Nicholas and Alexandra (15 page)

He had been there a year when Krupskaya joined him. Herself arrested for organizing a strike, she had arranged to be sent to Shushen-skoe by telling the police that she was Vladimir's fiancée. Vladimir was delighted to see her and to have the books she brought, but less happy to welcome her mother, whom she had brought along and whom he disliked. To his own mother he wrote that Nadezhda "has had a tragi-comic condition made to her; if she does not marry immediately, she has to return to Ufa." On July 10, 1898, to solve the problem, they married. As newlyweds, they settled down to translate
The Theory and Practice of Trade Unionism
by Sidney and Beatrice Webb; their Russian version ran to a thousand pages. In the winter, they ice-skated on the frozen river. Vladimir was expert; with his hands in his pockets, he glided quickly away. Krupskaya tried valiantly and stumbled behind. The mother-in-law went once and fell flat on her back. But all three loved the whiteness of the Siberian winter, the clear, glowing quality of the air, the peaceful silence of the snowy woods. "It was Uke living," said Krupskaya, "in an enchanted kingdom."

Because his term ended before hers, Vladimir left his wife and her mother in Siberia and returned to St. Petersburg. Soon after, he drew up a petition from "the hereditary noble, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov" asking the authorities to permit him to return to Siberia to see his wife before going abroad. The petition was granted, Vladimir said goodbye and began a lonely life as a Russian revolutionary in the cities of Europe. His work as an underground organizer and a forceful writer had already brought him a significant reputation; this was enhanced when he became an editor and regular contributor to
Iskra (The Spark),
a revolutionary magazine published abroad for smuggling into Russia. It was at this point that Vladimir began to use the pen name "Lenin." He wrote a pamphlet titled
What Is to Be Done?
which attracted wide attention, and drafted a program for the Social Democratic Party, as the exiled Russian Marxists had begun to call themselves. He no longer feared to attack the Tsar personally; "Nicholas the Bloody" and "Nicholas the Hangman" were favorite expressions.

When Krupskaya's term of exile was ended, she joined her husband in Munich. In 1902 the offices of
lskra
were moved to London, and Lenin and Krupskaya followed, arriving in a dense fog. For Krupskaya particularly, the transition from a peaceful Siberian village to an immense city with its noise and dirt and clanging traffic was painful. They rented an unfurnished two-room apartment at 30 Holford Square kept by a Mrs. Yeo, and Lenin, under the name "Jacob Richter," applied for entrance to the Reading Room of the British Museum. In the

mornings he worked, and in the afternoons he and Krupskaya took trips around London on the top of a double-decker bus. There was trouble with Mrs. Yeo, who protested that Krupskaya did not hang curtains and wore no wedding ring. Finally a Russian friend warned the landlady that her lodgers were legally married and that if she persisted in chattering, she would be sued for defamation of character.

By his implacable certainty and singleness of purpose, his overwhelming energy and self-sacrifice, Lenin rapidly became a dominant figure within the party. Once recognized as a leader, he was fiercely intolerant and unwilling even to discuss his views with others unless circumstances forced him to do so. On the rock of Lenin's intransigence, the tiny party of exiles began to splinter.

It was to end this quarreling that the Social Democratic Party called a unity conference to be held in Brussels in July 1903. With forty-three delegates in attendance, the conference opened in an old flour warehouse draped with red cloth but infested with rats and fleas. The Belgian police, who had harassed the Russians by searching their rooms and opening their baggage, suddenly gave the exiles twenty-four hours to leave the country. In a body, they boarded a boat and crossed the English Channel to London, arguing all the way.

Continuing their sessions in a socialist church in London, the delegates soon realized that their momentous "unity" conference was leading to a dangerous split between Plekhanov and Lenin. Plekhanov's speeches were lyrical and moving; Lenin's were simpler, cruder, more logical and more forceful. The divisive issue was the organizational structure of the party. Lenin wanted the party restricted to a small, tightly disciplined, professional elite. Plekhanov and others wanted to embrace all who were willing to join. On a vote, Lenin was narrowly victorious; thereafter his followers took the name of Bolsheviks (Majorityites) and the losers became the Mensheviks (Minor-ityites). Half fearful, half admiring, Plekhanov looked at Lenin and said, "Of this dough, Robespierres are made."

