . In the old days

the chinovniki used to be very hard and beat

us,but now they are very polite . In the old

days we could only look at the outsides of the

palaces,now we can walk right inside them .

In the old days we only talked about the Tsar,but they tell u s now,

Tovarishchi, tomorrow

I can shake hands with Tsar Lenin himself.

God grant him long life !”

The audience exploded . Astounded at the

roars of laughter and applause, the old peas

ant sat down . But the next day he was p re

sented to Lenin , and l ate r was the peasants’

representative at B rest -Litovsk.

During these chaotic weeks only i ron will

and iron nerve would suffice . Rigid o rder

and discipline were evident in all depa rt

ments . One could note the stiff ening of the

morale of the workingman , a tightening up of

the loose parts in the Soviet machinery. Now

when the Soviet moved out into action, as fo r

example in the seizure of the banking sys


tem, i t struck hard and effectively. Lenin

knew where to be p recipitate in action,but he

knew also Where to go slow. A delegation

of workingmen came to Lenin asking him if

he could decree the nationalization of thei r

factory .

“Yes,s aid Lenin

,picking up a blank form

,

“ i t i s a very simple thing, my part of it. All!

I have to do is to take these blanks and fill in

the name of your factory in this space here ,and then Sign my name in this space here , and

the name of the commissar here . ” The work

men were highly gratified and pronounced it“very good .

”

“But before I S ign this blank, resumed

Lenin,

“ I must ask you a few questions .

Fi rst,do you know where to get the raw ma

terials for your factory ?” Reluctantly they

admitted they didn’t .“Do you understand the keeping of ac

counts,resumed Lenin

,and have you

worked out a method for keeping up produc

54 LENIN

tion?” The workmen s aid they were af raid

they did not know very much about these

minor matters .“And finally

,comrades , continued Lenin,

may I ask you whether you have found a

market in which to sell your p roducts

Again they answered,“N

“Well,comrades

,

” s aid the Premier,“don’ t

you think you are not ready to take over your

facto ry now ? Go back home and work over

these matters . You will find it hard ; you

will make many blunders,but you will learn .

Then come back in a few months and we can

take up the nationalizing of your factory.”

4 . I ron D iscipline in Lenin’

s Personal Life

The same i ron that Lenin was inj ecting into

the social li fe he showed in his individual

li fe . Shchi and borshch, sl abs of black bread,tea and porridge made up the fa re of the

Smolny c rowds . It was likewise the usual

fa re of Lenin, his wife and si ster . For twelve


and fifteen hours a day the revolutionists

stuck to thei r posts . Eighteen and twenty

hours was the regular stint for Lenin . In hisown hand he wrote hundreds of lette rs . Im

mersed in h i s work, he was dead to every

thing, even his own sustenance . Grasping her

opportunity when Lenin was engaged in con

versation his wife would appear with a glass

of tea, s aying,“Here

,tovarishch, you must

not forget to drink this .” Often the tea was

sugarless , for Lenin went on the same ration

as the rest of the population . The soldie rs

and messenge rs slept on i ron cots in the big,

bare , barrack- l ike rooms . So did Lenin and

his wife . Wearied,they flung themselves

down on thei r rough couches,oftentimes with

out undressing,ready to rise to any emer

geney. Lenin did not take upon himself these

p rivations out of any ascetic impulses . He was

simply putting into practi se the first p rinc i

ple of Communism .

One of these p rinciples was that the pay

56 LENIN

Of any Communist Offici al should be no l arger

than the pay of an average workingman . It

was fixed at a maximum of 600 rubles a

month . Later there was an increase . As it

i s today,the Premier of Russia receives less

than $200 a month .

I was in the National Hotel when Lenin

took a room on the second floor. The first

act of the new Soviet r! gime was the abol ition

of the elaborate and expensive menus . The

many dishes that comprised a meal were cut

down to two . One could have soup and meat

or soup and kasha. And that i s all that any

one, whether Chief Commissa r or kitchen

boy, could have, for i t i s written in the creed

of the Communists that “No one shall h ave

cake until everybody has bread.

” On some

days there was ve ry little even of b read for

the people . Still each,person got just as much

as Lenin . Occasionally there were days with

out any bread at all . Those days, too, were

breadless days for him .

58 LENIN

tervention of the Entente'” But these s ame

suffe rings Lenin was enduring along with the

masses about whom he writes .

Lenin has been accused of gambling With

the l i fe Of a great nation, an experimentalist

recklessly trying out his communistic formu

las upon the S ick body of Russia . But he

cannot be accused of lack of faith in those

formulas . He not only tries them on Russia .He tries them on himself . He is willing to

take his own medicine . To pay homage tothe doctrines of Communism from a distance

i s one thing. TO endure,as does Lenin

,the

privations and rigors that the introduction ofCommuni sm entails on the spot i s a vastly different thing.

Starting a communistic state Should not,

however, be portrayed enti rely in sombre colors . In the darkest days in Russi a

,art and

the opera flouri shed . Romance,too

,played

its p art. I t touched even the chief charactersof the revolutionary stage . We were as


tounded to find one morning that the versatileKollontay had married the sailor Dybenko .

Later, for ordering a retreat before the Ger

mans at Narva,he came under censure . In

disgrace he was expelled from ofli ce and

party, Lenin approving and Kollontay natu

rally resentful .

Talking with her at thi s juncture I suggest

ed that Lenin might have gone the way of all

flesh , the poison of power entering his veins

and inflating his ego .

“Bitter as I feel now,

”

she answered,“I couldn’ t think of imputing

any action of his to personal motives . N0 one

of the comrades who had worked with Com

rade Lenin for ten years could believe that

there was a single drop of selfishnes s in

him .

”

5 . Practise of Communism Rallies the

People to the S oviet

Lenin was of course pictured in the bour

geois pres s as the opposite of thi s . A fiend

60 LENIN

incarnate,a selfish

,grasping monster. But

gradually the real Lenin emerged from this

sh roud of lies . And as the news sp read

through Russia that Lenin and his colleagues

were taking pot- luck with the people, the

masses rallied around them .

The miner in the Urals , inclined to grum

ble at his meagre ration, remembers that each

one draws alike from the common store of

food and clothes and shelter. Why, then,should he grumble at his morsel of black

bread ? At any rate it i s as l arge as Lenin’s .

The rankling pangs of injustice are not added

to the pangs of hunger.

The peasant wife shivering in the icy blasts

that sweep O ff the Volga knows little of the

man who has taken the place of the Czar.But she hears that he often has an unheatedroom . Now though She suffe rs from the cold

she does not suffe r from the inequalities ofl ife.

The engineer at Nizhni , finding the six


hundred rubles in the pay- envelope woefully

inadequate to cover the needs of his family,begins to be bitte r. Then he recollects that

the man in the Kremlin draws no more . That

helps to take the rancor away.

The Soviet soldie r facing the drum-fire of

the A ll ied guns knows that Lenin is also on

the firing line though he is in the rear. For

danger, l ike everything else in Russi a, has

been socialized . No one is immune from it .

The percentage of Soviet leaders killed and

wounded at the front . Uritzky, Volardskypercentage of Soviet soldiers killed and

wounded at the front . Uritsky, Voladarskyand scores of others h ave been as sassinated

whi le Lenin’ s body has twice stopped the as

sassin’s bullets . To the Red Soldier Lenin

then is not someone aloof from the fray, but

a comrade- in- a rms sharing the risks and

hardships of the campaign .

The American Miss ion to Russ ia report by

Bullitt s ays :

62 LENIN

Lenin today is regarded as almost a

p rophet. His picture, usually accompaniedby Karl Marx’s

,hangs everywhere . When I

called on Lenin at the Kremlin I had to wait

a few minutes until a delegation of peasants

left hi s room . They had heard in thei r vil

lage that Comrade Lenin was hungry. And

they had come hundreds of miles carrying

eight hundred pads of bread as the gift of

the v i llage to Lenin . Just before them was

another delegation of peasants to whom the

report had come that Comrade Lenin was

working in an unheated room . They came

bearing a stove and enough firewood to heat i t

for three months . Lenin i s the only leader

who receives such gifts . And he turns them

into the common fund .

”

Sharing alike in the common wealth and

the common dearth c reated a common bond of

sympathy running from Premie r to poorest

peasant,bringing to the Soviet leaders the in

creasing support O i the people .


6 . Practice of Communism Gives Lenin

the Pulse of the People

Living so close to the people, the Communist

leaders knew the ebb and flow of popular

feeling.

Lenin did not need to send out a commis

sion to discover the sentiments and psychology

of the people . A man going without food

doesn’t have to speculate upon the mood of a

hungry man . He knows . Hungering with

the people,f reezing with the people

,Lenin

was feeling thei r feelings , thinking thei r

thoughts,and voicing thei r desi res .

Now this i s p recisely the way in which the

Communist Party claims to function— as an

instrument di rectly reflecting the thoughts of

the masses and as a mouthpiece articulating

them .

The Communists say : “We did not cre

ate the Soviets . They sp rang out of the

l i fe of the people . We did not hatch up some

64 LENIN

program in our brains and then take i t out

and superimpose i t upon the people . Rather

we took our p rogram di rectly f rom the peo

ple themselves . They were demanding ‘Land

to the Peasants,’ ‘Factories to the Workers ,

’

and ‘Peace to All the World .

’ We wrote these

slogans upon our banners and with them

marched into power. Our strength l ies in our

understanding of the people . In fact, we do

not need to understand the people . We

are the people .” This was certainly t rue

of the rank and file of the leaders,who

,

l ike the five young Communi sts we first met

in Petrograd , were flesh and bone O f the

people .

But intellectuals like Lenin—how can theyspeak for the people ? How can they under

stand the hearts and minds of the masses ? The

answer i s that they never can. That i s certain . But it is equally certain, as Tols toy

showed,that he who l ives the l ife of the peo

ple gets closer than he who holds himself

66 LENIN

7. Lenin in Public Address

Despite these rigors and the d rain of th i s

day and night o rdeal,Lenin appeared con

stantly upon the platform,concise, alert, diag

nosing the conditions,p rescribing the reme

dies, and sending his l isteners into action to

administe r them . Observers have wondered

at the enthus iasm which Lenin’ s add resses

roused in the uneducated class . While his

speeches were swift and fluent and crowded

with facts,they were generally as unpictu

resque and unromantic as his p latform ap

pearance . They demanded sustained thought

and were just the opposite of Kerensky’s .

Kerensky was a romantic figure, an eloquent

orator,with all those a rts and passions wh ich

should have swayed , one would think,“the ig

norant and i ll iterate Russians .” But they were

not swayed by him . Here is another Russian

anomaly. The masses li stened to the flashing

sentences and magnificent periods of thi s bril


l i ant platform orato r. Then they turned

around and gave thei r allegiance to Lenin,the

scholar, the man of logic , of measured thought

and academic utte rance .

