The Last Congress of the Bolshevik Party

...As I said, I was unaware of the beastlike struggle for power that was in progress behind the scenes of this high-minded discussion...

...He had been a manager for years of the Russian department of Simmens & Schukert, a famous Berlin firm like our General Electric...

...He told the delegates that in London years ago, when the Revolution was burning low and Lenin needed funds for the publication of his journal, somebody suggested that they might get a contribution from a rich British capitalist who sympathized with the revolutionary movement in Russia...

...But the problem these men were discussing was how to develop a system of business such that all men and women should have a chance to live rich lives and be free and happy...

...What a mistake...

...He looked sadder than ever—sad, cold and sincere...

...His wife, still hoping for his recovery, withheld the letter...

...A simpler way of stating the facts would be to say that his exquisite head was so full of all kinds and varieties of ideas, learned by heart and never assimilated into his own thought-stream, that he could wind up any practical question in a web of theoretical big talk which the other Bolsheviks were unable to penetrate...

...Amid the laughter this evoked, he turned toward Krassin, who was sitting on the edge of the platform...

...The smile of his eyes never quite connected with that of his mouth, and they both quickly vanished as though smiling were something you do in order to get it done...

...He was a rabble-rouser if there ever was one...

...A strongly maintained political line of the Party in the State must not hinder the revival of industry...

...Dwelling on the role of politics in the State Krassin says: 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's...

...What you learned to like about them was an expression of serenity...

...You can imagine Comrade Krassin's psychology...

...Max Eastman is a long-time contributor to The New Leader...

...That was as near as he came to answering his critics...

...What may this mean...

...Radek did not approach the erring child with the well-known "this hurts me more than it does you...

...Our esteemed friend," he began, "knowing that you sympathize with our struggle for freedom in Russia, and with all the libertarian efforts of mankind...

...They undertook the chastisement of Comrade Krassin in good order and with unanimous enthusiasm...

...You thought he was weak-eyed and coarse-lipped, and that you could never endure that old brown stocking of whiskers under his ears and chin...

...I was content to rejoice in the mere topic of the discussion, the cool-minded and resolute concentration on a goal so remote from that of Big Business in the United States...

...Indeed he was just a healthy, clean, rosy-skinned boy who looked happy —seemingly because he had been elected president of his class, and was going to play quarterback on the college team...

...He had confided to his wife a letter, written on his sick-bed, warning the Party against Stalin and advising the election of a secretary "who in all respects differs from him only in superiority...

...Something in me, some vein of practical good sense, felt a sympathy for Krassin, but my hopes in the other direction were too strong...

...He would flit about on fine threads of intellectual interest like a grandmother spider, seeing that everything was revolutionary and all right...

...Comrade Krassin finds himself on the verge of making a very, very serious mistake," he said, picking up a copy of Pravda in which Krassin had set forth his views...

...I had the privilege of attending that 12th Congress, and perhaps my unpublished account of it, although written in a mood of rather Utopian elation, may have some historic value...

...But you would never prepare yourself for the sparkling torrent of witty argument that flowed out of him when he got on the platform...

...He did not deny that he had been "on the verge of a very grave mistake...

...You found that behind the big spectacles his blue eyes were not watery, but penetrating...

...Trotsky did not say anything about Krassin in his report on the problems of industry, and Krassin in discussing the report did not say anything about himself either...

...The only flaw in your illustration," he added with a smile, "is that Plekhanov got the money and you didn't...

...He made a charmingly disarming speech on the need of foreign credits for the revival of Russian big industry, and the peculiar difficulty of securing them...

...We knew this, and that is exactly why we sent Comrade Krassin to England...

...He would have opposed Stalin's re-election as general secretary and prevented in every way he could his rise to further power...

...How often as industrialists," he said, "we turn to the Party with reproaches—with reproaches not because it controls, but because it does not control enough, does not interfere enough, does not give that help which is the one thing real and essential...

...He delivered in Lenin's absence the "Political Report" of the Central Committee to the Party...

...Lenin himself, in his last letter to the Party, called him "scholastic," and said he did not "understand the dialectic"—a death-blow from a Marxist...

...There were two moments devoted to emotion: one when at the opening they rose and sang their sadly undulating hymn in memory of those who died for the Revolution, the other when Trotsky first entered the hall and they rose to applaud...

...But there was no substitute for Lenin...

...Krassin was the only businessman in the whole assembly...

...There was still a hope that Lenin would be back, and Stalin had not shown his hand...

...You found that the coarse lips had a delicate line between them...

...The very viability and survival of the State-operated economy was at issue...

...After this rather painful and motherly-serious spanking the paddle was passed to Karl Radek, who thoroughly enjoyed manipulating it...

