Comrade Nicholas.
Historians are familiar with the fact that the Russian secret police Okhrana was very fond of infiltrating all sorts of political movements and organizations, as a means of keeping Russian political life under control. Some of the worst acts of political violence were directly committed or treacherously provoked by Czarist government agents. The name of Yevno Fishelevich Azef, Russia’s one-time terrorist-in-chief, and also the notorious police agent of note, is by no means the only one that comes to mind. Roman Malinovsky, leader of the Bolshevik faction in the Russian Parliament Duma was yet another Okhrana stooge. The police were always on the prowl for valuable recruits, and their recruitment techniques were constantly diversified and refined.
After the hanging of Alexander Ulyanov, they (naturally) started looking very closely at the Ulyanov family. Can you find a better undercover agent than a close relative of a revolutionary martyr? Vladimir filled the bill very nicely. Age 17, on the doorstep of college, very ambitious, and very vulnerable. The circumstances of his recruitment and all of his subsequent relationship with the police were dutifully recorded in his police file, which in 1917 fell into the hands of the Provisional Government of Russia, formed after the abolition of the monarchy. Incredibly, it was Prime Minister Kerensky’s decision not to use this explosive file against Lenin during the shaky interregnum of 1917, for reasons I will reveal in a later entry… After the Bolsheviks came to power, the file was destroyed.
And so, the young Vladimir Ulyanov was approached by the secret police, and immediately proved that he had the stuff to go far, by picking up the challenge.
Coming out of high school, the brooding boy was facing the dilemma of how to channel his colossal natural drive. Because of the scandal surrounding his family after Alexander Ulyanov’s execution, saying no to the police effectively meant saying no to college. And, of course, without college there could be no meaningful life for an aspiring young intellectual. The police made him an offer he could not refuse.
Vladimir would never regret his decision. Surely he was being used! But in this relationship he was certain to come out the much greater user. They wanted him to be a revolutionary? Splendid! Such a career was the dream of every young man, and with the help of the secret police, he would not have to start from scratch, working his way up through the ranks. His brother’s name would be of help at the bottom, of course: those senior revolutionaries would just love to patronize a dead legend’s kid brother. But Vladimir’s desire was not to be patted on the head, but to go all the way straight to the top, and it was pretty crowded and ugly up there. To get to the top, he would be helped by the Okhrana infinitely more than by a dead brother!
…That very fall of 1887 he entered the University of Kazan, in a breeze, to study law. Soon thereafter, he was to receive his first police assignment, which must have filled him with delight: he was to join a radical student group at the University, as an agent provocateur, to use this lovely French expression; to participate in a student disturbance; and to be summarily expelled, in order to accumulate the necessary trustworthiness among the revolutionaries for his future assignments. Who could ask for anything better?! Without risking anything, he would be getting his first personal war decoration, and end up with all the time on his hands, to indulge himself for the next few years in the incredible luxury of reading books, whose lavish supply to him was practically unlimited.
This sounds like a very strange story, and it is unsupported by any extant documentation. But taking a closer look it fits all historical facts in evidence and goes even further explaining the otherwise unexplainable facts of Lenin’s Urtext biography. Historians have indeed been confronted with too many inexplicable facts in his biography which start making sense only when looked at in the light of his secret duplicity which is revealed in this entry… By a special permission from the Russian Minister of Education, this expelled freshman from a second-rate university is allowed to take his bar exams, as an “extern,” at the best law school in Russia, at the University of Saint Petersburg. At the age of 21, without even having to attend college, Lenin becomes a certified lawyer, with highest academic credentials. Needless to say, his four years of excused absence from school are counted toward his revolutionary résumé.
After a short tour of duty as a lawyer, his revolutionary career acquires a predictable shape: a visit abroad to touch base with Russian Marxist luminaries in emigration, headed by Plekhanov; then back to Russia, with another arrest, a jail term, and an exile to Siberia, all characterized by a remarkable leniency in treatment on the part of the Czarist authorities, the fact that could not be dismissed, but was never suitably explained by the official Soviet accounts (or Western versions, for that matter). Then, another visit abroad, and now the sparks are really starting to fly… But before we get to this point which is the subject of my next entry, one last point, a very interesting one, from the psychological perspective, remains to be made in this one.
