Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

He had later realised that, even at that early stage, by taking him in hand and giving him basic training in street craft and organisational strategy, Nicolai had been grooming him for the Second Congress, where the future shape of the RSDLP was to be decided. That is why Nicolai had built him up in the Party’s estimation, put him on the circuit of speakers and ensured that his articles were of sufficient quality to be published in Iskra. In return the Old Man had expected his personal loyalty and political support when the time came to move against Jules Martov.

The sight of the pigs wallowing in the mire below had reminded him the morning that Nicolai had taken him to the Reading Room at the British Museum. The night before he had sat up late listening to Jules, Vera and Nicolai arguing over the membership question. Jules and Vera were in favour of the RSDLP becoming a more open mass party with a broad membership, whereas Nicolai – ever the conspirator – wanted a narrower inner clique; an oligarchy that ruled through the outer party through diktat and ukase. In his innocence he had been shocked that such a fundamental divergence of opinion existed amongst these pillars of the movement.

Nicolai had promised him to show him the Reading Room where Karl Marx had worked on Capital on the following day and they agreed that they should set off early. It had been most unfortunate that Nicolai’s understanding of “early” did not correspond with his own. He was still asleep in bed when Nicolai called on the house on Percy Circus that he shared with Jules and Vera. Impatient to make the most of the day, the older man would not wait for Trotsky to prepare and eat his breakfast. Instead he had hustled the young comrade out of the house and had taken him to a worker’s cafe abutting the Euston railway terminus where he had ordered food for them both. While they waited for their meal to arrive, Trotsky had asked Nicolai to explain the deep division between himself and Jules.

“Jules Martov is a good comrade but he is dangerously mistaken in the type of party that we need to have if we are to lead the revolutionary working class, defeat the Autocracy and its apparatus and pursue the correct socialist agenda. We can’t have a mass party of flâneurs or part time members who can choose to support us one day and not the next, or who want to waste time in endless discussion trying to reach an unachievable consensus. Do you think that the Tsar’s armies or the Okhrana work like that? We won’t close their torture chambers using the politics of the debating chamber. And we can’t have members that face different ways like the splayed fingers of a hand – they have to be united and held closed tight, like a fist!”

Suiting his actions to his words, Lenin held up one tightly clenched hand threateningly between them. Trotsky looked at it doubtfully. Nicolai’s hand, he realised, made a surprisingly large fist for such a compact man.

“Jules Martov would have the party open to a multitude of people,” Nicolai went on, “who feel, for whatever personal reason – and many of them will be rank opportunists or Liberals – that they ought to be ‘involved’ in the Struggle. Whereas the need is not to build a mass party but for a small group of politically dedicated men and women wholeheartedly committed to the struggle and willing to accept, and dispense, iron Party discipline. The only way that the working class stands a chance of defeating the Autocracy is by being led by a Party that can distinguish between mere involvement and full-blooded, unthinking commitment.”

He paused as a waiter hurriedly placed two plates of food in front of them.

“It is like this English breakfast of eggs and bacon,” observed Nicolai happily, pointing with his knife at the meal on his plate. “The hen is involved but the pig is committed.”

“But Nicolai,” Trotsky had said quietly, “the pig is dead.”

“There can be no life outside the Party,” Nicolai had replied.

For a while they had eaten in silence.

“I understand the need for revolutionary discipline,” said Trotsky at last with a frown, “but many of the people who would want to join Jules’s version of the Party will still want to be involved, and they have some power and influence and, more importantly, money. We must be practical.”

Nicolai put down his knife and fork and, reaching inside his worn black overcoat, produced a small dog-eared green card and passed it across the table. Trotsky took the card and read the typed script upon it, and the name of its owner handwritten in faded ink.

“British Library… Readers Ticket… ‘Dr. J Richter’ Ticket number A72453.”

“Don’t lose it,” Nicolai told him.

Trotsky nodded obediently.

“But what has this to do with the question of Party membership?” he asked, putting the card in his jacket pocket.

Carefully wiping up a remaining smear of egg, Nicolai ate the last mouthful of his breakfast and dropped his cutlery with a clatter onto his plate.