atrociously barbarous in the world. There is on earth no parallel example of a polite society so degraded, a people so crushed, an official system so unscrupulous.”{65}
When White made this statement, the population of Russia was slightly over 70,000,000. Of these, 46,000,000 were in virtual captivity as serfs.
It will be recalled that Marx and Engels had been aroused to wrathful vehemence when they saw conditions among the industrial workers of England, but the status of life among the English was far above that of the peasants in Russia. The Russian serfs were not only starved, exploited and pauperized, but they were subjected to an iron-clad system of feudal political suppression. Always there was the plague of the secret police, the threat of arrest and sentencing to forced labor camps in Siberia and the cruel indecencies imposed upon them by the Tsar’s everpresent military. A Russian serf seemed to enjoy no sacred immunities whatever, neither in his person, his possessions, his children, nor, sometimes, his wife. All were subject to the petty whims of grasping officials in the Tsar’s corrupt bureaucracy.
Between 1861 and 1866, Tsar Alexander II sincerely attempted to do away with the institution of serfdom by approving several acts of emancipation. However, for all practical purposes, the impoverished lives of the peasants continued to be insecure, harsh and austere. Circumstances leading to a revolution were in the making.
Marxism came to Russia in 1868 when Bakunin’s translation of
Russian revolutionary movements soon began to take shape and by 1880 Marxism could be described as definitely taking hold. The first significant violence came in 1881 when Tsar Alexander II fell dying beneath the shattering impact of a bomb which was hurled into the royal carriage by Ignatius Grinevitsky, a member of a revolutionary group called “The People’s Will.”
The successful murder of the Tsar led many Marxists to feel that the hour for unrestricted revolution might be very near. Over in London, the aging Marx began receiving inquiries from his Russian disciples. They wanted to know whether or not it might be possible to have a revolution in Russia even though the Russian economy had never passed through the capitalistic development which Marx had always said was a prerequisite. Marx studied the problem diligently. Finally, he gave it as his opinion that Russia had “the rarest and most suitable opportunity ever offered to any country to avoid (skip) the phase of capitalistic development.” In other words, Marx was suggesting the possibility of an early revolution in Russia.
This was a complete theoretical switch for Marx. He was also admitting the error of one of his earlier prophecies; namely, that the revolution would come first among highly developed capitalistic nations such as Germany and England. Among his friends he declared: “It is an irony of fate that the Russians, whom I have fought for twenty-five years, and not only in German (publications), but in French and English, have always been my patrons.”
It was indeed ironical that the Russian Marxists had remained loyal to Marx and his theories in spite of the verbal and editorial abuse he had heaped upon them. This was never truer than in the case of Bakunin, the first Russian Marxist, who promoted the theories of Marx and Engels with such zeal, that they both feared he might take over the First International. They, therefore, marked him for political liquidation.
Even at the end, however, Bakunin reaffirmed his faith in Marxism, and after referring to the “furious hatred” of Marx toward himself, he concluded: “This has given me an intense loathing of public life. I have bad enough of it, and after devoting all my days to the struggle, I am weary…. Let other and younger persons put their hands to the work. For my own part, I no longer feel strong enough…. I therefore, withdraw from the arena, and ask only one thing of my dear contemporaries—oblivion.”
In 1876 Bakunin laid down the burden of his life, but the “younger persons” to whom he bequeathed Marxism and the Russian people’s revolution were already commencing to make their appearance among men.
In 1870, Nikolai Lenin was born, and in the year 1879, there arrived on earth both Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. Others would come, but these three were to be the principal leaders in carrying forward the traditions of Bakunin and at the same time doing for Marx what he was never able to do for himself; these three would convulse a great nation in a revolution and would serve as midwives at the birth of the world’s first Communist dictatorship.
The Early Life of Nikolai (V.I.) Lenin
Marx would hardly have guessed that the first Communist dictator would be a man like Lenin, who was born on April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, on the Volga. His father was a Councilor of State with a hereditary title of nobility while his mother was a German of the Lutheran faith. Lenin had red hair, high cheek bones, and the slanting eyes of his Tartar ancestors from Astrakhan.
Originally, Lenin was named Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, but “Nikolai Lenin” is the revolutionary pseudonym under which he became famous. As a boy he had strict training under a father who was called a “liberal” even though he was a Councilor of State. His father was a man of humanitarian ideals who worked himself to death setting up four-hundred and fifty primary schools during a period of seventeen years. Lenin was fifteen when his father died, and soon afterwards an even greater tragedy struck the family—his older brother was hanged.
This brother, named Alexander, was nearing twenty-one. He had lost his religious faith some time before and had become deeply impressed with the philosophy of materialism. He had also come to feel the need for direct and decisive action in getting social reforms in Russia.
While attending the University at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), Alexander agreed with several associates to construct a bomb which could be used to kill Tsar Alexander III. The bomb was built inside a bogus medical dictionary and consisted of dynamite and strychnine-treated bullets. The police discovered the assassination plot just before it was to have been executed and the entire group was summarily arrested. Trials and convictions soon followed, and in May, 1887, the St. Petersburg papers announced that Lenin’s older brother had gone to the gallows.
When the excitement subsided, Lenin, who had just turned 17, went back to reading Marx and other revolutionary writers in deadly earnest. Like his brother, Lenin had lost his religious faith two or three years before and was becoming reconciled to the cynicism of the Marxist interpretation of life. Furthermore, the death of his brother accelerated his determination to become an active revolutionist as soon as possible.
To give himself some kind of professional status, Lenin made an intensive study of law. Through the intercession of his mother, he was allowed to take his final examinations at the Univerity in St. Petersburg and came out first among one hundred and twenty-four students. Lenin then attempted to practice law, but for some reason lost nearly all his cases and, therefore, abandoned the law and never returned to it.
In 1891-92 the Russian famine and cholera epidemic broke out. Lenin was living in a region where Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer and philanthropist, was trying to sustain the courage of the people by organizing hundreds of soup kitchens and distributing seed-grain and horses to the impoverished peasants. But Lenin would have none of it. He would not help set up soup-kitchens nor join a relief committee. Later he was accused of welcoming the famine as a means of accentuating the suffering of the people and firing up their revolutionary will to act. There is no doubt that during these years the Marxist program was ram-rodding Lenin’s thinking into that of an uncompromising revolutionist.
Shortly after this, Lenin took up residence in St. Petersburg. He was now twenty-three and anxious to begin active revolutionary work. He therefore joined the “Fighting Union for the Liberation of the Working Class.” However, in 1895 Lenin learned that he had tuberculosis of the stomach. This made it necessary for him to go to