If Lenin was Robespierre, Alexander Kerensky was Russia's Danton. Himself struck by the coincidence of their background and upbringing, Kerensky once wrote: "Let no one say that Lenin is an expression of some kind of allegedly Asiatic 'elemental Russian force.' I was born under the same sky, I breathed the same air, I heard the same peasant songs and played in the same college playground. I saw the same limitless horizons from the same high bank of the Volga and I know in my blood and bones . . . that it is only by losing all touch with our native land, only by stamping out all native feeling for it,

only so could one do what Lenin did in deliberately and cruelly mutilating Russia."

Fedor Kerensky, Alexander's father, was a gentle, scholarly man, destined originally to become a priest, who instead became a teacher. Early in his career, he married one of his pupils, an officer's daughter whose grandfather had been a serf. As director of the high school in Simbirsk, Fedor Kerensky was a leading member of local society. "From my earliest glimpses of consciousness I remember an enormous, splendid flat provided by the government," wrote Fedor's son, Alexander. "A long row of reception rooms; governesses for the elder sisters, nurseries, children's parties in other 'society' households." At school, standing in chapel in a white suit and pink Eton bow, Alexander was an important boy, the headmaster's son. "I see myself in my early childhood as a very loyal little subject. I felt Russia deeply . . . the traditional Russia with its tsars and Orthodox Church, and the upper layer of provincial officialdom." In the same town of Simbirsk, the parish priest was Alexander's uncle. Alexander himself dreamed of becoming a "church bell-ringer, to stand on a high steeple, above everybody, near the clouds, and thence to call men to the service of God with the heavy peals of a huge bell."

In 1889, when Alexander was eight, Fedor Kerensky was promoted to become Director of Education for the Province of Turkestan, and the family moved to Tashkent. There, one night, Alexander overheard his parents discussing a pamphlet circulating illegally in which Leo Tolstoy protested the alliance of the backward Russian autocracy and the French republic which Tolstoy admired. But "my youthful adoration of the Tsar was in no way impaired through hearing Tolstoy," said Alexander; ". . . when Alexander III died, I read the official obituaries . . . and I wept long and copiously. I fervently attended every mass and requiem held for the Tsar and assiduously collected small contributions in my class for a wreath to the Emperor's memory."

In 1899, Kerensky arrived in St. Petersburg to study at the university. The city, bursting with creative excitement in every field of the arts and intellect, was packed with-students from every social class and every province of the empire. "I doubt whether higher education before the war was so cheap and so generally accessible anywhere in the world as it was in Russia. . . . The lecture fees were practically negligible, while all laboratory experiments and other practical work . . . were completely free . . . one could have dinner for from five to ten kopecks . . . the poorest among us often lived in very bad

conditions, ran about from house to house giving lessons and did not dine every day; still we all lived and studied."

At first Kerensky, the loyal son of a government bureaucrat, had little interest in politics. But politics was a part of student life in St. Petersburg, and he became caught up in the waves of student agitation, mass meetings and strikes. Student opinion was split between the two leading Russian revolutionary parties, the Marxists and the Narod-niki or People's Party. Kerensky instinctively favored the latter. "Simbirsk, the memories of my childhood . . . the whole tradition of Russian literature drew me strongly towards . . . the Narodniki movement. . . . The Marxist teaching, borrowed in its entirety from abroad, deeply impressed youthful minds by its austere completeness and its orderly logic. But it tallied very badly with the social structure of Russia. In contrast . . . the Narodniki teaching was indistinct . . . inconsistent. . . . But it was the product of national Russian thought, rooted in the native soil, flowed entirely within the channel of the Russian humanitarian ideals."

Swept along by his youthful enthusiasm, Kerensky one day found himself making a speech at a student gathering; the following day, he was summoned before the rector and deans and temporarily sent home. He returned, planning an academic career, hoping to take up post-graduate study in criminal law. Before he had graduated, however, this "highly respectable pastime" began to pale for him—it "even, perhaps, repelled me a little. One does not want to attend to private interests when one dreams of serving the nation, of fighting for freedom. I decided to be a political lawyer."

