Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (2 page)

Lenin would undoubtedly have considered the current moment in world history to be profoundly counter-revolutionary. The task of presenting the life of a revolutionary to such a world is a complicated one. Writing about Victor Serge, the Russo-Belgian writer and activist who was one of Lenin’s greatest admirers and a fellow Bolshevik, Susan Sontag bril
liantly expounded the problem: ‘English-speaking readers of Serge today have to think themselves back to a time when most people accepted that the course of their lives would be determined by history rather than psychology, by public rather than private crises.’
¹
The present generation may be in for a shock as history strikes back after its much-vaunted ‘end’ in the 1990s. However, the current conjuncture does have one advantage for understanding Lenin. Revolution, in Lenin’s early years, appeared as distant and improbable a prospect as it does today. In his time, as today, the world was thought to be post-revolutionary, the main revolution being that of France in 1789. In fact, the world of Lenin’s youth turned out to be pre-revolutionary (in the case of Russia) and heading for self-destruction by means of the First World War (in the case of Europe in general). Maybe the same is true today. Whether it is or not, the experience of Lenin, his strengths and weaknesses, his triumphs and tragic mistakes, still provide a fund of experience from which we can learn. There are ideas that can still stimulate. There are other ideas which turned out to be sterile, even dangerous, from which we can learn what to avoid.

introduction

With this in mind the aim of the present study is to try to understand Lenin. Not to justify him, but to understand. To that end the emphasis is on what Lenin himself said and did rather than what others said about him. There is no shortage of material. The so-called
Collected Works
(actually incomplete) amount to 47 volumes of around 500 pages each in the English edition, 55 volumes in the most recent Russian edition. The amount written about him is exponentially greater. Almost all comments about Lenin come from someone with an axe to grind. The greatest distorters of Lenin’s actions and ideas originate from two groups – his admirers and his detractors. There has been no third group of any size. Lenin’s ability to wreck the closest of friendships for political reasons left a trail of emotional, angry debris out of which many memoirs of the ‘Lenin I knew’ genre were written. Former allies claimed that they discerned the later dictator in the younger man. As often as not, with notable exceptions like Trotsky, their writings of earlier times show no hint of this deep, prescient, perception. Admirers, too, have patched over his faults. The finest single guide to Lenin’s life, particularly before October, the memoirs of his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, steer clear of political issues. They, along with the memoirs of other members of his family, do, however, paint a convincing picture of the positive aspects of Lenin’s personality and of his (limited) life and interests outside politics. But the source material remains problematic, though massive. Should one write about Lenin through the eyes of his admirers or his opponents? This offers historians a choice: follow the outlines of the interpretation offered by one group or the other. Select Lenin the affable genius or Lenin the irascible tyrant. Can one, should one, avoid those stereotypes?

The path chosen in this account is to look at Lenin’s own words at the time as much as possible. His supposedly minor articles and letters are the most prominent source used. Next in priority are comments made about him close to the time. Krupskaya’s memoirs have, perforce, been used extensively to fill in the personal and emotional colours of Lenin’s life. In a relatively short study it has been a question of leaving massive amounts of material out. Nonetheless, the central focus on Lenin, his works and deeds, has, it is to be hoped, presented a fresh picture of Lenin resulting in a less melodramatic and caricatural view of his personality than that emanating from his committed friends and enemies.

introduction

For the benefit of the anticipated readership quotations from Lenin have been referenced to English language editions. References to these and to two other frequently used sources have been abbreviated and inserted into the text in square brackets. The sources and abbreviation conventions are: Lenin’s
Collected Works
, 47 vols (Moscow, 1960–70) (English edition) appear as ‘CW’ followed by volume and page number to give, for example, ‘[CW 27 113]’. A similar format has been used for the three-volume
Selected Works
(Moscow, 1963–4) to produce, for example, ‘[SW 2 419]’. Where possible all Lenin quotations have been given to this set as it is relatively accessible for the potential users of the book. Two other one-volume sources have also been referenced in this way. They are Nadezhda Krupskaya’s
Memories of Lenin
(London, 1970) which appears as, for example, ‘[Krupskaya 157]’, the number, of course, being the page number; and, the best chronology of Lenin’s life, G. and H. Weber’s
Lenin: Life and Works
(London and Basingstoke, 1980) which appears as, for example, ‘[Weber 80]’. In the many quotations from Lenin all emphases, unless otherwise stated, come from the original texts. Interpolations in square brackets are authorial amendments.

