I ordered the commander of the Automobile Combat Detachment to move some trucks from the enclosures and to start the engines. I also gave orders to send a passenger car to the blind alley, turning it to face the gate. Having posted at the gate two Latvians with orders to allow no one in, I went to fetch Kaplan. A few minutes later I was leading her to the courtyard.… “Into the car!” I snapped a sharp command. I pointed to the automobile that stood at the end of the cul-de-sac. Convulsively twisting her shoulders, Fannie Kaplan took one step, then another … I raised the pistol …*
Thus perished a young woman ridiculed as the Russian Charlotte Corday: without the semblance of a trial, shot in the back while the truck engines roared to drown out her screams, her corpse disposed of like so much garbage.
The details of the terrorist plot that led to the attempt on the life of Lenin, and, as it turned out, also on the lives of Trotsky and other Soviet leaders, became known to the Cheka only three years later. The main source of this information was a veteran SR terrorist, G. Semenov (Vasilev). Semenov emigrated abroad but changed his mind and in 1921 returned to Russia, where he turned renegade and denounced his past associates. His testimony, no doubt doctored to some extent, was subsequently used by the Bolshevik prosecutor in the trial of the Socialists-Revolutionaries in 1922.58
As best as can be determined, the SR Combat Organization was reactivated in Petrograd at the beginning of 1918, The group, which numbered fourteen people, some of them intellectuals, some workers, for a while shadowed Zinoviev and Volodarskii. In June 1918, one of its members, the worker Sergeev, assassinated Volodarskii. This terrorist underground acted on its own without sanction of the SR Central Committee. In the spring of 1918, after the Bolshevik Government had moved to Moscow, some members of the Combat Organization followed it. They chose Trotsky as their first victim in the belief that his death would have the greatest effect on the Bolshevik cause since he directed the war effort. Lenin was to follow. Adopting methods perfected against tsarist officials, members of the group stalked their victims to determine the pattern of their movements. They learned that Trotsky traveled constantly and unpredictably between Moscow and the front, and hence, “for technical reasons,” as Semenov would later explain, it was decided to dispose of Lenin first.
Before carrying out their mission, the terrorists requested the approval of the SR Central Committee. By this time most SR leaders had moved to Samara, but a branch of the committee remained in Moscow, headed by Abraham Gots. Gots and one other committee member, D. Donskoi, refused to sanction the attempt on Lenin’s life, but said they would not object to it as long as it was done as an “individual” act, without implicating the party. They also promised that the party would not repudiate Lenin’s murder.
While laying his plans, Semenov learned that Fannie Kaplan and two associates were working independently toward the same end. Kaplan impressed him as a resolute “revolutionary terrorist”—in other words, a suicidal type. He invited her to join his group.
To track Lenin’s appearances at worker meetings, Semenov divided Moscow into four districts, to each of which he assigned two members of his organization: one to act as observer (dezhurnyi), the other as “executor” (ispolnitel’). The former was to mix with the crowds to learn when and where Lenin would speak. As soon as he had the information, he was to contact the “executor,” who would wait at a central location within the zone. These preparations took place in August 1918, at the time when the SRs in Samara, taking advantage of the military victories of the Czechs, were laying claim to authority over Russia.
Lenin addressed a gathering of the Moscow Committee of the Party on Friday, August 16, but due to some mishap Semenov’s observer failed to appear. The following Friday, Lenin spoke again, this time at the Polytechnic Museum. Word got around of his appearance and a large crowd turned up. This time everything went according to plan, but the “executor” lost his nerve, for which Semenov expelled him from the Combat Organization. Semenov had intelligence that the following Friday, August 30, Lenin would make one or more appearances in the southern zone. To make certain that nothing would go wrong this time, he assigned to this area his two most trusted agents: an experienced terrorist, the worker Novikov, to act as observer, and Kaplan as executor. In the tradition of SR terrorists, Kaplan was prepared to give up her own life for the one she took: she told Novikov that after shooting Lenin she would surrender. Just in case she changed her mind, however, he hired a hack to stand by.
In the afternoon of August 30, Kaplan took up her post at Serpukhovskii Square. In her purse she carried a loaded Browning; three bullets had crosslike incisions, into which had been rubbed a deadly Indian poison, curare.*
Novikov learned that Lenin would speak at the Mikhelson factory. To make certain that the information was correct, Kaplan questioned Lenin’s chauffeur, after which she entered the building, placing herself near the exit. (Other sources have her waiting in the courtyard.) It was Novikov who staged the accident on the steps leading to the exit, purposely falling to hold back the crowd so as to give Kaplan undisturbed access to her victim. After firing her revolver, Kaplan seems to have forgotten her promise to surrender and instinctively ran away, but then stopped and gave herself up.
On September 6, Pravda carried a brief statement from the Central Committee of the SR Party, disclaiming, on its behalf and that of its affiliates, any connection with the attempt on Lenin’s life. This violated the agreement which Semenov had made with Gots and Donskoi, and considerably dampened the terrorists’ spirits. They made an attempt on the life of Trotsky, as he was departing for the front, but Trotsky eluded them by switching trains at the last moment. To keep the organization going, they carried out several “expropriations” of Soviet institutions, but their morale kept on sinking, especially after the Bolsheviks had regained the initiative against the Whites. Sometime toward the end of 1918, the Combat Organization dissolved.
Lenin recovered remarkably quickly. This attested to his strong constitution and will to live, but to his associates it implied supernatural qualities; it was as if God Himself intended Lenin to live and his cause to triumph. As soon as he regained some strength, he resumed work, but he overexerted himself and suffered a relapse. On September 25, on his physicians’ insistence, he and Krupskaia left for Gorki. Lenin spent three weeks there convalescing; although he kept in touch with events and did some writing, he left the day-today conduct of affairs of state to others. One of the few visitors allowed to see him was Angelica Balabanoff, an old comrade and a Zimmerwald participant. As she recalls it, when she raised the matter of Fannie Kaplan’s execution, Krupskaia became “very upset”; later, when the two women were alone, she shed bitter tears over it. Lenin, Balabanoff felt, preferred not to discuss it.59 At this time, the Bolsheviks still felt embarrassment about executing fellow socialists.
Lenin returned to Moscow on October 14. On October 16, he attended a meeting of the Central Committee and the following day a session of the Sovnarkom. To assure the populace that he had fully recovered, motion-picture cameras were brought to the Kremlin courtyard and filmed him in conversation with Bonch-Bruevich. On October 22, Lenin made his first public appearance, after which he returned to full-time work.
The most immediate effect of Kaplan’s attempt was the unleashing of a wave of terror which in its lack of discrimination and number of victims had no historic precedent. The Bolsheviks were thoroughly frightened, and acted exactly as Engels had said frightened people did: to reassure themselves they perpetrated useless cruelties.