Lenin is a master of dialectics and polem

ics, aggravatingly self - possessed in debate.And in debate he i s at his best. Olgin says“Lenin does not reply to an opponent. He

vivisects him . He is as keen as the edge of a

razor. H is mind works with an amazing

acuteness . He notices every flaw in the line of

argument. He disagrees with,and he draws

the most absurd conclusions from , p remises

unacceptable to him . At the same time he is

deri s ive . He ridicules hi s Opponent. He cas

tigates him . He makes you feel that his vic

tim is an ignoramus , a fool , a p resumptuous

nonentity. You are swept by the power of his

logic . You are ove rwhelmed by his intellec

tual passion .

”

Occas ionally he relieves the march of his

a rgument by a bit of humor or a stinging re

68 LENIN

tort as: “Comrade Karellin’s queries remind

me of the adage,

‘One fool can ask more ques

tions than ten Wi se men can answer . ’ Again,when Radek

,the Bolshevik journali st, turned

once on Lenin saying,

“ If there were five

hundred brave men in Petrograd we would

send'

you to j ail,

” Lenin quietly replied ,“Some comrades indeed may go to j ail , but

if you will calculate the p robabilities you

will see that it ismore l ikely that I will sendyou than you me .” Occasionally he would

bring in a homely incident illustrating the

new order : the old peasant woman gathering

firewood in the landlo rd ’s forest with the sol

die r of the new day acting as her protector

instead of her persecuto r.

Under suff ering and the stress of events the

fire and passion which lies in the man'

seemed

to have broken through the usual reserve . A

recent observer says that in a great meeting

Lenin began with sentences somewhat halting

and heavy, but as he got under way he spoke


more clearly. He became fluent and viva

cious, without much external effort but with

an increasing internal agitation that was more

and more eff ective . “A sort of controlled

pathos pervaded his soul . He used many

gestures and kept walking a few steps back

ward and fo rward . Remarkably deep and i r

regular wrinkles formed upon his brow,giv

ing evidence of an intensive pondering, an al

most tormenting labor of intellect .” Lenin

aimed primarily at the intellect, not at the

emotions . Yet in the response of his audience

one could see the emotional power of sheer

intellectuality.

Only once did I see him miss fire . That

was at the Mikhailovsky Manege,in De

cember, when the first detachment of the new

Red Army was leaving for the front. Flar

ing to rches l it up the vast interior, turning the

long lines of armoured cars into a group

of strange p rimeval monsters . Swarming

through the great arena and clambering over

70 LENIN

the cars were the dark figures of the new re

cruits, poorly equipped in arms , but strong

in revolutionary ardor. To keep warm they

danced and stamped their feet and to keep

good cheer they sang thei r revolutionary

hymns and the folksongs of the villages .

A great shout announced the arrival of

Lenin . He mounted one of the big cars and

began speaking. In the half darknes s the

throngs looked up and l i stened attentively.

But they did not kindle to his words . He fin

ished amidst an applause that was far from

the customary ovation . His speech that day

was too casual to meet the mood of men going

out to die . The ideas were commonplace and

the exp ressions trite . There was reason

enough fo r thi s deadness—overwork, preoc

cupation. But the fact remained . Lenin had

met a significant occasion with an insignificant speech . And these workmen fel t i t.The Russian p roletarians are not blind hero

worshippers . One cannot long capitalize


one’ s past exploits and prestige, as the Grand

father and the Grandmother of the Revolu

tion discovered . I f one did not acquit onesel f

l ike a hero now , one did not get the hero ’ s

meed of plaudits .

When Lenin stepped down,Podvoisky an

nounced,“An American comrade to address

you .

” The crowd pricked up its ears and I

climbed upon the big car.“Oh

, good . You speak In English,s aid

Lenin .

“Allow me to be your interp reter .“No

,I shall speak in Russian , I answered ,

p rompted by some reckless impulse .

Lenin watched me with eyes twinkling, as

i f anticipating entertainment. It was not long

in coming. After using up the first run of

p redigested sentences that I always carried in

stock,I hesitated, and stopped . I had dith

culty in getting the language started up again .

No matte r what a foreigner does to thei r

tongue , the Russi ans are polite and charitable .

They appreci ate the novice’ s effort,i f not his

72 LENIN

technic . So my speech was punctured with

long periods of applause which gave me each

time a breathing spell in which to assemble

more words for another short advance . I

wanted to tell them that if a great c ris i s came

I should myself be glad to enl ist in the ranks

of the Red Army. I paused , fumbling for a

word . Lenin looked up and asked , What

word do you want ?” “Enlist,” I answered .

“Vstupit, he prompted .

Thereafte r,whenever I was stuck, he would

fl ing the word up to me and I would catch it

and hurl i t out into the audience, modified , of

course,by my American accent . This

,and

the fact that I stood there in the flesh , a tangi

ble symbol of the international ism they had

heard so much about, raised storms of laugh

ter and thundering applause . In thi s Lenin

joined heartily.

“Well,that’s a beginning in Russ ian

, at any

rate,

” he said .

“But you must keep at it

hard . And you ,” he said, turning to Bess ie

74 LENIN

brain, they s aid, were wrought the plans for

thei r undoing . Oh,for a bullet to still that

brain ! That was the prayer that every dayfervently went up from the altars of the

counter- revolutionary homes .

In such a home in Moscow we were always

welcomed with a lavish hospitality. The

great table with its steaming samovar was

loaded with fruits and nuts,a bewildering ar

ray of zakuska, and what Arthur Ransome

called “sweets,

” his particular failing. The

war had done very handsomely by this house

hold . Speculation in all its branches , running

goods by the underground route to Germany,

and profiteering, grand and petty,had put

this family upon the roof garden . Now sud

denly out of the darkness , knocking away the

very foundations of the roof garden , came the

Bolsheviks . They wanted to put a stop tothe war. There was no reasoning with them .

Wild, insane fellows ! They wanted to put a

stop to everything, to speculation, to profiteer


ing, to everything ! The only thing to do was

to put a stop to them . String them up !

Shoot them down ! Begin at the top with

Lenin .

“I have a million roubles this minute for

the man who will kill Lenin,

” thi s rising

young Moscow speculator informed me

gravely,

“and there are nineteen other men

whom I can place my hands upon tomorrow,

each with a mill ion more for the cause .”

We asked our Bolshevik quintette whether

Lenin was aware of the risk he was running .

“Yes , he is quite aware of i t,” they said .

“But

he doesn’t worry. You see , nothing really

worries him ” And apparently nothing did .

Along a path beset with mines and pitfalls

he walked with the composure of a country

gentleman , while crises that shook men’ s

nerves and blanched thei r faces found him

cool and unruffl ed. Plan afte r plan of the

counter- revolutionists and foreign imperial

ists to ass assinate Lenin mi scarried . But on

76 LENIN

the last of August,19 18 , the plotte rs almost

succeeded .

The Premie r had finished his address to

the workmen at the MikhelsonWorks .

As he was returning to his car, a girl ran out

holding a paper as if p resenting a petition to

the Premier . He reached out to take it and

as he did so another girl,Dora Kaplan, fired

th ree shots at him,two of them taking eff ect

and stretching him out upon the pavement.

He was lifted into his ca r and driven to the

Kremlin . While bleeding profusely from his

wounds he insi sted upon walking up the steps .

He was wounded more seriously than he

thought . For weeks he was close to death .

The strength left from fighting the fever in

his veins he gave to fighting the feve r of t evenge that ran through the country.

For the masses, enraged that the dark

forces of reaction had struck down the man

who stood as the symbol of all thei r l iberties

and aspi rations, struck back at the bourgeois ie


and at the monarchists with the Red Terror.Many of the bourgeois ie had to pay with

thei r lives for the ass ass inations of the commissars and the attempt upon Lenin . So

fierce was the wrath of the people that hun

dreds more would have perished had not

Lenin pleaded with the people to restrain

thei r fury. Through all the furor it i s s afe

to say that he was the calmest man in Russ ia .

9 . Lenin’s Extraordinary S elf-Composure

On all occasions he maintained the most “

perfect sel f- control . Events that sti rred

others to a frenzy were an invitation to quiet

and serenity in him .

The one historic session of the Constituent

A s sembly was a turbulent scene as the two

factions came to death- grips with each other.

The delegates, shouting battle- cries and beat

ing on the desks,the o rators

,thundering out

th reats and challenges,and two thousand

78 LENIN

voices,pass ionately singing the International

and the Revolutionary march , charged the

atmosphere with electricity. As the night ad

vanced one felt the voltage of the place going

up and up . In the galleries we gripped the

rails,j aws set and nerves on edge . Lenin sat

in a front tier box,looking bored .

At last he rose,and walking to the back of

the tribunal he stretched himself upon the red

carpeted stai rs . He glanced casually around

the vast concourse . Then as i f saying,“So

many people wasting nervous force . Well ,here’ s one who is going to store some up ,

” he

p ropped his head on his hand and went to

sleep . The eloquence of the orators and the

roar of the audience rolled above hi s head,but peacefully he slumbered on. Once or

twice,opening his eyes

,he blinked about him

,

and nodded off again .

Finally,ri sing

,b e stretched himself and

strolled leisurely down to hi s place in the

front tier box . Seeing our opening,Reed and


I slipped down to question him about the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly. He

replied indiff erently. He asked about the activities of the Propaganda Bureau . His face

brightened up as we told him how the ma

terial was being printed by tons,that it was

really getting acros s the trenches into the Ger

man army . But we found it hard to work in

the German language .“Ah !” he s aid with sudden animation

,as he

recalled my exploits on the armored car,“and

how goes the Russian language ? Can you

understand all these speeches now ?“There are so many words in Russian

,

” I

replied evasively.

“That’ s it,” he retorted .

“You must go at i t systematically. You must

break the backbone of the language at the out

set . I ’ll tell you my method of going at i t.”

In essence,Lenin’s system was this : First,

learn all the nouns,learn all the verbs

,learn

all the adverbs and adj ectives , learn all the

rest of the words ; learn all the grammar and

80 LENIN

rules of syntax,then keep p racticing every

where and upon everybody. As may be seen,Lenin’ s system was more thorough -going than

subtle . It was, in short, his system of the con

quest of the bourgeois ie applied to the con

quest of a language,a merciless applica

tion to the job. But he was quite exercised

over it.

He leaned over the box, with sparkling

eyes,and drove his words home with gestures .

Our fellow reporters looked on enviously.

They thought that Lenin was violently ex

coriating the crimes of the opposition, or di

vu lging the secret plans of the Soviet, or

spurring us to greater zeal for the Revolution .

In a cri sis l ike this,surely only such themes

could d raw forth this burst of energy from

the head of the Great Russian state . But

they were wrong. The Premier of Russi a

was merely giving an exposition on how - to

learn a foreign language and was enjoying

the diversion of a little friendly conversation,

82 LENIN

been talking all day and night, and I’m ti red .

I ’m riding the elevator though it i s but one

flight up .

”

Only once did I ever see him hurried or

rushed . That was in February, when the

Tauride palace was again the scene of a fe

vered conflict— the debate over war or peace

with Germany. Suddenly he appeared,and

with quick, vigorous stride was fai rly hurtling

himself down the long b all toward the plat

fo rm entrance . Professor Charles Kuntz and

I were lying in wait for him,and hailed him

with “Just a minute,Tovarishch Lenin .

