Triumph and Disaster: Five Historical Miniatures Read online

  The sound as it strikes the stone echoes through the church and far beyond, for the whole of the west shakes as it falls. The terrible news echoes on in Rome, in Genoa, in Venice; like menacing thunder it rolls to France, to Germany; and Europe, shuddering, recognizes that—thanks to its own unfeeling indifference—a fateful, destructive power has broken in through the fatal forgotten gate, the Kerkoporta, a power that will bind and cripple its own strength for centuries. But, in history as in human life, regret can never restore a lost moment, and 1,000 years will not buy back what was lost in a single hour.

  THE SEALED TRAIN

  LENIN

  9 April 1917

  The Man Who Lodges

  in the Cobbler’s House

  In the years 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918 the little island of peace that is Switzerland, surrounded on all sides by the stormy tide of the World War, is the ongoing scene of an exciting detective story. The envoys of enemy powers, who only a year before used to play f riendly games of bridge together and visit one another’s houses, now pass in the country’s luxury hotels as if they had never met before. A whole flock of inscrutable characters steal in and out of their rooms: parliamentary deputies, secretaries, attachés, businessmen, veiled or unveiled ladies, all of them on secret missions. Magnificent limousines bearing foreign emblems of distinction draw up outside the hotels, to disgorge industrialists, journalists, virtuosos and people ostensibly travelling for pleasure. But almost all of them have the same task in mind: to find something out, to act as spies. And the porters who show them to their rooms, the chambermaids who sweep the rooms, have all been urged to keep their eyes open and be on the alert. Organizations are working against each other everywhere, in restaurants, boarding houses, post offices and cafés. What is described as propaganda is half espionage, what purports to be love is betrayal, and every openly conducted business deal done by these arrivals hastily passing through has a second or third deal hidden behind it. Everything is reported, everything is under surveillance; no sooner does a German of any rank set foot in Zürich than his enemy’s embassy in Berne knows it, and so does Paris an hour later. Day after day, agencies large and small send whole volumes of reports both true and fictitious to the attachés, and the attachés send them on. All the walls are transparent as glass, telephones are tapped, correspondence is reconstructed from waste-paper baskets and sheets of blotting paper, and in the end there is such pandemonium that many of those involved no longer know whether they are hunters or hunted, spies or spied on, betrayed or betrayers.

  But in those days there are few reports on one man, perhaps because he is too unimportant and does not stay at the grand hotels or go to the cafés, does not attend propaganda lectures, but lives with his wife in a cobbler’s house and stays out of the limelight. His lodgings are on the second floor of one of the solidly built houses in the narrow old winding Spiegelgasse, across the River Limmat, a house with an arched roof, dark with smoke partly because of time, partly because there is a little sausage factory down in its yard. His neighbours are a baker’s wife, an Italian and an Austrian actor. His landlady knows little about him except that he is not very talkative, just that he is a Russian with a name that is difficult to pronounce. She deduces, from the frugal meals and well-worn clothes of the couple, whose household belongings hardly fill the little basket they brought with them when they moved in, that he left his native land many years ago and does not have much money, or a very profitable occupation.

  This small, stocky man is inconspicuous, and lives in as inconspicuous a style as possible. He avoids company, and the other lodgers in the house seldom see the shrewd, dark look in the narrow slits of his eyes. He seldom has visitors. But at nine in the morning he regularly goes to the library and sits there until it closes at twelve. At ten past twelve exactly he is home again, and at ten past one he leaves the house so as to be the first reader back in the library, where he sits until six in the evening. However, as the news agencies pay attention only to those who talk a lot, they are not aware that solitary men who read and learn a great deal are always the most dangerous when it comes to instigating rebellion, so they write no news stories about the inconspicuous character who lodges at the cobbler’s house. In socialist circles, he is known to have been the editor of a small radical journal for Russian émigrés, and in Petersburg as the leader of some kind of indescribable special party; but as he speaks harshly and contemptuously of the most highly regarded socialists, calling their methods erroneous, as it is difficult to get to know him, and he is not at all accommodating, no one bothers much about him. At most fifteen to twenty people, most of them young, attend the meetings that he sometimes holds in the evening in a small proletarian café, and so this loner is regarded as just one of those emigrant Russians whose feelings run high on a diet of much tea and long discussions. But no one thinks the small, stern-voiced man is of any significance, not three dozen people in Zürich consider it important to make a note of the name of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov who lodges in the cobbler’s house. And if, at the time, one of those fine limousines racing at top speed from embassy to embassy had accidentally knocked him down in the street and killed him, the world would not know him by the name of either Ulyanov or Lenin.

  Fulf ilment…

  One day—it is the 15th of March 1917—the librarian of the Zürich library has a surprise. The hands of the clock say it is nine in the morning, and the place where the most punctual of all readers in the library sits every day is empty. The clock face shows ninethirty, then ten; the tireless reader does not come in and will never visit the library again. For on the way there a Russian friend hailed him, or rather assailed him, with the news that the revolution has broken out in Russia.

