*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- "The Best Type of Bolshevik"-Early Bolshevik Organizer Jacob Sverdlov

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for early Bolshevik organizer Jacob Sverdlov.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
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Markin comment on this article:

Yes, one needs Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, or their modern day equivalents, to make international working class revolution. No question. We can quibble about the relationship, guided by a Marxist interpretation of historical materialism, between the weight of role of individual heroic figures and the objective historic forces in making those revolutions - the so-called “indispensable individual” question. What we cannot quibble about is that it is necessary to flesh out that revolutionary leadership with talented cadre with, perhaps, more limited but essential skills as with the case of this entry’s honoree, organizer Jacob Sverlov. You cannot make a revolution without him. Also no question.

Trotsky noted, in a political obituary for a fallen Russian Left Oppositionist brought low by Stalinist repression in the late 1920s, that the West had no produced the type of revolutionary forged by the anvils of the Russian revolutionary process of his time. And it is even harder to disagree with him some eighty years, many defeats, and a serious decline in socialist political consciousness later. But we had better. And pronto. Meanwhile Jacob Sverlov can serve as an exemplar.
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"The Best Type of Bolshevik"- Leon Trotsky-from Young Spartacus, 1980

We reprint below an appraisal by Leon Trotsky of Yakov Sverdlov, a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee during the October Revolu¬tion. Renowned for his outstanding organizational capacities, Sverdlov held the post of Chairman of the All-Union Soviet Executive Committee after the revolution until his death.

The following passage was written in 1927 and is presented here as it appeared in Fourth International, November 1946.

Up to the spring of 1919 the chief organizer of the Party had been Sverd¬lov. He did not have the name of General Secretary, a name which was then not yet invented, but he was that in reality. Sverdlov died at the age of 34 in March 1919, from the so-called Spanish fever. In the spread of the civil war and the epidemic, mowing people down right and left, the Party hardly realized the weight of this loss. In two funeral speeches Lenin gave an appraisal of Sverdlov which throws a reflected but very clear light also upon his later relations with Stalin. "In the course of our revolution, in its victories," Lenin said, "it fell to Sverdlov to express more fully and more wholly than anybody else the very essence of the proletarian revolution." Sverdlov was "before all and above all an organizer." From a modest underground worker, neither theoretician nor writer, there grew up in a short time "an organizer who acquired irreproachable authority, an organizer of the whole Soviet power in Russia, and an organizer of the work of the Party unique in his understanding." Lenin had no taste for the exaggerations of anniversary or funeral panegyrics.

His appraisal of Sverdlov was same time a characterization of the task of the organizer: "Only thanks to thi fact that we had such an organizer as Sverdlov were we able in war times to work as though we had not one single conflict worth speaking of."

So it was in fact. In conversation: with Lenin in those days we remarked more than once, and with ever rendwecSverdlov. The secret of his art was simple: to be guided by the interests of the cause and that only. No one of the Party workers had any fear of intrigues creeping down from the Party staff. The basis of this authority of Sverdlov's was loyalty.