”

He checked his headlong fl ight and came

to attention in almost military fashion,bowed

very gravely,and said ,

“Will you be so good

as to let me go this time, comrades ? I haven’t

even as much as a second . They are await

ing me inside the hall . I beg you to excuse

me this time,please . With another bow

and a handshake he was off in full strideagain .


Wilcox, an anti - Bolshevik, commenting on

the amenity of Lenin in intimate relation

ships, s ays that an Engl ish merchant, in o rder

to rescue his family from a critical situation,went to seek Lenin’ s personal aid . He was

astonished to find the “blood- thi rsty tyrant” a

mild-mannered man, courteous and sympa

thetic in bearing,and almost eager to afford

all assistance in his power.

In fact,at times he seemed over- courteous ,

exaggeratedly so . This may have been due

to his use O f English , l i fting bodily from the

books the elaborate fo rms of polite conversa

tion . More probably, i t was part of his tech

nic in soci al inte rcourse , for Lenin was highly

effi cient here as elsewhere . He refused to

squande r his time upon non- essenti al persons ;he was not easily access ible . In his ante- room

is thi s notice“Visitors are asked to take into considera

tion that they are to speak to a man whose

business is enormous . He asks them to ex

84 LENIN

plain clearly and briefly what they have come

to say.

”

It was hard to get at Lenin, but once you

did you had all there was of him . All his

faculties were focused upon you in a man

ner so acute as to be embarrass ing. After a

polite,almost an eff usive

,greeting, he drew

up closer until hi s face would be no more than

a foot away. As the conversation went on he

often came still closer,gazing into your eyes

as i f he were searching out the inmost reces

ses of your brain and peering into your very

soul . 'Only an extraordinarily brazen liar

like Malinovsky could Withstand the steady

impact of that gaze .

We often met a certain Socialis t who in

1905 had taken part in the Moscow uprising

and had even fought well on the barricades .

A career and the comforts of li fe had weaned

him from his first ardent devotion . He wore

now an ai r of prosperity,acting as co rrespond

ent for an English newspaper syndicate and


Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo. Bourgeois writers

were regarded by Lenin as wasters of time ;but by playing up his p ast revolutionary rec

ord this man had managed to secure an ap

pointment with Lenin . He was in high spi r

its as he went away to meet it. Some hours

l ate r I saw h im in a state of perturbation. He

explained :

When I walked into the ofli ce I referred

to my part in the 1905 revolution . Lenin

came up to me and said,

‘Yes,comrade

,but

what are you doing fo r this revolution ?’ His

face was not more than six inches away and

his eyes were looking straight into mine . I

spoke of my old days on the Moscow barri

c ades,and took a step backwards . But Lenin

took a step forward,not letting go my eyes ,

and said again,

‘Yes,comrade

,but what are

you doing for this revolution ?’ It was like an

X- ray—as i f he saw all my deeds of the last

ten yea rs . I couldn’ t stand it. I had to look

down like a guilty child . I tried to talk, but

86 LENIN

it was no use. I had to come away.

” A

days later this man threw in h i s lot with

revolution and became a worker for

Soviet.

I I . Lenin’s S incerity and Hatred ofUnreality

One of the secrets of Lenin’ s power is his

terrible s incerity. He was sincere with his

friends . He was gratified , of course, with

each access ion to the ranks,but he would not

enlist a single recruit by painting in roseate

hues the conditions of se rvice,or the future

p rospects . Rather he tended to paint things

blacke r than they were . The burden of many

sof Lenin’s speeches was : “The goal the B01

sheviks are striving for is far away—furtheraway than most of you dream . We have

led Russi a along a rough road,but the course

we follow will bring us more enemies,more

hunger. Difficult as the past has been , the


futu re p romises ha rde r things—harder thanyou imagine .

” Not an alluring promise .

Not the usual call to arms ! Yet as the Italians

rall ied to Garibaldi , who came Offering

wounds,p rison and death

,the Russians rallied

to Lenin . This was a li ttle d iscomforting to

one expecting the leader to glori fy his cause

and to urge the p rospective convert into join

ing i t. He left the urge to come from within .

Lenin is sincere even with his avowed ene

mies . An Englishman,commenting on his

extrao rdinary frankness , says his attitude was

l ike this : “Personally, I have nothing against

you . Poli tically, however, you are my enemy

and I must use eve ry weapon I can think of

fo r you r destruction . Your government does

the same agains t me . Now let us see how far

we can go along togethe r.”

This stamp of sincerity i s on all h i s public

utterances . Lenin i s lacking in the usual out

fit of the statesman -politician—bluff , glitter

ing verbiage and success -psychology. One

88 LENIN

felt that he could not fool others even i f he

desi red to . And for the same reasons that he

! could not fool himself : His scientific attitude

of mind,his passion for the facts .

His lines of information ran out in every

direction,bringing him multitudes of facts .

These he weighed,si fted and assayed . Then

b e utilized them as a strategist,a master chem

ist working in social elements,a mathemati

cian. He would approach a subject in this

way“Now the facts that count for us are these

One , two , th ree, four He would briefly

enumerate them .

“And the factors that are

against us a re these .

In the same way he would count them up,

One,two

,three

,four Are there any

others ?” he would ask . We would rack our

brains for another,but generally in vain .

Elaborating the points on each side,pro and

contra , he would p roceed with his calculation

as with a p roblem in mathematics .

90 LENIN

When the Germans were making their drive

upon the Red Capital a flood of telegrams

poured in on Smolny f rom all over Russia,exp ressing amazement

,horro r and indigna

tion . They ended with slogans like “Long

live the invincible Russian p roletari at !”

“Death to the imperial istic robbers !” “With

our last drop of blood we will defend the

Capital O f the Revolution !”

Lenin read them and then dispatched a tele

gram to all the Soviets,asking them kindly

not to send revolutionary phrases to Petro

grad , but to send troops ; also to state precisely

the number of volunteers enrolled,and to for

ward an exact report upon the arms,ammu

nition and food conditions .

I 2 . Lenin at Work in a Crisis

With the advance of the Germans came the

flight of the fo reigners . The Russians manitested a mild surp ri se that all those who had


so wildly c ried to them,

“Kill the Huns now

fled p recipitately when the Hun came within

killing range . It would have been good to

join the hegi ra, but there was my pledge made

upon the armored car. So I went out to join

the Red A rmy. Bukharin, the Left-Bolshe

vik insis ted that I should see Lenin .

My congratulations ! My fe l icitations !”

s aid Lenin .

“It looks very bad for us just

now. The old army will not fight. The new

one'

is largely upon paper. Pskov has just

been su rrende red without resistance . That i s

a c rime. The President of the Soviet ought

to be shot. Our workers have great sel f- sac

rifice and heroi sm . But no militarytraining,no discipline .”

Thus in about twenty short sentences he

summed up the situation,ending with

,

“All

I can see i s peace . Yet the Soviet may be fo r

war. In any case, my congratulations fo r

joining the Revolutionary A rmy . Afte r your

struggle with the Russian language you ought

92 LENIN

to be in good training to fight the Germans .

He ruminated a moment and added :“One foreigner can’t do much fighting .

Maybe you can find others .” I told him that

I might try to form a detachment .

Lenin was a di rect actionist. A plan con

ceived,at once he p roceeded to put it into

execution . He turned to the telephone to ring

up Krylenko, the Soviet commander. Fail

ing, he picked up a pen and scribbled him a

note .

By night we had formed the International

Legion and issued our call summoning all men

speaking foreign languages to enroll in the

new company . But Lenin did not drop the

matter there . He was not content merely with

inaugurating something in the grand manner .He followed it up relentlessly and in detail .Twice he telephoned the Pravda oflice in

structing them to p rint the call in Russian and

in English . Then he telegraphed it th rough

the country. Thus, while opposing the war,


and particularly those who were intoxicating

themselves with revolutionary phrases about

it,Lenin was mobilizing every force to pre

pare fo r it .

He sent an automobile with Red Guards

to the fortress of Pete r and Paul to fetch part

of the counter- revolutionary staff imprisoned

there .“Gentlemen

,said Lenin

,as the generals

filed into h is oflice,“I have brought you here

for expert advice . Petrograd is in danger .

Will you be good enough to work out the

military tactics for its defense ?” They as

sented .

“Here are our fo rces , resumed Lenin , in

dicating upon the map the location of the Red

troops,munitions and reserves . “And here

a re our l atest reports upon the number and

disposition of the enemy troops . Anything

else the generals desi re they will call for .”

They set to work and toward evening

handed him the result of thei r deliberations .

94 LENIN

Now,said the generals ingrati atingly,

“will

the Premier be good enough to allow us more

comfortable quarters ?”

“My exceeding regrets,

” replied Lenin .

Some other time,but not just now . Your

quarters , gentlemen, may not be comfortable ,but they have the merit of being very safe .”

The staff was returned to the fortres s of Pete r

and Paul.

I 3 . Lenin as a Prophet and S tatesman

I t is clear that Lenin’s p rowess as a states

man and seer ari ses not f rom any mystic in

tuition or power of divination, but from his

ability to amass all the facts in the case and

then to utili ze them . He showed this ability

in his work,“The Development of Capital

ism .

” There Lenin challenged the economic

thought O f his day by asserting that half the

Russian peasants had been p roletarianized,

that,despite thei r posses sion of some land

,

these peasants were in eff ect “wage- earners


with a piece of l and .

” Bold and daring as the

asse rtion was, i t was co rroborated by investi

gation in l ater years . Lenin had not merely

guessed at it . It was hi s verdict afte r exten

s ive marshalling of statistics in the Zemstvos

and in other fields .

One day, discussing with Peters the roots

of Lenin’ s p restige,he said

,

“Often in the

closed sess ions of our party Lenin made cer

tain p roposals based upon his analysi s of the

situation . We voted them down . Later on i t

turned ou t that Lenin was right and we were

wrong .

” On the question of tactics there have

been Homeric struggles between Lenin and

othe r members of the party, in which late r

events have generally vindicated his judgment.

Prominent Bolshevik leaders like Kame

nev and Zinoviev held that in the p roposed

November revolution it was impossible to suc

ceed . Lenin said ,“It i s impossible to fail .”

Lenin was right . The Bolsheviks made a ges

tu re, and the governmental power fell into

96 LENIN

thei r hands . None were more surpri sed than

the Bolsheviks at the ease with which i t was

accomplished .

The other Bolshevik leaders s aid that

though they might take the power they could

not hold it . Lenin said,

“Every day will bring

us fresh strength .

” Lenin was right . After

two years of fighting against enemies hem

ming them in from all sides , the Soviet ad

vances on every front.

T rotzky pursued his juggling tactics with

the Germans,decoying them along but refus

ing to sign the treaty . Lenin said,

“Don’t play

with them . Sign the first treaty offered , how

ever bad , or we shall have to Sign a worse

one Again Lenin was right . The Russians

were forced to S ign “the brigand’ s” “the ban

dit’ s” peace of B rest-Litovsk .

In the Spring of 19 18 , while the whole

world was ridiculing the idea of a German

revolution , and the Kaiser’s a rmy was smash

ing the Allied line in France,Lenin in a con

98 LENIN

ican sailors in Vladivostok, while Czarists ,Czechs , British , Japanese and other Al lies

hauled down the flag of the Soviet Republic

and ran up the flag of the old autocracy.

