Alexander Solschenizyn: Lenin in Zürich. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1980. 253 pp.
This book was originally written with two very particular audiences in mind, both of which have dwindled to the point where they have largely ceased to exist. The first was made up of intellectuals in the West who idealized Lenin and thought he had been betrayed by Stalin; the second consisted of average Soviet readers who had been subjected to decades of propaganda. Solzhenitsyn’s objective was to de-mythologize Lenin for both groups, and his chief method of doing so was to get the facts straight and remove the encrustations of fable that had grown up around him. The Lenin of this book would be neither all-wise, all-knowing, nor clairvoyant.
What Solzhenitsyn provides in this extensively researched work, then, is more of a character study than a novel in any traditional sense. And what is the character that emerges? His Lenin is hard-headed, free of illusions when it comes to matters of political power, though impractical when it comes to daily life – women’s work, in his eyes. He was susceptible to error. Though disdainful of Swiss socialists, he thought the revolution was more likely to break out in Switzerland, or even Sweden, than Russia – though he did not cling to his illusions once the truth became clear to him. He was an inveterate deviser of plots who kept the main goal – revolution – constantly in mind. A man without friends, one for whom others were chiefly valued for their usefulness. A revolutionary who wanted nothing more than to be given time alone so he could think, not by nature a man of action at all.
Lenin was energized by the outbreak of war in 1914 because he understood what it would necessarily bring about: the end of empires and the coming of revolution. The circumstance that Nicholas II had begun this war and that neither he nor Kerensky could end it was a gift for the Bolshevik leader. His slogan was: The world war must be transformed into a civil war. He understood that the best solution for the Romanovs – indeed, for whoever ruled in Russia – was a separate peace with Germany. He assumed (incorrectly) that the most powerful country – Germany – would inevitably win, and (correctly) that Russia’s defeat would lead to the end of the tsars. Achieving his goal of seizing power would mean dismembering the Russian empire, cutting loose Poland, Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine and the Caucasus. This was a price he was willing to pay.
But it would take four long years to get there. Impatient by nature, he was forced by circumstances to bide his time in Swiss exile, which was personally difficult for him; passing an hour in unproductive idleness was enough to make him physically ill. That’s why he spent day after day in the Zurich library, preparing himself intellectually for the coming upheavals.
Gripped as he was by revolutionary single-mindedness, he was disdainful of those who were less driven. He tended to treat people as instruments, and one could well call him manipulative, though always in the service of a higher cause, never for personal aggrandizement. One of his maxims was: The ability to drop people when no longer useful is the key to political success. Utterly lacking in sentimentality, he never forgot another’s mistake. His deepest resentment was directed less against the class enemy than those opportunists on his own side who failed to see the light as he saw it. The greatest tragedy of the 20th century was that such a man was able to seize power in such a country as Russia.
Though (as already stated) not by nature a man of action, he knew some secrets of leadership. Here are a few of the maxims he gleaned from years of experience:
- If something is hard, then take on an additional task that is even harder, and the first one will seem easier.
- The majority is always stupid – a leader cannot wait for them. A resolute minority must take decisive action – then it will become the majority.
- The moment when one is in greatest danger of losing one’s head is not the moment of failure but of success.
- Individual acts of terror are senseless – only mass terrorism is effective.
Though his overriding aim is to indict Lenin in his own words, in the end what Solzhenitsyn reveals is a resolute, if unscrupulous, schemer, one who made mistakes along the way and went down blind alleys, but when the moment came was uniquely ready to take decisive action, a man who would prove less blinded by wishful thinking than anyone else. The wheel of history began to turn with the outbreak of war in August 1914, but only Lenin was able to comprehend this fully; moreover, he was the only one who knew it could not be turned back.
Putting himself in the mind of Lenin could have turned into an opportunity for Solzhenitsyn to engage in mockery. But he wisely chose not to exaggerate his portrait, and strove rather for strict fidelity to the available sources. One could say that his goal was to reveal Lenin’s inhumane character from within, using not only his presumed point of view but his actual words wherever possible.
