Not long before their clash, Bliumkin had proposed to M. that he work in a new organization which was then being set up, and which he said would have a great future. In Bliumkin's view, this organization was bound to give shape to the new era and become the focus of power. M. took fright and refused to work for it—this at a moment when nobody yet knew exactly what the nature of the new institution would be. M. only had to learn that it was powerful to keep right away from it. He had always, in an almost childish way,
shunned any contact with power. When he arrived in Moscow in 1918, for instance—he had traveled by Government trains—he had to stay with Gorbunov in the Kremlin for a few days. One morning when he came to breakfast in the common dining room, the waiter, a former court flunkey who now waited on members of the Revolutionary Government in the same obsequious fashion, said that Trot- ski himself would shortly be coming in to take coffee. M. seized his raincoat and fled, thus losing a unique opportunity to have a proper meal in the hungry city. He found it impossible to explain what prompted him to flee like this: "I just didn't want to breakfast with him." A similar thing happened when he was summoned to the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to discuss the possibility of a job there. Chicherin came out to see him and asked him, as a test, to draft an official telegram in French. He left him alone to do it, and M., seeing his chance to escape, just made off without even trying to draft the telegram. "Why did you run away?" I asked him. He dismissed the question in the same way—if it had been some minor official he might have stayed and taken a job in the Commissariat, but it was better to keep away from people invested with power. It was perhaps this instinctive, almost unconscious abhorrence of power that saved M. from many false and disastrous paths which opened up before him at a time when even the most experienced people had no idea what was going on. What would have happened to him if he had joined the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, let alone the "new organization" which Bliumkin was so keen he should work for?
M. first understood the functions of this "new organization" during his clash with Bliumkin. The scene was the Poets' Cafe in Moscow—the only detail correctly reported by Georgi Ivanov. But it is not true that Bliumkin used to go there as a bloodthirsty Chekist looking for new victims—as has been written in the West. Rather he was a welcome visitor; he was close to the center of power, and such persons are always sought after in literary circles. M.'s quarrel with Bliumkin took place a few days before the assassination of Mirbach. At that early date the term "Chekist" still meant very little. The Cheka had only just been organized, and up till then terror and shootings had been carried out by other organizations—by military tribunals, I believe. In his conversation with Bliumkin, M. perhaps clearly understood for the first time the precise functions of this "new organization" which Bliumkin had asked him to join a few days previously.
Bliumkin, in M.'s words, began to boast that he had powers of life and death in his hands, and that he was about to shoot some "wretched intellectual" who was being held under arrest by the "new organization." It was fashionable in those years to speak with contempt of the "spineless intelligentsia" and to talk blithely about shooting people. Bliumkin was not just following the fashion, he was one of those who created it. He was referring to an art historian, a Hungarian or Polish count, whom M. had never heard of before. When he later told me the whole story in Kiev, M. could not remember either the name or the nationality of this man he had stood up for. In just the same way he was unable to remember the names of the five old men he saved from execution in 1928. It is now easy to find out the count's name from published materials about the Cheka, which include a report on the murder of Mirbach, where Dzerzhinski mentions that he had already heard of Bliumkin.
Bliumkin's boast that he was going to put this "wretched intellectual" up against the wall and shoot him enraged M., who said that he would not stand for it. To this Bliumkin said he would not tolerate any interference in his business and that he would shoot M. too if he dared to "meddle." It appears that Bliumkin threatened M. with his revolver during this first argument between them. This was something Bliumkin did at the slightest provocation—even, I was told, at home with his family.
According to the story as it has been told abroad, M. next managed to seize Bliumkin's warrant and tear it up. What kind of a warrant could it have been? The art historian was already in the Lubi- anka, so the warrant for his arrest must already have been filed away and could not have been in Bliumkin's possession. Nor would it have made sense for M. to do this—a piece of paper can always be replaced. Knowing M.'s temperament, I can well believe he would have been capable of snatching something and tearing it up, but he would not have left it at that. That would not have been like him—it would have meant that, frightened by Bliumkin's threats, he washed his hands of the business after making a fuss merely as a sop to his conscience. If that had been the case, the story would only be worth recalling as an illustration of how badly standards of behavior had declined. But in fact the story had a sequel.
M. went straight from the Poets' Cafe to Larisa Reisner and made such a row that Raskolnikov phoned Dzerzhinski and arranged for him to see Larisa and M. In the published account it says that Raskolnikov also went with Л1. to the meeting, but this is not true—only his wife, Larisa, went. I doubt whether anything in the world would have induced Raskolnikov to go to the Cheka on such an errand, particularly together with M., whom he did not like. He was always irritated by his wife's literary infatuations.
Everything else in the published account is more or less true: Dzerzhinski listened to M., asked for the file on the case, accepted M.'s assurances about the art historian and ordered his release. Whether his order was actually carried out I do not know. M. thought it was, but a few years later he learned that in a similar case an order for someone's release given by Dzerzhinski in his presence was not followed up. In 1918 it never occurred to M. to check whether this promise given by such a high official had actually been kept. He did, however, hear from someone that the Count had been released and allowed to return to his own country. This also seemed to be borne out by Bliumkin's subsequent behavior.
Dzerzhinski showed interest in Bliumkin himself and began to question Larisa about him. She didn't know very much, though M. later complained about how garrulous and indiscreet she was—qualities for which she was celebrated. At all events, her loose talk did Bliumkin no harm, and M.'s complaint about his threats to kill prisoners remained, as could be expected, the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. If closer attention had been paid to Bliumkin, the murder of the German Ambassador might have been prevented. But, instead, Bliumkin was allowed to carry out his plans without the slightest hindrance. Dzerzhinski remembered M.'s visit only after Mirbach's assassination and evidently mentions it in his report only to show how well informed he was. He couldn't even remember who was with M. After the assassination Bliumkin was suspended from work for a time, but he was soon allowed to return to it and remained with the Cheka until his downfall and execution.