Lenin on the Train by Catherine Merridale

Author:Catherine Merridale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

8. Lenin in Lapland

The British Government decided to prevent the emigrant internationalists from returning to their native land and taking part in the struggle against imperialist war.

V. I. Lenin

Lenin had told them to ignore the journalists; as always, he would be the one who took care of the press. The trouble was that there were dozens of new people on the train; they shoved their way inside the Russians’ carriages and deluged them with questions. The pack, its cry a chorus of northern European languages, had boarded all at once when the slow service from Malmö had stopped, just after dawn, at a suburban station on the outskirts of Stockholm. It was Friday 13 April (the day on which Plekhanov and his friends arrived in Russia), and some of Lenin’s fellow passengers were starting to miss the sealed carriage and the silent German plain. They did not want celebrity at this ungodly hour. They were on edge, they had slept badly, their clothes were sticking to their flesh and it was four days since any had enjoyed the benefits of a clean towel, running hot water and five minutes of privacy.

Such was their mood, weary and sour, when they stepped down from the train in Stockholm to find that a reception party had assembled. Though he had been unable to get to Trelleborg the night before, the left-wing socialist Fredrik Ström was on the platform now. With him stood some other representatives of the Swedish Riksdag and Stockholm’s powerful chief magistrate, Carl Lindhagen. A modest crowd had gathered, too, including at least two Swedish secret policemen and several foreign spies.1 The Russians were to spend most of the day in the Swedish capital. Someone would make a note of everything they did.

Lenin might have preferred to press on, but there were no trains to the high Norrland until the evening. To make the best of the delay, he had set a busy agenda in advance, much of it focused on securing explicit Swedish approval for his decision to cross German territory in that sealed carriage. Apart from that, he wanted to sound out the Swedish comrades’ views on war, peace and revolution, he needed money, and he hoped to set up a permanent Bolshevik office – a Foreign Bureau for his international campaign – with a Stockholm address and staff. If there was any time left after all of that, he intended to visit his old Zimmerwald comrade Zeth Höglund in nearby Långholmen prison.

It was a spring morning in Stockholm, grey but calm, and the conditions were perfect for photographers. The picture that one of them took, capturing Lenin in full stride, is one of the most famous images of the entire story. The Bolshevik leader’s face is turned away, but he is marching rapidly along, already embarked on the first of his day’s missions. His feet are shod in heavy mountain boots, and though respectable enough he wears a scarecrow’s choice of city clothes, including an ill-fitting woollen coat.

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