By that time Vladimir Ulyanov was expected to disappear behind a barricade of revolutionary aliases and so he did. His most famous nom de guerre Lenin would come soon enough, but his by far most inspired earliest alias, woefully unappreciated for its brilliance by historians, who have all somehow missed its significance, was to call himself Comrade Nicholas, daringly raising himself to the top level of dialectical contraposition, vis-à-vis His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas II ipse: “Tsar Nicholas--Comrade Nicholas.” Arrogance? So what? He well deserved it!
Men like this Comrade Nicholas do not come into history in droves, and, to be fair to him, Russia deserved him too.
(Postscriptum: Having acquired his favorite alias Lenin relatively early on, in 1895, Lenin did not abandon Comrade Nicholas, signing himself as Nicholas Lenin and still being called Comrade Nicholas by some of his comrades. However, after Tsar Nicholas’s abdication, in March 1917, Lenin’s antithetical alias had completely outlived its usefulness, and, consequently, was conveniently and permanently retired. Nobody was calling Lenin “Comrade Nicholas” ever since!)
Veni, Vidi, Vici.
(This entry is very short, but momentous, from the world-historical point of view. Lenin’s iconic image in the USSR, and his demonic image in the West, as l’enfant terrible of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, had made it “politically incorrect” to represent him as anything but a self-sustained genius, a Hegelian Geist, to be sure, and thus the contradiction of both images with the story below was too hard to take and to reconcile with standard Lenin mythology. But here is this story anyway---)
The Tsarist Okhrana now had another, far more ambitious assignment for Comrade Nicholas, alias Lenin. At the turn of the twentieth century, great efforts had been made by the Russian Marxists to merge all tiny leftist revolutionary groups and factions into a single party. This was the main reason behind the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP), which, officially, dates back to 1898, but, in practical terms, had become more or less organized only by the time of its ‘Second’ Congress, in 1903. By this time, it had started to worry the Czarist authorities, but just as its delegates were hoping to become an authentic significant political force, there came Okhrana’s ace in the hole, Lenin, who saw it, and destroyed it.
His coup was absolutely brilliant in its simplicity. He joined the Party, made waves, and then, abruptly and decisively, resigned from all his posts, declaring himself the majority alternative (in Russian, Bolshevik) to the existing RSDWP organization, labeling it with equal audacity, the minority (in Russian, Menshevik).
His audacity, of course, did not go unappreciated, making him some loyal and adoring followers, who saw him as the ultimate man of action. But as far as Okhrana was concerned, Lenin had done quite well as their double agent too. From now on, in Okhrana’s analysis, the pesky Russian Social Democratic Workers Party would cease to function as an effective opposition force in Russia, on account of being too much entangled in the petty squabbles among themselves, that is, between the RSDWP establishment and Lenin’s splinter group.
Looking back at it today, little did they know… Or maybe, some of them already knew something, or even knew a lot? After all,-- sorry, Bakunin!-- destruction is the easiest part of creation...
In the meantime, Lenin was now living abroad, and away from the Russian Revolution, full time, and many of his comrades were convinced that he had completely lost touch. With the exception of a brief return, for a few months during the 1905-1906 Russian turbulence, he was away for fifteen years, coming back only in April 1917 (at the height of World War I and a month after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II), in the most scandalous manner possible: as a stooge for Russia’s worst enemy.
From The Ridiculous To The Sublime.
(Both in Napoleon’s famous phrase, and in Harry Potter’s anti-bogart spell, the word ridiculous (ridiculus) connotes the final stage of the fall of a great man (or the end of the bogart’s scare). My ironic title reverses Napoleon’s dictum to best describe Lenin’s single step from utter desperation to a glorious victory.)
In the summer of 1917, Lenin was a desperate man. With no more Tsarist secret police to watch over him, he was exposed to political and physical dangers from both friend and foe. During one month between the fall of the Czar and his return to Saint Petersburg from Switzerland, Lenin, however, had managed to find himself another sponsor: the government of Germany, still at war with Russia. Germany happily organized and financed his trip home, reasonably expecting that he would be able to stir up enough trouble in Russia to shut down the troublesome Eastern Front. And, of course, they were right: Lenin proved himself capable of destroying Russia for the Kaiser, just as he had destroyed the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party for the Tsarist Okhrana.
