Table of Contents
Read Victor Sebeschen's Lenin, Power and Love⑹.
Continued by Victor SebeschenLenin, Power and Love.The following are some of the memorable passages from the
Lenin's first experience abroad
Vladimir first left his homeland at the age of twenty-five, but he has spent nearly half of his adult life outside Russia. His first foreign trip was a revolutionary "continental tour" commissioned by the Marxists in St. Petersburg to make contact with the radical group in exile in Western Europe, the Labor Liberation Organization.
This group included all the big names in the Russian dissident movement who had fled the imperial regime. At the end of April 1895, he embarked on a four-month journey through Austria, Switzerland, France, and Germany.
He had planned to leave earlier in the year, but his departure was delayed by the first symptoms of various illnesses that would periodically afflict him thereafter. A severe attack of pneumonia left him bedridden for several weeks, but when he recovered, he was eager to go on "an important mission for the revolution." [omitted)
What he soon learned on his trip was that he thought he was fluent in a foreign language, but he was not. He had studied German and English, and had dabbled in French from books, but he could hardly converse with anyone in any of these languages. He later became quite fluent in all three languages, but when he left Russia for the first time, he was shocked to learn that he knew almost nothing, even about German, a language in which he had always felt confident. I couldn't understand even the simplest words - the pronunciation was not what I expected, and they spoke very quickly," he said. (omitted).
The second significant discovery was the magnificence of the Alps. He fell in love with the Alps at first sight. The mountain ranges always calmed him. Even after that, as Nadja (*Lenin's wife. As the blog author notes) says, "Ilyich was happiest and most relaxed when there were mountains nearby.
As the train approached the Tyrol region of Austria and he caught sight of one of the high Alpine peaks, he was taken aback by it. I was almost speechless," he soon wrote in a letter to his mother.
The scenery here is exceptionally stunning. I have always enjoyed it. As soon as the train left the small station in Germany where I sent you the letter, I could see the Alps and then so many lakes that I could hardly leave the window of the coach.
He never learned to ski during his life, but many types of mountain activities fascinated him. One of the reasons he spent so many years in exile in Switzerland was the proximity of his beloved Alps.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.123-124
Some line breaks have been made.
On Lenin's first trip abroad, the first thing he noticed was that he could not communicate at all in a foreign language. He thought he had studied it, but in reality it was not what he expected.
I felt this was an episode that showed the humanity of the young Lenin.
Above all, the love at first sight for the Alps, my second discovery, was very impressive to me.
Lenin is the dictator that everyone later feared. He was a man who was ruthless and gave orders to kill many people without hesitation.
But what a gap it is that such a Lenin was moved by the magnificent scenery of the Alps and loved nature all his life. This is not a machine-like, inhuman image of Lenin, but a Lenin who was moved by something and had the sensitivity to love it.
This episode made me realize that Lenin is not a machine, but only a human being.
Lenin's arrest
Upon his return to Japan, Lenin was arrested in December 1895 on charges of revolutionary activity. This was his first arrest.
The arrest gave Vladimir the credentials needed to be a revolutionary. He had written pamphlets, agitated and addressed rallies. Besides, he was the brother of a notorious "terrorist" executed at the hands of the regime. But to be recognized by society, he had to spend time in prison and exile in the Siberian wastelands before he could be taken seriously as a real revolutionary. That is one of the tests to determine how much he has devoted himself to the cause.
He was placed in Cell 193 of the Pre-Trial Detention Center from December 1895 to February 1897, during which time he was interrogated four times. He was never subjected to physical abuse or severe psychological pressure. The interrogations seemed to be mere routine tasks, and other prisoners have described the interrogation methods as "harassing".
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.131
How interesting that in order to be recognized as a revolutionary, one must first have a track record of being arrested.
But if he were arrested, he would be executed like Lenin's brother, and that would be dangerous.
However, in fact, the circumstances of arrest, detention, and exile at this time were much different than in the past. Let us read the following quotation.
A criminal system that is more lenient than it once was and much more lenient than it was in the later Soviet era
Vladimir was interrogated three more times by Lieutenant Colonel Kulikov in a similarly relaxed atmosphere. He revealed nothing. He maintained his physical and psychological condition and was in high spirits. In a letter to his family he wrote: "I am placed in a better environment than other citizens of the Russian Empire. At least I am not under arrest," he joked. The criminal system under the Czarist regime was much more lenient toward political prisoners than under the Soviet system of later years, where torture and summary executions were the order of the day.
A few weeks after his arrest, Vladimir told his mother, "My health is in a satisfactory condition. Here I can drink mineral water. It is delivered by the pharmacy the same day I order it," he wrote.
He devised a routine to endure life in detention. Later, when his sister Marija and brother-in-law, Marc Elizarov, were arrested in February 1901 for their activities to overthrow the government, he explained his strict methods in his usual pompous, preachy tone.
I especially recommended translation to Marc," he said. It is a two-way process: first translating a foreign language text into Russian, and then translating the Russian text into the foreign language. In my experience, this is the most logical way to learn a language.
As for his body, I strongly advised him to do ...... exercises and massage his body with a wet towel every day. This is absolutely essential in a solitary cell. ......
I would also encourage you to switch your reading from one book to another as you read the books you have. I remember very well how useful it was for me to change my reading and work - from translation to reading, from exercises to writing, from serious books to novels. After dinner, I always read a novel as an evening diversion, and I never enjoyed it as much as I did in prison.
The key is to never forget to do your exercises every day. Subject yourself to dozens of different ways to move your body of all kinds, this is very important."(omitted)
While in jail, he began work on his first real book, The Development of Capitalism in Russia. I sleep nine hours every day and dream about the different chapters of my future book. ...... If I had stayed in jail much longer, I would have finished the book there."
The book has enhanced his reputation as a radical theorist and is extremely important because it discusses that controversial idea that Russia is already on the road to an advanced industrialized country - a stage that, according to Marx, is essential for the victory of the proletarian revolution It becomes.
People who came to visit him at the jail brought him money, food, clean sheets, and even more comforts than he needed - "For example, one person brought me a frock coat, a vest, and a travel blanket," he wrote to his mother.
They were immediately put into storage as unwanted items." His mother and Anna moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg to facilitate visitation. They sent him food items recommended for his delicate stomach. And when a doctor at the jail advised him that regular bowel cleansing was good for him, they inserted a tube for an enema. [omitted)
Prisoners were allowed to exchange normal correspondence. Security was so lax that prisoners could conspire to do many things in the jail.
There was a sure code to let Vladimir know if the secret message, written in burnout ink, had reached him.
At 6 p.m. they bring hot water to brew tea and the guards take the common criminals to the church. By this time, the "political prisoners" tear their letters into long, thin pieces of paper. Then they brew tea and as soon as the guards leave, they dip the pieces of paper into the cup. The letter is thus "developed."
In a jail, the usual practice of holding a letter over a flame is not possible. It was Vladimir's idea to try hot water. We made little 'ink bottles' out of bread so that no one would find us writing with milk," Vladimir said. When he heard the creaking of the grating, he immediately put it in the lo," he wrote in a postscript to a letter to Nadja one day. One time he wrote in a postscript to a letter to Nadja: "Today I ate six ink bottles."
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.133-134
Some line breaks have been made.
It is a bit long, but it gives a very clear description of the atmosphere in the prison at the time of Lenin's arrest.
As you can read, it seems that the prison was looser than we imagined. In fact, it may even have been comfortable. Lenin used this prison period to read many books and even wrote political works.
They were also free to bring in food, and even exchanged secret messages with each other under surveillance.
This makes me wonder if it would not be more convenient for the government to capture revolutionaries and put them in jail.
The situation is very different from that of 1849, when Dostoevsky was arrested. The difference is quite obvious, since the conditions of detention in those days were so harsh that some people went insane and others even lost their lives.