Lenin’ s p redictions have so often been verified by the events that his view of the future

i s , to say the least, interesting . Here is the

gist of Naudeau’s famous interview as it ap

peared in the Pari s Temps in April , 19 19 .

“The future of the world ?” said Lenin .

“I

am not a p rophet. But this much is certain .

The capitalist state , of wh ich England is an

example,is dying out . The old order i s

doomed . The economic conditions arising out

of the war are driving towards the new order.

The evolution of mankind inevitably leads to

Socialism .

“Who would have believed some years ago

that the nationalization of rail roads in Amer

ica was possible ? And we have seen that

Republic buy all the grain in o rder to use it

to the fullest advantage of the state. All that


i s said against the state has not retarded this

evolution . True it is necess ary to c reate and

contrive new means of control in order to

remedy the imperfections . But any attempts

to p revent the state from becoming sovereign

are futile . Fo r the inevitable comes and

comes of its own momentum . The Engli sh

say,‘The proof of the pudding i s in the cat

ing.

’ S ay what you will of the Socialistic

pudding,all the nations eat and will eat more

and more of i t.“To Sum up . Experience seems to p rove

that each human group goes on towards So

cialism by its own particular way. Even the

Letts go at it diff erently from the Russians .

There will be many passing forms and varia

t ions,but they are all diff erent phases of a

revolution which tends toward the same end .

I f a Social istic r! gime i s establ ished in France

or Germany, i t will be much easier to pe r

petuate it than here in Russia . For in the

West Soci alism will find frameworks , organi

I oo LENIN

zations, all kinds of intellectual auxilia ries

and materials, which are not to be found in

Russia .”

I 4 . Lenin’s Attitude Toward M en of

B rains

For every honest Bolshevik the re are

thi rty- nine scoundrels and sixty fools .” This

widely quoted sentence has been put into the

mouth of Lenin in an attempt to picture him

as the grand patrician with cynical mistrust of

the masses . To support this curious charge a

statement of fifteen years ago is dug up . It

s ays that the working- classes of themselves de

veloped only a trade -unioni st consciousness ,that is

,the sense of organi zation

,striking

against employer,the eight- hour day

,etc .

But the ideas of Socialism have come to the

workers largely from outside , from the intel

lectuals.

It i s true that in all thei r actions and de

c rees Lenin and the Soviet government show

102 LENIN

ministrator quite as we delegate politicalpower to our representative in Congress . He

is given the vast resources of Russi a to work

upon . Besides,Russia under the Soviet off ers

to the engineer or administrator not only its

vast wealth to work upon but also a labor force,enthusiastic and alive

,with which to work it .

This latter condition does not obtain under

the capitalist system where the workman’s

greatest interest lies in his wages rather than

in his work, and where the management and

the labor force come into constant conflict .

Under the Soviet the energies of the men, in

stead of being spent in quarreling over the

division of the p roduct,are liberated for the

task of larger p roduction . Lenin bel ieved in

the great results arising from the Soviet sys

tem calling out the enthusiasti c c reative energies of the masses and at the same time giv

ing a free hand to the men of brains and

genius .

In his survey of social forces Lenin made


h is estimate of the value of all the diffe rent

elements . The intellectuals had thei r place

before and afte r the Revolution . As agitators

they could help make the Revolution pos

s ible . As experts with skill and technic they

could help make the Revolution permanent

and stable .

I 5 . Lenin’s Attitude Toward Americans,

Capitalists and Concessions

American technicians , engineers and admin

istrators Lenin particula rly held in high

esteem . He wanted five thousand of them , he

wanted them at once,and was ready to pay

them the highest s al aries . He was constantly

ass ailed for having a peculiar leaning toward

America . Indeed , his enemies cynically re

fe rred to him as “the agent of the Wall Street

bankers,

” and in the heat of debate the extreme

Left hurled this charge in his f ace .

As a matte r of f act, American capital ism

104 LENIN

was to him not less evil than the capitali sm O fS any other nation . But America was so far

away . It did not offe r a direct threat to the

li fe of Soviet Russia . And it did off e r the

goods and experts that Soviet Russi a needed .

“Why is i t not then to the mutual interest of

the two countries to make a speci al agree

ment ?” asked Lenin .

But Is i t possible for a communistic state to

deal with a capital istic state ? Can the two

forms live side by side ? These questions were

put to Lenin by Naudeau .

“Why not ?” s aid Lenin .

“We want techni

cians, scientis ts and the various products of

industry, and i t i s clea r that we by ourselves

are incapable of developing the immense re

sources oi thi s country. Under the ci rcum

stances, though it may be unpleasant for us,we must admit that our p rinciples

,which

hold in Russia, must, beyond ou r f rontiers ,give place to political agreements . We very

s incerely propose to pay interest on our for

106 LENIN

of land and all kinds of unexploited mines will

f all within the domain of the constructing

company.

“This state p roperty is ceded for a certain

time,probably eighty years

,and with the

right of redemption . We exact nothing dras

tic of the associ ation . We ask only the oh

se rvance of the laws passed by the Soviet,

l ike the eight- hour day and the control of the

workers’ organizations . It i s true that this is

far from Communism . I t does not at all cor

respond to our ideal , and we must say that this

question has raised some very lively controw

versies in Soviet journals . But we have de

cided to accept that which the epoch of tran

sitiou renders necessary .

”

“So you believe, then, said Naudeau ,“that

,

considering the dangers run here by foreign

capitali sts—dangers which do not seem to

have been removed , and which one fears may

b e aggravated at any time —you believe thatfinancie rs will have courage enough to come


to Russi a and let it swallo,w! up new treasures ?

They will not begin such a task without thep rotection of an armed force from thei r own

country. Will you consent to such an occu

pation?”

“It will be quite superfluous, s aid Lenin ,because the Soviet Government will observe

faithfully what they have bound themselves to

observe . But all points of view may be con

sidered .

The reports from the G reat Moscow Eco

nomic Council in June , 19 19 , show Lenin

with Chicherin battling fo r the pol icy of eco

nomic alli ance with America against the en

gineer Krassin leading the fight for economic

alli ance with Germany.

15 . Lenin’s Tremendous Faith in the

Proletarians

To Lenin, of course , the driving fo rce of

the Revolution,its soul and its sinew, was the

108 LENIN

proletariat. The only hope of a new so

ciety l ay in the masses . This was not the

popular view. The conception of the Russian

masses generally current makes them but

shambling creatures of the soil,shiftless , lazy,

i ll iterate, with dark minds set only upon

vodka,devoid of ideali sm

,incapable of sus

tained eff ort.

Over agains t thi s stands Lenin’ s estimate of

the “ignorant” masses . Through the long

years , in season and out of season , he insisted

upon thei r resoluteness,thei r tenacity

,thei r

capacity fo r sac rificing and suffering,thei r

ability to grasp large political ideas,and the

great c reative and constructive forces latent

within them . This seems l ike an almost reck

less t rust in the character of the masses . How

far have results justified Lenin’s venture of

faith in the Russian workinmen?

Thei r ability to grasp large political ideas

has astounded all observers who have gone

below the surface in Russia . I t made a mem

1 10 LENIN

head,but there will be none of these ideal s in

the Treaty of Peace unless the workers have

control of the government .”

An eminent American professor who heard

the Russ ians say this l aughed at thei r scepticism . TO - day he laughs at his own credulity

and wonders how these “dark people” in the

l ittle Soviets in the remote parts of backward

Russia had a better grasp on international

politics than h imsel f .

The B ritish worked on the plan that i t was

only necess ary to appeal to the immediate self

interest of the masses . They arrived in Arch

angel bringing j am,whiskey and white flour

with which to seduce the people . The famished folk rejoiced to receive the gi fts

,but

when they saw that these were bribes to blind

them and that the price of these goods was

the integri ty and freedom of Russi a,they

turned upon the invade rs and drove them

from the country.

Time has also justified Lenin’ s faith in the

TEN MONTHS WITH LENIN 1 1 1

tenacity and resoluteness of the Russian masses. Compare the di re p rophecies of 19 17

with the facts of to-day.

“Three days and

thei r power i s gone,

” croaked the enemies of

the Soviets then . The three days passed into

as many more, and the cry became ,“Three

weeks i s the utmost that the Soviet can last .”

Again they had to change the cry. This time

it became “Three months .” Now ,afte r eight

times th ree months, the best the enemies of the

Soviets can offer their backers is “Three

years .”

I 7. The Achievements of the Workers and

P easants greater than his Expectations

The strength and persistence of the Soviet

Government does not l ie , as some infe r, in the

violation of all l aw,the strange whimsy of an

insc rutable Providence . It rests just where

Lenin said i t would—on the solid achieve

ments of the workers and peasants .

In the economic field they have started new

1 12 LENIN

processes for the manufacture Of l inen,matches and the utilization of the great peat

beds of Russia . They have completed vast

engineering enterp ri ses ranging from the set

ting-up of power- plants and electric stations

to the dredging of the great canal between the

Baltic Sea and the Volga River and the build

ing of hundreds of versts of railways .

In the military realm the workers and peas

ants submitted themselves to a stern military

discipline which trans formed the Red Army

into one of the most formidable fightingmachines in the world . These proletarians

have a distinct morale and spi rit . Hithertothey have always fought in the interests ofsome superior caste . Now for the first timethey are fighting

— consciously— battles inthei r own interest and in the interests of the

toiling and exploited peoples of the world .

But it is in the cultural realm that the tri

umphs of the “dark people” have been most

s ignificant. Make man f ree and he c reates .

1 I 4 LENIN

other and left them with hundreds

of thousands of o rphans and hundreds of

thousands of the blind,the deaf and the dumb .

The railways were broken down , the mines

flooded,the reserves of food and fuel nearly

gone . The economic machinery, dislocated

by the war and further shattered by the Revo

lu tion, had suddenly thrown upon it the task

of demobilizing soldie rs . They

raised a bumper grain crop , but the Czechs ,supported by the Japanese, French , British

and Americans, cut them off from the grain

fields of Siberia,and the other counter- revolu

tionaries f rom the grain fields of the Ukraine .“Now,

” they said,

“the bony hand of hunger

will clutch the people by the th roat and bring

them to thei r senses.

” Because they separated

the church from state they were excommuni

cated . They were sabotaged by the old offi

cials, deserted by the intelligentzia and

blockaded by the Allies . The Allies tried by

all manner O f th reats , bribery and assassina


tion to overthrow their government,British

agents blowing up the railway bridges to pre

vent supplies reaching the big cities,and

French agents , under s afe - conduct from their

consulates , putting emery in the bearings of

the locomotives .

Facing these facts , Lenin s aid“Yes , we have mighty enemies , but against

them we have the i ron battal ion of the p ro

letarians. The vast majority are not as yet

truly conscious and they are not active . And

the reason is clea r They are war weary,

hungry and exhausted . The Revolution now

is only skin deep,but with rest there will

come a big psychological change . If it

only comes in time the Soviet Republic iss aved .

