Krupskaya's “Reminiscences of Lenin”

Munich
1901-1902

Although Vladimir Ilyich, Martov and Potresov

went abroad with legal passports, they decided in
Munich to live under false passports, and keep
away from the Russian colony in order not to
compromise our associates arriving from Russia
and the better to be able to send illegal literature to
Russia in suitcases, letters, and so on.

When I came to Munich Vladimir Ilyich was

living unregistered with this Rittmeyer under the
name of Meyer. Although Rittmeyer kept a beer-
house, he was a Social-Democrat and sheltered
Vladimir Ilyich in his flat. Vladimir Ilyich had a
poor room, and lived in bachelor style, having his
meals at a German woman's, who kept him on a
Mehlspeise diet. In the morning and the evening
he drank tea out of a tin cup, which he carefully
washed himself and hung up on a nail by the sink.

He looked worried. Things were going slower

than he wanted. Besides Vladimir Ilyich, there
lived in Munich at the time Martov, Potresov and
Vera Zasulich. Plekhanov and Axelrod wanted the
paper to be published somewhere in Switzerland
under their direct control. They – and at first
Zasulich too – did not attach great significance
to Iskra, and failed completely to appreciate the
organizing role which it could and eventually did
play. They were much more interested in Zarya.
 "That Iskra of yours is silly," Vera Zasulich said
at the beginning. Spoken in jest, it nevertheless
betrayed a certain underestimation of the whole
enterprise. Vladimir Ilyich thought Iskra ought to
be kept apart from the political emigrant centre,
and run on secret lines. This was vitally important
as a means of facilitating contact with Russia,
correspondence and the arrival of agents. The Old
Men were inclined to construe this as
unwillingness to have the paper transferred to
Switzerland, unwillingness to accept their
leadership, a desire to pursue an independent
course of action, and so they were in no particular
hurry to help. Vladimir Ilyich sensed this and was
worried about it. He had a soft spot for the
"Emancipation of Labour" group, a great affection
for both Axelrod and Vera Zasulich, not to mention
Plekhanov. "Wait till you see Zasulich," he told me
the first evening I arrived in Munich. "She is true
to the core." And he was right.

Vera Zasulich was the only one of the

"Emancipation of Labour" group to identify herself
closely with Iskra. She lived with us in Munich and
London, and Iskraand its editorial board were all
she had in the world. Their joys and sorrows were
hers, and tidings from Russia were the air she
breathed.

"Iskra is coming along, you know," she said as

the influence of the paper grew and extended. Vera
Zasulich often spoke about the long bleak years she
had lived in emigration.

We never experienced the kind of life in

emigration that the "Emancipation of Labour"
group had known. We were constantly and closely
in touch with Russia and always had people from
there coming to see us. We were better informed
than if we had lived in some provincial town in
Russia itself. We had no life outside the interests of
our Russian work. Things in Russia were on the
upgrade, the working-class movement was rising.
The "Emancipation of Labour" group had been cut
off from Russia, living abroad during the worst
period of reaction, when a student arriving from
Russia had been an event. Travellers had been
afraid to call on them. When Klasson and Korobko
visited them at the beginning of the nineties, they
were summoned to the police as soon as they
returned and asked why they had gone to see
Plekhanov. Police detection was well organized.

Of all the "Emancipation of Labour" group Vera

Zasulich lived the loneliest life. Plekhanov and
Axelrod both had families. Vera Zasulich often
spoke about how lonely she felt. "I have no one,"
she would say, then hasten to cover up her feelings
with a joke: "You love me, I know, but when I die
the most you'll do will be to drink one cup of tea
less perhaps."

Her yearning for a home and family was all the

more poignant for her having been brought up
herself in a strange home as a ward. How lovingly
she dandled Dimka's baby boy (Dimka was P. G.
Smidovich's sister). She even displayed
unsuspected gifts for housewifery and did the
shopping when it was her turn to cook dinner for
the "commune" (Vera, Martov and Alexeyev ran a
communal household in London). Few people
would have suspected such domestic inclinations
in her, however. She always lived in nihilist style –
dressed carelessly and smoked without a stop; her
room was shockingly untidy, and she never
allowed anyone to do it. Her eating, too, was rather
fantastic. I remember her stewing some meat on
an oil-stove and snipping pieces off it with a
scissors and putting them into her mouth.