Unless otherwise stated the dates in the text conform to conventional western dates. However, mainly for Russian events in 1917 I have used the Old Style calendar, which, up to its abolition at the end of January 1918, was twelve days behind the western calendar in the nineteenth century and thirteen behind in the twentieth. This is done primarily to keep the February Revolution in February and the October Revolution in October. Use of the Old Style calendar is signified by ‘(OS)’ after the date. Transliteration follows Library of Congress guidelines with some variants so that names end in the more familiar ‘y’ rather than ‘ii’.

Lenin was not born, Lenin was constructed. The child who was to become Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich Ulyanov, was born on 22 April 1870. He was the fourth child of a moderately prosperous, upwardly mobile teacher and public official, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (1831–86) and his wife Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (1835–1916) whose maiden name had been Maria Blank. At the time, the family was living in the deeply provincial town of Simbirsk on the Volga, a place which came to bear the name of Ulyanovsk in honour of their son. Ilya and Maria were not from the Simbirsk region. Ilya’s family was based in Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga, and his life was spent in large towns along Russia’s greatest river. He and Maria married and lived in Penza, where Ilya taught mathematics and physics before moving to Nizhnii-Novgorod. Maria was already pregnant with Vladimir when they moved to Simbirsk to allow Ilya to take up a prestigious post as an inspector of primary schools.

FAMILY BACKGROUND: THE ETHNIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INHERITANCE

At the time of Vladimir Ulyanov’s birth, the European world was already becoming deeply obsessed with national and racial identity. Nothing could better show the contradictions of such thinking than Vladimir’s own background. While, to the outside world, Lenin

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appeared to be a symbol of Russianness in the twentieth century, like so many major national figures, the purity of his Russianness was much diluted. A great deal of research has been conducted into Lenin’s family background since access to former Soviet sources became easier in the 1980s. As a result we have a clearer idea of the ethnic and social mix which he inherited. Going back to his great-grandparents, Russian, Jewish, Swedish, German and possibly Kalmyk influences can be dis
covered. One might say Lenin’s first revolutionary act was to be born an internationalist! In fact one could argue that the fusion of Russia’s two ancient groups, Slavonic and Tatar, plus an addition of Jewishness and western European influences, was the ultimate expression of a truer hybrid Russianness.

The ethnic mix came mainly from the side of his mother, Maria Alexandrovna. Her father Alexander had been born Srul (Israel) Blank. He and his brother, Abel, who took the name Dmitrii, had been officially baptized into the Orthodox church in 1820, probably as a convenience to facilitate their professional careers. As Jews they could avoid all discriminatory measures through baptism. Their father Moishe Blank had himself been a non-practising Jew who also converted to Christianity after his wife died. Moishe Blank had been a very active small trader and merchant living in the largely Jewish town of Starokonstantinov in Volhynia province in western Russia. His sons Abel and Srul had settled in St Petersburg in pursuit of their medical careers. Maria Blank’s own mother, Anna Ivanovna Groschopf, provided the German and Swedish ingredients. Her father, Johann Groschopf, was German; his wife, Anna Estedt, Lenin’s great-grandmother, was Swedish. The family increasingly assimilated through the generations though Maria Alexandrovna and her mother retained Lutheran connections, despite being officially Orthodox. Maria Blank’s family circumstances changed when her mother died in 1838 when Maria Alexandrovna was only three years old. To help look after his six children Alexander turned to his wife’s sister, Ekaterina von Essen, to help him and they set up a household together. Apparently with her money they purchased a country estate at Kokushkino, near Kazan, where Maria Alexandrovna was brought up as the child of a landowner.

The provenance of Lenin’s father Ilya was less complicated. His background was overwhelmingly Russian. The exception to this was Ilya’s mother. Even her name is disputed, some sources calling her Anna,

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others Alexandra. According to Ulyanov family lore she was of ‘Tatar’ origin. Exactly what her precise ethnic background was is unknown. Most sources say she was a Kalmyk, that is a member of a small Buddhist people. Others suggest she may have belonged to a Muslim ethnic group. However, nothing has yet been found to prove that she was non-Russian, though the family assumption that she was not is powerful circumstantial evidence.

