(8) Lenin's black money source - young gangster, Stalin's dark side

Read Victor Sebeschen's Lenin, Power and Love⑻.

Continued by Victor SebeschenLenin, Power and Love.The following are some of the memorable passages from the

Surprising Sources of Funding for Lenin's Bolshevik Party

In 1905, the defeat of the Russo-Japanese War that had broken out the previous year and dissatisfaction with the regime led to mass demonstrations in the capital city of St. Petersburg.

In response, the emperor ordered the demonstrators to be removed and used force, including firing guns at unarmed civilians. Many people died as a result. This incident is known as the Bloody Sunday Incident.

This incident raised domestic dissatisfaction with the emperor to a dangerous degree. The following quote describes the actions of businessmen of that era.

Billionaire Sava Morozov increased his support for the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, and other industrialists began funding socialists and liberals. It became fashionable to do so. If it made them feel better, they didn't mind supporting us," Leonid Krasin said. He was a cashier's specialist who handled many of the "donations" and was a Bolshevik safekeeper. He thought it was a kind of perverse snobbery for industrialists to support a movement so radically opposed to their personal interests.

Among those who regularly donated 5 to 25 rubles [each month] were prominent lawyers, engineers, and doctors, as well as bank executives and government officials, Among those who regularly donated between five and twenty-five rubles [each month] were not only prominent lawyers, engineers, and doctors, but also bank executives and government officials.

The Czar's big mistake was to make enemies with wealthy businessmen such as Morozov, Pavel Lyapshinsky, and Alexander Guchkov. The Czar did not realize how important they would become because he thought it was bad for his good name to associate with those who were engaged in "business.

Much of the business world supported the liberals in their quest for Western-style reforms. Alexei Petrov, one of the wealthiest Russian industrialists, who employs 27,000 people in a vast factory outside St. Petersburg and makes many of the weapons for the Russian army, said. The tsarist regime is finished. There is no hope for it.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.234-235

Our common image may be that socialism (communism) hates capitalists. I thought so too.

But at this time in Russia, the capitalists were supporting socialist parties. So much so that there was growing opposition to the Russian government. This was a complete failure of the Czar. The Czar had neglected the people who ran the country's economy, and now he was paying the price for it.

The capitalists gave economic aid to the Bolsheviks, including Lenin, but if the imperialists had been firmly in politics, that would not have happened and history might have been different.

Robbery in the name of "deprivation" - Lenin's black money source. The dark deeds of the young gangster Stalin.

While some critics accused Lenin of cowardice in the face of his enemies, other revolutionaries labeled him a "gangster" and a "chaser" who was no better than a "thief". Even if there were few, if any, serious political differences or issues of principle between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, there were many sharp disagreements on tactics.

The Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party could not rely solely on donations from the wealthy - the Russian conglomerates of a bygone era - to finance the revolution. Funds had to be found through other means, and Lenin created a de facto criminal gang that stole at the behest of the party. This is probably the prototype of the Russian Mafia.

He did not directly order the raid himself as one, calling it by the Marxian-inspired name of "deprivation," but whatever euphemism he used, it was robbery itself. Lenin put Leonid Krasin in charge of the "Technical Committee. Kuraghin placed Stalin at the head of the "summary" who would be his right-hand man, and Stalin planned and carried out many "expropriations" in the Russian Empire.

Various gangs they hired robbed numerous banks, extorted huge sums of cash and gold bullion from the safe of the steamship "Nikolai I" docked in Baku harbor, and robbed post offices and state railroad ticket offices all over the place.

Krasin planned a major operation to print counterfeit bills using a secret printing press, but was unable to find a counterfeiter with sufficient skills.

Martov, Plekhanov, and Mensheviks were appalled and did not want to "engage in criminal acts for very natural moral and practical reasons. They did not want to "engage in criminal acts for very natural moral and practical reasons, because such acts may not bring serious repercussions to any of us. We did not want to be seen as thieves.

Lenin despised them. He told Martov, "You cannot accomplish a revolution wearing kid goat leather gloves."
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.250-251

This is a rather surprising part for me as well.

The fact that a group that so brazenly commits robbery and uses it as a source of funds is in the public eye as a political group.

And then there is the future Soviet dictator Stalin, who has been a shadowy gangster since this time.

This was a fact that I would have been unaware of had I not studied Soviet history, especially Lenin and Stalin.

The robber is robbed" - Lenin also justifies robbery.

He developed complex and conflicting arguments to justify his theft. Maxim Litvinov, one of the most intelligent of the early Bolsheviks and always a reliable Lenin supporter, asked him on one occasion.

