The main factor in his ability to avoid arrest was paradoxically the very charge that he had been receiving money from the Germans. This charge was again publicized on July 5, one of its propagators being a former Bolshevik member of the Duma and then a bitter personal enemy of Lenin, Gregory Alexinsky, The charges turned on facts largely familiar to us: Lenin's connections with Hanecki, who in Stockholm was representing the Parvus interests. There were some additional charges of what an escaped Russian prisoner of war allegedly learned while in the Germans’ hands, but the crux of the matter clearly turned on the Lenin-Hanecki-Parvus connection.
Today, as mentioned above, there can no longer be any doubt that the substance of the charges, as distinguished from some details, was correct: the Bolsheviks were getting money from the Germans. But what is of interest as we study the July days is the clumsiness of Lenin’s attempt to deny the accusation. He was usually much more skillful, and his lying, very transparent even at the time, is a good proof of his alarm. From his hideout he wrote humble letters to Menshevik newspapers which only a short time before he had been denouncing for “philistinism,” “near-socialism,” and the like. “Dear Gomrades,” they begin. He, Lenin, had to escape because there was no assurance that if arrested he would be granted the usual guarantees extended “even in the bourgeois countries” to the accused. Hanecki? Why, he, Lenin, barely knew him. He met him only once at the London Gongress in 1907 (11). Insofar as he was aware, Hanecki and the other intermediary, Kozlovsky, were not Bolsheviks but Polish Socialists. Lies and calumnies! And the pregnant warning, so often and successfully used by the Communists: if they arrest us Bolsheviks today, watch out who may be next. It will then be the turn of the left Mensheviks such as Martov, then of the Socialists and all the progressive elements.
At the time Lenin was issuing denials, the Ministry of Justice had copies of his letters to Hanecki and Radek. In one of them, dated April 12, he wrote among other things, “Be accurate and extra cautious in your connections.” In another, “Nothing [lately] received from you, neither letters nor money. . . .” In yet another Lenin acknowledged the receipt of a considerable sum from Kozlovsky."*!
“ Both the letters and Lenin’s denials found their way to the official Collected Works of Lenin (to be sure in different volumes). Therein lies a piquant story: In 1923 a Communist archivist working on the files of the old Ministry of Justice found the copies of those letters. Needless to say, he was eager to publish those previously unknown letters of Vladimir Ilyich and he transmitted them to The Proletarian Revolution. Its editorial board then turned to Radek and Hanecki to ascertain their authenticity (Lenin was on his deathbed). They returned an amazing answer; yes, they seemed to be authentic, but neither of them recalled receiving them. The money referred to, said Radek and Hanecki, was obviously the money "collected by the foreign committee of the Bolshevik Central Committee.” And thus the letters were published in Soviet Russia. The Proletarian Revolution, 1923, No. 9, pp. 225 and ff.
But Lenin’s warning struck the mark. The Menshevik leaders of the Soviet were already having second thoughts about a too vigorous prosecution of the Bolsheviks. The main threat to the Revolution was after all still from the right, wasn’t it? The left wing of the Mensheviks led by Martov thought that even the suppression of the July rebellion went too far. When loyal troops arrived to defend the Soviet from the Bolsheviks Martov shouted, “This is how a counterrevolution always begins.” Though numerically weak, Martov’s group, largely because of his moral authority, exercised an inhibiting influence on the majority Mensheviks led by Tseretelli and Dan. They reminded Martov how before the war he had written that Lenin was not a politician, but the leader of a Mafialike organization within the Social Democracy, bent upon establishing his dictatorship. But in vain. In a manner that was to become traditional with many of the non-Communist leftists, Martov insisted that though the Bolsheviks went too far they were spokesmen for the real grievances of the proletariat. One should not use force against them but one should “tell the workers that their discontent is justified,” and adopt the desired reforms. It is only thus that the adventurers could be “morally isolated.”