Once again Lenin had been used and loved it. But this time he was walking a much tighter rope. His life was at stake, and the Kaiser had nothing to do with it. At issue was his highly compromising Okhrana file which in March 1917 had fallen into the hands of the Provisional Government, which, however, was in no hurry to make its contents public. Now that the new authorities had sensational goods on the man in their possession, they honestly believed that they could choose their own timing as to when and how to use them. As long as Lenin the troublemaker was not wreaking too much havoc in the Russian capital, they stayed put, preferring to keep their options open.
Now, Lenin had a good friend Elena Stasova, a woman with connections, who was sentimentally attached to him.
During the so-called July Days of 1917, when major riots resumed in the capital, allegedly provoked by the Bolsheviks, but attributed to them by false rumor, the new Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky now decided that the time had finally come to get rid of Lenin once and for all. Through her ubiquitous contacts, Elena Stasova was able to learn that Kerensky was considering releasing Lenin’s lethally compromising file to the press.
As soon as Lenin heard this, he knew he was as good as dead and he fled from the Russian capital north into Finland. Before fleeing, however, he ventured to strike an outrageous gambit. Through the selfsame Stasova he urged a preemptive release to the press of the documents, in his own possession, suggesting that he was a German agent of influence, subsidized by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The bombshell exploded, preempting Kerensky’s own disclosure of the Okhrana file. The press was having a field day, salivating over Lenin’s German ties. Everybody was convinced that this time Lenin was finished for good, but Lenin alone seemed to realize that this was his only chance to survive, and to win the game.
Now Prime Minister Kerensky had this most peculiar dilemma… A Russian police informer, and a German spy--- can these two indictments be successfully reconciled? With this new revelation of Lenin’s connection to the Kaiser, every patriotic Russian was certainly bound to condemn the traitor. Lenin was dead as it were. But imagine what would happen if Kerensky were now to release the Okhrana file, people may immediately become confused and very suspicious.--- So many wild accusations made at once… maybe it was all a hoax, a series of forgeries intended to discredit the man, and Lenin in reality was not guilty of anything?!
No. One deathblow should be enough... And thus by failing to release Lenin’s Okhrana file Kerensky saved Lenin’s skin, while relegating himself, to use the colorful Trotsky phrase, to the garbage dump of history.
So, why did Lenin’s gambit succeed? What Kerensky failed to understand was that Lenin already had many enemies, and only thrived on their animosities. To be finished, he had to be destroyed among friends. That charge of treason was, of course, pretty serious. There was no doubt that Lenin had indeed conspired with Russia’s enemy, in wartime. But this charge had to do with the circumstances of Lenin’s notorious “sealed train” trip over the enemy territory on his way from Switzerland to Russia. Alongside with Lenin there were some thirty distinguished Bolsheviks on that train. Were they all German spies too?
Besides, that sealed train had never been a secret among the Bolsheviks, and Lenin’s supporters would only cheer their leader’s ingenuity in making the Kaiser finance their common Bolshevik cause. From which one can easily conclude with the benefit of hindside of course that the German connection was bound to misfire. So, when the Kerensky government, next, issued an order for Lenin’s arrest, there was nothing there that an experienced hideout artist could not handle. Lenin had fled to Finland, in fear of his life, not because of that German connection exposure, but because of the other charge, which Kerensky had in the palm of his hand, and failed to produce. Being a police stooge, setting up comrades, betraying the Revolutionary ideal,--- that would have appalled Lenin’s supporters. Had they learned about it then and there, they would have torn him down from his lofty pedestal, and, like Roman Malinovsky’s, Lenin’s name would have ended up as nothing more than a footnote in future history books!
“From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is just one step,” Napoleon wrote in his diaries. With Kerensky’s unwitting help, but even more so, protected from any such harm by Lady History herself, Lenin, on a close call, made his own one step in the opposite direction.
