The Go-Between
The Merchant of Revolution : The Life of•Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus) 1867-
ALEXANDER ISRAEL HELPHAND, the mad 'be- hind the pen-name `Parvus,' revolutionary activist and theorist jammed uneasily between the Ger- man and Russian Social Demobrats, associate of Trotsky and of Lenin, adviser on Russian affairs to the war-time Imperial German govern- ment, Marxist millionaire engaged on the import of coal and the expdrt of revolution, Russian Jew transformed into a 'fully recognised German citizen,' did much himself to engineer his sub- sequent fate as an 'un-person.' With his passion for secrecy and in pursuit of deliberate mystifica- tion, Helphand burned his papers and systemati- cally obliterated his personal and political tracks. The result, however, was not a legend shorn of all awkward or disfiguring inconsistencies, but a virtual oblivion in which friend and foe alike found it more convenient to leave him.
The rescue of the 'historical Helphand,' brought to full and fantastic life in The Merchant of Revolution, owes everything to the necessarily persistent and astonishingly assiduous detective work of the joint authors, who readily and realistically appreciate that Helphand himself would wish for no exhumation. But they are by no means wholly in pursuit of the man; they identify Helphand's 'personal tragedy' with the failure of a movement, European socialism,' which suffered first the disruptive agonies of 1914 and then the fatal thrust of the 'socialist dictator- ship' established by the Bolsheviks shortly after 1917. Helphand's causes were lost, and with their' the man whose life and times compose a tale by turns melancholy and bizarre, grotesque and tragic.
Of Helphand's ability and originality the authors leave the reader in no further doubt in their chronicle of Helphand—now `Parvus'—as Marxist radical and pamphleteer, attempting to bring the German Social Democrats back to Marxist realities, raising a storm of invective and dispute at the centre of the German move- ment and passing on to closer contact with the Russian exiles, not least Lenin and Trotsky. His design to bring Russian revolutionary fervour into closer alignment with German mass organi- sation came to little; his mediation between the Russian factions, Bolshevik and Menshevik, caine unstuck over a blundet of intemperate language, which 'pleased no one.' Lenin went his own way, 'willing to pay a high price for a clear-cut vic- tory': Helphand, defeated in the German party, also lost this historic encounter.
Phrenix-like, having removed himself to Con- stantinople, a new Helphand arose from these
-grimied ashes. He laid the foundations of his
subsequent fortune; when the war came, he placed his socialist ideals at the service of the German cause, not out of cheap chauvinism, but out of a determination to promote the Socialist cause 'in his own way, and on his own terms.'
His persuasive pro-German—or, rather, anti- Tsarist Russian--arguments Helphani lavished on the Rumanian and Bulgarian socialists. He made money, bemused the Balkan socialists and attracted the attention of the German d'plornats. Having learned how to work the levers of power, Helphand, once more in Berlin, proposed to the German government a giant plan of subversion designed to pull Russia out of the war:. in
March 1915 he was established as 'the leading adviser to the German government on revaiu-
tionary affairs in Russia. He collected one million marks for his political schemes.' At this point the authors discern in him not only an 'operator' on a grand scale, but also a soar- ingly ambitious man.--preparing the way for his 'Ultimate entry as a reformer, a saviour. the leader of the revolution.'
Hoping to use Lenin's professional revolu- tionaries; Helphand nevertheless failed to win over Lenin in 1915. By 1916 he had apparently failed, but 1917 brought a restoration of his political fortune, this time under the auspices of the German General SIMI; in masterly fashion, the authors unravel Helphand's second and suc- cessful contact with Lenin and his Bolsheviks, the tinancing of the Bolsheviks and the trans- portation of these potent political wreckers back to Russia. But nothing of Helphand's grand design was consummated; both Lenin and the Imperial German government, agents too mighty for Helphand to master or to manipulate, pursued their own priorities. After a brief pro-Bolshevik Phase, Helphand became violently anti-Bolshevik, launched on schemes to undo them; as for Im- perial Germany, all he could do was to hope for a German victory. With Germany's defeat, apart from his money, Helphand was himself undone.
This vastly complicated, capricious. inconsis- tent life remained at a tangent to the main ques- tions; Helphand's scheines to save socialism from itself came to nought, his design to rescue the revolution met the steel mill of Lenin, his hopes of using Imperial Germany led to his being devoured by thAt particular monster. His talents were abundant, save for one: shrewdness. He threw off brilliant ideas, but his over- simplified formula of the connection between money and political power made no permanent conquests for him. He gave history one significant Push, but those levers, which he delighted to pull, failed to move it in his direction. The continuity of his life was that persistent incompatibility of ends and means, the tangle of Which The Mer- chant of Revolution handles with great skill, much originality and no little feeling for this unique man of trade.
JOHN ERICKSON
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