There has also been controversy about the social circumstances of Lenin’s father’s family. Soviet sources almost invariably stated that Ilya’s father, Nikolai, was originally a serf. Western writers have largely contested this, pointing to Nikolai’s substantial urban house in Astrakhan and his trade as a tailor to disprove the assertion. No one, however, disputes that Nikolai’s own father, Vasili Nikitich Ulianov, was a serf. It is not improbable that Nikolai was born a serf but achieved freedom allowing him to establish himself as a modestly secure urban artisan.

Arguments about Lenin’s background, whether it be his Jewish relatives or the social status of his grandfather, were minor elements of the East–West ideological conflict which arose out of the Russian Revolution. For the Soviets, the leader’s links to the ordinary population had to be emphasized. For western historians his links to the landowning class were occasion for much polemical writing. The Soviet authorities also tended to underemphasize Lenin’s Jewish connections. Some westerners claimed this was because of Soviet anti-semitism. It was equally likely to have been Soviet caution in not wanting anti-Soviet, anti-semitic elements inside and outside Russia to make play with the facts of his background, not least in the 1930s when fascism and Nazism were equating communism with the Jewish conspiracy.

Of course, the key question is, does Lenin’s background matter? At the genetic level we are not yet in a position to say that any of Lenin’s characteristics and physical attributes were related to particular sources. For example, he died young, as did many of his family members, and he suffered, as we shall see, certain persistent illnesses including the sclerosis that led to his eventually fatal strokes. In the crudely materialistic atmosphere of the Soviet Union in the 1920s, it was even decided to preserve Lenin’s brain for research and it was gruesomely sliced up for microscopic examination, the slides still being in existence today. However, nothing significant has emerged from such lines of enquiry. One day perhaps, the genetic roots of his mental abilities and other

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characteristics will be better known but all efforts so far have been fruitless. Lenin’s ethnic background, in itself, is not particularly important. What is much more significant and easier to trace is his cultural heritage. The gradual social rise from serfdom to hereditary nobility on his father’s side and the professional intelligentsia background of his mother, going back to her grandfather, Johann, who was a notary, plus the immediate small landowner milieu in which Maria grew up, created an active, energetic, cultured environment in which Vladimir Ulyanov was to develop. In order to examine this we can best look at his family upbringing.

THE ULYANOV FAMILY

The first point to make is that in the life of the young Vladimir, known as Volodya within the family, there was no sign of the developing Lenin. Volodya’s childhood seems to have been entirely conventional for the circles in which he lived. The family seems to have been a happy one. Indeed, Lenin remained close to his surviving family members throughout his life. The Ulyanovs spent a great deal of time together. The children played with one another. There were visits to friends and family. In particular, there were summer trips to the Kokushkino estate where they all enjoyed country pursuits: long walks; an increasing knowledge of nature and its cycles; and, eventually, the art of hunting which became one of Volodya’s passions as he grew up. The family lived the life of landowners, keeping themselves socially separate from the peasants. Romantic fables that Volodya used to take peasants to one side and chat about their conditions had no basis in fact.

That did not, however, mean Volodya and the rest of the family were indifferent to the plight of the peasantry, far from it. It is hard to pinpoint anything resembling a family political consciousness in the 1870s and early 1880s but there are signs that Lenin’s father, Ilya, was aware of the plight of the people and attempted to do something about it. In the tradition of so-called ‘repentant nobles’ and the early radical intelligentsia that sprang from it, Ilya was touched by the widespread sentiment that the raw inequalities of Russian society were immoral and needed to be reduced. In Ilya’s case he saw it as his mission to bring education to a wider and wider circle of the people and, as an inspector of schools, to ensure its quality was high. This did not mean that Ilya

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was in any sense a revolutionary. He was a loyal member of the government bureaucracy and was pleased to accept promotions up the official table of ranks including, in 1874, the attainment of hereditary nobility. He attended local official functions and wore his medals of honour with pride. Rather than associating with any revolutionary tradition, he belonged to the much more widespread group of ‘small deeds’ liberals who believed that grand revolutionary gestures were pointless. Instead they worked quietly and determinedly within the system to make as many real improvements in people’s lives as they could.

