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

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 


For several years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik 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 to honor revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since each 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 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 on some previous occasions. I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find a few good heroes, to highlight the early struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically. Below is a sketch of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in Russia 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.
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Ivan Smilga, “Big Ivan” to his friends, and rightly so since he was large, six feet six and two hundred and sixty pounds, large by Russian hunger standards in the winter of 1893 had come out of the Ukrainian farmlands not many miles outside of Odessa to Moscow when he had heard that John Smiley and Sons, the big English textile firm was given a license to set up a factory in that city to produce cloth for the home market. The farm life was so barren, so desolate that Ivan had walked on foot or taken a sleigh ride most of the way that hard winter in order to as he said (roughly and politely translated from the Russian) “get the stink of country life blown out of his nostril.” He was not alone that first day when the first Smiley plant went on line. Thousands of young farm boy Ivans (although perhaps none quite as large) were standing impatiently in line for a chance at employment. And more than one farm boy was crestfallen to see that if he had to compete against thousands of Ivans there were that many more thousands of Ivanas, young farm girls, girls  as always attracted to textile work in every budding capitalist country in order to get off their own desolate family farms and make their ways in the world before marriage. Although perhaps they would be too polite and pious to use the words that Ivan used to indicate his reasoning for getting off the land, and not look back.                

Fortunately Ivan, with his bulk and strength, was chosen very quickly by a watchful foreman who needed the strong back and hands of a young man who could lift the rolls of fabric as they came off the machines. And so Ivan started his new life, or part of his new life as a working-man, as a man of the city. For about a year things went well, although he worked many long sixteen hour days six days a week being young he was capable of doing the work. And loved to pocket his wages at the end of the week. Being somewhat frugal (as he had been taught in the peasant manner) Ivan was able to save for his dream of owning a small shop, maybe a blacksmith’s shop to service the needs of the fine horse that he saw daily on the streets of Moscow. He also sent, as a dutiful son, kopeks home to his family to help tide them over as the grain harvest that year was sufficiently short to bring the threat of severe hunger back to the Smilga door once again.

In the spring of 1895 all that changed though. Ivan had worked his way up to head hauler, directing others to load and unload the rolls of fabric produced from the never-ending machines. He had a good reputation among his fellow workers, although not a few saw his dreams of a little shop as somewhat awry. Moreover he was a moderate drinker by Russian and Ukrainian standards and so the young women of the factory floor would flirt, or at least cast an eye his way, especially Elena Kassova, who worked one of the machines which Ivan was in charge of keeping up to speed. Then one day James Smiley, the company owner’s son and manager of the plant   announced to young Ivan Smilga that his services (and that of the crew who worked under him) were no longer necessary since the company had purchased a machine that would automatically take the rolls from machine and place them on a wagon, a wagon so simple to operate that one of the girl machine-tenders could do it periodically.   

So there Ivan was, out in the cold, without a job, and with no particular prospects. Ivan stewed over his plight for about a week, maybe ten days, with solace only from endless bottles of vodka. Then one night he rounded up his now unemployed work crew, a group of four young farm boys who like Ivan did not want to go home to that desolate farm land, and explained to them his plan to get his and their jobs back. Of course each crew member had also sought solace in the bottle and so collectively their minds may not have been quite as sharp as they should have been of when Ivan unfolded his scheme. To hear Ivan tell the story the plan was simplicity itself. They would sneak into the factory on Saturday night when the machines were shut down and smash that hauling machine to smithereens. Then the Smileys would have to hire them back, maybe give them higher wages to boot.

Needless to say greedy for work and plied with liquor the crew bought into the plan with every hand and foot. That next Saturday they pulled off the caper. Snuck into the factory undetected by a dozing night watchman and did their dirty work. All day Sunday the working-class quarters of Moscow was abuzz with the news, spread by the night watchman who claimed he had been knocked out by whoever did the dastardly deed, that parties unknown had smashed the machinery. There were newspaper reports that the culprits would be momentarily apprehended. That the “Luddites”  would be captured and dealt with summarily. (Nobody knew exactly what a Luddite was but they all knew it could not be good to be one, or, worse, accused of being one) Of course they never were. On the other hand come that Monday morning as Ivan and the crew waited around in front of the factory doors expecting to be re-hired coming up the road on a horse-drawn wooden flatbed carriage was an exact replica of the machinery destroyed the previous Saturday night.