Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“There is no better library than the British Library,” he said with a shrug. “There are fewer gaps in its collections than in any other library. It is a remarkable institution, and the Reference section is exceptional. Ask them any question, and in a minute they’ll tell you where to look to find the material that interests you.”

“So?”

“The Library is organised along strict lines and access is severely limited,” he explained patiently. “They don’t let just anyone in. To get a ticket like that, you have to be vouched for. There are even collections within the Library that ordinary Readers cannot see without written permission. It is organised like an engine – an engine for the retrieval and creation of knowledge. It has to be that way.”

“But I don’t see…”

“The party we have to build must be an engine for Revolution. There can be no spare parts floating around. Everybody must be fully engaged all the time. Every part must be bent to the common purpose of driving the Revolution forward.”

Trotsky shook his head.

“But there are so many people who support us who would never be, could never be, revolutionists and yet share our goals and our principles,” he protested. “Good people… influential people… wealthy people, some of them. How do we regard them, if not as Party members?”

“As useful idiots?” Nicolai had suggested.

Was Nicolai thinking of me when he said that? Trotsky now wondered.

Nicolai had taken him in, in both senses of the word. A vision of his own father shaking his head in disbelief at his naïveté rose and burst in his mind. He realised that, in all the time Nicolai and he had spent together, it had never occurred to him to ask himself, Why? Why is this man doing this for me? How stupid he had been! There were so many fine lines, like the ones between innocence and self-delusion; between comrade and friend. He had allowed himself to think of Nicolai as a friend and mentor – no, more than that; almost as an elder brother, a more capable Alexander – when all the time Nicolai had seen him for what he was: another impressionable comrade for him to manipulate. Nicolai, a very shrewd judge of character, had known how to play on his personal weaknesses.

Standing beside him, Sverchkov stirred impatiently.

“Sorry, Lev, but I have to get out of here. This stink is overwhelming. Are you coming?”

“Not yet,” Trotsky replied slowly. “I’ve got some thinking to do. Leave me a couple of cigarettes, will you?”

When Sverchkov had gone he crossed the floor of the upper room and opened the shutters of a second small window. Resting his arms on its sill he looked out, his eyes unfocussed on the monotony of the snow covered landscape.

Hadn’t that business of the seventh seat been the first sign? he thought.

He had only been in London four months when Nicolai had written to Georgiy Plekhanov in Geneva proposing that “Pero” should be co-opted onto Iskra’s editorial board. Plekhanov had swiftly wrecked that plan and had never trusted Vera’s “young eagle” after that. Indeed, Jules Martov had later confided that Plekhanov had actively hated him from that day forward, believing him to be an ambitious arriviste, when in truth he had known nothing of Nicolai’s proposal. He had only become aware later how the Editorial Board was split: the old guard of Plekhanov, Axelrod, Zasulich, all of whom had been in exile for decades, repeatedly frustrating the plans of the younger members – Nicolai, Martov and Potresov – who had more recently come out of Russia. It was now obvious to him that if he had been co-opted, Nicolai would have assumed that he had at last the majority he craved. Instead, as an unhappy compromise, it was agreed that “Pero” could attend the editorial meetings in an advisory capacity only and, like the Membership question, the issue of the composition of Iskra’s editorial board was deferred to the Second Congress of the Party.