"When I lived in England," she told me, "the

English ladies tried to be sociable, and asked: 'How
long do you stew your meat?' 'All depends,' I
said.'II you're hungry ten minutes will do, if not –
three hours or so.' That stopped them."

When Vera had any writing to do, she would shut

herself up in her room and subsist on strong black
coffee.

She was terribly homesick. In 1899, I believe, she

went to Russia illegally – not to do any work, but
just like that, "to have a look at the muzhik and see
what kind of nose he has." And when Iskra began
to appear, she felt that this was a piece of real
Russian work, and clung to it desperately. For her
to leave Iskra would have meant cutting herself off
from Russia again, sinking back into the slough of
emigrant life abroad.

That is why, when the question

of Iskra editorship was brought up at the Second
Congress, she was filled with indignation. For her
it was not a question of ambition, but a matter of
life and death.

In 1905 she went to Russia and stayed there.

Vera Zasulich, for the first time in her life,

opposed Plekhanov at the Second Congress. She
had been associated with him by years of joint
struggle, she saw what a tremendous role he played
in having the revolutionary movement guided into
the proper channel, and appreciated him as the
founder of Russian Social-Democracy, appreciated
his intellect, his brilliant talent. The slightest
disagreement with Plekhanov distressed her
terribly. Yet in this case she went against him.

Plekhanov's was a tragic fate. In the theoretical

field his services to the workers' movement are
almost inestimable. Long years of life as a political
emigrant, however, told on him – -they isolated
him from Russian realities. The broad mass
movement of the workers started after he had gone
abroad. He saw the representatives of different
parties, writers, students, even individual workers,
but he had not seen the Russian working-class
mass, had not worked with it, nor felt it.
Sometimes, when letters came from Russia that
lifted the veil over new forms of the movement and
revealed new vistas, Vladimir Ilyich, Martov and
even Vera Zasulich would read them over and over
again. Vladimir Ilyich would then pace the room
for a long time and not be able to fall asleep
afterwards. I tried to show those letters to
Plekhanov when we moved to Geneva and was
surprised at the way he reacted. He seemed to be
staggered, then looked incredulous, and never
spoke about them again.

His attitude towards those letters from Russia

became more sceptical than ever after the Second
Congress.

I felt hurt at this at first, and then I thought I

began to see the reason. He had been away from
Russia for such a long time that he had lost that
capacity, developed by experience, which enables
one to gauge the value of each letter and read
between the lines.

Workers from Russia often came to Iskra, and all

of them, of course, wanted to see Plekhanov.
Seeing him was much more difficult than seeing us
or Martov, and even when a worker did get to see
him, he would come away feeling baffled.
Plekhanov's brilliant intellect, knowledge, and wit
would impress the worker, but all that the latter
felt on leaving him would be the vast gulf between
him self and that brilliant theoretician. The things
that had lain uppermost in his mind, the things he
had been so eager to talk to him about and ask his
advice on, had remained unuttered.

And if a worker differed with Plekhanov and

tried to express his own opinion, Plekhanov would
get angry and say: "Your daddies and mummies
were knee-high when I...."

I daresay he was not like that at the beginning of

his emigration, but by the turn of the century he no
longer had the live feel of Russia. He did not go to
Russia in 1905.

Axelrod was much more of an organizer than

either Plekhanov or Zasulich. He saw much more
of the new arrivals, who spent most of their time
with him, and had their meals at his lodgings. He
questioned them closely about everything.

He carried on a correspondence with comrades

in Russia and was well up in secrecy techniques.
One can well imagine how a Russian revolutionary
organizer must have felt, living for years in
Switzerland as a political emigrant! Axelrod
worked at only a quarter of his former capacity; he
did not sleep for nights at a stretch, and writing
was a tremendous strain on him – it took him
months to finish an article he had started, and his
handwriting was almost illegible owing to the
nervous way he wrote.

His handwriting always upset Vladimir Ilyich.

"It's terrible to think of one reaching such a state as
Axelrod," he would often say. He often spoke about
Axelrod's handwriting to Dr. Kramer, who
attended Ilyich during his last illness. When
Vladimir Ilyich first went abroad in 1895 he had
discussed organizational questions mostly with
Axelrod. He told me a lot about him when I arrived
in Munich. He asked me what Axelrod was now
doing by pointing to his name in the newspaper
when he himself could no longer write or even
speak a word.

