Lenin: A biography

In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a ‘long fatigue’ began which finally knocked away the foundations of the state, social stability and national unity. The main question was who would exploit the new situation. The dominant thought in the public mind was that only drastic measures of a revolutionary character could provide an outcome. Some figures close to the tsar believed that the situation had arisen out of weakness on the part of the regime. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich had written bitterly to the tsar less than one month before his abdication: ‘We are present at the unprecedented spectacle of a revolution from above, not from below.’5

Isolated in Zurich, Lenin had no feel for the nuances of the situation, and when on 2 (15) March he heard that the revolution had succeeded, he was amazed. He first heard of it from Moisei Bronsky, a quiet, retiring Polish Social Democrat from Lodz. Bronsky did not know much himself, except that telegrams had come from Russia. With Bronsky, Lenin wandered all around Zurich trying to find out something more definite, but all they heard was that there’d been a revolution in Petrograd, the ministers had been arrested and crowds were packing the streets. Lenin returned home in a state of excitement: he must do something. Pacing restlessly up and down, he exclaimed to Krupskaya, who was sitting quietly in her old armchair: ‘It’s staggering! Such a surprise! Just imagine! We must get home, but how? It’s so incredibly unexpected! Amazing!’ When he had calmed down somewhat, he wrote his first letter after hearing the news. It was to Inessa Armand, telling her what he had heard and describing the general state of agitation in Zurich. ‘If the Germans aren’t lying, it has happened. Russia must have been on the brink of revolution for the last few days. I’m so excited I cannot possibly go to Scandinavia!!’6 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, Helphand insisted that there was danger in a separate peace with Russia, for the tsar would survive to stamp out the revolution. Only a German victory was acceptable. Helphand did not know that Lenin would soon state publicly that he had always been opposed to a separate Russo – German peace. In an article entitled ‘Where is the Regime and Where is the Revolution?’, published in July 1917 in Listok Pravdy, Lenin stated categorically that he had ‘always and unconditionally repudiated separate peace with Germany in the most decisive and irrevocable way!!’16 As we have seen, Lenin wanted the defeat of Russia and a civil war. It was a position the German High Command found deeply sympathetic, for their own ‘defeatists’ were hardly to be heard. As First Quartermaster General Erich von Ludendorff, the ‘military brain of the German nation’, was to write of this episode: ‘In helping Lenin to travel to Russia, our government accepted a special responsibility. The enterprise was justified from a military point of view. We had to bring Russia down.’17 The Bolshevik revolution, when it came, would offer Germany a unique opportunity to win the war. Ludendorff would declare frankly that the Soviet government ‘exists thanks to us’. It is worth noting that in May 1920, when the Politburo discussed the publication in Russian of Ludendorff’s memoirs, it was unanimously decided that ‘only those sections dealing with the Brest negotiations should be translated and published’.18 Being in power, the Bolsheviks were not especially afraid of exposure, but it would nonetheless be embarrassing. Having secured the defeat of Russia, they had not only served their own interests, but also those of German militarism.

The ‘German factor’ in the Russian revolution has been extensively treated, especially in non-Soviet literature. The Russian Marxists preferred to say nothing, following Lenin’s request (which curiously was not published immediately) ‘again and again to all honest citizens not to believe the dirty slander and dark rumours’.19 The Bolsheviks never attempted to disprove the accusation that they had made a deal with the Germans to ‘bring Russia down’. While the financial connections had evidently been indirect, it was impossible to deny the call for Russia’s defeat. It was best either to say nothing, or simply ‘Don’t believe the slanderers.’

The question that remains to be answered is whether there was a Bolshevik – German understanding on ‘peace propaganda’, as the Germans preferred to refer to this touchy question. Did the Bolsheviks receive German money for the revolution? The historian S.P. Melgunov claimed that one should look for the ‘German golden key in the pocket of Parvus [Helphand], who was connected both to the socialist world and the [German] foreign ministry and representatives of the German General Staff’, and that this explained the extraordinarily rapid success of Lenin’s propaganda.20 The matter is one of the many secrets surrounding the revolution, and although I have examined a vast number of hitherto inaccessible documents, it is still far from clear. Much was decided within a small circle of Bolsheviks by word of mouth, many documents were destroyed after the revolution, and Lenin was very good at keeping secrets.

In order to lift the veil further, we must concentrate on two figures. The first is Alexander Lazarevich Helphand (also known as Parvus and Alexander Moskovich). The second, who is even more obscure, is Yakov Stanislavovich Fürstenberg (also known as Ganetsky, Hanecki, Borel, Hendriczek, Frantiszek, Nikolai, Marian Keller, Kuba … ). In 1917 these two shadowy figures played the rôle of unseen levers. They did not agitate the masses: their rôle was to help Lenin and his group secure the funds needed to do so.

Helphand was born three years before Lenin to a Jewish artisan in Berezicho in the province of Minsk. He went to school in Odessa and university in Berne, where he obtained a doctorate in philosophy. In the West he made the acquaintance of such grandees of the revolutionary movement as Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, Zetkin, Kautsky and Adler, and he met Lenin and Krupskaya before the 1905 revolution. He acquired a reputation for great erudition, a paradoxical turn of mind, radical judgments and bold predictions. In a series of articles published in 1904 under the title ‘War and the Revolution’, he forecast Russia’s defeat at the hands of Japan, which duly came to pass the following year, and, as an inevitable consequence, a revolutionary conflagration at home. Lenin had long kept an eye on Parvus, but always kept his distance. He might have been thinking of Parvus (or perhaps himself?) when he said to Gorky: ‘the clever Russian is almost always a Jew or has Jewish blood in him.’21 Kautsky introduced Parvus to journalism, a profession at which he excelled.22 Trotsky was captivated by him, and fascinated by his theory of ‘permanent revolution’. After leaving Russia, Parvus joined the German Social Democrats and for a long time edited the Dresden paper Arbeiter Zeitung.