”

To Lenin’ s mind the episode of November,

19 17—the masses spectacularly crashing into

powe r—was not the Revolution . But these

masses becoming conscious of thei r mis

s ion,pass ing into discipline and orderly work

,

1 16 LENIN

and bringing into the field their great c reativeand constructive forces— that would be the

Revolution .

In those early days Lenin was never ce r

tain that the Soviet Republic was s aved .

“Ten

days more !” he exclaimed,

“and we shall

have lasted as long as the Paris Commune .

In opening his address to the Third All -Rus

s ian Congress in Petrograd,he said

,Com

rades,consider that the Commune of Paris

held out for seventy days . We have already

lasted for two days more than that.”

More than ten times seventy days the great

Russi an Commune has held out against a

world of enemies . Great was the faith of

Lenin ini

the tenacity,the perseverance

,the

resoluteness,the heroi sm

,and the economic

,

military and cultural potentialities of the

p roletarians . Thei r achievements are not

merely the vindication O f his zealous faith .

They are a source of amazement to himself .

1 18 LENIN

To the reactionary Church Lenin is the

Anti -Christ . The priests try to rally the peas

ants a round the sacred banners and ikons and

lead them against the Red Army. But the

peasants say,

“He may be Anti -Christ, but

he brings us land and freedom . Why then

should we fight him ?”

To the man in the street Lenin has almost

a superhuman significance . He is the Maker

of the Russian Revolution,the Founder of

the Soviet,the cause of all that Russia i s to

day.

“Kill Lenin and T rotzsky and you kill

the Revolution and the Soviet . ”

This i s to View history as the p roduct of

Great M en,as if great events and epochs were

determined by their great leaders . I t i s true

that a whole epoch may express itsel f in a

single personal ity, and that a great mass

movement may focus itself in an individual .

But that i s the utmost that can be conceded to

the Carlylean View.

Certainly any interpretation of history that


makes the Russian Revolution hinge upon a

single person or group O f persons i s mislead

ing. Lenin would be the first to scoff at the

idea that the fortunes of the Russian Revolu tion l ie in his hands or in the hands of his

confreres .

The fate of the Russian Revolution lies inthe source whence it has sp rung— in the hearts

and hands of the masses . It lies back in those

economic forces,the p ressure of which has set

those masses into motion . For centuries these

masses had been quiescent,patient

,long- suf

fering. All ac ross the vast reaches of Rus

sia, over the Muscovite plains , the Ukrani an

steppes , and along the great rivers of S iberia

they toiled under the lash of poverty,chained by superstition

,thei r lot little better

than that of the beast . But there i s an end to

all things —even the patience of the poor .In March

,19 17, with a crash heard round

the world,the city masses broke thei r fetters .

A rmy afte r army of soldiers followed thei r

120 LENIN

example and revolted . Then the Revolution

permeated the villages,going deeper and

deeper, firing the most backward sections with

the revolutionary spirit,until a nation of 180,

has been sti rred to its depths—seventimes as many as in the French Revolu

tion .

Caught by a great vision, a whole race

strikes camp,and moves out to build a new

order. It i s the most tremendous movement

of the human spirit in centuries . Based on

the bed - rock of the economic interest of the

masses,i t i s the most resolute strike for jus

tice in histo ry. A great nation turns c rusader

and, loyal to the vision of a new world ,marches on in the face of hunger, war, block

ade and death . It drives ahead, sweeping

aside the leaders who fail them,following

those who answer thei r needs and thei r aspira

tions .In the masses themselves l ies the fate of the

Russian Revolution—in thei r di scipl ine and

RAYMOND ROBINS’ IMPRESSIONS

126 LENIN

There now sits Lenin,short-built and

staunch-built,gray- eyed and bald -headed and

tranquil . He wears a woolen shi rt and a suitof clothes bought

, one would think, manyyears ago

,and last p ressed shortly afterwards .

The room is quite still . As he dep recates “theintoxication of the Revolutionary phrase,

”

so he seems to reject the intoxication of

Revolutionary excitement . He busies himselfwith reports of accounts and departments , and

receives visitors for stated lengths of timeten minutes

,five minutes

,one minute . He is

l ikely to receive them standing, and he Speaksto them in the low tones of a man who does not

need to raise his voice .

In his manner of easy authority one may,

perhaps,see his father

,hereditary nobleman

and State Councillo r of the government ofSimbi rsk. In his ways of thought one i s certainly reminded of his brother, executed as a

political offender by the Czar’s pol ice whenLenin was but seventeen years old .

RAYMOND ROBINS 1 27

Colonel Robins never visited Lenin in this

High Court Building of the Czar without

thinking of that execution and of the sanction

given to ir— and to all such executions— by the

State Church of Russia . Behind the gallows ,

generation afte r gene ration , in every part of

Russia , stand the priests , with thei r vessels of

gold , thei r vestments of lovely weavings , and

thei r ikons,preaching obedience to autocracy,

speaking the word of God in support of the

word of the Cza r,and blessing the hangman .

Out of that background came Lenin’ s utte r

anecs . He talked with no othe r assumption

than that religion had departed out of the pub

lic l i fe and out of the public policy of Russia ,along with the Czar . He talked only of secu

l ar effo rt, of materi al organization .

2 . Lenin’

s Growing Prestige as a Prophet

On a momentous occasion , the occasion of

the B rest- Litovsk treaty, T rotzky, in his p ro

paganda, appealed to the German soldie rs to

128 LENIN

rise up and break their maste rs who made

them march .

Would the German soldie rs march ? That

was the immediate question .

“N said T rotzky. Like all a rtists , he be

lieved in the i rresistible appeal ingness of his

work. He had shown the German working

men the folly and wickedness of marching,and they would not march .

But they will,

” s aid Lenin .

There was a certain p rivate meeting of cer

tain members of the All -Russian and Petro

grad Soviets . I t was a time of supreme ten

s ion, of the stretching and snapping of many

judgments and many reputations . The Ger

man Government had made its open and full

announcement of its imperialistic and annexa

tionistic policies toward Russia . In the Soviet there was consternation, indignation , fury .

But would the Russian Army, in the field ,fight ?

“It will,said loud voices .

130 LENIN

merely stated his position . The GermansWould advance ; the Russian army would notfight ; and the Russian Socialis t Republic, ino rder not to be trampled mil itarily out of ex

istence, would have to sign the peace.

Then T rotzky swayed the meeting. The

Revolution was afoot in Germany. Trotzky

saw i t striding on. Comrade Lenin was mistaken . The German comrades were not so

base as to fight for the terms of Brest-Litovsk.

Besides,there was Poland , and there was

Lithuania, and there was Letvia. They mustnot be surrendered to the Germans . The

Polish comrades and the Lithuanian comrades

and the Letti sh comrades must not be desert

ed . We must hold them for the Revolution,s aid Trotzky.

“We must not be intoxicated by the Revolutionary phrase,

” s aid Lenin .

But Trotzky swayed themeeting, and Leninlet him . When Robins afterwards asked

Lenin why he had permitted it, he said

RAYMOND ROBINS 13 1

I am willing to let Trotzky see i f he can

put off the peace . I am willing to let him see

i f he can s ave us f rom it . I would rejoice if

he could . But I wanted the comrades to know

what I am thinking . I wanted them to know

it, so that they can remember it a few days

from now . I have to keep thei r confidence . ”

During those few days and until they ended,

Lenin was very unpopular. Most of the lead

e rs of the Soviet were on T rotzky’s side . To

many of them Lenin’ s position seemed to be

monstrous . But everything turned out as

Lenin s aid i t would . Yet each new thing he

s aid was spoken amid a storm of protest .“We will call the Fourth All -Russian Congress of Soviets ,

” he said .

“What ?” was the

answer. “Call the Congres s now ? It can’ t

be done . Russi a can’ t send delegates now. It

c an’ t bring its mind to think of sending them .

And the delegates can’ t come, they won’t

t ravel , at thi s time . Impossible !”

“We will call it at Moscow,s aid Lenin.

132 LENIN

What ?” was the answer,

“Moscow ? The

stronghold of the reaction ? Go to MOSCOW

and the Hall of the Nobles and the haunts ofthe old r! gime ? Leave Petrograd, the revo

lutionary ci ty ? Never !”

But it happened . The Fourth All -RussianCongress of Soviets was called , as Lenin had

said . The Germans had advanced , as Lenin

had said . The Congress met at Moscow in the

Hall of the Nobles , as Lenin had said. Itratified the peace

,as Lenin had said .

The shadow of Lenin grew upon Trotzky.

It grew upon Radek . I t grew upon Karolin.

It grew upon eve rybody . More than everthey were eclipsed . More than ever Lenin

was master . He had out- analyzed and out

seen everybody . His books and his documents

and his reports and his theses and all his scho

lastic methods and manners had not hinderedhim— perhaps they had helped him —in becoming his party’ s absolute realist and almost

absolute ruler.

134 LENIN

to get his sleigh . He drove to Smolny, andwaved his card at the doorkeepers , and ranupstai rs . In the corridors were c rowds of

commissioners and clerks and guards , running,shouting

,and running again

,gett ing ready for

something very imminent . Machine - guns

were being unhooded . Thei r cartridges were

being filled into them . The crowds , with the

guns,surged over to one side of the building.

Robins looked out from that side ac ross the

yard of Smolny, toward the Viborg—the Viborg workmen’ s quarter.Two streets stretched from there toward

Smolny. They were black with two streams

of armed workmen flowing toward Smolny.

They would overwhelm Smolny and clean it

ou t and then flow to the Front against the Ger

mans . Such was the c ry.

Robins drew back from his window and

worked his way through a co rrido r of dense,

panic - stricken people toward Lenin’ s p rivate

office .

RAYMOND ROBINS 135

Lenin was there , receiving telephone mes

s ages from the Front. He was receiving per

sonal reports f rom couriers . He was writing

orders and sending them out . He was work

ing without pause , as usual , and , as usual , without haste . He seemed quite unaware of anyc ri s i s .

Robins was thrust into the room by shouting

men behind him who cried to Lenin,

“Theo rde r to fi re !”

Lenin jumped to his feet. For just one moment he

,too , was excited .

“No ! No he said .

Then again he said,

“No ! NO !” thi s time an

grily.

“Shoot them ? We will talk to them .

Tell thei r leaders to come in .

”

Somebody went to call them , and Lenin sat

down to his messages and his orders . The

leaders of the mob began to come in and began

to fill Lenin’ s oflice—workmen— in workmen’ s

clothes— each with a bayoneted rifle in his

hands and with a magazine pistol at his wai st—workmen— soldiers— the men Lenin had to

136 LENIN

rely ou—the armed Revolutionary proletariat—the nucleus of the future Red Army ofLenin’s Russia . They grounded thei r rifles .

Somebody said to Lenin,

“They are here .”

The outer door was closed .

Lenin rose and walked over toward his

visitors .“Comrades

,

” he said,

“you see I have not run

away . Comrades,I was fighting for the Revo

lution before some of you were born . I shall

be fighting fo r the Revolution when some of

you a re dead . I stand always in danger. You

stand in more danger . Let us talk frankly.