Axelrod reacted rather painfully to the fact

that Iskra was not being published in Switzerland
and that the flow of communications with Russia
did not pass through him. That accounts for his
bitter attitude on the question of an editorial trio at
the Second Congress. Iskra to be the organizing
centre, while he was removed from the editorial
hoard! And this at a time when the breath of
Russia made itself felt more strongly than ever at
the Second Congress.

When I arrived in Munich the only member of

the "Emancipation of Labour" group living there
was Vera Zasulich. She had a Bulgarian passport
and lived under the name of Velika Dmitriyevna.

All the others had Bulgarian passports too. Until

my arrival Vladimir Ilyich had been living without
any passport at all. When I came we took a
passport in the name of Dr. Yordanov, a Bulgarian,
with his wife Marica, and rented a room we saw
advertised in a working-class home. The secretary
of Iskra before me had been Inna Smidovich-
Leman. She, too, had a Bulgarian passport, and her
Party sobriquet was Dimka. Vladimir Ilyich told
me when I arrived that he had arranged for me to
be the secretary of Iskra on my arrival. This, of
course, meant that all intercourse with Russia
would be closely controlled by Vladimir Ilyich.
Martov and Potresov had had nothing against this
at the time, and the "Emancipation of Labour"
group had put up no candidate of their own, as
they had not attached any particular importance
to Iskra at the time. Vladimir Ilyich told me he had
felt very awkward about doing this, but had
thought it necessary I in the interests of the cause.
I had my hands full at once. Things were organized
in this way: letters from Russia were addressed to
German comrades in various towns in Germany,
and they readdressed them to Dr. Leman, who
forwarded them on to us.

Shortly before this there had been quite a scare.

Our comrades in Russia had succeeded at last in
setting up a printing plant in Kishinev. The
manager Akim (brother of Lieber – Leon Goldman)
sent to Leman's address by post a cushion with
copies of pamphlets published in Russia sewn up
in it. Leman refused delivery of the parcel, thinking
it a mistake, but when our people got to know
about it and raised an alarm, he took the cushion
from the post office and said that he would
henceforth accept delivery of everything that was
addressed to him, even if it was a trainload.

We had no transport facilities yet for

smuggling Iskra into Russia. It was sent in mainly
in double-bottom suit cases through various
travellers, who delivered them at secret addresses
in Russia.

One such secret rendezvous was the

Lepeshinskys' in Pskov. Another was in Kiev and
some other town. The comrades in Russia took the
literature out of the suitcases and handed it over to
the organization. Shipments had only just begun to
be arranged through the Letts Rolau and Skubik.
 All this took up a lot of our time. A good deal of
time was also wasted on all kinds of negotiations,
which led to nothing.

I remember wasting a week negotiating with a

fellow who planned to get in touch with smugglers
by travelling along the frontier with a camera,
which he wanted us to buy for him.

We corresponded with Iskra agents in Berlin,

Paris, Switzerland and Belgium. They tried to help
as best they could by raising money and finding
willing travellers, connections, addresses, and so
on.

An organization called the League of Russian

Revolutionary Social-Democrats Abroad was
formed out of the sympathizing groups in October
1901.

