The Times Great Lives. Anna Temkin

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      Lenin was received in Petrograd with all revolutionary honours. Searchlights from armoured cars lighted up the Finland railway station, which was thronged with people. Socialists of all parties made speeches, but Lenin was not to be led away by any external success. He wanted real power. On April 14, the day after his arrival, he laid his programme before the Social Democratic Conference, a programme which six months afterwards he carried out to the letter in his decrees. At the time his speech was ridiculed by the moderate Socialists. Only a small group of Bolshevists applauded their leader when he declared that peace with the Germans must be concluded, at once, a Soviet Republic founded, the banks closed, that all power must be given to the workers, and that the Social-Democrats must henceforth call themselves Communists. His motion was rejected by 115 to 20.

      Lenin had at his back a compact organization well equipped with money. The Bolshevists displayed extraordinary activity in demoralizing the Army and the workmen and in provoking riots among the peasantry. There was no power to restrain them. In Petrograd, Lenin took up his quarters in the house of the dancer Kaszesinska, and from the balcony addressed large crowds day after day. In July he attempted a coup d’état, but failed. He went into hiding, but continued to direct subversive movement. The Provisional Government under Kerensky shrank from coercive measures. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Social-Democrats who controlled the Petrograd Soviet partly sympathized with the Bolshevists, partly feared them, but in their appeals to the masses they were always outbid by Lenin’s followers, and speedily they lost ground.

      After the failure of Korniloff’s attempt in August to re-establish law and order the general demoralization increased. The Army went to pieces and, taking advantage of this disorganized host of armed men, to whom he promised immediate peace, Lenin effected a coup d’état on November 7, 1917, this time without any difficulty. Lenin appeared with his followers in a Congress of Soviets, and was acclaimed as Dictator. The members of the Provisional Government were imprisoned, all but Kerensky, who escaped. There was a sharp struggle in Moscow, where for several days boys from officers’ training schools defended the Kremlin, but they finally succumbed.

      Master of the Terror

      Lenin took up his residence in the Kremlin, and from that ancient citadel of autocracy and orthodoxy launched his propaganda, of world-revolution. Outwardly he lived as modestly as when he had been an obscure political refugee. Both he and his wife – he had married late in the ’nineties Nadiezhda Krupskaya – had the scorn of sectarians for bourgeois inventions and comforts. Short and sturdy, with a bald head, small beard, and keen, bright, deep-set eyes, Lenin looked like a small tradesman. When he spoke at meetings his ill-fitting suit, his crooked tie, his generally nondescript appearance, disposed the crowd in his favour. ‘He is not one of the gentle-folk,’ they would say, ‘he is one of us.’

      This is not the place to describe in detail the terrible achievements of Bolshevism – the shameful peace with Germany, the plundering of the educated and propertied classes, the long-continued terror with its thousands of innocent victims, the Communist experiment carried to the point of suppressing private trade, and making practically all the adult population of the towns servants and slaves of the Soviet Government; the civil war, the creation and strengthening of the Red Army, the fights with the border peoples, the Ukraine, with Koltchak and Denikin and with Poland, culminating in 1920 in the defeat of the White Armies and the conclusion of peace with Poland. Never in modern times has any great country passed through such a convulsion as that brought about by Lenin’s implacable effort to establish Communism in Russia, and thence to spread it throughout the world.

      In the light of these world-shaking events Lenin’s personality acquired an immense significance. He retained control. He was the directive force. He was in effect Bolshevism. His associates were pygmies compared with him. Even Trotsky, who displayed great energy and ability in organizing the Red Army, deferred to Lenin. Both the Communist Party and the Council of People’s Commissaries were completely under Lenin’s control. It happened sometimes that after listening to a discussion of two conflicting motions in some meeting under his chairmanship Lenin would dictate to the secretary, without troubling to argue his point some third resolution entirely his own. He had an uncanny skill in detecting the weaknesses of his adversaries, and his associates regarded him with awe as a supreme tactician. His judgment was final.

      He was ultimately responsible for the terror as for all the other main lines of Bolshevist policy. He presided over the meeting of the Council of People’s Commissaries which, in July, 1918, approved the foul murder of Nicholas ii and his family by the Ekaterinburg Soviet.

      The Communist experiment brought Russia to economic ruin, famine, and barbarism. Under Soviet rule the Russian people suffered unheard of calamity. To Lenin, this mattered little. When the famine came in 1921 he remarked, with a scornful smile, ‘It’s a trifle if twenty millions or so die.’

      He did realize, however, that the effort to maintain undiluted Communism was endangering the existence of his Government. In March, 1921, he called a halt. Against the wishes of the majority of his followers he proclaimed a new economic policy, consisting of a temporary compromise between Socialism and Capitalism, with the Communist movement in complete control. His hope was that this policy would secure a breathing space during which the Communists might rally for a new attack on world capitalism.

      The famine raged. Russia sank deeper and deeper into the mire. The resources of the Soviet Government, the gold reserve of the Imperial Government which they had squandered in their wild propaganda and in their feeble pretence of foreign trade, were almost exhausted. Their one hope lay in bluffing Europe, and to this task they set themselves with great zest and incomparable skill.

      Last Illness

      In the midst of the rapid crumbling of all his plans, Lenin fell ill towards the end of 1921, and for many weeks was unable to take any public part in affairs. The nature of his complaint was obscure. Experts were summoned from Germany, and a bullet was extracted that had been fired on Lenin when an attempt was made on his life by the Jewish socialist revolutionary, Dora Kaplan, in 1918. There was a brief interval, during which Lenin’s health was apparently restored, and he made speeches declaring that the new economic policy would go no farther, and that concessions to capitalists were at an end. He was unable to attend the Genoa Conference, and shortly after the conclusion of the Conference the reports as to his health became more alarming. German specialists were again summoned, and his condition became so grave that steps were taken by his associates to establish a directorate, to carry on his functions.

      One paralytic stroke followed another, and it became clear that Lenin would never return to affairs, that his days were numbered. He was removed to a country house near Moscow, where, under the care of nurses, he lingered on till his name grew shadowy and his party was divided by an open dispute for the succession.

      Giacomo Puccini

      A famous opera composer

      29 November 1924

      Giacomo Puccini, whose death is announced on another page, had held first place among the composers of opera in his generation so decisively that to the majority of opera-goers he seemed to stand alone. Musicians may find among his contemporaries a dozen or more names whose works for the stage they will prefer before his. Humperdinck, Strauss, Charpentier, Bruneau, and Debussy have all displayed qualities which in their different ways are beyond the range of Puccini’s art, yet no one of them competes for his position of favour in the eyes of the general public. A conservative operatic management such as we have known in London may try experiments in one or other; ever since the success of La Bohème there have been no experiments in Puccini. The only question was how quickly each new work could be hurried on to the stage. In fact, an opera of his entitled Turandot was announced СКАЧАТЬ