In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Five       

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

For several years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s–Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period to honor revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since in the month of January leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.

I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I on previous occasions. I have also made some special points in previous years as well about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, “the Rose of the Revolution.” This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, as he attempted to define himself politically. Below is a sketch of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in Russia under the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century. This sketch should help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and perhaps now as well.

Ivan Smilga did not know when he resolved to go after his lover Elena Kassova who was being prepared for deportation to Siberia and either aid her escape or share her fate. Ivan needed to deal with the question of Elena’s fate after returning to Saint Petersburg shortly after New Year’s Day 1900 and finding that his “engaged” Elena Kassova had been arrested for political crimes and was being held for trial prior to deportation to Siberia, All he knew was that he was ashamed that he had left the city in a huff after several quarrels about Elena’s leadership role in political demonstration proposed for that New Year’s Day. A day when the bloody sabre-wielding Cossacks had wreaked havoc on the small demonstration before it even stepped off before the Winter Palace. He was ashamed first that he had not been there to share her fate and secondly that Elena had been right, right all along that, something more than getting better wages and working conditions needed to be done to bring Mother Russia into the new century.

Ivan reddened as he thought about how he had constantly belittled Elena (and her friends and associates, mostly sparsely-bearded radical students from Saint Petersburg University and a smattering of young workers, some from his own Putilov Works) around what Mother Russia did or did not need. Mainly that the fight for wages, for shorter hours and for a union was enough to carry the day. He could begin to see that even those demands could not be met without more political organization than that necessary for shop floor issues. Ivan wasn’t sure what that might be but he knew he had been wrong to rattle Elena’s confidence by dismissing her notion that a party was necessary to fight the Tsar and his minions. He cringed when he thought about how he had laughed out loud and said that Russia had too many political parties already.       

But politics, or finding out what politics would serve the ends desired, was not really what drove Ivan to distraction. Ivan loved Elena in the old-fashioned way like a wayward backward peasant boy. He had wronged her and therefore it was his responsibility to right that wrong and hence his resolve. Maybe by going to Siberia he would win back her respect. Maybe even join her and her comrades in their quixotic fight against the massive Tsarist repression. He was not looking forward to going back to Siberia after his prior tour there a few years back when he had served his own two year sentence for political crimes (a scatterbrain scheme involving holding responsible governmental officials hostage in return for some political action) but he needed to go. Who knows what the future held but all he knew was that whatever Elena’s fate was his as well.