Connections with Russia grew apace. One of the

most active correspondents of Iskra was the St.
Petersburg worker Babushkin. Vladimir Ilyich had
seen him before leaving Russia and made
arrangements with him to send in correspondence.
He sent in a mass of reports from Orekhovo-
Zuvevo Vladimir, Gus-Khrustalny, Ivanovo-
Voznesensk, Kokhma and Kineshma. He made a
regular round of these towns and strengthened
contacts with them. Letters also came from St.
Petersburg, Moscow, the Urals and the South. We
corresponded with the Northern Union. Noskov, a
representative of the Union, arrived from Ivanovo-
Voznesensk. A more Russian type it is difficult to
imagine. Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, with a slight
stoop, he spoke with a broad country accent, and
had arrived abroad with a small bundle to make all
the necessary arrangements. His uncle, the owner
of a small mill in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, had given
him the money for the trip in order to get rid of his
troublesome nephew, who was for ever being run
in and having his room searched by the police.
Boris Nikolayevich Noskov (Babushkin's alias, his
real name and patronymic being Vladimir
Alexandrovich) was an experienced practical
worker. I had met him in Ufa where he had
stopped over on his way to Ekaterinburg. He came
abroad for contacts. Making contacts was his
profession. I remember him sitting on the stove in
our Munich kitchen, telling us with shining eyes
about the work of the Northern Union. He was
terribly enthusiastic, and Vladimir Ilyich's
questions only added fuel to the flames. Boris kept
a note-book while he lived abroad, in which he
meticulously wrote down all contacts: where this
or that one lived, what he did, and how he could be
useful. He left us that note-hook afterwards. His
work as an organizer had a poetic sort of quality.
He overidealized his work and people, however,
and lacked the ability to face up to reality. After the
Second Congress he became a conciliator, and later
disappeared from the political scene. He died
during the years of reaction.

Other people came to Munich too. Struve had

been there before my arrival. Things were already
heading for a break with him. He was passing over
from the Social-Democratic to the liberal camp. On
the occasion of his last visit there had been a
serious clash. Vera Zasulich had nicknamed him
"the book-fed calf." Both Vladimir Ilyich and
Plekhanov had given him up, but Vera Zasulich
still thought there was hope for him. We jokingly
called her and Potresov the "Struve-freundliche
Partei."Struve visited Munich again when I was
there. Vladimir Ilyich refused to see him. I went to
see Struve at Vera's rooms. The interview was a
very painful one. Struve felt terribly hurt. There
was a Dostoyevsky sort of touch about it all. He
spoke about his being regarded as a renegade and
other things in a similar strain, and acted the self-
tormentor. I do not remember everything he said,
but I do remember the heavy feeling with which I
came away from that meeting. Plainly, he was a
stranger, a man hostile to our Party. Vladimir
Ilyich had been right. Afterwards Struve's wife,
Nina Alexandrovna, sent us her regards and a box
of sweets through somebody – I don't remember
who now. She was powerless, and I doubt whether
she realized where her husband was heading. He
knew, though.

After my arrival we lived in rooms at a German

working-class home. They were a family of six, and
all lived in the kitchen and a tiny room, but
everything was spotlessly clean. The children, too,
were tidy and polite. I decided to put Vladimir
Ilyich on home-cooked food and tackled the pots
and pans. I did the cooking in the landlady's
kitchen, but prepared everything in our own room.
I tried to make as little noise as possible, because
Vladimir Ilyich had then begun to write What Is To
Be Done? When writing, he would usually pace
swiftly up and down the room, whispering what he
was going to write. I had already adapted myself to
his mode of working, and when he was writing I
never spoke to him or asked him any questions.
Afterwards, when we went out for a walk, he would
tell me what he had written and what he was
thinking about. This became as much a necessity to
him as whispering his article over to himself before
putting it down in writing. We went for long
rambles on the outskirts of Munich, choosing the
loneliest spots where there were fewer people
about.
 A month later we moved into a flat of our own in
Schwabing, a suburb of Munich, in one of the
numerous newly erected buildings, and got
ourselves some furniture (we sold it all for twelve
marks when we left). We now Settled down to real
home life.

After lunch – which was at twelve – Martov and

others came to attend the so-called editorial
meeting. Martov Spoke without a stop, jumping
from one subject to anOther. He read a lot and was
always chock-full of news. He knew everything and
everybody. "Martov is a typical journalist,"
Vladimir Ilyich often said about him. "He is
remarkably talented, quick at grasping things,
terribly impressionable and easy-going." Martov
was an indispensable man for Iskra. Those five-to-
six-hour talks every day were very tiring for
Vladimir Ilyich. He used to feel quite ill after them
and was unfit for work. He asked me once to go
and see Martov and tell him not to come to us. We
arranged that I would call on him myself, and tell
him what letters we had received and arrange
everything with him. But nothing came of it. Two
days later we were back again where we were.
Martov could not live without these talks. From us
he would go to a cafe with Vera Zasulich, Dimka
and Blumenfeld and sit there talking for hours.

Afterwards Dan arrived with his wife and

children, and Martov spent most of his time with
them.