Historians are familiar with the fact that the Russian secret police Okhrana was very fond of infiltrating all sorts of political movements and organizations, as a means of keeping Russian political life under control. Some of the worst acts of political violence were directly committed or treacherously provoked by Czarist government agents. The name of Yevno Fishelevich Azef, Russia’s one-time terrorist-in-chief, and also the notorious police agent of note, is by no means the only one that comes to mind. Roman Malinovsky, leader of the Bolshevik faction in the Russian Parliament Duma was yet another Okhrana stooge. The police were always on the prowl for valuable recruits, and their recruitment techniques were constantly diversified and refined.
After the hanging of Alexander Ulyanov, they (naturally) started looking very closely at the Ulyanov family. Can you find a better undercover agent than a close relative of a revolutionary martyr? Vladimir filled the bill very nicely. Age 17, on the doorstep of college, very ambitious, and very vulnerable. The circumstances of his recruitment and all of his subsequent relationship with the police were dutifully recorded in his police file, which in 1917 fell into the hands of the Provisional Government of Russia, formed after the abolition of the monarchy. Incredibly, it was Prime Minister Kerensky’s decision not to use this explosive file against Lenin during the shaky interregnum of 1917, for reasons I will reveal in a later entry… After the Bolsheviks came to power, the file was destroyed.
And so, the young Vladimir Ulyanov was approached by the secret police, and immediately proved that he had the stuff to go far, by picking up the challenge.
Coming out of high school, the brooding boy was facing the dilemma of how to channel his colossal natural drive. Because of the scandal surrounding his family after Alexander Ulyanov’s execution, saying no to the police effectively meant saying no to college. And, of course, without college there could be no meaningful life for an aspiring young intellectual. The police made him an offer he could not refuse.
Vladimir would never regret his decision. Surely he was being used! But in this relationship he was certain to come out the much greater user. They wanted him to be a revolutionary? Splendid! Such a career was the dream of every young man, and with the help of the secret police, he would not have to start from scratch, working his way up through the ranks. His brother’s name would be of help at the bottom, of course: those senior revolutionaries would just love to patronize a dead legend’s kid brother. But Vladimir’s desire was not to be patted on the head, but to go all the way straight to the top, and it was pretty crowded and ugly up there. To get to the top, he would be helped by the Okhrana infinitely more than by a dead brother!
…That very fall of 1887 he entered the University of Kazan, in a breeze, to study law. Soon thereafter, he was to receive his first police assignment, which must have filled him with delight: he was to join a radical student group at the University, as an agent provocateur, to use this lovely French expression; to participate in a student disturbance; and to be summarily expelled, in order to accumulate the necessary trustworthiness among the revolutionaries for his future assignments. Who could ask for anything better?! Without risking anything, he would be getting his first personal war decoration, and end up with all the time on his hands, to indulge himself for the next few years in the incredible luxury of reading books, whose lavish supply to him was practically unlimited.
This sounds like a very strange story, and it is unsupported by any extant documentation. But taking a closer look it fits all historical facts in evidence and goes even further explaining the otherwise unexplainable facts of Lenin’s Urtext biography. Historians have indeed been confronted with too many inexplicable facts in his biography which start making sense only when looked at in the light of his secret duplicity which is revealed in this entry… By a special permission from the Russian Minister of Education, this expelled freshman from a second-rate university is allowed to take his bar exams, as an “extern,” at the best law school in Russia, at the University of Saint Petersburg. At the age of 21, without even having to attend college, Lenin becomes a certified lawyer, with highest academic credentials. Needless to say, his four years of excused absence from school are counted toward his revolutionary résumé.
After a short tour of duty as a lawyer, his revolutionary career acquires a predictable shape: a visit abroad to touch base with Russian Marxist luminaries in emigration, headed by Plekhanov; then back to Russia, with another arrest, a jail term, and an exile to Siberia, all characterized by a remarkable leniency in treatment on the part of the Czarist authorities, the fact that could not be dismissed, but was never suitably explained by the official Soviet accounts (or Western versions, for that matter). Then, another visit abroad, and now the sparks are really starting to fly… But before we get to this point which is the subject of my next entry, one last point, a very interesting one, from the psychological perspective, remains to be made in this one.
