‘Lenin in Zurich’ by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

In 1974 the Nobel Prizewinning Russian novelist and historian Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008) was stripped of his Soviet citizenship and deported to West Germany. Only a few of his early books had ever been published in the Soviet Union due to his opposition to the communist regime and his portrayal of its government as utterly brutal and corrupt.

He had though continued writing. And his texts were smuggled under the Iron Curtain, resulting in him gaining a major literary reputation in the West. These included his masterpiece ‘The Gulag Archipeligo’, a three volume account of the Siberian Labour camps to which political prisoners such as himself were sent if they dared to criticise their government, even in private letters. It was this trio of books which were the pretext for his expulsion from Russia. He spent some time in Germany and then in Switzerland, before settling in Vermont where he lived with his family for nearly twenty years before being able to return to Russia in the era of glasnost and perestroika.

‘Lenin in Zurich’ was the first book he published after going into exile, and the English translation was issued exactly fifty years ago in April 1976.

This novel actually comprises a few chapters extracted from the vast series he devoted much of his final decades to writing - The Red Wheel - in which he tells the story of the Russian Revolution in huge detail, creating imagined fictional passages to add to the historical record. These are the chapters which concern the period during the First World War when Lenin lived in Zurich, obsessively planning for a socialist revolution that he hoped the war would expedite. The result is a blend of fiction and non-fiction which provides a compelling pen portrait of the future Soviet leader in the final years of his exile, ending with him about to return to Russia following the February 1917 revolution in his famous ‘sealed train’.

Solzhenitsyn draws on Lenin’s writings and speeches, as well as accounts of his life in Zurich, embellishing to create an account of his conversations and thoughts. The book is not at all difficult to read, bring splendidly translated and just under two hundred pages long.

The portrait, as you would expect, is not so flattering, but neither is it unfair to its subject, and is wholly believable. The Lenin that emerges is a man who has no doubts whatever about his politics and who is obsessed with the notion of revolutionary change, to which he is unquestioningly devoted in the manner of a fundamentalist religious believer. There is no suggestion of personal greed or any ambition on his own account. Nor is there any suggestion here of a psychopathic personality that might relish cruelty for its own sake. But his discipline is iron, means always justifying ends, even if that requires violence, the spread of misleading propaganda and the manipulation of fellow revolutionaries. He spends most of his time studying past revolutions in the libraries of Zurich, holding a particular fascination with the Paris Commune of 1871.

He quarrels with other communist exiles, particularly Alexander ‘Helphand’ Parvus, who believes that compromises are necessary to advance the cause of socialism and that no revolution can take place without the backing of a great deal of money to oil its wheels. Parvus had made a huge amount of money for this purpose, but this was of no interest to Lenin who distrusted him.

Most of all though, Lenin uses his time reading and writing. Through these activities he turns his mind into that of the consummate politician, always suspicious of others, always thinking several steps ahead. these are the thoughts Solzhenitsyn puts into Lenin’s head following the February 1917 revolution which deposed Tsar Nicholas and looked to establish some kind of liberal democracy in Russia:

Contempt was all that Lenin felt for the mouthings of these quasi- revolutionaries eloquently discoursing on freedom and revolution, with no understanding at all that events might fall into patterns as varied as the combinations on a chess board, knowing nothing of the enemy or of his skill in intercepting a movement under way or even forestalling it. They might have been talking about a day of general rejoicing, as though it were all decided, had already happened….. What was the Tsar doing? What counter-revolutionary armies were advancing on Petersburg? Would not the Duma most probably panic and hurriedly do a deal with the reactionaries? Were not the proletarian forces still weak and unorganised? These were things they did not think about, questions which they did not attempt to answer.

Lenin’s biggest sin though, in Solzhenitsyn’s eyes appears to be his passionately held wish to see a German victory in the war as a means of bringing about the fall of the Tsar and the creation of a revolutionary moment that he and the Bolshevik’s can take advantage of. This lack of patriotism was unforgiveable.

I think that to get the most out of reading this, it is necessary to have a reasonable working knowledge of early twentieth century Russian history and to know something about Lenin’s life prior to his time living in Zurich. There is a very helpful and necessary glossary of names included at the end with potted biographies of all the figures who appear or are mentioned in the text.

I found it took me a bit of effort to get into the book, but once I came to realise what he was trying to achieve I found it to be wholly absorbing. I just wish it hadn’t stopped with Lenin poised to return to Petrograd. That train ride across Germany followed by a further journey through Sweden and Finland is apparently covered in a later volume of the Red Wheel - 'April 1917' - but in a much less concentrated way. I am tempted to read it, but it has only just been translated into English and is only available as a very expensive hardback. It is also some 900 pages long, so not such a comfortable read in bed or in a cafe.