And Solzhenitsyn was uniquely qualified for this task. Illegal, underground agitation, undermining a state from within and later from foreign exile – these were just the kinds of things he knew first hand. Expelled from the USSR in 1974, he went to Zurich and later Vermont, where he gained access to new sources. The result was that these eleven chapters, originally intended as part of a larger book, eventually became one in their own right. But more was involved than just being able to access new libraries. One suspects he put some of his own experiences into Lenin’s mouth. As Solzhenitsyn revealed to Alexander Schmemann, an American Orthodox theologian who befriended him in the US, he himself was the novel’s Lenin. It took some courage to write such an unsparing self-portrait as this.
Do these chapters amount to a novel? Simon Karlinsky, the NY Times reviewer, said no, calling it a bunch of “disjointed chapters” that do not hang together. “It is as if someone had removed all the chapters in which Napoleon appears from Tolstoy’s War and Peace like so many raisins from a cake and then published them separately as Napoleon in Russia.” (NY Times, April 25, 1976) Is it history? A prose documentary? Certainly the amount of research Solzhenitsyn put into it is impressive. In my opinion, it’s really a character study rather awkwardly masquerading as a fragmentary historical novel.
The question of genre, though, is surely secondary. The key question is, does it hold together? I would argue that it doesn’t. While it has brilliant parts, particularly the final chapters leading up to Lenin’s departure, the earlier ones are weighted down by too much detail; the story has little forward momentum, and it’s overpopulated with minor historical figures. Perhaps it would have been better if the author had started with the months leading up to Lenin’s departure from Zurich, then used that epic journey through Germany as the centerpiece, ending with the train’s arrival in Petrograd. (In other words, the approach taken by Michael Pearson in The Sealed Train.) But that would have meant departing from the documentary record, which he was unwilling to do. The book fails as a novel about Lenin primarily because Solzhenitsyn never fully intended to write a novel at all. The urge to set the record straight, backed up with archival research, is not easily compatible with the drive to create fictional characters and situations, based on imagination.
The cast of characters is huge for such a short work. The focus is so relentlessly close to Lenin and his circle it puts demands on the reader to supply the wider context. That’s why the footnotes are so necessary. Solzhenitsyn was apparently more worried about being charged with having taken liberties with the historical record than anything else; clearly he was unconcerned about being accused of having written a novel which is heavy on conspiracy planning and short on action. In the context of this book, when Lenin doesn’t go to the library one day but instead hikes up to the top of the mountain overlooking Lake Zurich, it counts as a dramatic high point. One wonders if an adaptation for the stage might not be appropriate.
The end result is anything but an easy read, as it presumes a degree of familiarity with a cast of characters that few non-specialists are likely to have. Solzhenitsyn was writing for people who already know their Lenin pretty well, or think they do. Being familiar with Trotsky, Zinoviev and Radek in a general sort of way won’t cut it with this book, which is intended for those who don’t need to brush up on Parvus, Hanecki, and the Zimmerwald meeting. If ever a novel needed an index, it is this one. Of all these characters, the only ones who really come to life are Alexander Parvus, “the rhinoceros,” and the irrepressible Karl Radek, and he only plays a bit part. By the way, Radek was the subject of Stefan Heym’s last novel, which has not been translated into English; he also appears as a character in Döblin’s November 1918 (reviewed elsewhere on this site), the model of a successful novel based on historical events and featuring real people.
