Spies and Commissars

reaction: ‘I went to Russia a communist, but contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.’⁷⁴ Russell had done his homework and peppered his conversation with Lenin with awkward questions. He interpreted Bolshevism as a secular religion. About Lenin he reported:

I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty, courage, and unwavering faith — religious faith in the Marxian gospel, which takes the place of the Christian martyr’s hopes of Paradise, except that it is less egotistical. He has as little love of liberty as the Christians who suffered under Diocletian, and retaliated when they acquired power. Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with wholehearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the sceptical temper of the Western world.⁷⁵

Russell refused to exercise any toleration of intolerance. He also turned on the Western socialists who suppressed mention of what they saw with their own eyes on trips to Moscow. Communist harshness, he argued, could not be explained away by the military intervention of Britain and France. Although war and blockade had undoubtedly made things worse, the fundamental cause lay in the doctrines of the Bolshevik leaders.

Nonetheless Russell’s hostile testimony was inconsistent with some of his private comments. He wrote to his friend Ottoline Morrell from Stockholm:

I was stifled and oppressed by the weight of the machine as by a cope of lead. Yet I think it the right government for Russia at this moment. If you ask yourself how Dostoevsky’s characters should be governed, you will understand. Yet it is terrible. They are a nation of artists, down to the simplest peasant; the aim of the Bolsheviks is to make them industrial and as Yankee as possible. Imagine yourself governed by a mixture of Sidney Webb and [British Ambassador to Washington] Rufus Isaacs, and you will have a picture of modern Russia.⁷⁶

Whereas The Theory and Practice of Bolshevism was a work of lasting value, Russell was tempted into silliness when corresponding with his clever London friends; and his prescription for the ‘nation of artists’ was condescending at best, callous at worst. His mistress Dora Black, soon to be his second wife, was even sillier. She had always given intellectual approval to the Soviet order and did not modify her ideas when she subsequently made her own trip to Russia — Russell had refused to take her with him. Black enjoyed shocking him by saying that ‘she liked Russia just about as much as [he] had hated it’. She scoffed at his opinions as ‘bourgeois and senile and sentimental’.⁷⁷

The disagreement between the future spouses was a microcosm of the debates about Soviet Russia on the political left. Quite apart from out-and-out communists, the Bolsheviks had many admirers — and the degrees of approval varied from individual to individual. But there were also plenty of detractors who saw very clearly that the communist revolutionary project could bring the entire labour movement into disrepute. However many delegations went to Moscow, the disagreement was likely to remain.

27. THE SPREADING OF COMINTERN

The British Labour delegation had been remarkably incurious about global revolution in their talks with Soviet leaders. Whether out of naivety or politeness, they barely mentioned Comintern and its activities abroad. Although Ethel Snowden knew that Lenin had a ‘great interest’ in insurrections around the globe, she still did not discuss this with him when she had the chance. In Moscow she gained the impression that Comintern was a pretty feeble organization, and she claimed that this was how Russian communist acquaintances felt. They had told her that the policy of excluding weak or wavering groups on the European political far left ‘would so restrict [Comintern’s] members that it could not become effective as it is’.¹ And with that, Mrs Snowden moved on to topics closer to her heart. Most fellow members of the Labour delegation did not even mention Comintern in their reports. This obviously made it easy for Soviet leaders to sidestep the topic. Whereas they had endlessly asked questions about Bolshevism in Russia, they failed to enquire about Bolshevik ambitions in Europe.

But those ambitions were very real and, since the First Comintern Congress in 1919, Comintern had been the main agency used to realize them. There was indeed no other option while the Red Army and Cheka were tied down in the Civil War. Funds were disbursed to find zealots in every country who would split with the socialists and social-democrats and set up a communist organization. World revolution was an openly stated objective. The Kremlin was in charge from the start and knocked back the objections of Hugo Eberlein, the Spartacist delegate, who did not see why the Russians should boss everyone around. Eberlein objected to the March 1919 gathering calling itself a formally constituted congress. He thought that the cart was being put before the horse, arguing that the global map should be densely dotted with communist parties before any congress could take place.² Eberlein got nowhere; Lenin and his comrades simply reverted to tricks they had used before the Great War. They stuffed the ‘delegations’ with trusted foreigners, including several who were living permanently in Russia — Boris Reinstein was allowed to attend for the American Socialist Party and Khristo Rakovski for the Balkan Revolutionary Social-Democratic Federation. There were thirty-four voting delegates and the Bolsheviks had assured themselves a majority on all matters: Eberlein was the only person even to abstain in the vote for the formal proclamation of Comintern.

Even if Rosa Luxemburg had been present, it is far from certain that she could have successfully counteracted the psychological cunning of the Bolsheviks. The Congress delegates were taken to Petrograd to visit the places of communist glory in 1917. They went to the Finland Station where Lenin and Trotsky had arrived from abroad. They wandered the corridors of the Smolny Institute. They gazed at the Winter Palace. The effect was to dazzle them with the achievements of the Soviet order. The foreign delegates came away with the impression that the Bolsheviks were giants walking the earth. Bright applause greeted Lenin and Trotsky whenever they appeared. Lenin delivered the introductory report and offered ‘theses’ on bourgeois democracy and proletarian dictatorship. Bukharin supplied a ‘platform’ and Trotsky a ‘manifesto’. Trotsky also gave a spirited speech on the Red Army, praising the achievements of ‘socialist militarism’. (This kind of belligerence disconcerted Arthur Ransome but did not put an end to his admiration for Trotsky.) The official drafts and orations won a warm reception. Reports by foreign delegates on revolutionary possibilities abroad invariably supported the line marked out by the Bolshevik leaders, who got the Congress they had planned for.³

Lenin and Trotsky performed with a commendable display of modesty and humour, as exemplified by an incident on the last day of the proceedings. After the singing of the Internationale it was time for the official photographs, but Trotsky had stepped down from the stage. The photographer complained loudly till the People’s Commissar for Military Affairs returned. There was much merriment when someone joked that Soviet Russia had installed the Dictatorship of the Photographer.⁴

It was ultimately intended that Comintern would be run by its Executive Committee, but until everything was sorted out it was agreed to hand authority to ‘comrades of the country where the Executive Committee is’.⁵ The natural assumption was that either Trotsky or Lenin would chair the Comintern Executive Committee. But this was impractical since Trotsky needed to travel to the front lines of the Civil War and Lenin had onerous duties in Sovnarkom and the Politburo. It was decided to give the Comintern post to Zinoviev, which was something of a surprise since he had originally opposed the seizure of power in Petrograd in 1917. But Zinoviev had made up for this by showing solidarity with Lenin ever since. Although he ran the Petrograd administration, he was ambitious to prove himself on the international stage and there was no obviously better candidate among the Russians. He set about his new job by demanding lavish funding from the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow. His request was met, and when the Executive Committee met for the first time on 26 March 1919 Zinoviev announced that credit facilities to the value of one million rubles had been opened for Comintern.⁶ In May the budget was raised to three million.⁷ Despite the size of these sums, much of Comintern’s activity was carried out in the traditions of the pre-revolutionary political underground. When Lenin decided that a million pounds sterling had to be transferred to Zinoviev in Petrograd, the Party Central Committee Secretary Yelena Stasova physically took it by train from Moscow.⁸