Lenin: A biography. Harold Shukman

Having only two months earlier predicted a long wait for such events, Lenin was now possessed of perfect hindsight, and like so many politicians, felt no need to recall what he had recently asserted.

      He cabled Zinoviev in Berne suggesting he come to Zurich immediately, and simultaneously wrote to his most trusted agent, Yakov Ganetsky: ‘We must at all costs get back to Russia and the only possible plan is as follows: find a Swede who looks like me. But as I can’t speak Swedish he’ll have to be deaf and dumb. I’m sending my photo, in any case.’⁷ It was an order almost as tall as starting the world revolution, and was soon dropped in favour of a more practical one.

      Meanwhile, the news from Petrograd was more and more staggering. The tsar had abdicated on 2 (15 New Style) March 1917, and so had his brother Michael, having first called on the people to submit to the Provisional Government, which had been ‘initiated by the State Duma and invested with full powers’ until a Constituent Assembly could be convened to determine the nature of government according to the will of the people.⁸ When Lenin read the list of names in the Provisional Government, he remarked sarcastically, ‘the bourgeoisie has managed to get its arse onto ministerial seats’. He had no doubt that these liberals were not one whit better than the tsar, and he regarded their adherence to democratic ideals as nothing better than an attempt ‘to make fools of the people’. In his first ‘letter from afar’ Lenin, accurately from the Bolshevik point of view, caught the flavour of the moment: apart from the Provisional Government there had emerged another ‘plaything’ of the regime, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, headed by N.S. Chkheidze, A.F. Kerensky and M.I. Skobelev. Only two Bolsheviks, Shlyapnikov and P.A. Zalutsky, were members of its executive committee. Lenin, however, saw in the existence of the two centres of power a unique opportunity for the Bolsheviks. In his view the Soviet was the prototype of the future dictatorship of the proletariat, while the Provisional Government, which might have introduced the principles of bourgeois democratic popular power, he saw as nothing other than the target of his frenzied attacks.

      Less than a week after it had been formed, and without the slightest idea of what was happening in Petrograd and Russia, Lenin pronounced: ‘The government of Octobrists and Kadets, of the Guchkovs and Milyukovs … cannot give the people peace, bread or liberty.’⁹ The Octobrists had taken their name from the tsar’s October 1905 Manifesto, and had been the political party most committed to attempting reform within the limits permitted by the tsar, rather than in constant opposition. The Kadets, that is the KDs, or Constitutional Democrats, were a fairly broad coalition of liberals, ranging from former Marxist revolutionaries to moderate reformers, who had spearheaded the criticism of the tsar’s handling of the war effort and were effectively the dominant successors to the old regime. To attack the Provisional Government would undermine the possibility of a peaceful alternative to further revolution. It was therefore consistent for Lenin to tell the Bolsheviks, as they departed for Russia: ‘Our tactics are complete distrust, no support for the new government; we especially suspect Kerensky; we arm the proletariat as the only guarantee; we call for immediate elections to the Petrograd city council; we make no friendships with other parties.’¹⁰ It was a typical reaction: mentally Lenin had applauded the revolution, as his letter to Inessa Armand had shown, but power was in the hands of the bourgeoisie, and there were moderate socialists – Mensheviks – heading the soviets. None of this suited Lenin, who had shown he was incapable of compromise with such people. The only way forward was to arm the proletariat. Since the Bolsheviks had played no noticeable part in the February revolution, he had to change the scenario.

      Before leaving Zurich, on 27 March Lenin made a speech in which he declared, with evident satisfaction, that ‘the transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war in Russia has begun’.¹¹ The February revolution was merely the first stage. ‘The unique historical situation of the present moment is as a moment of transition from the first stage of the revolution to the second, from the uprising against tsarism to the uprising against the bourgeoisie …’¹² He ended his speech by declaring, ‘Long live the revolution! Long live the world proletarian revolution that has begun!’

      In his first ‘letter from afar’ Lenin had described the present moment in Russian political life as ‘a bloodstained bundle’. But it was the Provisional Government that believed, rightly as it turned out, that remaining loyal to the Allies, rather than consciously assisting in the defeat of its own army, would cause less loss of Russian life. It would be hard to find a precedent in history when a political party, for the sake of gaining power, worked as consistently and as zealously for the defeat of its own country as the Bolsheviks were to do. It was, however, an essential link in the chain: the collapse of the state through military defeat would be followed by the seizure of power. The democratic forces of February were not capable of withstanding such a plan.

      More surprising than Lenin’s cynicism and anti-patriotism was the fact that he gained enough supporters to achieve his plan in so short a time. Whether he dreamed up the idea of a separate peace with Germany in Zurich, or whether he was entirely preoccupied with the question of getting back to Russia, or whether uppermost in his mind was how to exploit the ardent desire for peace of millions of people, it is not possible to say. With the imagination of the creative writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn has suggested, probably rightly, that all these thoughts were jumbled together in Lenin’s mind in the days following February and before his return to Russia in April.¹³ During that time, most politicians in Russia felt that February had opened up a great new chapter in their history, a chapter of democracy. Lenin, however, was convinced that if the country remained at that stage, he and his party would at best occupy an insignificant place among the opposition in the forthcoming Constituent Assembly. All the shrill revolutionary speeches of his followers would be seen as nothing but the sort of extreme leftism to which Western parliaments had become blithely accustomed. If the February revolution were to stick to the aims proclaimed by its leaders, there would be an opening for Lenin’s old rivals, the Mensheviks, and that was unacceptable to him. He must get to Russia. Having invented and nurtured a tribe of ‘professional revolutionaries’, he now intended to make use of them. The chance might not come again, and he was already forty-seven.

Parvus, Ganetsky and the ‘German Key’

      Lenin wrote urgently to his most trusted agent, Yakov Ganetsky in Stockholm, to find a way for him out of his Swiss blind alley. He asked Robert Grimm, a Swiss socialist, to test the possibility of travelling through Germany, but there was no rapid response there. Ganetsky, meanwhile, expeditious and resourceful as always, sent five hundred roubles for the journey,¹⁴ but there was still no plan, and Lenin began to wonder if he had missed the train of history. He wrote to Inessa: ‘It looks as if we won’t get to Russia! England won’t let us. [The idea of] going through Germany isn’t working.’¹⁵ It is possible that the journey might indeed not have taken place at all, since Lenin was frankly afraid of either being arrested in England or sunk by a German U-boat. Perhaps, had he remained in Switzerland writing his ‘letters from afar’, the October revolution would never have happened. Trotsky was to write that without Lenin, October was inconceivable.

      Besides the Bolsheviks, however, the German High Command was also interested in getting Lenin back to Russia. For some time they had not only been watching the Bolsheviks with interest, they had also been giving them substantial financial help through various front-men. German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg had been encouraged to do so both by the General Staff and some German Social Democrats, but in particular by Alexander Helphand, then the publisher of Die Glocke. In conversation with the German ambassador in Copenhagen, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau,