15

The Young Lenin

The innumerable insults that Lenin meted out to opponents, both to individuals and, later, to entire social classes, have prompted a number of writers, both journalists and novelists, to portray him, even in childhood, as a red-headed monster, full of cruelty, conceit, and vindictiveness. Yevgeni Chirikov, who had been expelled from Kazan University together with Ulyanov, in a novel written after the October Revolution, when he was already a member of the White emigration, endowed Vladimir with ‘pathological vanity and readiness to take offence’. Vodovozov relates that 'Vladimir’s crude behaviour, coarse gestures, acrimonious remarks, etc. – and there were many – greatly shocked Maria Alexandrovna. Often she couldn’t help saying, “Oh, Volodya, Volodya, how can you!”’ In actual fact, however, Vladimir was too aware of his own importance to fall prey to pathological vanity. Further, he really had no occasion to take offence, because there were all too few who dared give offence. But there can be no doubt that Vladimir’s rough-edged ruthlessness did not always spare the vanity of others. According to Yasneva, some opponents ‘felt hostile toward him from the very first encounter’, and their hostility was intense enough to last through their lifetimes.

The late Vodovozov must be counted among those who had been insulted once and for ever. When he had first arrived in Samara, Vladimir had treated him in a friendly way and helped him to get settled, but he very soon saw through Vodovozov, that sterile eclectic who could neither be won over as a partisan nor taken seriously as an opponent. Their clashes in connection with aid to victims of the famine and the message to the governor left their imprint: Vodovozov’s irritation with young Ulyanov has given us several pages of reminiscences in which the author, to the reader’s profit, tells more than he had intended.

In describing Vladimir’s appearance, Vodovozov says, ‘His face as a whole startled one by its odd mixture of intelligence and crudeness. I would say it showed a sort of animality. One’s attention was drawn to his forehead – intelligent but sloping. A fleshy nose … something stubborn and cruel in these features was combined with undoubted intelligence.’ In his slanderous novel, Chirikov has some young people of Simbirsk speak as follows about Vladimir Ulyanov: ‘His hands are always damp! And yesterday he shot a kitten … then grabbed it by the tail and threw it over the fence! …’ Another fairly well-known Russian writer, Kuprin, discovered, although in later years, that Lenin had green eyes ‘like a monkey’. Thus even physical appearance – what one would take to be the aspect least open to question – was subject to tendentious transformation by memory and imagination.

A photograph of 1890 shows a fresh young face in whose calm one senses reserve. The stubborn forehead has not yet been accented by baldness. The small eyes look sharply forth out of Asiatic slits. The cheekbones, too, hint slightly at Asia. Below a broad nose, fleshy lips and a strong chin are lightly covered with a sparse growth that has not yet known scissors or razor. The face is certainly not handsome. But behind these primitive, unpolished features, one is all too clearly aware of the disciplined intellect to admit any suggestion of animality. Vladimir’s hands were dry, plebeian in shape, with short fingers – warm and manly hands. For kittens, as for everything weak and defenceless, he displayed the lenient affection of the strong. The literary gentlemen have slandered him!

‘In the moral make-up of Vladimir Ilyich,’ Vodovozov continues, ‘one was at once struck by a certain amoralism. In my opinion, it was an inborn trait of his character.’ This amoralism, it turns out, consisted in recognizing that any means was admissible if it led to the desired end. Yes, Ulyanov was no admirer of clerical or Kantian morals, which are allegedly supposed to regulate our lives from celestial heights. His purposes were so great and so far above personal considerations that he openly subordinated his moral criteria to them. He regarded with an ironic indifference, if not with disgust, those cowards and hypocrites who concealed the pettiness of their goals or the shabbiness of their methods behind high principles, which though absolute in theory are quite flexible in practice.

And then Vodovozov suddenly qualifies his statement: ‘I do not know of any specific facts that prove Lenin’s amoralism.’ However, after digging in his memory, he does recall that his sensitive conscience 'was struck by the fact that Lenin was inclined to encourage gossip’. Let us bend down and listen to the accuser. Once, in a small group, Vodovozov said that Ulyanov did not hesitate to use arguments he knew to be false, ‘so long as they lead … to success with poorly informed audiences’. It turns out, however, that Vodovozov himself ‘attached no importance’ to his own accusation, and soon went to visit the Ulyanovs as though nothing were wrong. However, Vladimir, having heard about the insulting remark from one of his friends, demanded that his guest explain himself. In replying, Vodovozov 'tried to tone down his language’. The conversation led to a formal reconciliation, but by the spring of 1892 their relations had deteriorated so far that they almost stopped seeing each other.

Banal as it is, this incident is truly remarkable. The moralist accuses the amoralist, behind the latter’s back, of deliberately using false arguments. After that, ‘attaching no importance’ to his own insinuation, he goes to pay a friendly visit to the man he has slandered. The amoralist, who is in the habit of attaching importance to what he says, openly demands an explanation. The moralist, with his back to the wall, tries to evade the issue, retreats, and then retracts his own words. On the basis of Vodovozov’s own report, one cannot but reach the conclusion that the moralist’s actions make him look very much like a none-too-courageous gossip, whereas the amoralist’s conduct demonstrates in him precisely the absence of any inclination ‘to encourage gossip’. Let us also add that Vodovozov himself refuted the substance of his accusation that Ulyanov used arguments he knew to be false: writing about Ulyanov in another connection, he stated that ‘a deep conviction that he was right was felt in all his speeches.’ Let us remember this entire incident: it will serve us well as the key to the many conflicts in which hypocrites accused the revolutionary of lack of moral scruples.

No letters by or about Vladimir, nor any other human-interest stories, have been preserved from the Samara period. The opinions of both friends and foes are all stated in retrospect and have inevitably been coloured by the powerful influence of the Soviet period. Nevertheless, whether taken together or juxtaposed, they often allow us to restore Lenin at least partly as he was at the dawn of his revolutionary career.

First of all, it should be noted that Vladimir Ulyanov bore no resemblance at all to the classic type of Russian nihilist encountered not only in reactionary novels but occasionally in real life as well – with a wild shock of unkempt hair, untidy clothes, and a gnarled walking stick. ‘His hairline had already begun to recede quite a bit’, as Semyonov recalls. There was nothing startling or defiant either in his clothing or in his manners. Sergievsky, who belongs to roughly the same Marxist generation, gives an interesting description of Vladimir at the end of the Samara period:

'… a modest man, neatly and, as they say, properly but unpretentiously dressed, with nothing about him to attract the attention of the man in the street. This protective coloration appealed to me… I did not notice at the time the sly expression which later, after deportation, attracted my attention… He seemed careful, looking around keenly, observant, calm, restrained, despite the temperamental nature I was already familiar with from his letters…'

In passing, Semyonov offers a vignette of the mores of Samara’s radical youth. Upon arriving in Sklyarenko’s apartment, Ulyanov would stretch out on the bed, ‘first putting a newspaper under his feet’, and start listening to the conversations around the samovar. Someone’s opinion would make him raise his voice. ‘Nonsense’ came the voice from the bed, and then a systematic refutation would ensue. The unpraiseworthy habit of sitting or lying down on someone else’s bed was common among young people and stemmed both from simplicity of manners and from the shortage of chairs. If anything distinguished Vladimir from the others it was the fact that he put a newspaper under his feet The abruptness of his remarks reflected the irreconcilability of his opposition, and served as a means of forcing his opponent to show his true colours.

In these talks around the samovar or in a rowboat on the Volga, Ulyanov, after having thoroughly studied Engels’ Anti-Dühring, that polemical encyclopedia of Marxism, tirelessly cleansed metaphysical values out of young minds. Justice? A myth to conceal that might is right. Absolute principles? Morality is the servant of material interests. State power? The executive committee of the exploiters. Revolution? Be kind enough to specify, bourgeois revolution. It is in these and similar pronouncements, which shattered the fine porcelain of idealism, that we must, apparently, seek the key to Ulyanov’s early reputation as an ‘amoralist’. The listeners, who had been taught otherwise at school, were amazed and tried to protest. That was all the young athlete needed. ‘Sophistry?’ ‘Paradoxes?’ Friendly blows rained right and left. The opponent, taken by surprise, might grow silent, occasionally even forgetting to shut his mouth, then look for the books cited by Ulyanov, and later still he might even declare himself to be a Marxist.

In his debates with the Jacobins and members of People’s Will, Vladimir, a star in the growing Marxist clan, used the Socratic method. ‘All right, you have seized power, and what comes then?’ he would ask his opponent. ‘Decrees!’ ‘And who would be your support?’ ‘The people!’ ‘And who are the “people”?’ This would be followed by an analysis of class contradictions. By the end of the Samara period, a manuscript by Ulyanov was circulating among the young. It was entitled A Dispute Between a Social Democrat and a Populist, and most likely was a summary of Samara disputes presented in dialogue form. Unfortunately, the paper has been lost.

Vladimir argued passionately – he did everything with passion – but not indiscriminately and not without forethought. He was in no hurry to enter the fray, did not interrupt, did not try to outshout the others, but allowed his opponent to have his say even when he was shaking with indignation, noted carefully the weaknesses in his opponent’s arguments, and then rushed magnificently into a headlong attack. But even in the fiercest blows dealt out by the young polemicist, there was nothing personal. He attacked ideas or the unscrupulous use of ideas; he hit the person only indirectly. It was now the opponent’s turn to be silent. While not interrupting others, Vladimir did not allow them to interrupt him. As in a game of chess he never retracted any moves or allowed others to do so.

Maria Ulyanova’s remark that Vladimir’s shyness was a family trait seems strange. This lack of psychological insight, which is apparent in much of the younger sister’s testimony, calls for caution, the more so since it was natural for her to try to find in Lenin as many ‘family’ traits as possible. True, the photograph of 1890, with which we are already familiar, does seem to hint at a conflict between shyness and a self-assurance as yet not fully developed. It looks as though the young man felt awkward in the presence of a photographer or had unwillingly given In to him, just as thirty years later Lenin was to feel shy about dictating his letters and articles to a stenographer. If this is ‘shyness’, it certainly does not imply either a sense of weakness or excessive sensitivity; it conceals strength. Its purpose is to protect his inner world from overly close contacts and unwanted intimacy.

A trait that is called by the same name may, in different members of the family, not only vary greatly but become its own opposite. The shyness of Alexander, noted by all those close to him, is quite in line with his generally self-contained and reticent personality. Alexander was certainly embarrassed by his superiority when he was aware of it. But this is the very trait that separated him from his younger brother, who, without hesitation, let it become apparent that he was bigger than others. It could even be said that Vladimir’s aggressive turn of mind, being fully subordinated to ideas and free of any personal vanity, in a sense freed him from the restraints of shyness. In any event, even if he did sometimes, particularly in his youth, feel the constraint of embarrassment, it was not for himself but for others – because of their banal interests, their vulgar jokes, and sometimes because, of their stupidity. Samoilov has shown us Vladimir surrounded by strangers: ‘He spoke little, but this apparently was not at all because he felt ill at ease in unfamiliar surroundings.’ On the contrary, his presence put others on their guard; people inclined to take too many liberties began to behave with a degree of caution, if not timidity.

The elder sister told us earlier that Alexander’s comrades restrained themselves in his presence, and that they 'were embarrassed to talk nonsense in front of him, looked to him, and awaited his verdict’. Different as the brothers’ personalities were, in this respect Vladimir acted toward others ‘like Sasha’: he forced them to rise above themselves. Semyonov writes that ‘even in his youth, Vladimir Ilyich was alien to any kind of bohemianism … and in his presence all of us who comprised Sklyarenko’s group seemed to pull ourselves together … ; idle chatter and coarse joking were out of the question in his presence.’ What invaluable testimony! Vladimir was capable of using a down-to-earth expression in the heat of debate or in a description of an enemy, but he did not tolerate in himself the vulgar hints, trivial jokes, or dirty stories that are so common among young men. This was not because he adhered to any rules of asceticism – this, ‘amoralist’ did not need the threat of the transcendent whip – nor was it because by nature he was indifferent to other than the political side of life. No, nothing human was alien to him. True, we have no stories whatsoever about young Ulyanov’s attitude toward women. There probably were courtships and infatuations: otherwise he would hardly have sung of beautiful eyes, even if his emotion was masked by irony. But even without knowing the details, one can say with assurance that young Vladimir’s pure attitude toward women remained unchanged for the rest of his life. It was not because of a cold disposition that his spiritual make-up had an almost Spartan tinge. On the contrary, passion was the basis of his nature. But it was supplemented by – I find it difficult to think of another word – chastity. The natural merger or these two elements, passion and chastity, precludes any idea of immorality or impropriety. Vladimir had no need of any moral shackles in order to rise above others: his inborn revulsion from vulgarity and triviality sufficed.

It is also Vodovozov who attests that in the Samara Marxist group Vladimir was ‘an unquestioned authority – they almost idolized him, just as his family did’, even though some were older than he. ‘His authority in the group was beyond question’, Semyonov agrees. Lalayants wrote that Ulyanov, whom he met a year after the incident with Vodovozov, won him over at once. ‘This man of twenty-three was a most remarkable combination of simplicity, sensitivity, love of life, and enthusiasm on the one hand, and of firm and profound knowledge and merciless logical consistency … on the other.’ After their very first meeting, Lalayants was glad that he had chosen Samara as his place of residence while under police surveillance.

To elicit such contradictory impressions is a privilege of the elect. It is unlikely that even in his youth Ulyanov was inclined to complain of other people’s partiality. The emotions he aroused were too much like inductive currents flowing from his own partiality. To him, a person was not an end in himself, but a tool. ‘In his dealings with people,’ Semyonov writes, ‘sharp differences were readily discerned. With comrades whom he believed shared his views he argued gently, with good-natured joking …, but if he decided that his opponent represented another ideology … his polemical fire was merciless. He hit the opponent where it hurt most and was very free in his choice of expressions.’ This observation by a companion of his youth is of paramount importance for the understanding of Lenin.

His ‘partial’, since utilitarian, approach to people flowed from the deepest sources of his nature, which were wholly directed toward a transformation of the external world. Even if there was some calculation in this – and there certainly was, and, as time went on, it became more far-sighted and sophisticated – it could not be separated from true feeling. Lenin very easily ‘fell in love’ with people when they showed him their valuable and important features. But he was not to be won over by any personal qualities in the case of an enemy. His attitude toward the same people changed radically, depending on whether at a given moment they were on his side or against him. In such ‘falling in love’ and in the period of hostility that succeeded it, there was not a trace of superficiality, whim, or vanity. His code of justice was the laws of struggle. It is for that reason that one often finds startling contradictions even in his published comments on different people,' and yet in all these contradictions Lenin remained true to himself.

Individualist gentlemen proclaim that personality is an end in itself, but this does not prevent them in practice from being guided by their tastes in their attitudes toward people, if not indeed by the state of their liver. The great historical task to which our ‘amoralist’ dedicated himself ennobled his attitude toward people; in practice, he applied to them the same yardstick he applied to himself. Partiality dictated by the interests of the cause became, in the last analysis, the highest kind of impartiality, and this rare quality – truly an attribute of a leader – imparted to Lenin an extraordinary authoritativeness even during his youth.

Semyonov, who was perhaps three years older than Vladimir, once remarked in a general talk about himself and his friends that they had little understanding of Marxism, because they were not sufficiently familiar with history and bourgeois economy. Vladimir replied briefly and sternly: ‘If you are poor at that, you are poor at everything – you must study.. When it came to major questions, this simple and cheerful youth spoke as one who wielded power. And the others fell silent, anxiously searching their souls.

This same Semyonov reports with what assurance and firmness Vladimir refuted unconvincing arguments advanced by his brother-in-law Yelizarov, who tried to lend his support in a dispute with Vodovozov. No, he was not shy! It should be borne in mind, moreover, that both Yelizarov, who idolized Vladimir, and Vodovozov, who took a dislike to him, were six years older than he, if not more. When it came to revolutionary ideas, Vladimir did not recognize friendship or kinship, let alone respect for age.

According to Vodovozov, at the age of twenty-two Ulyanov gave the impression of a ‘politically fully formed and mature person’. Semyonov, for his part, writes; ‘Even then Vladimir Ilyich already seemed a man whose views were completely formed, and who conducted himself at group gatherings … with assurance and complete independence.’ The future economist of the Menshevik Party, P. P. Maslov, then a university student, heard from visitors who came to see him in a village of Ufa gubernia, where he was being held under police surveillance, that there lived in Samara a certain Vladimir Ulyanov, who ‘also takes an interest’ in economic questions and who is, moreover, ‘a person of outstanding intelligence and erudition’. On reading a manuscript sent to him by Ulyanov – in those days Russian Marxism did not yet have access to a printing press – Maslov was particularly struck by ‘the categorical and definite formulation of his basic ideas, indicative of a man with fully formed views’.

