The Dilemmas of Lenin. Tariq Ali
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their torpor and trigger a mass uprising based on previous models (Razin/Pugachev), but this time under new conditions and in order to completely destroy the autocracy and its institutions. It never worked out and, in a grumpy mood, Lenin once characterised terrorists as liberals with bombs, suggesting that both held the opinion that propaganda alone, of deed or word, would be sufficient for the task that lay ahead. For the most part terrorist acts scared people and legitimated government repression.
Till now the Executive Committee had won the admiration and financial support of many intellectuals who felt that they were on the right track. Key members of the committee were at the house of Gleb Uspensky, a major pro-Populist writer, on 1 March, waiting for news of the operation. They drank to success and then withdrew to compose a powerful open letter to the dead man’s son. The opening paragraph was suitably defiant, even while misjudging the writers’ own strength. They informed Alexander III that ‘the bloody tragedy which took place along the Catherine Canal was not just the result of chance and was not unexpected. After everything that has been happening for the last ten years, it was inevitable.’ They warned him that their struggle against the autocracy would continue, unless political prisoners were released and a national assembly convened via elections based on proportionality and without any restrictions whatsoever, including freedom of speech, press, assembly and electoral programmes. This would enable Russia to develop peacefully: ‘We solemnly declare before our beloved Fatherland and the entire world that our party will of its own accord unconditionally submit to the decisions of a National Assembly.’
The initial reaction of the court to the death of the tsar was fear. When the open letter reached him, the new monarch burst into tears and had to be comforted by his tutor. But the autocracy was soon back on course. Tsarist ministers and advisers had noted the absence of uprisings or popular assemblies anywhere in the country. And the hard-line councillors of Alexander III turned their back on concessions of any sort and accelerated the counterreformation. A chain of legal proclamations sought to seal off free thought of any kind. Violations of these ordinances led to swift and brutal punishments. The mood in the country became despairing.
Having isolated themselves, the People’s Will was dismantled by the repression and by the rapid dwindling of popular support. The end for leading members of the Executive Committee came in the month that followed the assassination of the tsar. Only one of them recanted. The others walked to the gallows with their heads held high:
Sofia Perovskaya, Kibalchich, Gesia Gelfman and Mikhailov, all confirmed the ideas for which they had sacrificed their lives. Sofia Perovskaya was outstandingly brave, Kibalchich revealed his true worth, and showed himself a man of genius, always concerned with the technical problem of the relations between ends and means. In his prison cell he went on designing a plan for a flying machine, which he regretted not being able to finish before he was hanged. Only Rysakov said that he was a peaceful socialist and he felt remorse for his terrorist activities … At 9.50 in the morning of 3rd April 1881, Rysakov, Zhelyabov, Mikhailov, Kibalchich and Sofia Perovskaya climbed the scaffold. With the exception of Rysakov they all embraced for the last time. Then they were hanged.10
There is a postscript to this story. Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist philosopher, was living in comfortable exile in England when the Russian Revolution erupted. Seventy-five years of age now, the old man was incredibly excited and decided to go back. He went first to visit his old haunts in Petrograd, but decided not to stay there and moved instead to Moscow. He arrived quietly without any fuss or fanfare. His daughter tried to persuade him to move back to the old family house in the country, but Kropotkin wanted to live in the capital. His daughter went to the offices of Sovnarkom (the Council of People’s Commissars) and met with V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, secretary for the organisation and Lenin’s personal secretary. She described all the problems she had encountered trying to find modest accommodation for her aged father. Despite the chaos, it was an unwritten law that revolutionaries returning from exile would be provided with permanent accommodation.
Bonch-Bruevich informed Lenin of the problem, who instructed him to find accommodation for the old man immediately. Bonch-Bruevich then visited Kropotkin to welcome him back. Kropotkin’s views came as a pleasant surprise. He supported the revolution and declared that it had ‘proved to everybody that a social revolution was possible’. He was totally hostile to the White Guards and anti-Soviet forces and commended the Bolsheviks for having moved on from February to October. As an anarchist, naturally, he did not agree with the organisation of the Soviet state or the role of the party, but was interested in reading Lenin’s State and Revolution:
I was told that Vladimir Ilyich wrote an excellent book about the State which I have not yet read, in which he puts forward a prognosis that the State would in the end wither away … By this single shaft of light thrown boldly on the teaching of Marx, Vladimir Ilyich has earned the deepest respect … I regard the October revolution as an endeavour to achieve the transition to communism and federalism.
Lenin asked to see Kropotkin and the two men met at the Sovnarkom offices in early May 1919. Bonch-Bruevich was present and his record of the meeting is instructive. Lenin admired Kropotkin not for his anarchism, but for his history of the French Revolution that had educated two generations of Russian radicals. Lenin regarded this book by Kropotkin as an indispensable classic and wanted it reprinted and placed in every library. The discussion opened with an exchange of views on the cooperative, with both men explaining their positions on this subject. Kropotkin complained of bureaucratic harassment of genuine cooperatives by local authorities, ‘perhaps even people who yesterday were revolutionaries, changed as all authorities do, into bureaucrats, into officials, who want to twist their subordinates and who think that the whole population is subordinated to them.’
Lenin’s response was immediate:
We are against officialdom always and everywhere. We are against bureaucratisation, and we must pull up bureaucracy by its roots if it still nestles in our new system. But you know perfectly well that it is extremely difficult to remake people and that, as Marx used to say, the most inaccessible fortress is the human skull.
Kropotkin countered by pointing out that this explanation did not make things easier for citizens, since ‘authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.’
Lenin replied by stressing that
you cannot make a revolution in white gloves … We are still making many, many mistakes; we correct all that can be corrected; we admit our mistakes – which sometimes result from plain stupidity … You should help us, let us know when you see that something is wrong; you can be assured that we shall welcome your remarks with the greatest attention.
After further debate on cooperatives, Lenin explained that ‘we need enlightened masses and it would be good if, for example, your book on the great French revolution were published in a very large edition. This book is so useful for all.’
Kropotkin was flattered, but suspicious.
‘But who would publish it? I cannot let the State Publishing House do it.’
‘No, no,’ interrupted Lenin. ‘Why, of course not the State Publishing House, but a cooperative publisher.’
‘Oh well,’ said Kropotkin, ‘if you find the book interesting and valuable, I agree … Perhaps one could find such a cooperative enterprise.’
‘One can find it, one certainly can,’ nodded Lenin. ‘I am sure of this.’
The deal was done.
During the course of this conversation Lenin explained his views on anarchism and the decisive factor that helped him to solve the dilemma between anarchism and socialism.
It was the necessity of ‘a mass struggle’, he informed Kropotkin:
We do not need individual terroristic attempts and the anarchists should have understood long ago. Only with the masses, through the masses … All other methods, including those of the anarchists, have been relegated to the limbo of history – nobody needs them, they are no good, and they do not attract anybody – they only demoralise people who in one way or another have been drawn on to that old worn-out path.
When Kropotkin died