By that time Vladimir Ulyanov was expected to disappear behind a barricade of revolutionary aliases and so he did. His most famous nom de guerre Lenin would come soon enough, but his by far most inspired earliest alias, woefully unappreciated for its brilliance by historians, who have all somehow missed its significance, was to call himself Comrade Nicholas, daringly raising himself to the top level of dialectical contraposition, vis-à-vis His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas II ipse: “Tsar Nicholas--Comrade Nicholas.” Arrogance? So what? He well deserved it!
Men like this Comrade Nicholas do not come into history in droves, and, to be fair to him, Russia deserved him too.
(Postscriptum: Having acquired his favorite alias Lenin relatively early on, in 1895, Lenin did not abandon Comrade Nicholas, signing himself as Nicholas Lenin and still being called Comrade Nicholas by some of his comrades. However, after Tsar Nicholas’s abdication, in March 1917, Lenin’s antithetical alias had completely outlived its usefulness, and, consequently, was conveniently and permanently retired. Nobody was calling Lenin “Comrade Nicholas” ever since!)
Veni, Vidi, Vici.
(This entry is very short, but momentous, from the world-historical point of view. Lenin’s iconic image in the USSR, and his demonic image in the West, as l’enfant terrible of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, had made it “politically incorrect” to represent him as anything but a self-sustained genius, a Hegelian Geist, to be sure, and thus the contradiction of both images with the story below was too hard to take and to reconcile with standard Lenin mythology. But here is this story anyway---)
The Tsarist Okhrana now had another, far more ambitious assignment for Comrade Nicholas, alias Lenin. At the turn of the twentieth century, great efforts had been made by the Russian Marxists to merge all tiny leftist revolutionary groups and factions into a single party. This was the main reason behind the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP), which, officially, dates back to 1898, but, in practical terms, had become more or less organized only by the time of its ‘Second’ Congress, in 1903. By this time, it had started to worry the Czarist authorities, but just as its delegates were hoping to become an authentic significant political force, there came Okhrana’s ace in the hole, Lenin, who saw it, and destroyed it.
His coup was absolutely brilliant in its simplicity. He joined the Party, made waves, and then, abruptly and decisively, resigned from all his posts, declaring himself the majority alternative (in Russian, Bolshevik) to the existing RSDWP organization, labeling it with equal audacity, the minority (in Russian, Menshevik).
His audacity, of course, did not go unappreciated, making him some loyal and adoring followers, who saw him as the ultimate man of action. But as far as Okhrana was concerned, Lenin had done quite well as their double agent too. From now on, in Okhrana’s analysis, the pesky Russian Social Democratic Workers Party would cease to function as an effective opposition force in Russia, on account of being too much entangled in the petty squabbles among themselves, that is, between the RSDWP establishment and Lenin’s splinter group.
Looking back at it today, little did they know… Or maybe, some of them already knew something, or even knew a lot? After all,-- sorry, Bakunin!-- destruction is the easiest part of creation...
In the meantime, Lenin was now living abroad, and away from the Russian Revolution, full time, and many of his comrades were convinced that he had completely lost touch. With the exception of a brief return, for a few months during the 1905-1906 Russian turbulence, he was away for fifteen years, coming back only in April 1917 (at the height of World War I and a month after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II), in the most scandalous manner possible: as a stooge for Russia’s worst enemy.
From The Ridiculous To The Sublime.
(Both in Napoleon’s famous phrase, and in Harry Potter’s anti-bogart spell, the word ridiculous (ridiculus) connotes the final stage of the fall of a great man (or the end of the bogart’s scare). My ironic title reverses Napoleon’s dictum to best describe Lenin’s single step from utter desperation to a glorious victory.)
In the summer of 1917, Lenin was a desperate man. With no more Tsarist secret police to watch over him, he was exposed to political and physical dangers from both friend and foe. During one month between the fall of the Czar and his return to Saint Petersburg from Switzerland, Lenin, however, had managed to find himself another sponsor: the government of Germany, still at war with Russia. Germany happily organized and financed his trip home, reasonably expecting that he would be able to stir up enough trouble in Russia to shut down the troublesome Eastern Front. And, of course, they were right: Lenin proved himself capable of destroying Russia for the Kaiser, just as he had destroyed the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party for the Tsarist Okhrana.
