The Lenin myth was gathering momentum; the intimations of saintly stoicism and the extravagant personality cult that would attend him in life and in death are already evident in Pravda's words. Lenin was a holy martyr, saved by miraculous forces and insisting on carrying on working, Christ-like, for the good of the people. A party that had destroyed religion in a deeply Christian country needed something to replace it in the people's minds and holy Lenin - dedicated, self- denying and fanatical - was in tune with the times.
While Lenin was being very publicly heroic, Fanny Kaplan was pursuing her own concept of heroism in a considerably less glamorous setting. The police officer who arrested her reported her as saying, 'I have done my duty without fear, and now I shall die without fear.' But her courage was about to be tested.
Her interrogation, in the bowels of the Lubyanka, was rigorous. The Cheka were determined to make her reveal her fellow conspirators, and their methods were not renowned for subtlety. The sketchy record of her questioning, compiled later by Bolshevik sources, reflects the regime's insistence on creating its own version of what had happened.
Under examination by three investigators, named as Kursky, Skryp- nik and Dyakonov, Kaplan is reported as being in possession of a Browning automatic with the serial number 150489. When the deputy head of the Cheka, Yakov Peters, questions her about this, Kaplan refuses to respond. Yakov Sverdlov, chairman of the Bolshevik Central Committee and de facto head of state, then joins the interrogation and is described as angered and exasperated by Kaplan's stubborn silence.
The Cheka's aim is to vilify Kaplan and establish her as an agent of the hated SRs. Her interrogation continued for three days and three nights, so the fact that they failed to make her talk is remarkable. Kaplan did not name Semyonov, or his fellow SR activist Lidia Kono- plyova. She insisted that she had acted alone and not on the orders of any political party. She said she considered Lenin a traitor to the revolution, whose actions had put back the advent of socialism 'by decades'.
On 1 September, two days after the assassination attempt, the Socialist Revolutionary Party Central Committee denied having ordered the attack. According to Semyonov's 1922 testimony (by which time he had become a collaborator with the regime), this was a lie; the party leadership had promised him they would claim responsibility, but reneged in panic when they saw the scale of revulsion the shooting had caused.
Kaplan, it seemed, was of no further use to the Cheka; her firing squad was already being prepared. But there was one final twist still to come.
In August 1918, the Bolsheviks were fighting a vicious civil war against powerful military forces, led by former tsarist generals, whose aim was to topple the Soviet regime and restore the old order. The struggle between the Bolshevik Reds and the opposition Whites was at a critical stage, with the outcome hanging in the balance. Fearing that a Bolshevik victory would lead to world revolution and the spread of communist contagion throughout Europe, the Western powers had sent troops to support the White armies. British, French and American forces were landing in the Russian far north; Czech legions were seizing control of territory and communications in Siberia. With 40,000 troops on the ground, Britain had taken the lead in the campaign and the Kremlin leadership regarded London as the most dangerous of their enemies.
So it was little surprise that the Bolsheviks should suspect - or at least announce that they suspected - British involvement in the plot against Lenin. On the morning after the shooting, Yakov Sverdlov had issued a statement in the name of the Soviet government:
A few hours ago there occurred an evil assassination attempt aimed at comrade Lenin. As he was leaving after a political meeting comrade Lenin was wounded. Two gunmen have been arrested. Their identities are now being established. We have no doubt that the fingerprints of the Right SRs will be discovered in this affair, along with those of the hirelings of the English and the French.
The British diplomat, Robert Bruce Lockhart, who had been acting consul general in Moscow before the 1917 revolution, was now serving as London's envoy to the Bolshevik regime. In his vivid, tendentious memoirs, he describes the backlash against Britain that followed the attack on Lenin:
On the way home we had bought a paper. It was full of bulletins about Lenin's condition. He was still unconscious. There were, too, violent articles against the bourgeoisie and against the Allies ... There had been a terrible tragedy in St Petersburg. A band of Cheka agents had burst into our Embassy there. The gallant Cromie [Captain Francis Cromie, the British naval attache - MS] had resisted the intrusion and, after killing a commissar, had been shot down at the top of the staircase. All British officials in St Petersburg had been arrested...
As well as fulfilling his diplomatic duties, however, Bruce Lockhart was also working for British intelligence - it is no coincidence that his autobiography is entitled Memoirs of a British Agent - and there are grounds to believe that he had a hand in, or at least knew about Kaplan's plans to murder Lenin. For their part, the Bolsheviks were certain of his guilt. Together with his fellow spy Sidney Reilly, Bruce Lockhart was publicly accused of masterminding the plot on behalf of the Western imperialists.
On the Tuesday we read the full tale of our iniquities in the Bolshevik Press, which excelled itself in a fantastic account of a so-called Lock- hart Plot. We were accused of having conspired to murder Lenin and Trotsky, to set up a military dictatorship in Moscow, and by blowing up all the railway bridges to reduce the populations of Moscow and St Petersburg to starvation. The whole plot had been revealed by the loyalty of the Lettish garrison, whom the Allies had sought to suborn by lavish gifts of money ... An equally fantastic story described the events in St Petersburg. Cromie's murder was depicted as a measure of self-defence by the Bolshevik agents, who had been forced to return his fire. Huge headlines denounced the Allied representatives as 'Anglo-French Bandits,' and in their comments the leader-writers shrieked for the application of a wholesale terror and of the severest measures against the conspirators.
Bruce Lockhart was dragged from his bed and arrested. With the net closing in, Sidney Reilly fled north via Petrograd to Finland, finally reaching London on 8 November. Bruce Lockhart was interrogated by the Cheka in the Lubyanka prison. His memoirs are the epitome of British sangfroid under duress, but there is little doubt that his life was hanging by a thread:
My term of imprisonment lasted for exactly one month. It may be divided into two periods: the first, which lasted five days and was marked by discomfort and fear; the second, which lasted for twenty- four days and may be described as a period of comparative comfort accompanied by acute mental strain. My one comfort was the official Bolshevik newspapers, which my gaolers took a propagandist joy in supplying to me. Certainly, as far as my own case was concerned, they were far from reassuring. They were still full of the Lockhart Plot. They contained numerous resolutions, passed by workmen's committees, demanding my trial and execution ... From the first day of my captivity I had made up my mind that, if Lenin died, my own life would not be worth a moment's purchase.
Bruce Lockhart's first five days of 'discomfort and fear' coincided with the continuing interrogation of Fanny Kaplan. After refusing all demands to name her co-conspirators she had been consigned to a basement cell where, according to one of her guards, she spent the night pacing back and forth, then sitting forlornly on a wooden stool. In the morning she refused breakfast. As the sun rose she was taken into Bruce Lockhart's room and confronted with the man the Bolsheviks believed had sponsored her act of terror. He was careful to give no sign of recognition: