From the attacks that had made the CO famous three are prominent: the murder by Stephan Balmashev of the minister Sipyagin, the murder by Egor Sozonov the 15 July 1904 of V. K. Pleve and the assassination by Ivan Kalyaev the 4 February 1905 of the Great prince Sergei Alexandrovich. Kalyaev was executed the 10 May of the same year. There is a lot of material about him in the “Memories” of Savenko, just as about Egor Sozonov. From all of the CO heroes Kalyaev, – a poet and an inspired revolutionary – was a finished type of the most fanatical adherent to uncompromising means of struggle. His entire life threw a challenge not only to the existing political regime in Russia but was also a revolt against the unjust bases of world creation.
Stephan Balmashev was born in 1881 in the family of hereditary nobles of the Archangelsk province. At the same time his father is an old revolutionary-populist. In 1899 he enters the Kazan university from where he is transferred to the Kiev one on the juridical faculty. For participation in a student meeting Balmashev was excluded from the university and given to military service for a year. The 23 January 1901 having came (he was not yet sent to the army) in the building of the Kiev university, Stephan brought with him a few glass pipes filled with a foul-smelling liquid which he trampled with his feet in the closet room of the university with the goal of stopping the lectures. He was arrested and unauthorized manuscripts were found, and also notes and messages related to his acquaintances. The 10 April 1901 Balmashev was liberated form guard under the surveillance of the military authorities in the city of Roslavl of the Smolensk province. Soon after he resigned for a six months leave and came to Simferopol and then the 30 July 1901 in Kharkov but even there he did not stay, went to Kiev where he stayed until December 1901 and then left in Saratov. In this city Balmashev had tight contacts with the SRs. (The acquaintance of Balmashev with Gershuni happened in 1901 in Kiev.) The Saratov SRs provided Balmashev with the means for the commitment of a terrorist act.
The 2 April 1902 in the building of the Committee of Ministers came Balmashev, disguised in an adjutant uniform and having awaited the arrival of Sipyagin, made too shots at him. (Sipyagin diseased after an hour and a half). After the shots Balmashev said loudly: “That’s what should be done with these people”. The next day it was Balmashev’s birthday – he was now 21 years old. The 3 May at four o’clock in the morning Balmashev was hanged in the yard of the Shlisserburg fortress. Stephan declined the confession and the Eucharist, on seeing the priest he said: I don’t want to deal with hypocrites.”
That’s the kind of people, frenzied, restless, today they would be called misfits, who were the material for the most revolutionary organization of the beginning of the century Russia. And for all revolutionary organizations in essence. Not only of Russia. Precisely frenzied, restless, changing places of study, service, work, place of residence and even life style. These are all the first characteristics of misfits. Misfits were also the Great Leaders of future powerful political movements that had blown up Europe. Before becoming a corporal and then chancellor of Germany Adolph Hitler bummed in Vienna seven years, lived in shelters, made drawings of Vienna’s sightseeings, walked around in a long coat to the heels like Lautreamont (Hitler, by the way, looks like Edgar Poe, did anybody beside me remark it?), shared his den with a bum, who sold his drawings. All of this is usually omitted in biographies but it is precisely the youth, the years that form a person that are important. There, in Vienna, in the shadow of magnificent cathedrals, among splendid museums, near the luxurious burgers mansions, how he must have suffered, the unknown to everyone vagrant Adolph! And how he started to hate Vienna and how after as a reichchancellor in 1938 he must have rejoiced driving into the hostile at a time city accompanied by the welcoming shouts of the million-size population. The young Stalin was also a misfit, it suffices to look at his early picture – young, with a small beard, in a flimsy scarf drawn into the little jacket. Benito Mussolini, a loud-voiced socialist from the little village of Predappio bummed in the wealthy Switzerland, spent the nights under bridges, was arrested by the police, worked as a construction worker, worked on a can plant, walked, stared, envied, hated. Later he affirmed that he met with Lenin in Zurich and Geneva. Mussolini is a big mouthed Italian… They all avidly read, wrote, studied bit by bit, vagabonded, wrote poetry and searched a long time what to do. Vladimir Lenin did not bum but he too was not the quietest jury attorney, brother of the executed for an unsuccessful regicide older brother, a professional revolutionary almost from 17, at 27 already an exiled, at 30 an immigrant, a cruel and strange weirdo. When in Russia the February revolution happened he wanted to fly over the military fields of Europe in a balloon! Or to ride a train with the documents of a deaf-mute Swede! Say, what a type! In humiliations, in poverty, in sufferings the leaders of the Great parties had experienced enlightenments: illuminations about their mission.
And the brothers-in-arms of the Leaders of the Great Parties of Europe! Around them joined poets, provincial journalists, writers (at random: Goebbels, Trotsky, Marinetti, Lunacharsky), strange women (the first to come: Inessa Armand, Anjelica Balabanoff, Kollontai, Leni Rifenschtal, Larisa Reisner), strange military (Ludendorff, Ernst Rem, the count Ciano, Tukhachevsky, Fruntze), psychopaths, countless extravagant types of half-thugs half-revolutionaries (at random: Kotovsky, Dzerjinsky, Camo, Horst Wessel).
Lenin possibly clearly saw this paradox: the first proletarian revolution was organized and performed not by the proletarians but by misfits, hysterical people, tramps, demagogues, orators, half-educated people, bums and all kind of rolling stones. Later the sailors and the peasants and the workers dared to arrive at what already happened, yes. However, they were not the first in the revolution business, they are not its fathers, – they joined later.
And here a mistake was committed. Lenin himself is guilty here because nobody except him could have done that. As a founding father, he should have left tables where he should have stated clearly, according to which criterias should diamonds be chosen in the dung. Like Buddhists have special criterias of selection of the dalai-Lama and the Panchen-Lama. He should have said in his tables: “In the future for purposes of public service look for the talents among misfits, among weird, hysterical, poetic people, among lunatics, but not among the workers or some peasants, unless you’ll fall on a really unusual exemplar. God forbid you, comrades successors, to look among the stable classes of the population”. However, Lenin did not keep any such instruction. The insolence and honesty to declare that only a party consisted of talented misfits, poets, prophets and psychopaths is capable of carrying out a revolution lacked to Lenin. The magic of the absolute justice of the revolution in the name of the majority forced him to preserve and support the ideological lie: a proletarian, fourth estate revolution for the sake of the majority (of the workers). (Accordingly the fascists in Germany affirmed that they made their 1933 revolution for the volk – the people, the Italian fascists did theirs for the Italian nation.) But they just had to admit that the majority (proletariat, volk, nation) is untalented and is not capable to win or to defend its interests. Later this ideological lie had disastrous consequences, it catastrophically reflected on the quality of the party staff who came to replace the first heroic staff of misfits. The official lie about the special revolutionary character of the proletarians (after them the most revolutionary were considered the peasants and the third were the soldiers, who know why) became branded with glowing red letters in the legacy of the Bolsheviks’ communist party.