In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-January 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Three

In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-January 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take Three      

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 



For a number of years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 in each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period in honoring revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since every January  

Leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered in separate incidents after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.



I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in which he eventually wound up in prison only to be released when the Kaiser abdicated (correctly went to jail when it came down to it once the government pulled the hammer down on his opposition), on some previous occasions. The key point to be taken away today, still applicable today as in America we are in the age of endless war, endless war appropriations and seemingly endless desires to racket up another war out of whole cloth every change some ill-begotten administration decides it needs to “show the colors”, one hundred years later in that still lonely and frustrating struggle to get politicians to oppose war budgets, to risk prison to choke off the flow of war materials.  



I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” About her always opposing the tendencies in her adopted party, the German Social-Democracy, toward reform and accommodation, her struggle to make her Polish party ready for revolutionary opportunities, her important contributions to Marxist theory and her willing to face and go to jail when she opposed the first World War.



This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find, and are in desperate need of a few good heroes, a few revolutionaries who contributed to both our theoretical understandings about the tasks of the international working class in the age of imperialism (the age, unfortunately, that we are still mired in) and to the importance of the organization question in the struggle for revolutionary power, to highlight the  struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically.

Below is a third sketch written as part of a series posted over several days before Lenin’s birthday on the American Left History blog starting on April 16^th of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in the Russia of the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century which will help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and the ones that Lenin had to get a handle on.

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Ivan Smilga was persona non grata in Moscow after his sojourn to bloody Siberia and that was the one and only reason he had crossed the country to Saint Petersburg. That and the feeling that he needed a new start, a fresh start. That bloody Siberia sojourn was the result of an unwise decision to right the wrongs of this world, or at least of his world, by conspiring with known radical students and worker militants in Moscow to kidnap various high officials for ransom in order to gain some small rights in return. The whole thing exploded in his face (in their faces) when one of the workmen “snitched” to save his own neck and Ivan got a two year sentence for his mistake (since he was late in on the conspiracy and the idea had come from that workman snitch he was given a lenient sentence. They others received ten to twenty years at hard labor, including ten to Suslov who had expected only two like Ivan. Perfidious Okhrana). After that Ivan swore, swore off of politics as a way to change the world, to change his world. Now that he had applied for and had been taken on as a blacksmith apprentice in the Putilov Ironworks he vowed to keep his hands busy and his head away from the world’s woes. Again Ivan got the job due to his size and strength which the head blacksmith noticed right away when he saw in him in the superintendent’s office and told the metal work foreman to grab him with both hands. Fortunately, fortunately for Ivan (and the revolution) he was able to cover up his two years in Siberia by saying he had gone back to the farm after being dismissed by Smythe and Son and unlike later under Stalin the legal “paper trail” behind him never caught up in sprawling Saint Petersburg where the foreign concessions were not as concerns about paperwork as by ability to adjust to the factory system.

Then Elena Kassova entered, or rather re-entered, his life. He had known her as a fellow-worker, a machine-tender, in the John Smythe and Son textile factory in Moscow where he worked taking the rolls of fabric off the machines, her machine, before he became a gang boss. Since in those days before he was finally laid off as “redundant” by the company he was well respected as a worker and had not taken to drink he was eyed by many young women as a possible “catch.” He had caught Elena’s eye as well although as a pious country girl she had refrained from flirting with Ivan like some of the other girl machine-tenders who practically threw themselves at the giant of a man. Through the vagaries of commerce Smythe and Son had closed their Moscow plant and relocated to Saint Petersburg. Elena had followed having no other recourse or resources in Moscow. While in Saint Petersburg she had applied to the Putilov works in order to better herself. After some time she was employed in the foundry doing small piecework. Ivan and Elena met one evening coming out of the plant, had greeted each other, and Ivan had walked her home.

That story about Elena moving on to the Putilov Works to better herself was just that though, a story. While in Moscow, Elena had joined a readers’ circle not just any readers’ circle, but a Workers Benefit Circle. These circles met ostensibly to read, but were actually organizing committees for establishing Tsarist-banned trade unions. Some had imbibed the new socialist ideas coming from Europe, especially Germany and especially the Marxist wing of that movement. (Other trends the Bakunin and Kropotkin tendencies in anarchism, workers co-operatives, social reformism, Christian socialism translated through the Orthodox religion held by most Russians got some play as well.) Elena had been drawn into the work by some students at Moscow University and had shown so much promise that she was “ordered” to go to Saint Petersburg in order to establish circles in that metropolis where there were many plants, including the expanding Putilov, that needed to be organized.  Her task at the time that she met Ivan was thus to help organize a strike at the Works for higher pay and only half a day’s work on Saturday. After several weeks she tried to recruit Ivan to the work knowing that he was well respected among the apprentice blacksmiths, knowing that he had been the organizer of the “Luddite” operation one Saturday night which wreaked hauling machinery at the Smythe factory in Moscow (it had become common knowledge among the tight-knit working class neighborhoods), and knew he had served “time” (that knowledge coming one night after Ivan had had too much vodka and was trying to impress Elena with his manly prowess).

Ivan turned Elena down cold, told her whatever she thought, that he had learned the error of his youthful ways and was looking to make no waves so that he could concentrate his energies on his dream of becoming a master blacksmith and eventually opening his own shop. Elena, wise to the ways of the world and trained to keep her full motives in check, continued to work on Ivan. Of course unknown to Ivan who thought it was just a matter of gaining higher wages and more time off that drove Elena was the hard fact that she had become a revolutionary, had come to see the trade union struggle as just an organizing tool to a grander scheme.

Then one day the workers on the night shift at the Putilov factory called a strike over the firing of several workers, including a couple of apprentice blacksmiths. The next morning Elena called out the workers in her section on the day shift, mainly women. She then cornered Ivan as he was about to walk into his work shed and told him to join the strike. She said it in such a way that Ivan knew that if he crossed the line that would be the last that he saw of Elena. And he was not finished with Elena, not by a long shot. And so he said this to her, “I will fight to get more money, I will fight for a shorter day and I will fight to get my brothers rehired but that is it. No more politics for me, no more.” Now due to some weaknesses of organization, and some crossing of the lines and increasing police menacing they did not get any more money or less time after that strike but after three days they were able to get those fired brothers back. And Ivan had thought they had done a fine thing. Elena had just scowled.