...Krassin drew the moral from this tale, that if you are going to get money out of bourgeois governments you've got to approach them in a somewhat conciliatory spirit...

...We did not intend to change our policies, we just wanted him to translate us into English...

...Poet and essayist, he is author of many books including Great Companions...

...It put me back into a mood of unqualified belief...

...He lived, not in the Kremlin, but in the heart of Moscow among the people, leading a simple and devoted life—one man whom power could not corrupt...

...His voice was almost soprano and his oratory a series of short high vibrant complaints, each a phrase long and very rapidly uttered...

...Radek's more expert chastisement of Krassin concluded with these unambiguous hints: "I do not suppose Comrade Krassin's remarks were a candidate's speech, but if they had been a candidate's speech, they would have been rejected by the Congress, and the candidate would not have arrived in the Central Committee...

...I was unaware of the existence of Stalin...

...They sprinkle him with Communists, with whom he does not know what to do...

...Zinoviev came first...

...In the process of driving home a point there is usually a moment when it sticks a little on account of some purely intellectual friction, and it was a part of the recognized technique in Moscow, when this point arrived, to telephone for Nicolai Ivanitch Bukharin, a very small, young and inconspicuous-looking man who carried with him an enormous Marxian pile-driver...

...They all laughed, happy in the reminiscence of Lenin, and one felt that the chastisement of Krassin was about finished...

...I had come to Russia "to find out whether what I had been saying was true...

...Krassin's proposals would undoubtedly promote recovery, but they would also lead farther along the road back to capitalism that had been opened by Lenin's New Economic Policy...

...a really-and-truly palace, the kind they have in fairy tales, a climbing hive of "sumptuous chambers" full of "porphyry and gold," with thrones and coats-of-arms, and crystal chandeliers containing millions of tiny lights that fill its grandiose spaces with a delicately aristocratic glow...

...And to further mislead me, the Congress debated and decided, on the days I attended, an issue which I thought went to the heart of the question whether the Bolsheviks were really going to produce a "socialized" economy or not...

...It seemed to me that no meeting like this of a political party had ever been held before in the world...

...And Trotsky, in summarizing the decision against Krassin, came as near as he knew how to being diplomatic...

...He carried a cane, which was usually in his way when he was not using it to poke somebody halfway across the room...

...Comrade Krassin tells us," he said, "that if we are going to get credits out of foreign governments it is necessary to know how to do it, and he tells us how Plekhanov translated Lenin into English and got money for the Revolution...

...36-37) that "in reality the last Congress of the Bolshevik party took place at the beginning of 1923, the 12th Party Congress...

...A canary will start to sing, you know, and you think it is so brilliant that he will stop—but no, there is just nothing left of him but song...

...One does not defend the blood and violence of a revolution unless he believes it is going to change things profoundly, almost absolutely, for the better...

...He had asked Trotsky to substitute for him in this attack on Stalin and his clique, begging him to make no "rotten compromise" for the sake of peace...

...On the contrary, his expression said: "I am very glad to see that you have made an ass of yourself, for I have known all along that you were going to, and ever since you were born I've been aching to roll up my sleeves and hand you a good crisp wallop...

...What may this mean...

...Without even asking you whether you need them or not, they sprinkle you with a dozen or so more of human material belonging to the Party, sometimes absolutely unsuitable either for work or for control in the given department.' " Here Zinoviev drew a deep and reproachful sigh...

...He was inconspicuous from a distance...

...And I must confess they took place in a rather opaque cloud of optimistic emotion...

...I even reached a point where the news that it had been removed for the sake of some diplomatic sortie into Germany struck me not as a maneuver but a compromise...

...It was a rather overwhelming experience for a Mark Twain democrat, hating all false eminences whether of cast or class, to attend a Congress of the Russian Communist party in the resplendent reception hall of the Tsar's palace...

...For the rest it was more like a meeting of directors to discuss the balance sheet of a corporation than the convention of a political party...

...Plekhanov had to translate this speech...

...The average American, I thought, would find it difficult to believe that so many able brains, and such a wealth of practical thought and information, could be brought to bear upon a problem of production and distribution by any consideration less mundane than million-dollar profits...

...His attitude to the role of the Communists you can gather from this further quotation: 'You find that a power independent of you has thrown one of your workers into another department, perhaps into another establishment...

...And Trotsky made all the compromises necessary to bring off a peaceful Congress, not even opposing Stalin's re-election as general secretary...

...This article forms a chapter in his autobiographical volume titled Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch, to be published in January by Random House...

...Whatever their thoughts, they all looked friendly and congenial...

...Lenin, had he been there, would have "exploded a bombshell"—to use his own expression—"against Stalin...