  At first Lenin can’t believe it. It is as if he were numbed by the news. But then he hurries off, taking short, sharp strides, to the kiosk by the banks of the lake, and he waits there and outside the editorial offices of the newspaper hour after hour, day after day. It is true. The news is true, and with every passing day, so far as he is concerned, will become, magnificently, even truer. At first it is only the rumour of a palace revolution, apparently just a change of ministers; then comes the deposition of the Tsar; the appointment of a provisional government, the Duma; freedom for Russia and an amnesty for political prisoners—everything he has dreamt of for years, everything he has been working for over the last twenty years, in a secret organization, in his prison cell, in Siberia, in exile, it has all come true. All at once, it seems to him that the millions of dead demanded by this war did not die in vain. Their deaths no longer strike him as senseless, they were martyred in the cause of the new age of liberty and justice and eternal peace that is now dawning. Lenin, usually a man with such icy clarity of mind, a coldly calculating dreamer, is quite carried away by the news. And how the hundreds of others who sit in their little emigrant rooms in Geneva and Lausanne and Berne tremble, rejoicing at this happy turn of events: they can go home to Russia! Not travelling on forged passports, not entering the Tsar’s realm under false names and in mortal danger, but as free citizens of a free country! They are already getting their scanty possessions ready, for the newspapers print Gorky’s laconic telegram: they can all go home. They send letters and telegrams off in all directions to say they are on their way back. They must gather together, they must unite! Now they must stake their lives once again on the work to which they have dedicated themselves since their first waking hours: the Russian revolution!

  …And Disappointment

  But after a few days they are full of consternation: the Russian revolution that made their hearts rise as if on eagles’ wings is not the revolution they dreamt of, is not a Russian revolution at all. It was a palace revolt against the Tsar, instigated by British and French diplomats to prevent him from making peace with Germany, not a revolution of the people calling for peace and their rights. It is not the revolution they lived for and were ready to die for, but an intrigue of the parties favouring war, the imperialists and the gener
als who do not want to have their plans upset. And soon Lenin and those who think like him realize that the message promising them a safe return is not for all who want the real, the radical revolution of Karl Marx. Milyukov and the other liberals have given orders not to let them in. And while the moderates, the socialists who will be useful in prolonging the war, men like Plekhanov, are helpfully conveyed back to Petersburg by Britain in torpedo boats, with an official escort, Trotsky is kept in Halifax and the other radicals outside the Russian borders. At the borders of all the states of the entente there are blacklists of the names of all who attended the congress of the Third International in Zimmerwald. Lenin desperately sends telegram after telegram to Petersburg, but they are either intercepted or never delivered. What they do not know in Zürich, what almost no one knows in Europe, is very well known in Russia: how strong and energetic Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is, how purposeful and how murderously dangerous to his enemies.

  The despair of those powerless radicals barred from Russia is unbounded. They have been planning their own Russian revolution for years and years, in countless General Staff meetings in London, Paris and Vienna. They have considered, assessed and discussed every detail of its organization. For decades in their journals they have weighed up against each other the theoretical and practical difficulties, dangers and opportunities. Lenin has spent his whole life considering this one complex of ideas, revising it again and again, bringing it to its final formulation. And now, because he is kept here in Switzerland, this revolution of his is to be watered down and wrecked by others, the idea of the liberation of the people, which is sacred to him, is to be put to the service of other nations and other interests. In a curious analogy, it is in those days that Lenin hears of the fate of Hindenburg in the first days of the war—Hindenburg, who has also manoeuvred and planned for his own Russian campaign, and when it breaks out has to stay at home in civilian clothing, following the progress of the generals called in and the mistakes they make on a map with little flags. Lenin, otherwise an iron-willed realist, entertains the most foolish and fantastic dreams in those days of despair. Could he not hire an aeroplane and fly to Russia over Germany or Austria? But the first man to offer his help turns out to be a spy. Lenin’s ideas of flight become ever wilder and more chaotic. He writes to Sweden asking for a Swedish passport, saying he will pretend to be a mute so as not to be obliged to give information. Of course on the morning after these nights of fantasy Lenin himself always realizes that none of his crazy ideas can be carried out, but there is something else that he knows even in broad daylight—and that is that he must get back to Russia, he must put his own revolution into practice, the real and honourable revolution, not the political one. He must go back to Russia, and soon. Back at any price!

  Through Ger many: Yes or No?

  Switzerland lies embedded between Italy, France, Germany and Austria. The route through the Allied countries is barred to Lenin as a revolutionary; the way through Germany and Austria is barred to him as a Russian subject, belonging to an enemy power. But, absurd as it may seem, Lenin can expect a friendlier reception from Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany than from Milyukov’s Russia and the France of Poincaré. On the eve of America’s declaration of war, Germany needs peace with Russia at any price. So a revolutionary making difficulties there for the envoys of Britain and France can only be a welcome aid.