In many ways, the atmosphere in which Ilya and his generation had been brought up was reflected in this moderation. Prior to the Crimean War (1854–6) there had been three decades of complacent immobility, reigned over by Nicholas I. The stifling and unproductive atmosphere of his reign was based on two aspects. First, it had been sparked off by fear arising from the minor threat to the autocracy posed by the Decembrist uprising in 1825. Second, the massive pride in Russia’s great achievement of defeating Napoleon in 1812 and reaching Paris in 1814 lasted well beyond its sell-by date. The ensuing lack of progress was brought into focus by the disasters of the Crimean War. By chance, Nicholas died in the middle of the conflict in 1855. His successor, though no radical, realised change was necessary and, in 1861, promulgated Russia’s greatest reform of the age, the abolition of serfdom. Further reforms followed. The judiciary was reformed and trial by jury introduced. Military service became more humane. Most relevant to the small deeds liberals, however, was the establishment of more systematized local authorities which looked after a growing range of local problems and amenities. Roads, bridges, agricultural improvement and other minor works came under their control.

For Ilya Ulyanov, increased local responsibilities for primary education opened up the pathways of his career. He was able to throw himself into his life of service believing that the better he served the peasants the better he served his sovereign and his country. The Ulyanovs were themselves a cultured family and middle-class accomplishments like watercolouring and music, including singing and playing musical instruments, were part of family life. Volodya became a passable piano player but gave up when he was ten years old. The children themselves were successful learners. Alexander won himself a coveted place to study science at one of Russia’s best universities, St Petersburg. Although higher education

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was out of the question at that time for most women, the Ulyanov sisters, Maria, Anna and Olga, were also intelligent and accomplished.

Like Alexander, Volodya shone at school. At the end of his secondary school he was given a glowing report by his headmaster and achieved top marks in almost all his subjects. It is from this school report, copies of which were prominently displayed in Lenin museums around the country in Soviet times, that we have the best summary of Volodya’s intellect and personality:

Quite talented, invariably diligent, prompt and reliable, Ulyanov was first in all his classes, and upon graduation was awarded a gold medal as the most meritorious pupil in achievement, growth and con
duct. There is not a single instance on record, either in school or outside of it, of Ulyanov evoking by word or deed any adverse opinion from the authorities and teachers of the school.

It is somewhat ironic that the reference goes on to say that ‘The guiding principles of his upbringing were religion and rational discipline.’ The latter had already begun to strangle the former. Visitors to Soviet muse
ums who had good eyesight, since it was never emphasized officially, could discern another irony in the report. The signature of the headmaster who wrote it was that of Fyodor Kerensky, the father of Alexander, Prime Minister of the Provisional Government and arch-rival of Lenin in 1917. Alexander Kerensky, however, was yet to be born so the two men never met but the odds that the two dominant figures on opposite sides of the Revolution should come from the same provincial backwater, were enormous. The families, nonetheless, were acquainted and headmaster Kerensky, perhaps from friendship plus a desire to please an influential official, made great efforts to get Volodya into a university.

In the improving atmosphere of reform and relative toleration – many Jews, for instance, looked back on the 1860s and 1870s as a relative golden age – the reign of the ‘Tsar-Liberator’ changed the atmosphere for mild reformers like Ilya. The brutal conclusion of the years of moderate optimism came about as revolutionary terrorists closed in on the tsar and, after three years of serious attempts, finally succeeded in killing him in March 1881. For many, the small deeds strategy was reinforced by the assassination because, rather than achieve its goal of liberating Russia from tyranny, it brought about a massive wave of sympathy for the autocracy and provided the context for a more reactionary regime led by Alexander III and his chief adviser Konstantin Pobedonostsev to succeed the reforming tsar. It could be argued that, in the long term, the return to a stifling, anti-democratic police state undermined the autocracy more successfully than any revolutionary movement, but that was not apparent at the time. Instead, opportunities for small deeds were increasingly circumscribed.