Index to German paperback edition
Abramowitsch, Alexander 149, 151, 169, 176, 227
Adler, Fritz 52, 227
—–, Victor 13, 28, 221, 227
Alakajewka 164, 221 n. 5
Alexinski, Grigorij 227
Alexandra Michailowna, Schwester Lenins 173
Armand, Inessa 22, 23f, 26f, 62, 71, 152, 161, 167, 177, 180, 182, 190f, 196, 217, 227
Avenarius, Richard 228
Axelrod, Pawel 194, 228
Bagocki, Sergej 113, 228
Bauer, Otto 228
Basarow (eig. Rudnew), Wladimir 228
Bebel, August 229
Bernstein, Eduard 229
Bethmann-Hollweg 187
Blanc, Louis 171, 201, 229
Block, Frau 53
Bogdanow (eig. Malinowski), Alexander 173, 222 n. 10, 229
Bontsch-Brujewitsch, Wladimir 229
Bosch, Jewgenija 56, 72, 173, 224 n. 28 & 29, 229f
Branting, Hjalmar 59, 154, 219, 230
Brillant (eig. Sokolnikow), Grigorij 149, 150, 230
Brockdorff-Rantzau, Ulrich Graf von 126, 128, 136, 137, 214, 230f
Bronski (Pseudonym Warzawski), Moissej 36, 42, 50, 89, 147, 151, 154, 179?, 231
Brüssel 27
Bucharin, Nikolai 72f, 92, 134, 152, 208, 218, 231
Büchner, Georg 156, 163
Burzew, Wladimir 101, 231f
Charitonow, Moissej 124, 232
Chapin 219
Clarens 71
Clausewitz 58f, 140, 223 n. 20 & 21
Dänemark 132, 137
Danton – s. Büchner
Dardanellen 127
Davos 201
Diamand, Hermann 13, 28, 232
Dogopolski 133
Dolina, Dora 89, 199
Elisaweta Wassiljewna – s. Krupskaja, Nadja (Mutter)
Enver Pascha 232
Estland 124
Frey – Alias für Lenin 60
Garin-Michailowski, Nikolai 15, 232
“Glocke” 131, 134, 137, 193, 199, 226 n. 46
Gogol 222 n. 7
Gorki 59, 93, 109, 191, 222 n. 10, 223 n. 22, 225 n. 43
Gottmadingen 216
Graber, Ernst Paul 232
Greulich, Hermann 36, 54, 72, 145, 148, 233
Grimm, Robert 28, 34, 36, 38, 40, 43, 54, 65, 73, 74, 85, 106f, 145, 148f, 150f, 162, 185, 200, 206, 208, 210, 233
Guilbeaux, Henri 233
Gutschkow, Alexander 171, 184, 192, 196, 233
Gwosdew, Kusma 174, 233
Haase, Hugo 233
Hanecki (eigl. Fürstenberg), Jakob 10, 12, wie ein Bruder 13, 15, 17, 24, 76, 89, 93, 94, 131, 132, 134, Entmilitarisierung von Russland 158, 170, 172, 173, 178, 190, 192, 199, 210, 218, 219, 220, 233f
Harden, Maximilian 251
Heinold 221 n. 4
Herzen, Alexander 234
Hilferding, Rudolf 234
Hoffmann, Arthur 200, 234
Huysmans, Camille 234
“Iskra” 91, 90f, 221 n. 1, 225 n. 38
Jagow, Gottlieb von 126, 136, 138, 235
Jakubowa, Apollinaria 66, 235
Janson 218
d. 9. Januar als Anfangsdatum der Revolution 129, 136, 140, 141, 225 n. 41
d. 22. Januar 168, 226 n. 48
Jaures, Jean 9, 235
Jekaterinoslaw 139
Jogiches – s. Tyszka
Jouhaux, Leon 235
Juden 93
“Kaiserin Maria” (Panzerschiff) 140
Kamenev (eig. Rosenfeld), Leo 179, 190, 235
Kamo (eigl. Ter-Petrosjan), Simon 16, 117, 236
Karleson, Dr. 219
Karpinski, Wjatscheslaw 16, 29, 180, 190, 236
