Everybody else was “they”.
He didn’t single out anybody in particular. He just kept a keen watch, with his narrow, Mongolian eyes, to see who could be used, and how.
One man might be good at slipping across borders on a fake passport—he would be sent on a mission abroad. Another might be good at public speaking—he would be sent to speak at political rallies. A third was good at deciphering letters, while a fourth was good at exciting a crowd—he knew how to shout loudly and wave his arms about. And there were others who were good at putting together little articles based on the thoughts of Vladimir Ilyich.
As an orator, Lenin did not carry the crowd with him; he did not set a crowd on fire, or whip it up into a frenzy. He was not like Kerensky, who could make a crowd fall in love with him and shed tears of ecstasy; I myself witnessed such tears in the eyes of soldiers and workers as they showered Kerensky’s car with flowers on Marinsky Square. Lenin simply battered away with a blunt instrument at the darkest corner of people’s souls, where greed, spite and cruelty lay hidden. He would batter away and get the answer he wanted:
“Yes, we’ll loot and pillage—and murder too!”
Naturally, he had no friends and no favourites. He didn’t see anybody as a human being. And he had a fairly low opinion of human nature. As far as I could see, he considered everyone to be capable of treachery for the sake of personal gain. A man was good only insofar as he was necessary to the cause. And if he wasn’t necessary—to hell with him. Anyone harmful or even just inconvenient could be done away with—and this would be carried out calmly and sensibly, without malice. Even amicably. Lenin didn’t even seem to look on himself as a human being—he was merely a servant of a political idea. Possessed maniacs of this kind are truly terrifying.
But, as they say, history’s victors are never judged. Or, as somebody once said in response to these words, “They may not be judged, but they do often get strung up without a trial.”
It was rumoured that the Black Hundreds[29] from the “Tearoom of the Russian People”[30] were planning a pogrom[31] against New Life. Apparently they had made a list of all the paper’s staff and found out their addresses. They had already decided on the night when they would do the rounds of our apartments and finish off the lot of us.
Everybody had decided not to go home that night. I had been issued with strict instructions to go somewhere else. But, as it turned out, I went to the theatre that evening, and then went on to dine with friends. I didn’t get home until about five o’clock in the morning.
I decided that if the Black Hundreds were planning to kill me, they’d had all night for it—and it wasn’t the kind of thing one did in the morning. I asked the doorman if anyone had called. No, no one at all. And that was that. The next day it turned out that none of the staff had had any trouble.
Nevertheless, for quite other reasons, there was a general sense of anxiety in our office.
Rumyantsev told us that Lenin was demanding we break our contract with Minsky, take over the paper entirely and make it into a Party organ. Rumyantsev thought this would be wrong and was not agreeing to it. It was Minsky who had been granted permission for the paper and it was he who was the chief editor. What on earth would the literary world think of us?
“I don’t give a damn about your literary circles,” said Lenin. “The thrones of tsars are toppling—and your only concern seems to be the propriety of our conduct towards a few writers.”
“But it was me who signed the contract,” protested Rumyantsev.
“And it’ll be me who tears it up,” said Lenin.
But before tearing up that ill-fated contract, he wrote an article in New Life that terrified us all. As far as I remember, it was something about the nationalization of land.[32] Minsky was given an official reprimand. He came into the office very shaken indeed.
“I’m the editor in chief and you tell me nothing about the articles you are including. One more article like that—and I could be sent into exile.”
Minsky’s wife, the poet Ludmila Vilkina, also came into the office. “I’m frightened,” she said. “What if my husband does get sent to Siberia? He wouldn’t survive—he has a weak chest.”
In response to this entirely reasonable fear, we heard a snigger: “Oh, it’s not so bad as all that in Siberia! There’s a bracing climate out there in Siberia—(here there was another snigger). It’s just what he needs!”
It was all very nasty. Not for one moment had Minsky imagined he would be treated like this.
It was K.P. who came to his rescue.
“Go abroad immediately,” he said.
“But they might not let me out of the country.”
“I’ll give you my internal passport. But don’t waste a moment.”
A few days later, Minsky came into the office to say goodbye. He showed us the brand new external passport he had just obtained. On the English page[33] was written “gentleman” (K.P. was from a noble family).
“Look,” he laughed. “Now I’m a real gentleman—with official papers to prove it.”
Minsky left the country shortly after this, and the entire literary section soon resigned too. We asked for our names to be removed from the list of contributors. There was no point in us staying with the paper any longer.
Predictably enough, the paper soon closed down.
Lenin turned up the collar of his coat even farther and, still apparently unnoticed, left the country for several years.
When he came back, it was in the sealed railway carriage.[34]
RASPUTIN
There are people who are remarkable because of their talent, intelligence or public standing, people whom you often meet and whom you know well. You have an accurate sense of what these people are like, but all the same they pass through your life in a blur, as if your psychic lens can never quite focus on them, and your memory of them always remains vague. There’s nothing you can say about them that everyone doesn’t already know. They were tall or they were short; they were married; they were affable or arrogant, unassuming or ambitious; they lived in some place or other and they saw a lot of so-and-so. The blurred negatives of the amateur photographer. You can look all you like, but you still don’t know whether you’re looking at a little girl or a ram.
The person I want to talk about flashed by in a mere two brief encounters. But how firmly and vividly his character is etched into my memory, as if with a fine needle.
And this isn’t simply because he was so very famous. In my life I’ve met many famous people, people who have truly earned their renown. Nor is it because he played such a tragic role in the fate of Russia. No. This man was unique, one of a kind, like a character out of a novel; he lived in legend, he died in legend, and his memory is cloaked in legend.
A semi-literate peasant and a counsellor to the Tsar, a hardened sinner and a man of prayer, a shape-shifter with the name of God on his lips.
They called him cunning. Was there really nothing to him but cunning?
I shall tell you about my two brief encounters with him.
The end of a Petersburg winter. Neurasthenia.
Rather than starting a new day, morning merely continues the grey, long-drawn-out evening of the day before.
29
An ultra-nationalist Russian movement that supported the tsarist principles of Orthodoxy, Autocracy and nationality and was fiercely hostile to both revolutionaries and Jews. Its members were drawn from a variety of social classes.
30
“The Union of the Russian People”, one of the Black Hundred groups, met regularly at the Tver café in St Petersburg, offering free tea and food to unemployed workers.
31
The term “pogrom” was most often used of mass acts of violence against Jews. Jews and revolutionaries, however, were often conflated, especially in the minds of the Black Hundreds and other extreme nationalists.
32
The article in question, “The Dying Autocracy and the New Organs of Party Rule”, was published in November 1905. Minsky was arrested and released on bail.
33
Russian external passports of this period included several pages intended for foreign border guards. Written in French, German and English, these stated the traveller’s name and social class. (With thanks to Yevgeny Slivkin.)
34
In 1917, after the February Revolution and the abdication of the Tsar, the Provisional Government continued the war against Germany. Wanting to destabilize the Russian war effort, the German government provided Lenin with a sealed railway carriage and a large sum of money, enabling him to make his way from neutral Switzerland, across Germany, and into Russia. The Bolsheviks were, at the time, the only Russian political party unambiguously committed to making peace with Germany.