In 1912–13, Lenin concluded that this was not enough: although admittedly nationalism was a reactionary force and probably anachronistic in the era of mounting class conflicts, one still had to allow for the possibility of its temporary appearance. The Social-Democrats, therefore, had to be prepared to exploit it on a conditional and transitory basis, exactly as in the case of peasant claims to private land:
It is the support of an ally against a given enemy, and the Social-Democrats provide this support in order to speed the fall of the common enemy, but they expect nothing for themselves from these temporary allies and concede nothing to them.90
Searching for a programmatic formula, he rejected the two solutions popular among Eastern European socialists, federalism and cultural autonomy, the one because it promoted the disintegration of large states, the other because it institutionalized ethnic differences. After long hesitations, in 1913 he finally formulated a Bolshevik program for the nationality question. It rested on an idiosyncratic interpretation of the formula “national self-determination” of the Social-Democratic program to mean one thing and one only: the right of every ethnic group to secede and form a sovereign state. When his followers protested that this formula fostered particularism, Lenin reassured them. For one, the forces of capitalist development, which progressively fused the diverse regions of the Russian Empire into an economic whole, would inhibit separatism and ultimately render it impossible. Second, the “proletarian” right to self-determination always took precedence over the rights of nations, which meant that if, contrary to expectations, the non-Russian peoples separated themselves, they would be reintegrated by force. By offering the minorities a choice between all or nothing, Lenin was ignoring the fact that nearly all of them (the Poles and Finns excepted) wanted something in between. He fully expected the ethnic minorities not to separate but to assimilate with the Russians.91 Lenin used this demagogic formula to good effect in 1917.
One of the most secretive and yet critical aspects of Bolshevik history before the 1917 Revolution concerns party finances. All political organizations require money, but the Bolsheviks’ insistence that every member work full-time for the party made on them exceptionally heavy financial demands, for it meant that their cadres, unlike the Mensheviks, who were self-supporting, relied on subsidies from the party’s treasury. Lenin also needed money to outmaneuver his Menshevik rivals, who usually had a larger following. The Bolsheviks secured this money in various ways, some conventional, others highly unconventional.
One source was wealthy sympathizers, such as the eccentric millionaire industrialist Savva Morozov, who contributed 2,000 rubles a month to the Bolshevik treasury. After he committed suicide on the French Riviera, another 60,000 rubles from his estate was transferred to the Bolsheviks by Maxim Gorky’s wife, who served as trustee of Morozov’s life insurance policy.92 There were other donors, among them Gorky, an agronomist named A. I. Eramasov, Alexander Tsiurupa, who managed landed estates in Ufa province (in 1918 he would become Lenin’s Commissar of Supply), Alexandra Kalmykova, the widow of a senator and an intimate friend of Struve’s, the actress V. F. Komissarzhevskaia, and still others, whose identities remain unknown to this day.93 Such patrons out of snobbery subsidized a cause that was fundamentally inimical to their interests: at this time, writes Leonid Krasin, Lenin’s close associate, “it was regarded a sign of bon ton in more or less radical or liberal circles to contribute money to revolutionary parties, and among those who quite regularly paid dues of from 5 to 25 rubles were not only prominent attorneys, engineers, and physicians but also directors of banks and officials of government institutions.”94 The management of the Bolshevik treasury, operated independently of the common Social-Democratic one, was in the hands of a three-man Bolshevik “Center,” formed in 1905, consisting of Lenin, Krasin, and A. A. Bogdanov. Its very existence was kept secret from the Bolshevik rank and file.
But contributions from repentant “bourgeois” proved insufficient and in early 1906 the Bolsheviks resorted to less savory means, the idea of which seems to have been inspired by the People’s Will and the SR Maximalists. A great deal of Bolshevik funding henceforth derived from criminal activity, notably holdups, euphemistically known as “expropriations.” In daring raids, they robbed post offices, railroad stations, trains, and banks. In a notorious robbery of the State Bank in Tiflis (June 1907), they stole 250,000 rubles, a good part of it in 500-ruble notes whose serial numbers had been registered. The proceeds of this loot were transferred to the Bolshevik treasury. Subsequently, several individuals who attempted to exchange the stolen 500-ruble notes in Europe were arrested—all (among them the future Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov) proved to be Bolsheviks.95 Stalin, who supervised this operation, and other participants were expelled from the Social-Democratic Party.96 Ignoring the resolution of the 1907 party congresses condemning such activities, the Bolsheviks continued to commit robberies, sometimes in cooperation with the SRs. In this manner they acquired large sums, which gave them considerable advantages over the perennially cash-poor Mensheviks.97 According to Martov, the proceeds of such crimes enabled the Bolsheviks to send their St. Petersburg and Moscow organizations, respectively, 1,000 and 500 rubles a month, at a time when the legitimate SD treasury’s monthly earnings from membership dues did not exceed 100 rubles. As soon as the flow of these funds dried up, which happened in 1910 when the Bolsheviks had to give up their moneys to three German Social-Democrats acting as trustees, their Russian “committees” vanished into thin air.98
The overall direction of these secret operations was in the hands of Lenin, but the principal field commander and treasurer was Krasin, the head of the so-called Technical Group.99 An engineer by profession, Krasin led a a double life: outwardly a respectable businessman (he worked for Morozov as well as the German firms AEG and Siemens-Schuckert), in his free time he ran the Bolshevik underground.* He operated a secret laboratory to assemble bombs, one of which was used in the Tiflis robbery.100 In Berlin he also ran a counterfeit operation which turned out three-ruble notes. He engaged in gunrunning—sometimes from purely commercial motives, to make money for the Bolshevik treasury. On occasion, the Technical Group made deals with ordinary criminals—for instance, the notorious Lbov gang operating in the Urals, to whom it sold weapons worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.101 Inevitably, such activities attracted into Bolshevik ranks shady elements for whom the “cause” served as a pretext for a life of crime.
The lengths to which Lenin was prepared to go to acquire money for his organization is illustrated by the so-called Schmit affair.102 N. P. Schmit (Shmit), a wealthy furniture manufacturer related to Morozov, died in 1906, an apparent suicide, while awaiting trial on charges of having financed the purchase of weapons used in the December Moscow uprising. He left no last will, but told Gorky and other friends that he wanted his fortune, amounting to some 500,000 rubles, to go to the Social-Democrats. This disposition had no validity in the eyes of the law because the party, being illegal, could not be the beneficiary of a legacy. The money went, therefore, to his next of kin, a minor brother. Determined to prevent Schmit’s estate from being squandered by his heirs or transferred to the SD treasury, the Bolsheviks decided, at meetings chaired by Lenin, to get hold of it by any available means. The teenage brother was quickly talked into renouncing his share of the inheritance in favor of his two sisters. Arrangements then were made for two Bolsheviks to court and marry the heiresses. The younger girl, also a minor, was wed to a Bolshevik roughneck named Victor Taratuta; but to mislead the police, it was arranged for her to be married a second time, fictitiously, to a solid citizen. The 190,000 rubles which she subsequently received was forwarded to the Bolshevik treasury in Paris.103