Like Trotsky, Parvus played a prominent part in the 1905 revolution – unlike Lenin, who was little more than an extra. Both Trotsky and Parvus were arrested in St Petersburg and exiled, separately, to Siberia, whence they both escaped, first to St Petersburg and then abroad. Despite his talent as a writer, Parvus left only a small literary record, including a book of recollections of his spell in the Peter-Paul Fortress after the defeat of the 1905 revolution. Most of his time was taken up with his favourite occupation, commerce, in which he did extremely well. He was Gorky’s literary agent, and also represented his financial interests in Germany, where at one time his play Lower Depths was playing to full houses. According to Gorky, Parvus took his agreed twenty per cent of the profits for himself, dividing the rest one quarter to Gorky and three quarters to the German Social Democratic Party. Parvus amassed some 100,000 marks, but instead of sending Gorky his money, he wrote to him frankly admitting that he had spent it on a trip to Italy with a female companion. Gorky, who thought ‘it must have been a very pleasant holiday’ to have consumed only his quarter of the earnings, complained to the Central Committee of the German Social Democratic Party. A Party court made up of Kautsky, Bebel and Zetkin condemned Parvus morally, and he left Germany for Constantinople. There he became an advisor to the Young Turk movement, and carried on highly successful commerce between Turkey and Germany.23

When the war began, Parvus, now a rich man, became consumed by the idea of helping Germany by bringing about revolution in Russia, although there was more to his idea than this. In January 1915, Parvus explained his plan to Wangenheim, the German ambassador in Constantinople: ‘The interests of the German government are identical with those of the Russian revolutionaries. The Russian Democrats can only achieve their aim by the total destruction of Tsarism. On the other hand, Germany would not be completely successful if it were not possible to kindle a major revolution in Russia. However, there would still be a danger to Germany from Russia, even after the war, if the Russian empire were divided into a number of separate parts.’24 Here lay the essence of the German interest in the revolution, and its coincidence with Lenin’s desire for revolution via the defeat of Russia. While it is clear that the plan existed and that the Germans were interested in it, it is not clear quite how the German government intended to carry it out, or how the Bolsheviks would achieve their part of it without losing face.

Western historians have asserted that Lenin met Parvus in Zurich or Berne in May 1915. David Shub claims that ‘at first Lenin listened attentively to Parvus’s plan, but gave him no definite reply. To maintain contact with him, however, he sent Ganetsky-Fürstenberg to Copenhagen with orders to work in Parvus’s Institute and to keep him systematically informed about Parvus’s activities.’25 The official Soviet chronicle of Lenin’s activities in May 1915 states that he ordered from Berne Library a guide-book of resorts and The Influence of High-Mountain Climate and Mountain Excursions on Man, but says nothing about a meeting with Parvus. For his part, however, Parvus described their meeting in detail in a pamphlet entitled, ‘In the Struggle for the Truth’, confirming that it took place in Zurich. Shub asserts, on the basis of Parvus’s own testimony and other documents, that Parvus arrived in Switzerland in the company of Yekaterina Groman and took up residence in the most luxurious hotel. Through Groman, Parvus distributed largesse among needy Russian émigrés. One day in May he unexpectedly entered a restaurant where émigrés ate, and went straight to a table where Lenin, Krupskaya, Inessa Armand and Kasparov, another close friend, were sitting. After brief conversation, Lenin and Krupskaya accompanied Parvus to their apartment, where they talked until evening.

Parvus wrote of this meeting: ‘I told Lenin my views on the social-revolutionary consequences of the war and also drew his attention to the fact that, as long as the war was going on, there would be no revolution in Germany: revolution was possible only in Russia which would blow up as a result of a German victory.’ The meeting was confirmed by the Bolshevik, Arthur Zifeldt, who saw Lenin and Parvus leaving the restaurant together.26

Parvus made it known that he was setting up a new institute in Copenhagen to study the causes and effects of the war, and he succeeded in recruiting a number of Russian Social Democrats, among them some Mensheviks and some Bolsheviks, including, most notably, Yakov Ganetsky, Lenin’s most trusted agent.27 Parvus had frequent meetings with another of Lenin’s close associates, Karl Radek, who in 1924 wrote a sketch of him, based on personal recollections. Radek quoted Parvus saying of himself: ‘I’m Midas in reverse: whenever I touch gold it turns into garbage.’ Twenty years after the events, in an article entitled ‘Parvus-Lenin-Ganetsky’, Kerensky wrote: ‘The Provisional Government firmly established that Ganetsky’s “financial affairs” with Parvus were continued in Petrograd by the Bank of Siberia, where in the name of a relative of Ganetsky called Madame Sumenson, and also the not unknown Kozlovsky, very large sums came from Berlin via the New Bank in Stockholm through the mediation of the same Ganetsky.’ Kerensky could rightly claim that the first historical research into Bolshevik-German links was carried out by his government.

Materials in the Special Archive frequently record that in 1916 a special section was created in Berlin under the name ‘Stockholm’, headed by a certain Trautmann, who maintained contact with Parvus and Radek through Ganetsky. The archives also hold the addresses in Copenhagen where Parvus and Ganetsky lived not far from each other.28

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