We went to Zurich in October to amalgamate

with Rabocheye Delo. Nothing came of it, though.
Akimov, Krichevsky and others talked themselves
silly. Martov worked himself up to such a pitch in
his attack on the Rabocheye Delo adherents that
he even tore his tie off. I had never seen him like
that before. Plekhanov scintillated. A resolution
was drawn up to the effect that amalgamation was
impossible. Dan read it out at the conference in a
wooden voice. "Papal nuncio," his opponents
shouted at him.

This split was a painless one. Martov and Lenin

had not collaborated with Rabocheye Delo, and
strictly speaking no break had occurred since there
had never been any cooperation. On the other
hand, Plekhanov was in high feather. The
opponent he had been grappling with for so long
was at last worsted. Plekhanov was cheerful and
chatty.

We lived in the same hotel, and had our meals

together, and everything seemed to be going well.
Only occasionally did a very slight difference ill the
approach to certain questions make itself felt.

One conversation sticks in my memory. We were

sitting in a cafe, and in the room next to ours there
was a gymnasium where fencing was in progress.
Workers armed with shields and cardboard swords
were engaged there in a sham battle. Plekhanov
laughed, saying: "That's how we shall fight under
the new order." Going home – I walked with
Axelrod – he developed the theme touched on by
Plekhanov. "Under the new order everything will
be a deadly bore," he said. "There will be no
struggle."

I was still painfully shy then and said nothing,

but I remember being surprised at such an
argument.

After we returned from Zurich Vladimir Ilyich

sat down to finish his What Is To Be Done? Later
the Mensheviks vehemently attacked that
pamphlet, but at that time it gripped everybody,
especially those who were more closely associated
with Russian work. The pamphlet was an ardent
appeal for organization. It outlined a broad plan of
organization in which everyone would find a place
for himself, become a cog in the revolutionary
machine, a cog, which, no matter how small, was
vital to the working of the machine. The pamphlet
urged the necessity of intensive and tireless efforts
to build the foundation that had to be built if the
Party was to exist in deeds and not in words under
the conditions then prevailing in Russia. A Social-
Democrat should not be afraid of long, hard work.
He must work and work unremittingly, and be ever
ready "for everything, from upholding the honour,
the prestige and continuity of the Party in periods
of acute 'evolutionary 'depression,' to preparing for,
fixing the time for and carrying out the nation-
wide armed insurrection," Vladimir Ilyich wrote
in What Is To Be Done?

Twenty seven years have passed since that

pamphlet was written, and what years! The
conditions of work for the Party have changed
completely and entirely new tasks confront the
workers' movement, yet the revolutionary passion
of this pamphlet is irresistible even today, and it
should be studied by everyone who wants to be a
Leninist in deeds and not in words.

Whereas The "Friends of the People" was of

tremendous significance in defining the path which
the revolutionary movement had to take, What Is
To Be Done?can be said to have defined a plan for
extensive revolutionary activities. It pointed out a
definite task.

It was clear that a Party congress was still

premature, that the conditions capable of
preventing it from coming to nothing as the First
Congress had done were lacking, and that long
preparatory work was necessary. The attempt by
the Bund, therefore, to convene a congress in
Belostok was not taken seriously by anybody. Dan
went there from Iskra, taking with him a suitcase
whose false lining was crammed with copies
of What Is To Be Done? The Belostok Congress
turned into a conference.

Vladimir Ilyich was particularly interested in the

attitude of the workers to that pamphlet. He wrote
to I. I. Radchenko on July 16, 1902: "I was ever so
glad to read your report about the talk with the
workers. We receive such letters much too rarely.
They are really tremendously cheering. Be sure and
convey this to your workers with our request that
they should write to us themselves, not just for the
press, but to exchange ideas, so that we do not lose
touch with one another and for mutual
understanding. Personally I am particularly
interested to know what the workers think of What
Is To Be Done? So far I have received no comments
from the workers."