Kautsky, Karl 16, 27, 59, 71, 82, 100, 154, 236
Kegelklub 145f
Kerenski, Alexander 171, 174, 176, 189, 201, 226 n. 53, 237
Kesküla, Alexander 58, 75, 123, 237
Kienthal 138, 223 n. 16
Klingsland, Fabian 134
“Koba” – s. Stalin
Koblenz 145f, 226 n. 51
Kocher, Theodor 28f, 237
Kollontai, Alexandra 79, 153, 171f, 173, 191, 237
“Kolokol” – s. “Glocke”
Konowalow, Alexander 15, 237
Kopenhagen 134, 137
Koslowski, Mieczyslaw 133, 135, 237f
Krakau 11, 13, 27
Krassin, Leonid 16, 19, 238
Krupskaja, Nadeschda (Nadja) Konstantinowa 11, 22, 28f, 66, 149, 152, 155, 160, 179, 217, 238
—–, Erinnerungen an Lenin 221 n. 4, 226 n. 54
—–, ihre Mutter 22, 27, 67
Kruse, Alfred 135, 238
Krylenko, Nikolai 182, 238f
“Kuba” – s. Hanecki
Lebedour, Georg 43, 239
Lenin, Maria Alexandrowna (Mutter) 67
Lenins Schriften 142, 204, 212, 221 n. 2 & 3, 223 n. 14 & 15, 223f, 224 n. 30, 224f, 226 n. 47 & 52
Agrarprogramm 191, 226 n. 56
Briefe aus der Ferne 190, 212, 226 n. 55
Entwicklung des Kapitalismus 62
Ein Schritt vorwärts, zwei Schritte zurück 45, 142
Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus 46, 55, 60, 70, 142
Die Stellung des Marxismus zum Staat 157
Was tun? 45
“Letopis” 59, 223 n. 22
Levi, Paul 149, 202, 239
Ljadow (eigl. Mandelstam), Martin 239
Liebknecht, Karl 17, 43, 239
Lindhagen, Bürgermeister von Stockholm 219
Litwinow (eigl. Wallach), Maxim 16, 75, 239
Longuet, Jean 240
Losowski (eigl. Drisdo), Solomon 240
Lunatcharski, Anatolij 156, 190f, 208, 222 n. 10, 240
Lundhagen, Bürgermeister 219
Luxemburg, Rosa 17, 74, 241
Lwow, Fürst Georgij 201, 241
Mach, Ernst 222 n. 10, 241
Malinowski, Roman 18, 75, 173, 191, 235, 241
Mamontow, Sawwa 15, 242
Manilow 17
Manuilski, Dmitrij 242
Marat 162
Martow, Leo (eig. Julij Zederbaum) 9, 16, 19, 185, 200, 210, 242
Menschinski, Wjatscheslaw 242
Michael Alexandrowitsch, Großfürst 178, 242
Miljukow, Pawel 171, 182, 184, 194, 224 n. 32, 243
Mimiola, Giuglio 35, 44, 49, 243
Moissej – s. Bronski?
Moor, Carl 114, 174, 243
Morosow, Sawwa 15, 243
Münzenberg, Willi 35, 38, 39, 44, 49, 50, 53, 146, 148, 149, 151, 199, 206, 243
Nadja – s. Krupskaja
Naine, Charles 148f, 243f
Natanson, Mark 200, 244
Nikolajew 139
Nikolaus II. 81, 137, 156, 171, 172, 178
Nobs, Ernst, aus Winterthur 34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 52, 53, 148, 149, 151, 244
Nossar (eig. Chrustalew-Nossar), G.S. 96, 244
Nowy Targ 10f, 161
Odessa 135
Pannekoek, Anton 244
Pariser Kommune 168, 175, 176
Parvus (eig. Helphand), Israel 17 “Nilpferdhirn”, 89ff, “der Kleine” 92, 93, “Rivale” 94, “Falstaff” 101, 103, 106, 109, 121-131, 132ff, “Nilpferd” 143, 168,179, 192, 195ff, 206, 220, 225 n. 42, 234, 244f
—– Eindrücke von einer Reise durch das hungernde Rußland 94