"Staryk [Lenin's code name for "old man"], you always preach that it is right to 'rob the robber'. Tell me, if you encountered a Rothschild on the street with a thick wallet, would you threaten him with a revolver and steal his money?" (Rothschild, 1983, p. 3).

Lenin replied with a laugh. I don't think so. But if I were to come to power, I would not hesitate to issue an order to nationalize the Rothschild banks and their assets. Nevertheless, the rule of law is necessary as long as there are nations, including the proletarian state, which must be legitimately governed by a ...... victorious people and their government. Otherwise, everything will crumble and the most primitive instincts will be unleashed." These were prophetic words.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.252

Lenin argues the logic that since the capitalists were robbing the workers, it is only natural that they should be robbed by us. This is a perfect example of Lenin's idea that the ends justify the means.

Lenin Stalin's most dramatic "forcible seizure" - the Chiflis cash robbery

The most dramatic "forced deprivation" was orchestrated by Stalin in July 1997. This was only a few weeks after the party congress in London had explicitly banned it and Lenin had promised that he would not tolerate deprivations in the future.

A bank's horse-drawn wagon load of large amounts of transported cash was robbed in broad daylight in the center of Georgia's capital Teiflis (now Tbilisi). Stalin was the ringleader, and a gang led by the gangster Bolshevik Kamo (real name Simon Arshaki Ter-Petroshash) watched from the shadows as they robbed the cash on its way to the Russian National Bank in the city center.

Fifteen innocent passersby were killed by bombs and gunfire, and nearly fifty were seriously injured. This was by far the most extensive robbery in which the Bolsheviks were involved, and one of the least lucrative, although it upset the international community and revolutionary parties throughout Europe.

In the long run, the cost was high. The National Bank could not properly ascertain how much money the robbers had taken. It estimated it at roughly 250,000 to 340,000 rubles. This was an enormous amount of money for the time. In terms of the value in 2004, it would amount to a maximum of more than US$400 million.

The problem was that most of the stolen cash was in high denomination bills, either marked on the bills or the police knew the serial numbers.

Lenin had ostensibly distanced himself from the crime. However, he was privately aware of all the details of the plan before the incident occurred and approved it. As with the proceeds of other robberies, Stalin gave some of the money to Lenin personally. Duck also gave the cash to Lenin in Geneva.

The idea of using reliable party activists to exchange these bills in European cities came from Lenin. This plan backfired spectacularly. The bills were traced, and within weeks, more than a dozen party activists, including Duck, were detained.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.255-256

This incident comes up in the biography of Stalin, which you will read later in this blog, but this massive raid is quite shocking. Lenin's political capital was financed by money obtained through these "means".

Obtaining funds through marriage fraud

Lenin used a variety of other means to raise funds besides the extortion of cash through the use of force with Stalin and others. That is the following quote.

Less bloody, but equally despicable and morally dubious, is the Schmidt estate fraud case. Lenin planned to defraud two teenage girls of the inheritance they had inherited, almost certainly traumatizing them in the process. This is an episode that shows Lenin at his most shameless.

When it came to his own money, he was a man of integrity and no greed whatsoever, but when it came to politics, he was willing to lie, steal, cheat, and kill for the money that would increase the Bolsheviks' profits. He told Angelika Barabanova that "every word that is done in the cause of the proletariat is sincere.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.256

Lenin plans to acquire the inheritance of a teenage girl who will inherit the estate of Schmidt, a wealthy man who died young.

Lenin heard of the young man's death and saw an opportunity. He knew that Schmidt had two younger sisters. Ekaterina, 19, and Lizaveta, 17, both interested in the revolutionary movement. Now heirs to his inheritance, they were very tasty "dupes" for the ruthlessly motivated money-grubbers.

Lenin selected two handsome young party activists for the role of seducing and marrying the girls. The girls would become romantically involved and would hand over their assets to the Bolsheviks, elated at the prospect of supporting the revolution.
Some line breaks have been made.

Hakusuisha, Victor Sebeschen, translated by Motohiro Miura and Tsukasa Yokoyama, Lenin: Power and Love, vol. 1, p.257

He used a handsome man who worked for him to seduce and marry these women. He actually carried out his plan to rob them of their inheritance. I cannot go into the details of this incident at length, but the two girls were actually married to his men, and Lenin's plan for the inheritance was to some extent realized.

The book presented this episode as a straightforward example of Lenin justifying any action for a purpose.

be unbroken

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