Generous Siberian Exile: Differences from the Dostoevsky Exile Era
After spending 14 months in a St. Petersburg jail, Vladimir was sentenced to three years of "administrative exile" to Siberia on January 29, 1897. However, it was not initially decided where in Siberia he would be exiled. There was no trial and no right of appeal.
At his mother's request, he was allowed to go to the penal colony at his own expense and not under police supervision. This would make this long journey much more comfortable. On February 13, he was released from jail and allowed to spend four days in St. Petersburg before being transferred to the penal colony. As usual, he spends these days meeting with other revolutionaries.
The first stage of the trip took eleven weeks. Again, he received special treatment. After his mother contacted the authorities, he was allowed to stay in Moscow for a few days to meet with his family. He extended his stay for two days and left Moscow on March 6 with his mother, sister Anna, and her husband, Mark Elizarov. The family left him the next day at the Tula train station and returned to Moscow. (omitted).
At the end of the line, in Krasnoyarsk, he had to wait for notification from the authorities as to where his place of exile would be. But it was no hardship. He spent the entire day in the Eugene Library, a vast collection of books owned by Gennady Vasilievich Eugene, a wealthy vodka distiller and renowned bibliophile.
One of Eugene's friends knew Anna Ulyanova, who regularly allowed select prisoners on their way to exile free access to her home and to read the 80,000 volumes of books in her library. The library contained complete issues of several periodicals dating back to the 18th century, which Vladimir thought would be useful in writing The Development of Capitalism in Russia.
After five weeks of spending most of his time from dawn to dusk surrounded by Eugene's books, Vladimir was notified of his place of exile. It was Shushenskoye, a small village on the banks of the Enisei River. Few could have thought of better news.
It was located in the southwestern part of the vast Siberian region, where the climate was relatively mild and the political prisoners called it the "Italy of Siberia.
Still, it took eight days by steamboat to Minusinsk, the nearest large town to Shushenskoye, and from there a day's journey by carriage. He was assigned a peasant hut. It was surrounded by vast meadows, forests, and swamps. On a clear day, the snow-capped hills of the Sainskaya Mountains could be seen faintly in the far distance. [omitted)
The situation was not as bad as what Soviet dissidents later faced in the concentration camps. Vladimir was even allowed to carry a Bergie double-barreled rifle and a large quantity of bullets that his brother Dmitry had sent him. Within a month, he invited Dmitry to come with him. We can go hunting together - if Siberia makes me a sportsman.
Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.135-137
Some line breaks have been made.
Lenin also received lenient treatment regarding the Siberian exile.
At his mother's pleading, the trip itself was also comfortable. While Dostoevsky was forcibly taken away in a horse-drawn carriage in the middle of winter in December, when temperatures can reach minus 40 degrees Celsius, Lenin was able to travel in comfort by train at his own expense.
Moreover, the place of exile was a particularly warm and comfortable place to live in Siberia, and the people were not subjected to the kind of harsh forced labor that we imagine.
The harshness of Dostoevsky's 1849 exile in Siberia's Omsk Prison is the subject of his novelThe Record of the House of Death."It is detailed in the following table.
I had this image of Dostoevsky's Siberian exile, so when I learned of Lenin's life in exile, I was quite surprised at the difference.
Of course, the Siberian exile as a whole was harsh. Chekhov's, which I have mentioned in my blog before.Sakhalin Islandis typical.
The great Russian playwright Chekhov visited Sakhalin in the Far East, then known as Hell Island. The book reveals the miserable life here, but if Lenin had been sent here, we believe that his words as just described would not have been uttered.
The situation may have been very different depending on where they were distributed.
It is worth noting, however, that the prison system in the late imperial period was much more lax than in former times.
This looseness allowed Lenin to build up his strength as a revolutionary.
It was this experience that led him to create an unimaginably harsh penal system when he later came to power. Under Lenin's regime, he created a series of harsh concentration camps that led to immediate execution without trial and death, and he detained large numbers of arrestees. In order to maintain his power, he showed no mercy to dangerous elements. This attitude may have been based largely on his own experiences.
be unbroken
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