The Life and Death of Lenin by Robert Payne

Author:Robert Payne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-04-20T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two – On the Eve

For nearly ten weeks Lenin had been living the life of a fugitive, always disguised and always in hiding, grateful for the security provided by people he had never set eyes upon before he entered their apartments. He had stayed with workers, fanners, a Finnish deputy, a police chief. In Vyborg he stayed in the apartment of a journalist called Latukk. He remained in the apartment, cooked his own meals, read all the newspapers Latukk could find for him, and all the time he chafed at his imprisonment.

As soon as Shotman learned that Lenin was in Vyborg, he took the first train and presented himself in the apartment. Lenin was in a towering rage. Shotman had scarcely opened his mouth when Lenin snapped at him. “Is it true that the Central Committee has forbidden me to come to Petrograd?” Shotman answered that they had made the order for his own safety. Lenin demanded written confirmation of the order. Shotman took a sheet of paper and wrote:

I, the undersigned, hereby certify that the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Bolshevik faction) resolved at a meeting on [such-and-such a date] that Comrade Lenin shall be forbidden to enter Petrograd until further notice.

Shotman could not remember the exact date of the meeting when he wrote his Memoirs, but he remembered with absolute clarity how Lenin raged at his enforced idleness when, as he felt, he should be leading the revolution.

Lenin took the sheet of paper, carefully folded it twice, and with his thumbs in his vest, began to pace hurriedly up and down the room, murmuring angrily, “I won’t tolerate it! I won’t tolerate it!”

Later, when he had calmed down, he threw a barrage of questions at Shotman: What was happening in Petrograd? What were the workers saying? What about the morale of the army and the sailors? He showed Shotman tables of statistics carefully compiled to show the extraordinary growth of Bolshevik strength not only among the workers, but also among the bourgeoisie. In a tone of complete conviction Lenin said, “The country is for us. That is why our chief task at this moment is the immediate organization of all our forces to take over power.”

Shotman argued that they could hardly take over power while lacking the experts to run the machinery of government.

“Pure absurdity!” Lenin replied. “Any workman can learn to become a minister in a few days. There is no need for any special ability. It is not even necessary that he should understand the technicalities. That side of things will be done by the functionaries who will be compelled to work for us.”

Shotman was a little startled. To Lenin it was all so very simple, while to Shotman the machinery of government was profoundly complicated. He asked what Lenin proposed to do about money after the Kerensky bank notes were declared valueless.

“There’s nothing simpler,” Lenin replied. “We’ll simply run the bank notes off on the newspaper presses. In a few days we shall have millions of bank notes.

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