”

He put his hands in his pockets and walked

up and down , meditated , and spoke :

Comrades , I do not blame you for not al

ways trusting your leaders . There are so

many voices in Russi a today ! I wonder that

you have trusted us as much as you have .“Among honest Revolutioni sts to -day there

are two voices . One of them is right. One iswrong.

138 LENIN

the Revolution . Let us die when by dying we

can win victo ry for the Revolution .

“Comrades,my voice i s right. They tell

you I will make a shameful peace . Yes . Iwill make a shameful peace . They tell you Iwill surrender Petrograd, the Imperial City.

Yes. I will surrender Petrograd, the Imperial

City. They tell you I will surrender Moscow,

the Holy Ci ty. I will . I will go back to the

Volga, and I will go back behind the Volga toYekaterinburg ; but I will s ave the soldiers of

the Revolution and I will save the Revolution .

“Comrades , what i s your will ?I will give you now a special train to the

Front. I will not stop you . You may go . But

you will take my resignation with you . I have

led the Revolution . I will not share in the

murder of my own child .

“Comrades, what i s your will ?

Lenin ! Lenin ! Lenin !” The room held no

other sound .

“Comrade Lenin ! Comrade

Lenin !” It was a judgment delivered . Hav

RAYMOND ROBINS 139

ing delivered it, the judges p icked up thei rrifles and marched out of the room and downthe co rridor

,still del ivering their judgment :

“Comrade Lenin .

Such was Lenin face to face with his followers. Such was Lenin the personal leader.

4 . Lenin Explains the Advantages of the

S oviet System over the American

On a certain day when Colonel Robins

called on Lenin in that famous room with the

velvet hangings,Lenin said to him

“We may be overth rown in Russi a by thebackwardness of the Russian people , or by a

fo reign power,but the idea in the Russian

Revolution will break and wreck every politi

cal soci al control in the world . Our method

of social control must dominate the future .

Political social control will die . The Russian

Revolution will kill it— everywhere .”

“But,

”said Robins ,

“my government is a

140 LENIN

democratic government. Do you really mean

that the idea in the Russian Revolution WIll

destroy the democratic idea in the governmentof the United States ?”

“The American government,” answered

Lenin,“i s corrupt.”

“That i s not so, answered Robins .“Our

national government and local governmentsa re elected by the people . Most of the elec

tions are honest and fai r, and the men elected

are the true Choice O f the voters . You cannot

call the American government a bought gov

ernment .”

“Ah , Colonel Robins , replied Lenin , you

do not understand . It is my fault. I should

not have used the word corrupt . I do not

mean that your government is corrupt through

money . I mean that it i s co rrupt in that it is

decayed in thought . It i s l iving in the politi

cal thought of a by- gone political age . It i sl iving in the age of Thomas Jeffe rson . It

is not living in the p resent economic age .

142 LE NIN

our system is superior to yours . That is whyi t will destroy yours .”

“Frankly,Mr. Commiss ioner, s aid Rob

ins ,“I don’t believe it will .”

“It will,

” said Lenin .

“Do you know what

our system is ?”

“Not very well as yet,” s aid Robins . “You’ve

just started .

”

“I ’ll tell you,said Lenin .

“Our system willdestroy yours because it will consist of a social

control which recognizes the basic fact of

modern life . It recognizes the fact that real

power to - day is economic, and that the social

control of today must therefo re be economicalso . So what do we do ? Who will be our

representatives in our national legisl ature , in

our national Soviet,f rom the district of Baku ,

for instance ?“The district of Baku is an oil country. Oil

makes Baku . Oil rules Baku . Our representatives f rom Baku will be elected by the oil

industry. They will be elected by the work

RAYMOND ROBINS 143

ers in the O il industry. You say, Who arethe workers ? I say

,The men who manage

and the men who Obey the orders of managers,

the superintendents,the engineers

,the artisans

,

the manual laborers—all the persons who areactually engaged in the actual work of p ro

duction , by brain o r hand—they are the workers . Persons not so engaged— persons who arenot at labor in the oil industry but who try to

live off i t without labor,by speculation

,by

royalties, by investment unaccompanied by

any work of daily toil— they are not workers .

They may know something about oil , or theymay not . Usually they do not . In any case

,

they are not engaged in the actual p roducing

of oil . Our republic is a producers’ republic .

“You will say that your republic i s a citi

z ens’ republic . Very well . I say that the man

as p roducer is more important than the man

as citizen . The most important citi zens in

you r oil districts—who are'

they ? Are they

not oil men ? We will represent Baku as oil .

144 LENIN

Similarly we will rep resent the Donetz

coal basin as coal . The rep resentatives f rom

the Donetz basin will be rep resentatives of the

coal industry. Again , from the country districts, our representatives will be representatives chosen by peasants who grow crops .

What i s the real interest of the country dis

tricts? It i s not store - keeping . It is not

money- lending . It i s agriculture . From our

country distric ts our Soviets of peasants will

send rep resentatives chosen by agriculture tospeak fo r agriculture .

“This system is stronger than yours because

it fits in with reality. It seeks out the sources

of daily human work-value and, out of those

sources , di rectly, i t creates the social control

of the State . Our Government will be an econom ic social control for an economic age . It

will triumph because it speaks the spi rit,and

releases and uses the spi rit,of the age that

now is.

“Therefore, Colonel Robins, we look with

146 LENIN

Colonel Robins, you do not believe it. I

have to wait for events to convince you . You

may see foreign bayonetsparading across Rus

sia. You may see the Soviets , and all the lead

ers of the Soviets,killed . You may see Russi a

dark again as it was dark before. But the

lightning out of that darkness has destroyedpolitical democracy eve rywhere . I t has de

stroyed it not by physically striking it but

simply by one flash of revealment of the ia

ture .”

5 . Lenin Adapts Programme to Facts

On the very night on which he came into

power, at Petrograd , Lenin spoke in the All

Russian Congress of Soviets on the decree t e

garding land . He said,in eff ect

“You will notice, comrades , that in many

ways this i s not our decree. In many ways

this is the decree of some of our political oppo

nents. But we have taken into consideration

the answers given by the peasants to the ques

RAYMOND ROBINS 147

tions sent out to them . We cannot settle the

p roblem of the land without regard for the

ideas of the peasants . Time alone can tell , l i fe

alone can tell, whethe r we are right o r theyare right . In the meantime we must remem

ber that we cannot impose ou r ideas when it

i s impossible to impose them . We must keepou r ideas to put into fo rce when we can, notwhen we can’ t . ”

Some month s l ate r,when Lenin was t e

proached for failing to carry out the nationalization of all industries more rapidly

,he ex

p ressed himself to his critics in some such

words as these“What would you have ? I cannot make a

Revolution anything but a Revolution . Our

task a few months ago was to bring the Revo

lu tion in . Now we have to make the Revo

lution work . The formula then was : ‘All

Powe r to the Soviet. ’ The formula now is‘Labor Discipline . ’

He went on then to the writing of his mes

148 LENIN

sage in which he said that all persons not work

ing must be obliged to work,and that middle

class specialists must be hired,at any salaries

necessary,to give technical di rection to the

factories of Soviet Russia . His critics took

him to task at a great meeting of Soviet repre

sentatives. The b all was filled fo r hours withcries of “Bourgeois Lenin and “Czar Lenin ,from the extremists of the Left, and with seri

ous hostile arguments f rom speakers moderate

but alarmed .

At the end,when the night was far spent,

Lenin rose to reply. He said that all the argu

ments made against him could be divided into

a certain number of classes . He would an

swer them class by class . He proceeded to do

so. He spoke for perhaps half an hour . Hegot a vote of confidence as unmistakable as the

vote from the Red Guards in his office at Petrograd. Then he went back to the Kremlin

and continued to pursue his policy of “Labor

Discipline .”

150 LENIN

I agree with you,said Robins . “What do

you want me to do“Well

,they say you can see Lenin . See

him .

”

Lenin listened while Robins told him thatthi s American company certainly has a lot of

manufacturing knowledge,and that it i s will

ing to go on using that knowledge in Russiaand giving Russia the benefit of it i f only the

Bolshevik Government will compromise andnot insi st on putting workers’ control into the

oflice .

The compromise was made . Lenin wrote

out an orde r stopping the putting of workers ’

control into the office .

Robins met the manage r of that factory

some time later, and asked him how he was

getting on.

“All right,

” s aid he .

“First- rate .”

Going to keep on ?”

Sure .

Tell me . If you get out of Russia,who

RAYMOND ROBINS 15 1

will take you r place making harvesters forRussia ?”

“Why, some German .

Of course,” s aid Robins . Robins’ advice

was : “Stay in Russi a . Stick . Russia has a

Revolution . Lenin did not make it. He hasled it, but he did not make

“

it . Yet he does

lead it. And he leads it,all the time

,as much

as he can, toward work— toward the task of

actually ea rning a living in a living world . He

is calling for engineering advisers now,for fac

to ry managers . To get them he is willing to

negotiate,and he has tried to negotiate with

fo reign ‘bourgeois’ governments , and espe

ciallywith the United States . To get them he

i s willing to compromise, just as he has com

p romised with my American business man .

I f we break with him altogether he will find

i t more and more diffi cult to make his Government compromise with American business

men . If we go away altogether, and leave

Russi a,he will make his compromises and get

1

152 LENIN

his factory managers where he can—and thequickest and easiest place i s Germany. To

fight Lenin i s to play the German game .

0. Lenin Shows how to P reserve Law and

O rder

Lenin,by April of 19 18 , had two immediate

aims : work and orde r . About the middle of

April,Robins went to see Lenin and said to

him“About this May Day parade on the first

of May. My men tell me the re is going tobe a lot of trouble . Why do you have the par

ade ? It will cost a lot of money ; and Russia

is hungry and poor,and there will be Shooting

and murdering. Besides,what has i t got to

do with work ?”

Lenin looked really quite surp ri sed .

“We have to have work,” he said

,

“but we

have to have May Day. O n every May Day

past, for many years, we marched in honor of

154 LENIN

On the afternoon of April 3oth, Robinswas in his room in the Hotel Europe .

Some men came in . They closed the windowsand sealed the fastenings of the windows .

They warned Robins against breaking the

seals till the parade next day was ove r. A

regulation had been issued . It had been issued

to the legally responsible “house committee”

of every house along the l ine of march . Should

a shot be fired at the parade . by anybody in

that house,then the whole “house committee”

would be arrested and tried .

On the next day people marched ninemiles through a city filled with revolutionists and counter- revolutioni sts . Not a shotwas fired

,and not one man or woman was

hurt.

It was a holiday ; i t was a workless day ; butLenin, afte r all , had not been able to fo rget

work. He had caused certain words to be displayed conspicuously everywhere. They met

Robins’ eyes all day long . To Moscow cele

RAYMOND ROBINS 155

b rating the joyous overthrow of capitali sm,

these words everywhere said : “Labor Di sci

pline,” “Labor D i scipline

,

” “Labor Discipline .

Such is the temperament of Lenin the ruler,

in working pursuit of his economic soci al - control state .

7. Potency of S oviet I dea S ource of Lenin's

Pow er—Not Physical Force

In addressing a meeting of American busi

ness men Robins s aid“Gentlemen , the people who tell you thatthe Soviet system is nothing but riots and rob

he ries andmobs and massacres are leading you

to you r own destruction . They are giving you

your enemy’ s wrong address and starting you

O ff on an expeditionwhich can never reach him

and never hurt him . To hurt Bolshevism you

need at least to get its number. Bolshevism is

a system which in practice,on its record , can

156 LENIN

put human beings , in millions , into an ordered

social group, and can get loyalty from them

and obedience and organized consent, some

times by free will, sometimes by compulsion,but always in furtherance of an organized idea—an idea thought out and worked out and living in human thought and human purpose as

the plan of a c ity not yet made with hands but

already blue - printed,street by street, to be the

millennial city of assembled mankind .

“Gentlemen,it i s a real fight . Wehave to

fight it with the weapons with which it can be

fought. Against idea there must be idea .Against millenni al plan there must be millen

nial plan . Against self - sacrifice to a dream

there must be self- sacrifice to a higher and

nobler dream . Do you say that Lenin i s noth

ing but Red Guards ? Gentlemen, let me tell

you something. I have seen a l ittle piece of

paper with some words on i t by Nikolai Leninread and re- read

,and then instantly and scru

pu lously obeyed in Russian cities thousands of

158 LENIN

a point 500 miles east of here ? Don’ t you

know that all Siberi a i s overrun with Sovietswho pay no attention to Lenin, and with brig

ands who pay no attention to the Soviets ?

Don’ t you know that the Soviets and the brig

ands between them will take all your money

and probably all your clothes ?”

NO , I do not,” said Robins . He wasweary

of answering such questions in any other way.

“NO , I donot,” he said

,and boarded his train .

He got to Vladivostok. He got there in a

running time only a few hours greater thanwould have been consumed by the runningtime of the Siberian Railway under the old

r! gime . He himself has seen the SiberianRai lway under the Kerensky r! gime . The

Bolsheviks were doing bette r by it . There was

less Clutte r. There was more energy . Inci

dentally there was food at every station . And,

above all , the local governments were not

raising their heads against Lenin as they hadraised them against Kerensky.

President People ’s Commissioners, Moscow, Kremlin

To All Councils o f Deputies and O ther Soviet OrganizationsI b eg you to give every kind o f assistance to Colonel Robins

and other members of the American Red Cross M ission foran unhindered and soeediest iournev from Moscow to Vladi

160 LENIN

In 19 17, when Robins came into Russiathrough Siberia

,the Red Cros s Mission with

which he traveled was‘ stopped at Chita by a

local government,and had to run by stealth

through Krasnoyarsk in o rder to avoid beingstopped by a local government there . In 19 18 ,

when Robins came out of Russia , his Red

Cross car was stopped nowhere . Nowhere did

any local government interrupt it . Nowhere

did any local government,afte r Robins had

shown his c redential s f rom Moscow,even at

tempt to exam ine it.Between Moscow and Vladivostok Robins

passed through fifteen different successive

Soviet juri sdictions . At the first town within

each juri sdiction there would be a commis

sioner and a platoon of soldiers . They wouldstart going through the train to which Robins’

car was attached . They would arrest persons

whom they called rebels—counter- revolutionaries They would confiscate p roperty

vodka , fo r instance, and rifles—which they

162 LENIN

in parentheses the word Lenin . It was enough .

It was enough on the Volga, and it was

enough on the Amur. On the Amur, at Kha

barovsk, Robins came to a Soviet farther awayfrom Moscow than any other Soviet on Russian soil . It was “The Soviet of the FarEaste rn District

,

” bordering the Arctic , bor

dering the Pacific . I ts Pres ident Commis

sioner, A . M . Krasnoschchekov , read Lenin’s

lette r, and at once , in due form , gave ColonelRobins of the American Red Cross the official

f reedom of the city of Khabarovsk and took

him to attend a conference of the local Coun

cil of People’ s Commissioners , since Leninwished him to have courtesy. On the Amur,four thousand five hundred miles beyond

,the

farthest line then reached by any soldier in

Lenin’ s Guard,Lenin’ s name was enough . It

was the name of the Revolution, of the Sovietidea

,of the Soviet system .

At Vladivostok Robins took his rifles and

his cartridges and surrendered them to the

RAYMOND ROBINS 163

Vladivostok Soviet . He had not fired one

shot. He had not read one shot fired by anybody el se .That xwas Siberi a of the Bolsheviks . Today in S iberia the anti - Bolshevik ruler Kolchak cannot get Obedience from the Siberianpopulation and cannot keep the Siberian Rail

way for one day free from raide rs and marauders without the help of scores of thou

sands O f foreign Allied and Associated troops .

In May of 19 18 a lette r from Lenin , withouteven a headquarters policeman behind it, could

send a car across all Siberi a from Cheliabinsk

to“ Vladivostok unmolested and unsearched ,and could get from every local governmental

capital an immediate response of loyal fellow

ship .

LENIN IN 19 19

BY ARTHUR RANSOME

I . Lenin's View s of George B ernard S haw

and the Revolu tion in E ngland

WHATEVER else they may think of him,not

even his enemies deny that Vladimir Ilyich

Ulianov !Lenin ! i s one of the greatest per

sonalities of his time . I therefore make no

apology for writing down such sc raps of his

conversation as seem to me to illustrate his

manner of mind .

He was talking of the lack of thinkers in

the Engli sh labo r movement and said he t e

membered hearing Shaw speak at some meet

ing . Shaw, he s aid , was“a good man fallen

167

168 LENIN

among Fabians and a great deal further Leftthan his company. He had not heard of “The

Perfect Wagnerite,

” but was inte rested when

I told him the general idea of the book, and

turned fiercely on an interp reter who said that

Shaw was a clown .

“He may be a clown forthe bourgeoisie in a bourgeois state, but they

would not think him a clown in a revolution .

He asked whether Sydney Webb was con

sciously working in the interests of the capi

talists, and when I said I was quite sure that

he was not,he said : “Then he has more ih

dustry than brains . He certainly has great

knowledge .”

He was enti rely convinced that Englandwas

on the eve of revolution and pooh -poohed my

objections . “Three months ago I thought it

would end in all the world having to fight the

center of reaction in England . I do not think

so now. Things have gone further there than

in France , i f the news as to the extent of the

strikes is true .

170 LENIN

I suggested that one reason why it had been

poss ible in Russia was that they had room toretreat .

“Yes,he said .

“The distances s aved us .

The Germans were frightened of them,at the

time When they could have eaten us up , andwon peace

,which the Allies would have given

them in gratitude for our destruction . A revolu tion in England would have nowhere

whither to reti re . ”

Of the Soviets he said : “In thebeginning I

thought they were and would remain a purely

Russian form ; but it is now quite clear thatunder various names they must be the instruments of revolution everywhere .

2 . Lenin’

s O pinion of Colonel Raymond

Rob ins, D e Leon and O thers

He expressed the opinion that in England

they would not allow me to tell the truth about

Russia , and gave as an example the way in

ARTHUR RAN SOME 171

wh ich Colonel Robins had been kept silent inAmerica . He asked about Robins

,

“Had he

really been as f riendly to the Soviet govern

ment as he made out ?” I s aid : “Yes,i f only

as a sportsman admi ring its pluck and courage in difficulties .

” I quoted Robins’ s aying“I c an’ t go against a baby I have sat up withfor six months . But i f there were a Bolshevik

movement in Americ a I ’d be out with my rifle

to fight it eve ry time .” “Now that,” s aid

Lenin,

“is an hones t man and more fa r- seeing

than most. I always liked that man .

” He

shook with laughte r at the image of the baby,and said,

“That baby had several million other

folk si tting up with it, too.

”

He said he had read in an Engli sh Socialis t

p ape r a comparison O f his own theories with

those O f an American, D anel De Leon . He

had then borrowed some of De Leon’s pamph

lets from Reinstein !who belongs to the partywhich De Leon founded in America ! , read

them for the first time, and was amazed to see

172 LENIN

how far and how early De Leon had pursuedthe same train of thought as the Russians . Histheory that rep resentation should be by indus

tries,not by areas

,was already the germ of the

Soviet system . He remembered seeing De

Leon at an International Conference . De

Leon made no impression at all,a gray old

man,quite unable to speak to such an audi

ence,but evidently a much bigger man than he

looked,since his pamphlets were written be

fore the experience oi the Russi an Revolution

of 1905 . Some days afte rwards I noticed that

Lenin had introduced a few phrases of De

Leon,as i f to do hono r to his memory

,into the

draft of the new p rogramme of the Communist Party.

Talking of the lies that are told about Russia , he said i t was interesting to notice that they

were mostly pervers ions of the truth and not

pure inventions , and gave as an example therecent story that he had recanted .

“Do you

know the origin of that ?” he said .

“I was

174 LENIN

worry. I think the reason must be that he is

the first great leader who utterly discounts thevalue of his own personality. He is quitewithout personal ambition . More than that,he believes

,as a Marxist

,in the movement of

the masses which,with or without him , would

stil l move . His whole faith i s in the elementalforces that move people ; his faith in himself

i s merely his bel ief that he justly estimates the

direction of these forces .Lenin does not bel ieve that any man couldmake or stop the Revolution which he thinks

inevitable . I f the Russian Revolution fails ,according to him

,i t fails only temporarily, and

because of forces beyond any man’ s control .

He is consequently free with a f reedom noother great man has ever had . It is not so

much what he says that inspi res confidence inhim . It is thi s sensible f reedom ,

this obvious

detachment . With his philosophy he cannotfor a moment believe that one man’ s mistake

might ruin all . He is, for himself at any rate,

ARTHUR RANSOME 175

the exponent,not the cause, of the events that

will be fo rever l inked wit-h this name .

4 . Lenin’s Popu larity at the Third

I nternational

The meeting March 3d was in a smallishroom in the Kremlin

,with a dai s at one end

,

in the old Courts o f Just ice built in the time

of Catherine the Second , who would certainly

have turned in her grave i f she had known the

use to which it was being put . Two very

smart soldie rs of the Red Army were guarding

the doors . The whole room , including thefloo r

,was decorated in red . There were b an

ners with “Long Live the Third Internation

al” insc ribed upon them in many languages .

The P raes idium was on the raised dai s at the

end of the room ,Lenin Sitting in the middle

behind a long red - covered table , with Al

brecht,a young German Spartacist, on the

right,and Pl atten, the Swiss , on the left . The

176 LENIN

auditorium sloped down to the foot of the dais.

Chai rs were arranged on each side of an al

leyway down the middle , and the four or five

f ront rows had little tables fo r conveniencein writing. Everybody of importance wasthere .T rotzky, in a leather coat, military breeches

and gaiters , with a fur hat with the Sign of theRed Army in front

,was looking very well , but

a strange figure for those who had known him

as one of the greatest anti -militarists in Eu

rope . Lenin sat quietly listening,speaking

when necessary in almost every European

language with astonishing ease . Balabanova

talked about Italy and seemed happy at last,

even in Soviet Russia,to be once more in a

“secret meeting . It was really an extraordi

nary affai r, and, in spite of some childi shness ,I could not help realizing that I was present

at something that will go down in the histo riesof Soci alism , much like that other strange

meeting convened in London in 1848 .

178 LENIN

form were crammed,people standing in the

aisles , and even packed close together in thewings of the stage . Kamenev opened the meet

ing by a solemn announcement of the foundingof the Third International in the Kremlin.

There was a roar of applause from the audi

ence, which rose and sang the“International”

in a way that I have never heard it sung sincethe All -Russian Assemblywhen the news came

of the strikes in Germany during the B rest

negotiations .Kamenev then spoke of those who had died

on the w ay, mentioning Liebknecht and RosaLuxemburg

,and the whole theater stood again

while the orchestra played “You Fell as Vic

tims .” Then Lenin spoke . If I had ever

thought that Lenin was losing his personal

popularity, I got my answer now. It was along time before he could speak at all , every

body standing and drowning his attempts to

speak with roar afte r roar of applause . It was

an extraordinary, overwhelming scene, tier

ARTHUR RANSOME 179

afte r tier c rammed withworkmen, the parte rre

filled , the whole p latform and the wings . A

knot of workwomen were close to me , and

they almost fought to see him ,and shouted as

i f each one were determined that he should

hear her in particular. He spoke as usual, inthe s implest way, emphasizing the fact that

the revolutionary struggle eve rywhere wasforced to use the Soviet forms . “We declare

our solidarity with the aims of the Soviets ,”

he read from an Italian paper,and added ,

“and that was when they did not know what

our aims were , and befo re we had an estab

lished p rogramme ourselves .” Albrecht made

a very long reasoned speech for the Sparta

cans,which was translated by T rotzky. Guil

beau,seemingly a mere child

,spoke of the SO

cialist movement in France . Steklov wastranslating him when I left . You must re

member that I had nearly two yea rs of such

meetings and am not a Russian . When I got

outside the theater I found at each door a dis

180 LENIN

appointed crowd that had been unable to

get in .

The proceedings fini shed up next day with a

review in the Red square and a general hol iday.

5 . Revolu tion Caused by E conomic Con

ditions, not by Propaganda

I went to see Lenin the day afte r the Review

in the Red Square and the general holiday in

honor of the Third International . The first

thing he said was : “I am afraid that the j in

goes in England and France will make use of

yesterday’ s doings as an excuse for further aotion against us . They will say

,

‘How can we

leave them in peace when they set about set

ting the world ou fire ?’ To that I would answer : ‘We are at war, messieurs ! And just asduring your war you tried to make revolution

in Germany, and Germany did her best to

make trouble in I reland and Indi a, so we,

182 LENIN

each of their countries . They have thei r cus

toms officers, thei r frontiers , thei r coast guards .

They can expel any Bolsheviks they wish .

Revolution does not depend on p ropaganda.If the conditions of revolution are not there

no sort of propaganda will either hasten or im

pede it. The war has brought about those con~

ditions in all countries,and I am convinced

that i f Russia were to be swallowed up by the

sea, were to cease to exist altogether, the Revolution in the rest of Europe would go on . Put

Russia under water for twenty years,and you

would not aff ect by a shilling or an hour a

week the demands of the shop - s tewards in

England .

”

I told him , what I have told most of them

many times, that I did not believe there wouldbe a revolution in England .

Lenin :“We have a saying that a man may

have typhoid while still on his legs . Twenty,

maybe thi rty, years ago I had abOrtive ty

phoid, and was going about with it, had had

ARTHUR RANSOME 183

i t some days before i t knocked me over. Well ,England and France and Italy have caught

the disease al ready . England may seem to

you to be untouched , but the microbe is alreadythere .

I said that just as his typhoid was abortive

typhoid,so the disturbances in England to

which he alluded might well be abortive revolution and come to nothing . I told him the

vague,disconnected character of the strikes

and the gene rally Liberal as opposed to Social

i st characte r of the movement,so far as it was

pol itical at all,reminded me of what I had

heard of 1905 in Russia and not at all of 19 17,and that I was sure it would settle down .

Lenin : “Yes,that is possible . It i s , per

haps,an educative period

,in which the Eng

lish workmen will come to realize thei r politi

cal needs and turn from Liberali sm to Social

i sm . Social i sm is certainly weak in England .

Your Soci alist movements,your Sociali st par

ties when I was in England I zealously

184 LENIN

attended everything I could , and for a countrywith so large an indust ri al population theywere pitiable

,pitiable a handful at a

street corner a meeting in a drawing

room a school class p iti able . But

you must remember one great difference be

tween Russia oi 1905 and England today . Our

first Soviet in Russi a was made during the

Revolution . Your shop - stewards ’ committeeshave been in existence long before . They are

without p rogramme,without direction

,but the

opposition they will meet will force a p ro

gramme upon them .

Speaking of the expected visit of the Berne

delegation , he asked me if I knew Macdonald,whose name had been substituted for that of

Henderson In late r telegrams announcing thei r

coming. He said : “I am very glad Mac

donald Is coming instead O f Henderson. Of

course, Macdonald is not a Marxist in any

sense of the word, but he i s at least inte rested

in theory, and can therefore be trusted to do

186 LENIN

them,and said I regretted leaving too soon to

see the elasticity of the Communist theo riestested by the inevitable p ressure of the peas

autry.

Lenin said that in Russia there was a p rettySharp distinction between the rich peasantsand the poor. “The only opposition we have

here in Russia is di rectly or indirectly due tothe rich peasants . The poor, as soon as theyare liberated from the political domination of

the rich , are on our s ide and are in an enor

mous majority.”

I said that would not be so in the Ukraine,where p roperty among the peasants i s much

more equally distributed .

Lenin : “N0 . And there, in the Ukraine,you will certainly see ou r policy modified .

Civil war,whatever happens

,i s l ikely to be

more bitter in the Ukraine than elsewhere, be

cause there the instinct of p roperty has beenfurther developed in the peasantry

,and the

minority and majority will be more equal ,”

ARTHUR RANSOME 187

He asked me if I meant to return,s aying

that I could go down to Kiev to watch the

Revolution there as I had watched it in Moscow . I said I should be very sorry to think

that thi s was my last visit to the country which

I love only second to my own. He laughed,and paid me the compliment of saying that“ although Engli sh

,

” I had more or less suc

ceeded in understanding what they were at,and that he should be pleased to see me again .

CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS

ON LENIN

I .

“New York Times, upon the Report ofLenin

’s D eath, S ept. 2 , 1 9 1 8

Lenin was the most remarkable of thepersonalities b rought by the world-war into

p rominence from obscu ri ty. By many he has

been regarded as the mere paid agent of Ger

many. Of this no p roof has ever been forth

coming. An American,more or less in sym

pathy with his doctrines, who had rare oppor

tunities of studying Lenin at close range,de

sc ribed him as ‘the greatest l iving statesman

in Europe . ’ It was a striking tribute to the

pe rsonality of the man .

He endeavored to put into p ractice

theories which he had been preaching for

many years befo re the Russian Revolution19 1

192 LENIN

came to pass . In those years he conceivedand worked out in his mind a p rinciple of so

cial revolution which distinguished him from

other Socialist thinkers by his uncompromis

ing appeal to the spi rit of class revolt.

This spi rit as an indispensable weapon in

the construction of an ideal Socialist state he

p reached with increasing fervor as years went

by,supplementing it with something

that was essentially lacking in the Marxian

doctrine, namely, a political design under

which the economic aims of a thorough

going Soci ali sm might be put in eff ect. This

political design found its expression, so far

as it has gone,in the p resent Soviet govern

ment.”

2 . FrankVanderlip

The personal picture of Lenin,with which

I have found no disagreement in speaking

with a number of people who are well in

194 LENIN

He is certainly by far the greatest intellectualforce which the Russian Revolution has yet

brought to light.“The almost fanatical respect with which

he is regarded by the men who are his col

leagues and who are at least as j ealous as politicians in other countries is due to other quali

ties than mere intellectual capacity. To

qualities other than mere intellectual force he

owes his p redominating position in his own

party. Chief of these a re his i ron courage ,his grim , relentless determination and his

complete lack of all sel f- interest.“He has made use of the demagogue’ s arts ,but behind all the inconsistencies of his policy

,

the tactics,the maneuvering

,there lies a

deep - rooted plan which he has been turning

over in his mind fo r years and which he now

thinks i s ripe for execution . Demagogues

have no constructive p rogramme . Lenin atleast knows exactly what he wishes to achieve

and how he means to achieve it.

CONSERVATIVE OPINIONS 195

In the many attacks that have been made

against him no breath of scandal has eve r

touched hi s p rivate l i fe . He is married

acco rding to all accounts,s ingularly happily

married .

4 . GeneralVonH of mann, Who I mposedthe B rest-Litovsk Treaty on the S oviet

“ It was a l ittle upstart named Lenin that

defeated Germany. Germany did not play

with Bolshevism . Bolshevism played with

Germany . Immediately afte r conquering the

Bolsheviks we were conquered by them . Our

victorious army on the Eastern front becamerotten w ith Bolshevism . We got to the point

where we did not dare to transfer certain ofou r Eastern divisions to the West . Our mili

ta ry machine became the p rinting- press forthe Bolsheviks . I t was Lenin and the B01

sheviks that broke our morale and gave us de~

feat and the revolution you now see ruining

us.

”

TWO ADVERSE OPINIONS

! ohn Spargo in“H ow Lenin I ntrigued

w ith Germany”

Coldly cynical, crassly material istic, ut

terly unsc rupulous , repudiating moral codes

and sanctions as bourgeois sentimentality,Lenin has for many years surrounded himself

with desperate and shady characters,many of

them having criminal records . Burtzev

tells an interesting sto ry which throws a strong

light upon the unholy alli ance between Lenin

and Malinovsky, the police tool , and almostcompels one to believe that Leninwas deliberately conniving at the betrayal of his com

rades .

202

For we are a primitive landa a as

Forced forwarda: a

BEYONDt at

O ur natural pace !1: it

But we w ill keep alive2. s: as

The FLAIVIE osf revplution

Till the WORLD is alight !s e t

It will come firstt t

In Bulgariaa: at a:

And the Bulgarsan a: it

Will cease fighting.

at t

It will come nextas It a:

In Austria1: 4:

And the Austriansa: a:

Will cease fighting,i t s a:

And THEN it will come’

a: s a:

In Germany,a: a: a:

And the power of the kaisera a: at

Will crumble inward.a: a: a

When the day comesa: a: e

That a Workers’ Council

LENIN

Rules in BERLINi t i t

REMEMBER1: a: t

The little man in the Kremlin,

e t a:

Who said : That dayat t e

Marks the beginningat at i t

Of the IiEWizWORLD !

Yes , even though the powerst s as

O f ALL the EARTHt it s:

Combine to crush us1: a: a

As once they joined to crushat at as

The Revolut ion in France.

a: t s:

Yet as the IDEAas at it

O f the French Revolution11: t t

Overthrew at lastat: at: a:

The feudal lords of earth,at at as

All its ov

in CON! UERORS ,

So shall the IDEAs: s it

Of O UR revolutione t t

Overthrow in the endt a: e

O UR CON! UERORS l”

len in - forgotten books · -souled leader. ” such a eulogy ﬁts burtzev of the past, but...

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