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

 

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.

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Ivan Smilga was sitting at the quay on the Neva River in Saint Petersburg forlorn, more forlorn than he had been since sometime in his early childhood when he found out that the land that he lived on did not actually belong to him, or rather to his father and he had run out into the fields in rage. This day Ivan was forlorn because they had taken Elena off, off to Siberia (a place he himself had known having served a two year sentence there a few years before for political crimes against the state) for trying to organize a demonstration for a shorter work day and other more political rights (ten instead of twelve hours and half a day on Saturday, right to organize trade unions, right to free speech, etc.) in front of the Winter Palace on New Year’s Day to bring in the new year, and the new century [1900]. The reason for Ivan’s agitated state was that he had become “engaged” to Elena and had come to depend on her for his emotional support. (This engagement thing was not the old-fashioned type involving dowries and exchanges but a “new-type” where that “engagement” signified that they had slept together in anticipation of marriage.)

Yes, the year 1899 had not been a good year for the political struggles in Russia. The Tsar and his ministers had determined to crush any opposition in the bud and so even the organizing of trade unions, illegal but semi-tolerated especially in the foreign concessions, had become a point of contention. Ivan and Elena had clashed many times over that question. Elena, after they had met, or rather re-met having worked in Moscow together, at the Putilov Iron Works where he was an apprentice blacksmith and she world in the foundry, had been involved in a strike action in which Elena was a central figure that wound up getting a number of fellow workers back on the job after they had been fired. As a result of that victory the previously hesitant Ivan (hesitant due to that very trip to Siberia on his and a desire not to go back and well as fears for Elena now come true) had met Elena “half-way” and worked with her on trade-union organizing issues. He would however have no truck with the broader issues, the question of democratic right when he would have to confront the state in a more direct manner. They had had enough of that. Besides he had come to think, under the influence of various liberal and radical thinker who were popping up in the capital, that if they, the workers could just get more pay, less work, and some time off that things would be better. Let others, other, smarter people worry about the larger issues. That day to day struggle fight was all that could be expected and that was enough.

When Elena (and her fellow political workers, mainly students at Saint Petersburg and radical workers from the Vyborg, the working class quarters) determined that trade union organizing was not enough and that the Tsar had to be confronted with the issue of democratic rights and a street demonstration Ivan had gone off in a fit, had left Elena alone for several days to stew. During that time Elena, a crackerjack organizer and also a very committed revolutionary had organized the march set for New Year’s Day. On that day there was no turning back for her and her colleagues. The minute they stepped off at noon they were surrounded by sabre-welding Cossacks and arrested. Before Ivan could get back to the city, before he could attempt once again to talk her out of the rash action she faced deportation to Siberia. That is why one Ivan Smilga was sitting before the Neva River forlorn. But that is also one reason why Ivan thought that maybe, just maybe Elena had been right, the struggle for a better life for him and her, them might need more thought on his part.