The chaos of the whole country is indescribable. No one seems to know anything, or to do anything. The population is a seething mass of louse-covered, ragged humanity, who, apparently, have no purpose left in life. They all move slowly and listlessly about, the reigning law being, ‘It is yours, take it’. But there is no nothing left to take, so they just sit down and die.7
One story will give the flavour of the heartbreaking realities:
We came across a barn full of dead people. They were not just heaped up, but were carefully arranged like waxwork figures – some standing, some sitting, and some had tumbled down as the thaw had set in. In the hand of each was a piece of paper with the name of the person and a recommendation from the priest to St Peter to allow them through when he had time to attend to it.8
During the time of Payne’s stay, the country began to crawl out of the abyss, as shown by the contrast in Moscow’s appearance at the beginning and end of her time in Russia:
Moscow, March 1922: ‘Everything is indescribably miserable and sordid. Streets look as though they have never been streets. Houses are falling to bits – ruins of the Revolution. There is a continuous stream of ragged, silent men and women, an occasional horse and sleigh, or a motor car flying the red flag…. There are no shops worth mentioning.’9
Moscow, September 1922: ‘Moscow is a different place since I was here six months ago. Shops are open and apparently flourishing, there is plenty of food (at exorbitant prices) for those who can afford to buy. Trams are running, opera playing, and people are much better dressed. You can get quite a fair dinner for 20 million roubles!’10
Payne rather enjoyed herself at a parade for ‘young Communists’ and even managed to join the procession. She reports that ‘Lloyd George was burnt in the evening, for what particular sin I don’t know’.
It was altogether a strange sight; but rather fine to see the men, women and children in rags marching side by side with better dressed people. There was something striking, too, about the simplicity of it all – the ‘Grand Stand’ (a small wooden platform holding all the Bolsheviks packed together like sardines), so crowded and uncomfortable, with only a chair for the speaker to stand on to raise him above the shoulders of the rest.11
Payne’s attitude toward the Bolsheviks is mixed. She is bemused that a starving country is still obsessed with preventing one peasant from hiring another. She observes that ‘the power of Moscow does not extend very far in practice – 200 miles perhaps beyond the city’. Nevertheless, she is impressed that ‘whatever the reason, after travelling more than two thousand miles across Russia, one cannot help being struck with the comparative law and order exhibited by this population of millions under the rule of party of less than 500,000 men’. She finally divided the party into two: the idealists who ‘not only dream of a glorious and happy Russia, but who work for her good with no pay, no thanks, no holidays, no health; who still hope, and, I believe, still pray, and realize to the depths of their being the sorrows of the people’ vs. the ‘violent men, nominally their colleagues’.12
Lenin’s Health
After Lenin’s train trip from Petrograd to Moscow his life of peregrinations was over. The dramatic changes in his personal situation no longer came from enforced moves from place to place but rather from his deteriorating health. The final evolution in his outlook must be seen against the background of his growing awareness that his days were numbered.
All his working life Lenin was prone to overwork and to over-involvement with tense political issues, leading to nerves, headaches and insomnia.13 Fortunately, he had always been able to regain his spiritual equilibrium by means of vacations, energetic walks in the mountains and a quiet family life. After becoming head of state in 1917 these safety valves were no longer available in the same way. Looking back, he ironically thanked his political enemies, since their accusation of his being a German spy in 1917 forced him into hiding and thus gave him his last real vacation.
Indications of the brain troubles that eventually finished him off were already cutting into Lenin’s working habits by late 1920. By August 1921 he wrote to Maxim Gorky that ‘I am so tired that I can’t do a damned thing’.14 Headaches, insomnia and inability to concentrate continued to make serious inroads into Lenin’s workaholic ways. In December 1921 a week’s vacation at his dacha residence in Gorki stretched out longer and longer, until finally the Politburo insisted that he take a vacation for six weeks. Lenin was able to return to work and to participate in the 11th Party Congress in March 1922, although he was very upset by his reduced ability to read documents and to meet with congress delegates. He later referred to his fainting spells during this period as ‘the first bell’ (at the third bell, the train leaves).
Whether the underlying problem was his health or the political contradictions of NEP Russia, 1922 was marked by particularly irritable and aggressive outbursts on Lenin’s part that seemed to be aimed at permanently silencing independent views. The most egregious of these attempts were threats of violence against the Orthodox Church and the exile of many prominent socialist and non-socialist intellectuals.15
Lenin’s doctors still had very little sense of the seriousness of his illness, and only after his first stroke on 27 May 1922 were its full dimensions glimpsed. This stroke temporarily took away his ability to speak clearly or write legibly. Lenin was profoundly pessimistic after his first stroke and assumed that the end had come. He was essentially correct about this, although temporary improvements gave him a few more months of work. He remembered that a peasant had once predicted that his life would end by means of a kondrashka (an old word for stroke). The peasant based his diagnosis on the fact that Lenin’s neck was ‘awfully short’.
Lenin also felt, based on his own observations, that professional revolutionaries tended to burn out by around the age of fifty. He recalled the double suicide of Paul and Laura Lafargue in 1911. With this example in front of him, Lenin now contemplated suicide. On 30 May 1922 he demanded to see Stalin at his dacha in Gorki. Stalin and Bukharin drove out, and Stalin saw Lenin alone for just a few minutes. While he was waiting, Bukharin remarked to Lenin’s sister Maria that he guessed the reason why Ilich wanted to see Stalin. Stalin came out of Lenin’s room visibly shaken. While walking to the car, he conferred with Bukharin and Maria (while requesting that Krupskaya not be told). Lenin had reminded Stalin of a previous promise to help him in the case of paralysis, and he now wanted to call in his promise. He asked Stalin to obtain cyanide pills.