49. Leonid Krasin.
The second installment of the Schmit legacy, owned by the elder sister, was in the hands of her husband, also a Social-Democrat with Bolshevik leanings. He, however, preferred to keep the money. The dispute was submitted to a socialist court of arbitration, which awarded the Bolsheviks only one-half or one-third of the inheritance. Under threats of physical violence, the husband was eventually persuaded to turn his wife’s inheritance over to Lenin. In this manner, Lenin eventually acquired between 235,000 and 315,000 rubles from the Schmit estate.104
This sordid financial affair and others like it greatly embarrassed the Bolsheviks in socialist circles in Russia and abroad when they were revealed by Martov, compelling Lenin to agree to have the funds of the SD Party deposited with German Social-Democrats as trustees. Quarrels over money were one of the main bones of contention between the two factions during the decade preceding the 1917 Revolution. Working as Lenin’s secretary, Krupskaia maintained a steady correspondence with Bolshevik agents in Russia using invisible ink, codes, and other devices to keep the police in the dark. According to Tatiana Aleksinskii, who helped her with this work, most of Lenin’s letters contained demands for money.* 105
In 1908, the Social-Democratic movement in Russia went into decline, in part because the intelligentsia’s revolutionary ardor cooled and in part because police infiltration had made it all but impossible to conduct underground activity. The security services had penetrated the Social-Democratic organizations from top to bottom: before they could move, their members were exposed and arrested. The Mensheviks responded to this situation with a new strategy which called for emphasis on legal activity: publishing, organizing trade unions, working in the Duma. Some Mensheviks wanted to replace the Social-Democratic Party with a Workers’ Party. They did not intend to give up illegal activity altogether, but the drift of their program was toward democratic trade unionism in which the party did not so much lead the workers as serve them. To Lenin this was anathema and he labeled the Mensheviks who supported this strategy “liquidators,” on the grounds that their alleged aim was to liquidate the party and give up revolution. In his usage, “liquidators” became synonymous with counterrevolutionaries.
Nevertheless Lenin, too, had to accommodate himself to the difficult conditions created by police repression. This he did by exploiting for his own ends police agents who had infiltrated his organization. Although there cannot be any certainty about this, it seems the most convincing explanation of the otherwise puzzling case of the agent provocateur Roman Malinovskii, who for a while (1912–14) served as Lenin’s deputy in Russia and chairman of the Bolshevik Duma faction. It was a case of police provocation which in the opinion of Vladimir Burtsev exceeded in importance even the more celebrated case of Evno Azef.106
Lenin ordered his followers to boycott the elections to the First Duma, while the Mensheviks left the matter to their local organizations, most of which, with the exception of the Georgian branch, also opted for a boycott. Lenin subsequently changed his mind and in 1907, disregarding the wishes of most of his associates, instructed the Bolsheviks to run. He intended to use the Duma as a forum from which to spread his message. It was here that Malinovskii proved of inestimable value.
A Pole by nationality, a metalworker by profession, and a thief by avocation, Malinovskii had served three jail sentences for theft and burglary. Driven, according to his own testimony, by political ambitions but unable to satisfy them because of his criminal record, and always in need of money, he offered his services to the Department of Police. On its instructions, he switched from the Mensheviks and in January 1912 attended the Prague Conference of the Bolsheviks. Lenin was most favorably impressed by him, praising Malinovskii as an “excellent fellow” and an “outstanding worker-leader.”107 He appointed the new recruit to the Russian Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee, with authority to add members at his discretion. On his return to Russia, Malinovskii used this authority to co-opt Stalin.108
On orders of the Minister of the Interior, Malinovskii’s criminal record was suppressed to allow him to run for the Duma. Elected with the help of the police, he used his parliamentary immunity to deliver fiery speeches against the “bourgeoisie” and socialist “opportunists,” some of which were prepared and all of which were cleared by the security services. Despite doubts voiced in socialist circles about his loyalty, Lenin unreservedly backed Malinovskii. One of the greatest services that Malinovskii rendered Lenin was to help found—with the permission of the police and very likely with its financial support—the Bolshevik daily Pravda. Malinovskii served as the newspaper’s treasurer; the editorship went to another police agent, M. E. Chernomazov. The party organ, protected by the police, enabled the Bolsheviks to popularize their views inside Russia much better than the Mensheviks. For the sake of appearances, the authorities occasionally fined Pravda, but the paper kept on appearing, printing the text of the speeches that Malinovskii and other Bolsheviks delivered in the Duma as well as Bolshevik writings: Lenin alone, between 1912 and 1914, published 265 articles in the paper. With the help of Malinovskii, the police also founded in Moscow the Bolshevik daily Nashput’.109
While engaged in these capacities, Malinovskii regularly betrayed the party’s secrets to the police. As we shall see, Lenin believed that he gained more than he lost from this arrangement.
Malinovskii’s career as double agent was suddenly terminated in May 1914 by the new Deputy Minister of the Interior, V. F. Dzhunkovskii. A professional military man without experience in counterintelligence, Dzhunkovskii was determined to “clean up” the Corps of Gendarmes and put an end to its political activities: he was an uncompromising opponent of police provocation in any form.* When, on assuming his duties, he learned that Malinovskii was a police agent and that through him the police had penetrated the Duma, fearing a major political scandal, he confidentially apprised Rodzianko, the Duma’s chairman, of this fact.* Malinovskii was forced to resign, given 6,000 rubles, his yearly salary, and sent abroad.
The sudden and unexplained disappearance of the Bolshevik leader from the Duma should have put an end to Malinovskii’s career, but Lenin stood by him, defending him from Menshevik accusers and charging the “liquidators” with slander.† It is possible that in this case Lenin’s personal loyalty to a valued associate outweighed his better judgment, but this seems unlikely. At his trial in 1918, Malinovskii said that he had informed Lenin of his criminal record: since such a record precluded a Russian from running in Duma elections, the mere fact that the Ministry of the Interior did not use the information at its disposal to bar Malinovskii from the Duma should have alerted Lenin to his police connections. Burtsev, Russia’s leading specialist in matters of police provocation, concluded in 1918, from conversations with onetime officials of the tsarist police who testified at Malinovskii’s trial, that “according to Malinovskii, Lenin understood and could not help understanding that his [Malinovskii’s] past concealed not merely ordinary criminality but that he was in the hands of the gendarmerie—a provocateur.”110 The reason why Lenin might have wanted to keep a police agent in his organization is suggested by General Alexander Spiridovich, a high tsarist security officer: