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

 

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 initially was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period to honor our revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since in the month of January leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who had 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 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 maybe 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 trembled with exhaustion as he knocked on the door at 20 Wentworth Street in the city of London where he sought refuge after his long flight from the Siberian frost fields of Mother Russia. Exhausted too beside him was his “wife” Elena (nee Kassova), a very pregnant Elena, whom Ivan had just helped escape from those frost fields after a six month journey over several countries and many stops. He had been given the Wentworth Street address by reliable comrades in Germany after Berlin had become too hot for the couple to stay in as Russian refugees (political exiles but we will use the German governmental designation for effect) and needed to move on to continue the struggle for freedom back home while they were forced abroad. As Ivan stood there waiting for the door to open he reflected on just how fantastic the past six months, hell, the past year had been.   

He thought back to that time a couple of years before, a few days before New Year’s Day 1900 when he had fought with Elena over the very hot question then of whether they would just continue the trade-union organizing at the Putilov Iron Works in Saint Petersburg where they both worked as he wished having been burned before when he tried to act politically before or expand as Elena wanted to make political demands of the Tsarist regime including public street demonstrations to make their point. Elena had been determined to pursue that course and had been planning along with a few fellow radical workers and a few students from the University such an action for New Year’s Day 1900 to symbolically bring Russia in the new century. After that argument Ivan had run off, left town for a retreat at the Finnish border and sulked. Finished sulking and filled with love (regular old romantic love) for his Elena he determined that he would help her after all. However by the time he returned to Saint Petersburg the Cossacks had done their dirty bloody sabre-wielding work and Elena had been rounded up and detained for trial and eventual transportation and exile in Siberia. Ivan had been ashamed that he had left  this love, his real love in the lurch by his actions and resolved to  go to the Siberian exile to be with her, or help her escape abroad depending on the circumstances.

Ivan having prior to meeting Elena at the Putilov Works had his own Siberian exile for some scatter-brained conspiracy against the Tsar that he had been talked in to, had no problem getting himself exiled to Siberia for the political crime of standing in front of the Winter Palace by himself calling for freedom for the Winter Palace Twenty (the number of those, including Elena, who were picked up at that New Year’s Day demonstration). Once he got to his place of exile at Yalov in the Siberian wilds (their place eventually since he had “married” Elena while in exile in order bring her with him from her place of exile at Alta Ata) he immediately began to plot their escape. She encouraged him in that pursuit since her days as effective street organizer inside Russia were over for now. That plan became more pressing when Elena shortly after joining him at Yalov became pregnant and didn’t want to have her child born in slave Russia (she had wanted to parent a revolutionary Ivan, just an old county bumpkin wayward backward farm boy at heart just wanted a child). Moreover Elena (and in her wake once Ivan began to attend the lively if sometimes arcane meetings of the local political exile groupings), a crackerjack organizer was needed by her organization, the fledgling Russian Social-Democratic Party, to go into foreign exile in order to help the organization from abroad now that he days inside Russia were numbered.            

Hence the escape by the pair in the dead of night and in the dead of winter, harrowing at times what with nature, wild animals, wild men and desperadoes ready to pounce on any weak thing out there, having to hide out under many furs on a sleigh in order not to freeze to make good their initial escape, then finally by rail to Saint Petersburg. From that location they moved clandestinely over the border and further passage out to Germany. They needed to move on against despite Elena’s weakened condition after Berlin when, at the Tsar’s request to the German government to deny all Russians exile status (the various reigning monarchs were inter-related) that place became too hot for them. From there they moved to Paris and then now exhausted to London. As the door opened and Elena brightened to see Vladmir Smirnov, an old party comrade of Elena’s Ivan finally realized that whatever else Elena’s and now his party work had become a family necessity. He felt he was ready now…