  However, it is a great responsibility to take such a step as suddenly entering into negotiations with imperial Germany, a country that he has threatened and abused over and over again in his writings. For in the light of all previous morality it is, naturally, high treason to enter and pass through an enemy country in the middle of war, and do so with the approval of the enemy’s General Staff. Of course Lenin must know that it means he is initially compromising his own party and his own cause, that he will be suspect and sent back to Russia as the hired and paid agent of the German government, and that if he realizes his programme of bringing instant peace, he will always be blamed by history for standing in the way of the real, victorious peace of Russia. And of course not only the milder revolutionaries but also most of those who think as he does are horrified when he announces his readiness, if necessary, to take this dangerous and compromising course of action. They point out in dismay that negotiations were begun long ago by the Swiss Social Democrats to bring about the return of Russian revolutionaries by the legal and neutral method of an exchange of prisoners. But Lenin knows how tedious that course of action will be, how ingeniously and intentionally the Russian government will postpone their return ad infinitum, while he realizes that every day and every hour counts. He sees only the aim, while the others, being less cynical and less audacious, do not dare to decide on a course of action that by all existing laws and opinions is treacherous. But Lenin has made up his own mind, and takes on himself responsibility for negotiating with the German government.

  The Pact

  It is for the very reason that Lenin knows how much attention this step will arouse, and how challenging it is, that he acts as openly as possible. On his behalf, the Swiss trades union secretary Fritz Platten goes to see the German ambassador, who had already negotiated in general with the Russian emigrants, and lays Lenin’s conditions before him. For, as if that insignificant, unknown fugitive could already guess at his future authority, Lenin is not asking the German government for something, but stipulating the conditions on which the travellers would be ready to accept the co-operation of the German government. The railway carriage, he insists, must have an acknowledged right to extraterritoriality. There must be no checking of passports or persons at either the start or the end of the journey. The travellers will pay for their journey themselves, at the normal rates. No one would leave the carriage either if ordered to do so or acting on their own initiative. The minister, Romberg, passes these messages on. They reach the hands of Ludendorff, who undoubtedly approves them, although there is not a word in his memoirs about what was perhaps the most important decision of his life. The ambassador tries to make changes to many details, for Lenin has intentionally phrased the document so ambiguously that not only Russians but also an Austrian like Radek could travel in the train without any inspection. Like Lenin himself, however, the German government is in a hurry—for on that day, the 5th of April, the United States of America declares war on Germany.

  And thus, on 6th April at midday, Fritz Platten receives the memorable decision: “This matter approved in the desired sense.” On 9th April 1917, at two-thirty, a small, poorly dressed group carrying suitcases leave the Zähringerhof Restaurant on their way to Zürich Station. There are thirty-two of them in all, including women and children. Of the men, only the names of Lenin, Sinovyev and Radek are still known. They have eaten a modest lunch together, they have all signed a document saying that they are aware of the report in the French newspaper, Le Petit Parisien, that the Russian provisional government intends to treat the party travelling through Germany as guilty of high treason. They have signed in clumsy, awkward handwriting, saying that they take full responsibility for this journey upon themselves and have approved all the conditions. Quiet and determined, they now prepare for their historic journey.

  Their arrival at the station attracts no attention. No reporters or photographers have turned up. Who in Switzerland knows this Herr Ulyanov, the man in the crumpled hat, shabby coat and ridiculously heavy mountain shoes (he takes them as far as Sweden), in the middle of a group of men and women laden with baskets, silently and inconspicuously looking for seats in the train? They appear the same as anyone else on a walking tour: people from the Balkan states, Ruthenia and Romania often stop here in Zürich for a couple of hours’ rest, sitting on their wooden cases, before going on to France and the coast, and so overseas. The Swiss Socialist Party, which has also approved of the journey, has sent no representative; only a couple of Russians have come to give the travellers a little food and messages to take to the homeland, and a few also to try to dissuade Lenin, at the last minute, from going
on this “pointless, treacherous journey”. But the decision has been taken. At ten past three the guard of the train gives the signal. And the train rolls away to Gottmadingen, the German border station. Ten past three, and since then the world clock has shown a different time.

  The Sealed Train

  Millions of deadly shots were fired in the Great War, the weightiest, most powerful and far-reaching projectiles ever devised by ballistics engineers. But no shot went farther and was more fateful in modern history than the train that, carrying the most dangerous and determined revolutionaries of the century, races from the Swiss border across the whole of Germany to arrive in Petersburg, where it will blow the order of that time to pieces.

  In Gottmadingen this unique projectile stands on the rails, a carriage of second-and third-class seats, with the women and children in second class and the men in third class. A chalk line on the floor marks off the area over which the Russians rule as a neutral zone, distinct from the compartment occupied by two German officers who are escorting this cargo of live explosive. The train rolls through the night without incident. Only in France do German soldiers, who have heard of Russian revolutionaries passing through, suddenly race up, and once an attempt made by German Social Democrats to communicate with the travellers is repelled. Lenin must know how he will expose himself to suspicion if he exchanges a single word with a German on German soil. They are welcomed ceremoniously in Sweden, and fall hungrily on the Swedish breakfast table, which serves a smorgasbord that seems to them like an improbable miracle. Then Lenin has to buy shoes to replace his heavy mountain boots, and a few clothes. At last they have reached the Russian border.