Even during the Samara period, the term ‘old man’, which in the future was to become Lenin’s nickname, begins in some strange way to be associated with the figure of the young Vladimir. And yet neither in his youth nor until the end of his life was there anything about him that smacked of old age, except, perhaps, his baldness. What was impressive about the young man was the maturity of his thought, the balance of his intellectual forces, the sureness of his attack, ‘Of course,’ says Vodovozov, ‘ I did not foresee the part he was destined to play, but even then I was convinced, and said so openly, that Ulyanov’s role would be a major one.’

The heretical doctrine had in the meantime succeeded in winning over adherents in the groups of Samara youth and received something approaching official recognition in radical circles. Populism, which continued as the dominant political tendency, had to give it a little room. Social Democratic propaganda among students was conducted chiefly by Sklyarenko, a gifted but rather restless youth. In March of 1893, Lalayants, a Kazan University student and former comrade of Fedoseyev, arrived in Samara. He was sent there to reside under police surveillance. Almost immediately, Lalayants struck up a close friendship with Ulyanov and Sklyarenko. The three comprised – true, only for a few months – Samara’s Marxist general staff, Vladimir took no part in propaganda work. Lalayants states outright: ‘In Samara, at least during my stay there, he did not join any circles and did not conduct any courses in them.’ The general direction, on the other hand, was decidedly in his hands. The troika met frequently: now in Sklyarenko’s apartment, now in one of the Samara beer halls, of which Sklyarenko was overly fond. Ulyanov told his friends about his writings and learned from them about the latest events in the Samara circles. Theoretical disputes frequently broke out among them, but even then it was turning out that Ulyanov had the last word. In the summer, Sklyarenko would pay visits to Alakayevka, where everyone liked him because of his gregariousness and cheerful disposition, and where he would gather a supply of new ideas to take back to seminary students and girls in the Nursing School. Both Sklyarenko and Lalayants subsequently became prominent Bolsheviks. By this time Vladimir had also definitely succeeded in winning over Preobrazhensky, the one-time organizer of a farming commune, with whom he frequently, while engrossed in impassioned debate, paced off the nearly mile-long distance between their two villages. Preobrazhensky was later active in Samara’s Social Democratic organization, and many years later, under the Soviet regime, he was in charge of Gorki – that same estate where the leader of Soviet Russia rested, became ill, and died. In general, contacts formed in his youth occupied an important place in Lenin’s life.

From provincial life on the Volga, Vladimir extracted everything it had to offer. Toward the end of the winter of 1892-3, according to Yelizarova, ‘he was sometimes quite bored, eager to go to some livelier city…’ But since it made little sense to leave Alakayevka during the summer, his departure was postponed until the autumn. At this time, his younger brother was about to graduate from high school and was planning to enter Moscow University, Maria Alexandrovna intended to follow Dimitri and move to Moscow, just as she had moved to Kazan six years earlier to follow Vladimir, The time had come to leave his family. St Petersburg, the most European of Russian cities, attracted Vladimir far more than did Moscow, which was then ‘a big village’. Moreover, by living apart from his family he ran less risk of having his revolutionary work cast a shadow over his brother and sisters.

The last months in Samara and Alakayevka were filled with active preparations for the departure. Vladimir summarized books and articles, grouped together his most important conclusions, drafted polemical studies. He checked, polished, and sharpened the weapons he would soon have to put to active use. The critical movement in the minds of the intelligentsia, like the more profound movement in the industrial areas, required a doctrine, a programme, an instructor. The wheel of Russian history began to turn faster. The time had come to say good-bye to Samara, to Alakayevka, and to the avenue of linden trees. Vladimir Ulyanov left his provincial hide-out to find himself standing head and shoulders above his generation as soon as he appeared in the arena of the capital.

It is thus, between his brother’s execution and the move to St Petersburg, in these simultaneously short and long six years of stubborn work, that the future Lenin was formed. He was still to make great strides forward, not only externally but internally; several clearly delineated stages can be seen in his later development. But all the fundamental features of his personality, his outlook on life, and his mode of action were already formed during the interval between the seventeenth and twenty-third years of his life.