Once again Lenin had been used and loved it. But this time he was walking a much tighter rope. His life was at stake, and the Kaiser had nothing to do with it. At issue was his highly compromising Okhrana file which in March 1917 had fallen into the hands of the Provisional Government, which, however, was in no hurry to make its contents public. Now that the new authorities had sensational goods on the man in their possession, they honestly believed that they could choose their own timing as to when and how to use them. As long as Lenin the troublemaker was not wreaking too much havoc in the Russian capital, they stayed put, preferring to keep their options open.
Now, Lenin had a good friend Elena Stasova, a woman with connections, who was sentimentally attached to him.
During the so-called July Days of 1917, when major riots resumed in the capital, allegedly provoked by the Bolsheviks, but attributed to them by false rumor, the new Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky now decided that the time had finally come to get rid of Lenin once and for all. Through her ubiquitous contacts, Elena Stasova was able to learn that Kerensky was considering releasing Lenin’s lethally compromising file to the press.
As soon as Lenin heard this, he knew he was as good as dead and he fled from the Russian capital north into Finland. Before fleeing, however, he ventured to strike an outrageous gambit. Through the selfsame Stasova he urged a preemptive release to the press of the documents, in his own possession, suggesting that he was a German agent of influence, subsidized by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The bombshell exploded, preempting Kerensky’s own disclosure of the Okhrana file. The press was having a field day, salivating over Lenin’s German ties. Everybody was convinced that this time Lenin was finished for good, but Lenin alone seemed to realize that this was his only chance to survive, and to win the game.
Now Prime Minister Kerensky had this most peculiar dilemma… A Russian police informer, and a German spy--- can these two indictments be successfully reconciled? With this new revelation of Lenin’s connection to the Kaiser, every patriotic Russian was certainly bound to condemn the traitor. Lenin was dead as it were. But imagine what would happen if Kerensky were now to release the Okhrana file, people may immediately become confused and very suspicious.--- So many wild accusations made at once… maybe it was all a hoax, a series of forgeries intended to discredit the man, and Lenin in reality was not guilty of anything?!
No. One deathblow should be enough... And thus by failing to release Lenin’s Okhrana file Kerensky saved Lenin’s skin, while relegating himself, to use the colorful Trotsky phrase, to the garbage dump of history.
So, why did Lenin’s gambit succeed? What Kerensky failed to understand was that Lenin already had many enemies, and only thrived on their animosities. To be finished, he had to be destroyed among friends. That charge of treason was, of course, pretty serious. There was no doubt that Lenin had indeed conspired with Russia’s enemy, in wartime. But this charge had to do with the circumstances of Lenin’s notorious “sealed train” trip over the enemy territory on his way from Switzerland to Russia. Alongside with Lenin there were some thirty distinguished Bolsheviks on that train. Were they all German spies too?
Besides, that sealed train had never been a secret among the Bolsheviks, and Lenin’s supporters would only cheer their leader’s ingenuity in making the Kaiser finance their common Bolshevik cause. From which one can easily conclude with the benefit of hindside of course that the German connection was bound to misfire. So, when the Kerensky government, next, issued an order for Lenin’s arrest, there was nothing there that an experienced hideout artist could not handle. Lenin had fled to Finland, in fear of his life, not because of that German connection exposure, but because of the other charge, which Kerensky had in the palm of his hand, and failed to produce. Being a police stooge, setting up comrades, betraying the Revolutionary ideal,--- that would have appalled Lenin’s supporters. Had they learned about it then and there, they would have torn him down from his lofty pedestal, and, like Roman Malinovsky’s, Lenin’s name would have ended up as nothing more than a footnote in future history books!
“From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is just one step,” Napoleon wrote in his diaries. With Kerensky’s unwitting help, but even more so, protected from any such harm by Lady History herself, Lenin, on a close call, made his own one step in the opposite direction.
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