—– In der russischen Bastille 109, 118, 226 n. 45
Petrow/Petrowa – Pseudonyme f. Lenin, Inessa 24
Pjatakow, Georgij 72, 92, 173, 224 n. 28 & 29, 245
Planitz 216
Platten, Fritz 35, 36ff, 41, 46, 48, 49, 52, 147, 148, 149, 150f, 199, 158, 203, 206, 211, 215, 218, 245
Plechanow, Georgij “Wolgin” 16, 61, 246
Poronin 14
“Potemkin” (Panzerkreuzer) 225 n. 42
Potressow, Alexander 62, 246
Pressemane, Adrien 246
Pugatschow, Jemeljan 247
“Punduk” – s. Sklarz
Putilow-Werke 135, 139, 142
Radek (eig. Sobelsohn), Karl 35, 36ff, 42, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 66, 74, 80, 149f, 150ff, 152, 201, 205, 217f, 215, 234, 247
Rakowski, Christo 99, 247
Rasin, Stepan 248
Rawitsch, Sara 16, 194, 217, 248
Rjasanow (eig. Goldenbach), David 99, 248
Rojkow, Nikolai 248
Roland Holst-van der Schalk, Henrietta 248
Rolland, Romain 207, 248
Romanowitsch 133
Romberg, Gisbert Freiherr von 123, 174, 185, 186f, 193, 199, 203, 211, 214, 248
Safarow, Georgij 39, 194, 217, 248f
Saßnitz 216, 218
Schaffhausen 217
Schingarew, Andrej 171, 249
Schklowski, Grigorij 152, 165, 249f
Schljapnikow, Alexander 59, 74, 75, 92, 124, 134, 141, 176, 179, 249f
Schmid, Jacques 40, 250
Schmidt, Nikolai 16, 250
Schüler, Gesandtschaftsattaché 216
Schwede, taubstummer 178, 226 n. 54
Semaschko, Nikolai 16, 28, 250
Semljatschtka (eig. Samoilowa), Rosalie 55, 250
Siefeldt, Arthur 99, 124, 179, 250
Sinowjew (eig. Hirsch Apfelbaum bzw. Radmylski), Grigorij 12, 74, 76, 83, 149, “Grishka” 152, 184f, 194f, 250
Sklarz, Georg 88f, 171, 179, 132f, 194f, 201, 206
Smidowitsch, I. G. (genannt Dimka) 53, 251
Stalin 16, 76, 237
Stockholm 129f, 219
Stolypin, Pjotr 182, 251
Stumm, Unterstaatssekr. von 187, 214
Stüssi, Bürgermeister 50 (Statue in der Fontäne)
Sumenson, Yevgenija 134
Trelleborg (Schiff) 216, 218f
Trotzki (eig. Bronstein), Leo 39, 74, 81, 94, 96, 97, 101, 112, 143, 156, 166, 168, 224 n. 33, 225 n. 40, 252
Tschcheidse, Nikolai 172, 174, 189, 190, 252
Tschernomasow, Miron 191
Tschudnowski, Grigorij 131, 252
Tula 139
Tyszka (auch Tischko), Jan (eig. Leon Jogiches) 74, 252
Ukrain 127, 179, 225 n. 44
Uljanowa, Anna, verehel. Jelisarowa, Schwester Lenins 252f
Urizki, Moissej 131, 135, 253
Ussijewitsch, Grigorij 152, 190, 253
Valentinow, Nikolai (eig. Nikolai Wolski) 253
Vandervelde, Emile 253
Voltaire, Kabarett in Zürich 50
Weiss (eig. Zivin), Eugen 113, 174, 178, 185, 187, 193, 253
Wilhelm II. 112
“Willi” – s. Münzenberg
“Wolgin” – s. Plechanow
Zetkin, Clara 17, 110, 253
Zimmermann, Arthur 138, 186
Zimmerwald 138, 153f, 200, 223 n. 16 & 19
Zinka, Lilina 38
Zivin-Weiss – s. Weiss
Zürn 214
Zwingli 58
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