Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

And that is how it is done, reflected Trotsky. When the vote goes against you, you chip away at the opposition, exploiting the known fissures in its ranks and then call for a new vote. That is how a majority of 28 becomes a minority of 21, and is branded ‘menshiviki’. Democracy, once again, in action. Nicolai, as the leader of the new majority, takes over the Central Committee, Iskra becomes the Central organ of the party and its editorial board is reduced to three members: Nicolai, Plekhanov and Martov.

He was certain that, in the final scene, Nicolai intended that only he would remain, supported by his own gang of Party diehards. It was Robespierre all over again.

Nicolai must have known that I could never go along with him, he thought, not all the way. He must have done. Or did he think that I would follow meekly like a lamb? Was his opinion of me so low after those months together in London? Had he just thought, “Oh well, Trotsky isn’t with me, but it doesn’t matter. In the final analysis I can do without him. Meanwhile he too can be a ‘useful idiot’.”

His mind filled with bitter thoughts, Trotsky walked slowly across the floor of the straw strewn loft and stared into the darkness of the rafters. For the first time, the realisation of the level of contempt that his mentor must have felt for him dawned upon him. It made him feel physically frail. Nicolai Lenin had taken him in, all right. Yet, for all his cleverness, in the end Nicolai hadn’t been able to dispense with Plekhanov and Martov. Dear, doddering Plekhanov had invited all his old comrades back onto the Central Committee and it was Nicolai who had eventually been driven out instead. Hah! So there it was. Iskra and, by extension, the whole Party, controlled by Moderates dedicated to everything that Nicolai opposed. The Party torn apart, collapsing like a pack of cards, and it was all Nicolai’s fault.

Trotsky smiled up at the darkness above him, his mood lifting as he considered how this last reversal must have burned beneath Nicolai’s skin.

But I don’t feel sorry for him, he told himself. Axelrod was correct, for once. Nicolai was guilty of rank Jacobinism. What was worse, he couldn’t see it. There is a part of his character, a core of monomania that prevents him from recognising what he had done that was so wrong. Perhaps it is his age.

How old was Nicolai? Thirty-seven? Thirty-eight? He looked far older. Behind his back, it was Nicolai Lenin, not Georgiy Plekhanov, that everyone referred to as “the Old Man”. And he lived on his nerves. In the months before the Second Congress Nicolai had been as ill as a dog; his condition made worse because Nadhezda Krupskaya had panicked and called in a useless physician.

Perhaps he is scared of never seeing his life’s work amount to anything, thought Trotsky. As if that mattered!

And then there was Nicolai’s terrible rigidity in thought, word and deed. Even his recreational reading (such as it was) reflected it. Nicolai had no time for writers like de Maupassant or Flaubert; Knut Hamsun (but only Hunger) and Maxim Gorky were his meat. Trotsky had even begun to suspect that he was impotent until Natalya had hinted otherwise. A lunge for power: that’s what it had been about; foolishly conceived but brilliantly executed. It was absurd to believe that you could defeat Autocracy with a party restricted only to those who slavishly agreed with you. It would be nothing more than a Counter-Autocracy. It was hard to tell which was worse for the People: the prospect of eternal defeat or the threat of victory on such terms. What horrific children would such a Party spawn?

Go down that road, thought Trotsky, and you’re lost forever.