THE RUSSIAN RIDDLE
THOSE who expect to find here revelations of secret Russian history or explanations why Trotzky has fallen from power or out of favour with jealous colleagues will be disappointed. So also will those who hope to learn from any self-revelation what was the secret of the power wielded by Lenin and Trotzky. Lenin is here held up as the master-mind, the man who could treat small affairs with thoroughness, great ones with imagina- tion, and both with success : the man who was versed in languages and economic history and capable of dominating colleagues and opponents alike. So much is stated, but we are left wondering how these qualities were applied with such effect that he really has a claim to astonishing success during his life, since he succeeded in imposing himself as a dictator and putting into force his destructive theories. Of Trotzky himself we get no hint of greatness, even concealed by modesty. And yet we know that Trotzky wielded power that could scarcely be grasped by any man
de‘mid of Great qualities for good or for evil.
In his preface he disclaims writing history ; he has put down notes of what he remembers, to help the future historian. The first part of the book describes the squalor of the life in London of himself, Lenin and others who were writing a Russian revolutionary paper. The teaching of Marx seems to have been their sole inspiration. There is never a word of sentiment about raising the downtrodden, no cant of freedom; only the cold, heartless determination to get power to destroy existing things and to set up one class in despotic power. Possibly we should blame the Tsarist regime for having driven out of Tartar and Jew alike every spark of pity or humour: But it is incredible that they could have believed that the Proletariat, however they defined it, would ever exercise real power rather than the few men who were determined to seize it in that name. References to walks in Westminstei or Whitechapel will not relieve for English readers the sordid impression of this part. The only amusement they may get about English ideas is to be found elsewhere in a scathing account of an interview between Lenin and Mr. H. G. Wells on whom Lenin commented " What a Philistine ! What a monstrous little bourgeois ! "
In the next chapters we find ourselves in Petrograd. Trotzky arrived from an internment camp in Canada (released* by the British authorities at Kerensky's request according to the publishers' introduction). There is no word of how Lenin himself and the German staff conspired to introduce into Russia that fatal germ; but Trotzky found him there, and we have a hazy account of the Soviets' stroke which brought them power in October, 1917. Then follows the episode of Brest- Litovsk, and the account given of the lapse of the armistice removes no suspicions of collusion between Lenin and Trotzky
on the one side and Hoffmann and Kiihlmann on the other. There is scarcely a reference to the Polish war that followed and none at all to the continued bloodshed and violence by which the power was held at home. Now and again we hear of Lenin's contempt for evolution and insistence on " ierror " without which revolution cannot succeed : no more.
There are two phrases that strike us particularly. One is that in reality the revolution had only been carried through in Petrograd and Moscow ; in the provincial cities " revolution was accomplished by telegraph." So we supposed, in a country of such great distances and bad communications.
Could the revolution be unmade there by telegraph ? We doubt it. That is one side of these men's success. The other phrase is " our great party embracing half a million." Is this a claim that one half of one per cent. of the population holds
down the rest ? Let us quote one more striking sentence, remembering that naivete is not a Jewish characteristic.
Trotzky writes of Lenin : " Naturally, he was further removed than anyone from a superstitious adherence to formal oaths " ! The book leaves us wondering more than ever how they main- tained their power and how long it will be donee transeat iniquitas.
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