For the next six years, Kerensky would travel to every corner of Russia, defending political prisoners against prosecution by the state. But before he left St. Petersburg, in 1905, an extraordinary episode occurred:

"It was Easter and I was returning late at night, or rather in the morning, about four o'clock from the traditional midnight celebration. I cannot attempt to describe the enchanting spell of St. Petersburg in the spring, in the early hours before dawn—particularly along the Neva or the embankments. . . . Happily aglow, I was walking home . . . and was about to cross the bridge by the Winter Palace. Suddenly, by the Admiralty, just opposite the Palace, I stopped involuntarily. On an overhanging corner balcony stood the young Emperor, quite alone, deep in thought. A keen presentiment [struck me]: we should meet sometime, somehow our paths would cross."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Kaiser's Advice

In the early years of the reign, along with his mother, the tutor Pobedonostsev and his uncles, Nicholas was also taken in hand by his cousin Kaiser William II of Germany. From the first months, William peered over the Tsar's shoulder, tapped him on the elbow, flattered him, lectured him and dominated him. William was nine years older than Nicholas and had become Kaiser in 1888, six years before Nicholas became Tsar. He thus had the advantage of experience as well as age, and he used it vigorously. For ten years, 1894-1904, the Kaiser manipulated Russian foreign policy by influencing the youthful, susceptible Tsar. Eventually, an older and wiser Nicholas shook off this meddlesome influence. But the harm was done. Urged on by William, Russia had suffered a military catastrophe in Asia.

In character, the two Emperors were totally unlike. Nicholas was gentle, shy and painfully aware of his own limitations; the Kaiser was a braggart, a bully and a strutting exhibitionist. Nicholas hated the idea of becoming a sovereign; WilUam all but wrenched the crown from the head of his dying father, Frederick III. As Tsar, Nicholas tried to live quietly with his wife, avoiding fuss. William delighted in parading about in high black boots, white cloak, a silver breastplate and an evil-looking spiked helmet.

William II's thin face, bleak gray eyes and light-colored curly hair were partially masked behind his proudest possession, his mustache. This was a wide, brushy business with remarkable upturned points, the creation of a skillful barber who appeared at the palace every morning with a can of wax. In part, this elegant bush helped to compensate for another physical distinction, one which William tried desperately to hide. His left arm was miniaturized, a misfortune believed to have been caused by the excessive zeal with which an obstetrical surgeon used forceps at William's birth. William arrived in the

world with his arm pulled almost from its socket; thereafter the arm grew much too slowly. As much as possible, he kept this damaged limb out of sight, tucking it into especially designed pockets in his clothes. At meals, the Kaiser could not cut his meat without the aid of a dinner companion.

In the military atmosphere of the Prussian court in which he grew up, William's bad arm had a pronounced effect on his character. A Prussian prince had to ride and shoot. William drove himself to do both expertly and went on to become a swimmer, rower, tennis player as well. His good right arm became extraordinarily powerful, and its grip was as strong as iron. William increased the sensation of pain in those he greeted by turning the rings on his right hand inward, so that the jewels would bite deep into the unlucky flesh.

When he was nineteen and a student in Bonn, William fell in love with Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, the Empress Alexandra's older sister. William often visited in Darmstadt with the Hessian family of his mother's sister. Even as a guest, he was selfish and rude. First he demanded to ride, then he wanted to shoot or row or play tennis. Often he would throw down his racket in the middle of a game or suddenly climb off his horse and demand that everybody go with him to do something else. When he was tired, he ordered his cousins to sit quietly around him and listen while he read aloud from the Bible. Alix was only six when these visits occurred, and she was ignored. But Ella was a blossoming fourteen, and William always wanted her to play with him, to sit near him, to listen closely. Ella thought he was dreadful. William left Bonn, burning with frustration, and four months later he became engaged to another German princess, Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein. After Ella married Grand Duke Serge of Russia, the Kaiser refused to see her. Later he admitted that he had spent most of his time in Bonn writing love poetry to his beautiful cousin.