This man was a 'behemoth with genius'.9 He possessed some kind of unbelievable 'seismographic sense of movement in the depths [of society']',10 and 'ruthless inhuman intelligence'.11 He 'had knocked around Europe for twenty-five years like the Wandering Jew'12 and at the same time was always able to 'prophesy earlier, and farther into the future than anyone else'.13 This man even now n 1916 (when the action of Solzhenitsyn's book takes place), sees things more clearly and knows more than Lenin. He could once again take political leadership away from Lenin and thereby ruin him for good. When Lenin is totally crushed and disillusioned, when he no longer believes in anything any more and is planning to go off to America, suddenly this man comes to him and quietly says, T am setting the date of the Russian Revolution for the ninth of January next year!'14 (and ne .s out by only one month.)
This person is the real 'author . . the father of the first Revolution'.15 He is the real inventor of the Soviet regime who has every right to say, in Solzhenitsyn, 'my Soviets'.16 This 'Wandering Jew', this Behemoth', not only does not intend to distance Lenin, this time he himself comes to him, to his weak, beaten and powerless rival, to propose an alliance.
Why? What for? That is the most interesting and important question for us to decide here. Is it not because, in the first revolution, in 1905, he made a mistake in backing a Jew, Trotsky, as the potent ial leader of a Russian revolution? Is it not because he suffered defeat and Russia survived 1905? She must not survive the next revolution. That is why Lenin, the Russian (even if he's just one-quarter Russian), is now needed. That is why, in his memorandum to the German government, he 'had specifically mentioned Lenin ... as his main support. W.th Lenin at his right hand, as Trotsky had been n the other revolution, success was assured.'17
Certainly this person is a German agent Naturally, he is getting millions from the Germans Of course, he only wants to hire Leiun to carry out his scheme (as an indigenous Russian demon") to destroy Russia, This much is understandable and even obvious But does tins automatically explain his inhuman intellect, h;s scismographic sense of movement in the depths, his ability to prechct things earlier and farther into the future than anyone else (a capacity which completely overshadowed even Lenin's 'demonic' genius)? Is he serving the German General Staff or are they serving him? After all, the plan is his and not the Germans', and he is playing his own game, not theirs. It s quite clear that the Germans are no more to him than Lenin is — just tools. He is simply using them to achieve his own Satanic objective, as he once used Trotsky and as he now intends to use Lenin No, he is no demon'; he is a tempter of demons ( He always tried to operate behind the scenes, not to get in front of cameras, not to feed biographers'18). He s the Mephistopheles ot demonry- the instigator, the grey eminence, the true master of history in whose hands both the Bolsheviks and the Germans are merely puppets on a string to be manipulated as he chooses. At least, this is how Solzhenitsyn depicts him. Yet here one involuntarily begins to doubt whether this is a human he is describing
Yes, this figure has a name — he actually existed — Izrail' Lazarevich Parvus (whose real last name was Gel'fond). He was a Russian Jew who wandered around Europe with the sole purpose in mind of mobilizing its resources m order to unleash a 'black whirlwind' upon Russia. Whether by war or revolution, with German money or socialist ideas — what's the difference? An enormous, inhuman goal inspires this inhumanly intelligent creature. And if any doubts still remain that this character is himself Satan (the Jew Antichrist, emerged from the bowels of Russia, as foretold by Konstantm Leont ;:v), then Solzhenitsyn destroys these in one remarkable scene
The Coming of the Antichrist
It takes place in the oppressed and downtrodden Lenin's shabby little room, when the German Jew Sklarz br ings him Parvus's proposal, the one which is to determine the course of Russian history for decades to come. It is twilight outside. There's no kerosene in the lamp, but for some reason it continues to burn without giving any light. It's dark in the room, but Lenin is somehow managing to read. Sklarz has tossed his luxurious hat on the poor table and left his leather trunk in the middle of the room. Lenin reads Parvus's letter and at this point unbelievable things begin to occur. 'His [Lenin s] eyes happened to fall on Sklarz's case. It was heavy, so tightly packed. How did he lug it around? . . . Why did he need it?'19 Then: 'The hat behind the lamp shifted and revealed its satin lining. No, it was lying quietly, just as Sklarz had left it.'20 Suddenly a strange thought occurred to Lenin: 'What did Sklarz want with that case? It looked as big as a boar.'21 Then without warning, of its own accord, 'the handle of the big case flopped to one side . . Snap! '22 At this point the reader already begins to smell the unmistakable whiff of sulphur, especially since 'there was no kerosene in the lamp, but it had been burning for an hour. . . ,'23 (Is this not a tiny tongue of hell's fire?)
Snap! The suitcase had finally burst open . . . and freeing his elbows, straightening his back, he unfolded, rose to his full height and girth, in his dark blue three-piece suit, with his diamond cuff-links and, stretching his cramped legs, came one step, two steps closei. There he stood, life- sized, in the flesh ... the elongated dome of his head, the flashy bulldog features, the little imperial — looking with pale watchful eyes. Amicably, as ever.24
Satan had appeared. Izraill Lazarevich Parvus — risen from the darkness — was standing before Lenin personally and speaking, although he wasn't there. And Lenin answered him. 'Although speech was still difficult . . . Even without words they understood each other perfectly.'25 This mysterious (though traditional) appearance out of nothing and this speech 'without words', and the fact that Parvus 'breathed in his [Lenin's] face with a marshy breath' makes the skin crawl, doesn't it? But the main thing is what Satan said to Lenin; how diabolically flattering and disarmingly compelling the demonic logic of his speech was. The reader feels how 'Parvus's behemoth blood spurted from the latter into Lenin's feverish hands, poured into his veins, swirled threateningly in his bloodstream 26 And then everything vanished. 'No table, no Sklarz. Just a massive Swiss iron bed, with the two of them upon it, great men both, floating above a world pregnant with revolution, a world which looked up to them expectantly . . . and the bed sped again around its dark orbit '27 Satan had 'forced, pumped . . . his behemoth blood' into Lenin 28
Summary
And now, after crossing ourselves, let's sum things up. Naturally, we are not so much interested n Parvus's real role in the Russian Revolution as n his imaginary one in Solzhenitsyn's book And this role is clearly unambiguous: to raise up a defeated 'demon who will visit a satamc orgy of destruction upon Russia.
The image of satanocracy', as the reader will no doubt recall, haunted the Russian New Right from its very beginning, even VSKhSON. In the Antonovist 'Letter of the Three', published in Veche, ii had already provided a pretext for alliance with the regime. But all that was pale, fleshless, and written with a bloodless political pen In Solzhenitsyn, with his talent for the anthropomorphization of dead symbols, this image comes to life before us — powerful, convincing, frightening. This, apparently, is how satanocracy looks in the flesh. This is evidently how ihe Antichrist bought the Russian intelligentsia (in ihe person of Lenin) with German money. This is how ihe 'dark whirlwind was born. How can the intelligentsia be trusted after this? Do they not indeed deserve political annihilation? How can they not be excluded from deciding the fate of the country? Must not the devil be expelled from the sick body of Holy Rus'?