Iskra was going strong. Its influence was

increasing. The Party programme was being
prepared for the congress. Plekhanov and Axelrod
came to Munich to discuss it. Plekhanov attacked
parts of the draft programme which Lenin had
drawn up. Vera Zasulich did not agree with Lenin
on all points, but neither did she agree entirely
with Plekhanov. Axelrod also agreed with Lenin on
some points. The meeting was a painful one. Vera
Zasulich wanted to argue with Plekhanov, but he
looked so forbidding, staring at her with his arms
folded on his chest, that she was thrown off her
balance. The discussion had reached the voting
stage. Before the voting took place, Axelrod, who
agreed with Lenin on this point, said he had a
headache and wanted to go for a walk.

Vladimir Ilyich was terribly upset. To work like

that was impossible. The discussion was so
unbusiness-like.

Organizing the work on a business-like footing

without introducing any personal element into it,
and thus ensuring that caprice or personal
relations associated with the past would not
influence decisions, had now become an obvious
need.

All differences with Plekhanov distressed

Vladimir Ilyich greatly. He fretted and did not
sleep at night. Plekhanov on the other hand was
sulky and resentful.

After reading through Vladimir Ilyich's article for

the fourth number of Zarya, Plekhanov returned it
to Vera Zasulich with marginal notes in which he
gave full vent to his annoyance. When Vladimir
Ilyich saw them he was greatly upset.

By this time it became known that Iskra could no

longer be printed in Munich. The owner of the
print-shop did not want to run the risk. We had to
move. But where? Plekhanov and Axelrod were for
Switzerland, the rest – after that whiff of the
atmosphere that had prevailed during the
discussion of the programme – voted for London.

We looked back on this Munich period

afterwards as a bright memory. Our later years of
life in emigration were a much more distressing
experience. During the Munich days the rift in the
personal relations between Vladimir Ilyich, Martov,
Potresov and Zasulich had not been so deep. All
energies had been concentrated upon a single
object – the building up of an all-Russian
newspaper. There had been an intensive rallying of
forces around Iskra. All had had the feel of the
organization's growth, a sense that the path for
creating the Party had been rightly chosen. That
explains the genuine spirit of jollification with
which we had enjoyed the carnivals, the universal
good humour that had prevailed during our trip to
Zurich, and so on.

Local life held no great attraction for us. We

observed it merely as bystanders. We went to
meetings sometimes, but on the whole they were of
little interest. I remember the May Day
celebrations. For the first time that year the
German Social-Democrats had been permitted to
organize a procession, on condition that the
celebrations were held outside the town and no
crowds collected within the town.

Fairly large columns of German Social-

Democrats with their wives and children, their
pockets stuffed with horseradishes, marched
swiftly through the town in silence to drink beer in
a suburban beer garden. There were no flags, no
placards. That Maifeier bore very little
resemblance to a demonstration of working-class
triumph throughout the world.

We did not follow the procession to the suburban

beer garden, but dropped behind and roamed the
streets of Munich as was our habit, in order to let
the feeling of disappointment that had crept into
our hearts wear off. We wanted to take part in a
real militant demonstration, and not a procession
sanctioned by the police.

As we were working in strict secrecy, we never

met any of the German comrades except Parvus,
who lived near us in Schwabing with his wife and
little son. Rosa Luxemburg came to see him once,
and Vladimir Ilyich went there to meet her. Parvus
was then an extreme Left-winger. He contributed
to Iskra and was interested in Russian affairs.

We travelled to London via Liege. Nikolai

Meshcheryakov was living in Liege at the time with
his wife – both old Sunday School friends of mine.
I had known him as a Narodovolets, but he had
been the first to initiate me into illegal work, the
first to teach me secrecy technique and help me to
become a Social-Democrat by keeping me well
supplied with the foreign publications of the
"Emancipation of Labour" group.

Now he was a Social-Democrat. He had been

living in Belgium for a long time and was familiar
with the local movement. We decided to call on
him en route.

There was tremendous excitement in Liege at

that time. A few days previously the troops had
fired on the strikers. The ferment in the working-
class districts could be read in the faces of the
workers and the people, who stood about in knots.
We went to see the People's House. It was very
inconveniently situated, and any crowd standing in
front of the building could easily be cooped up and
trapped. The workers were flocking to it. To avoid
a crowd gathering there, the Party leaders had
arranged meetings in all the working-class districts.
This gave rise to a vague mistrust of the Belgian
Social-Democratic leaders. It was very much like a
division of labour, some shooting at the crowd,
others seeking an excuse to pacify it....