'The majority Mensheviks, for their part, while they looked at their enemies more realistically, still could not stomach the accusations that the Bolsheviks were German agents. This charge reflected on all Russian Social Democracy. “If we arrest Lenin we shall be judged by history as criminals,” exclaimed Dan. The “defensist” Mensheviks busied themselves denying rumors that the Bolsheviks were in receipt of the German gold. It is easy to see that no serious effort was made to apprehend Lenin. In his hiding place at theAliluyevs’ he was visited regularly by his wife and sisters. Later on in his shelter twenty miles from Petrograd he received Bolshevik visitors. It would have been a simple matter to track him down, but such an effort would have embarrassed his captors. A commission was appointed to probe the charges against him and Zinoviev. Gradually its investigation petered out.
More important, the resolution of the “revolutionary democracy” soon faded out insofar as the Bolsheviks as a whole were concerned. Some of their leaders let themselves be arrested: Lunacharsky, Kamenev, and Kollontay. Trotsky with his typical bravado demanded that he be included in their number and his request was satisfied. But no attempt was made to break up the Party. It was, after all, a Socialist and revolutionary party and how could their fellow Socialists soil themselves by such an undemocratic step? The Bolsheviks were taught a lesson; the healthy instinct of the masses would prevent them from following those adventurers again. And the main enemy still remained on the right. The Soviet and the Provisional Government settled down again to their tortuous coexistence: the wrangle about their respective powers and the responsibility for the dismal “ Tseretelli, op. cit., Vol, 2, p, 239.
Failure of the June-July offensive of the Russian army. Prince Lvov now finally faded out and Kerensky became Prime Minister in name as well as in fact. In retrospect the July crisis was viewed complacently as an additional proof of the strength of Russian democracy. Things were back to their revolutionary normal.
Among the Bolsheviks their ignominious failure led to some soulsearching. The shadow of July was to hang over the beginnings of the October insurrection when many were to believe that it was foolhardy to try to take power by force. Lenin’s flight was viewed with mixed feelings. Some Bolsheviks thought that the Party lost thereby a wonderful opportunity for propaganda; Comrades Lenin and Zinoviev should give themselves up and refute in open court the scandalous lies of the bourgeoisie. At the Bolshevik Congress late in July there were many voices urging that the hiding heroes should turn themselves in. This attitude was understandable in view of the fact that many Bolsheviks were unaware that the substance of the charges was true. In addition, once the excitement over the insurrection had passed, the reasons given for the flight, the danger to Lenin’s life, and so on, could not be taken seriously. The death penalty had been abolished in March. Lynchings, except at the hand of the proBolshevik sailors, were still unheard of. All that threatened Lenin was imprisonment, and it went without saying that he could from his prison as well as from his hideout issue directives for the Party, write articles, and the like. Then why does Comrade Lenin deprive the Party of this wonderful opportunity to expose the bourgeois calumniators? ‘"We should make another Dreyfus case from the trial of Lenin. We should go into the fight with a raised visor. . . . This is demanded by the interests of the Revolution and the prestige of our Party.” It was with difficulty that the more realistic of the Party leaders restrained this enthusiasm for the vindication of the Bolshevik honor. The visor remained shut.
Whatever Lenin himself thought about this solicitude to clear his name of the unworthy charges, his attention soon turned to more fundamental problems. The Bolsheviks now clearly had to change their slogans, “All power to the soviets” ceased to be an appropriate device, since the majority of the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries had become tools of the counterrevolution. Almost immediately a new device and a new mythology were invented. In July the Bolsheviks tried, so the mythology runs, merely to persuade the soviets to take over power from the bourgeoisie. Now, it was demonstrated that such attempts were hopeless and that one had to face the “dictatorship of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie.” Hence next time the Bolsheviks should not try any more “peaceful demonstration” of the kind of July 8. “Power can no longer be taken peacefully.” The new slogan must be “All power to the revolutionary proletariat.”
World History