...Though there was nothing extraordinary in the aspect of these people, the things they said and thought about seemed to me extraordinary...

...Every man in the Party who could get there attended the Congress on the evening when Trotsky made his summing up...

...Even in, the dispute with Krassin the question was predominantly of increasing sales and promoting production...

...The rapidity and monotony and equal spacing of these little wails of speech had a gradually inebriating effect, like the beating of a tom-tom, and turned your wonder at the unfaltering speed and lucidity of his thought into a kind of crazy passion...

...I have dwelt at length on this Congress of Lenin's party because it confirmed and strengthened my pro-Bolshevik convictions...

...I do not remember how many sessions I attended—perhaps only the first and second and last—but in any case I could have seen nothing of the sullen currents of schismatic passion that would swell to a riptide in the coming months...

...He knew what he was talking about and he talked well...

...You find yourself, Comrade Krassin, on the verge of a very grave mistake...

...he would sing...

...This erased my doubts...

...You gradually became reconciled to that brown fringe of whisker under his chin...

...They were undercurrents still—rigidly held under by common agreement...

...Leonid Krassin, coming back from a trade mission in London, made a ringing speech protesting the nagging and hampering of legitimate enterprise by Party politicians occupying posts where experts in commerce and industry were wanted...

...Lenin decided to tackle him, but as he could not then talk English, Plekhanov went along as interpreter...

...Such were my thoughts...

...She never mentioned it...

...Bukharin had a way like a songbird, too, of repeating a phrase but varying the melody: "What may this mean...

...And now the entire constellation of "big Bolsheviks" sat around him, either at the long table or on the steps leading to the platform: Bukharin, Radek, Litvinov, Krylenko, Chicherin, Piatakov, Rakovsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Krassin, Dzerzhinsky, Antonov-Avseenko, Rykov, Stalin, Preobrazhensky—every one who was not away on a diplomatic mission...

...But more was at issue here than just flexible good sense against the mounting bigotry of the Party...

...Radek dressed his hollow-frame in a strange square costume with unusual flaps and buttons, slick and aristocratic in material, but in design suggesting a New England deacon rather than a Bolshevik agitator...

...He was quick and wiry and popular like that, and he toed in a little, and stood very firm on his legs...

...The 12th Congress, sitting from April 17-25, 1923, was the first one from which Lenin was absent...

...Lenin was out of the fight now—paralyzed, perhaps for good—and his disciples had no more consuming fear than that this policy, so carefully explained by him as a maneuver, should turn into a retreat...

...Throughout the sessions that I attended there was not a sentence or a phrase of what could be called political oratory, either of the spread-eagle or the tub-thumping variety...

...I thought I had found out now that it was true...

...Dzerzhinsky's opinion was influential because he was supposed to be a great executive, but this was really a sentimental view...

...All subsequent congresses were bureaucratic parades...

...And I was uncritical of the momentous implications of the discussion itself...

...He just strolled about, holding some paper in his hand, his blouse unflapped at the neck to make it easier to talk, and his whole being became that talk...

...Listen for yourselves...

...All this was as far as the moon from my knowledge...

...They looked to my admiring eyes like a good-natured family...

...They got the money, Krassin said, and moreover the esteemed friend came around recently to the Russian Trade Commission in London, presented a bill, and got it back...

...You would see, if he came nearer, that the outline of his head and ears and features was delicate as a seashell, and you would guess that he must be very talented in a polite and lovable way...

...You could not help liking him...

...In that glow those chambers now became homelike in spite of themselves, and the great gold-freighted doors that you had to buck your back against to move seemed to stand open as hospitably as though the delegates, plain folks who might have come from a farm in Idaho, or a factory in Pittsburgh, or from Greenwich Village or the Henry Street Settlement, were the original proprietors...

...Radek had the attractiveness of a thing that you did not like at first...

...The palace had got used to them, I suppose, by the time I arrived there...

...I think from reading his books that Bukharin's gifts as the "theoretician" of the Bolshevik party were much exaggerated...

...Although rosy in color, he reminded me of a canary bird...

...Politics—that is a necessary evil, but at least let it not hinder the revival of industry.' "It did not occur to Krassin that politics not only does not hinder, but it helps...

...The ovation to him had been the big moment of the Congress...

...It was an orphan Congress, and everybody was on his good behavior...

...He was not the theoretician, but the saint, the one they all loved, the "favorite of the Party," as Lenin called him...

...They shook hands and sat down, and Lenin began: "Of course we recognize in you a political enemy, a representative of the exploiting class, but we understand that you are liberal-minded, and in spite of your unfortunate position we thought perhaps...

...I must say that if there is any one enormous obstacle to the general appraisement of the situation, that obstacle is Comrade Krassin...