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YELIZAVETA DRABKINA

A member of the Communist Party since 1917, YelizavetaDrabkina (b. 1901) worked with many of Lenin’s associates, including his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. She knew Lenin personally and was a witness of many episodes in his life, which she has described in her book Crusts of Black Bread. One of these stories is published here.

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p That year there was a long sunny autumn and then the cold weather set in all at once. On the eve of the October Revolution celebrations an icy wind began to blow and by the second day of the holiday a snow-storm was pasting the windows with damp snow-flakes. Mother and I began to wonder whether to go to the concert at the Conservatoire, for which we had tickets. But how lucky it was that we did in the end decide to go!

p The street was wrapped in flying snow-flakes. The illuminations shone dimly through the snowy gloom. Outside the House of Trade Unions stood a wooden statue of a soldier of the Red Army. The generals, landlords and factory-owners skewered on his bayonet symbolised the victories of recent weeks over Denikin and Yudenich.

p Arm in arm, Mother and I pushed on against the wind, which was tearing at the banners and swinging the street wires. We made our way up to the Conservatoire along a narrow path trodden through the snow. The cloak-rooms were not in use. We just shook the snow off our coats and went upstairs.

p The hall was nearly full when we entered. Attendants were bringing in music stands and arranging the music. Our tickets were for the fifth or sixth row of the stalls. Just in front of me there was a vacant seat and next to it sat a man wearing a fur-trimmed cap with ear-flaps. He had his coat collar up and sat hunched in his seat. Either he was very tired or else he was trying to get warm.

p The players came on—in overcoats and fur hats. The woman pianist kept her woollen gloves on. Feeble squeaks and moans came from the instruments as they tuned up, as though even sounds were chilled stiff in the deathly cold. At last the 337 conductor, Sergei Kusevitsky, appeared. He was wearing tails, but instead of a boiled shirt a grey sweater showed between his lapels. He bowed briefly, breathed on his hands and lifted his baton. The concert began.

p I wrapped my coat tighter round me and prepared myself to listen, but a nudge and a look from Mother made me glance at the man who was sitting in front and to the left of us. I saw that it was Lenin.

p I had often seen Lenin. I had seen him speaking from the platform, presiding over meetings, and at home. On those occasions he had always been in action, full of movement. This was the first time I had seen him in a moment of meditation, absorbed in his own thoughts.

p Listening and yet not listening to the overture to Coriolanus, I watched Lenin out of the corner of my eye. He was sitting very still, entirely engrossed in the music. The orchestra was gradually shaking off its numbness but still sounded rather muffled; the shivering drummer, however, when he had an entry to make, flailed his instruments with demonic energy.

p “Like a horse just out of the stable,” someone murmured humorously behind us.

p The final chords rang out and there was a round of applause. Lenin stirred in his seat. I could .see from the way he moved that he was trying to find a more comfortable position for his left shoulder, from which those Socialist-Revolutionary bullets had not yet been removed.

This movement reminded me of how the staff at the Council of People’s Commissars and even the Secretariat of the Central Committee, whose offices were outside the Kremlin, had involuntarily walked about on tip-toe and talked in whispers for the first few days after Lenin had been wounded. Then 338 he began to get better, and how happy we were, when we went for dinner in the Kremlin diningroom, and saw him through the window taking his walks in the courtyard.

A fresh burst of applause interrupted my thoughts. Lenin had now changed his position and was sitting so that I could see the right half of his face. His expression was preoccupied, almost sad. A wave of profound affection for him swept over me.

p I recalled the May Day of 1919. In those years that holiday of the international proletariat was celebrated differently from the way it is now. All revolutionary Moscow marched in orderly columns to the Red Square, listened to public speakers, inarched past Lenin, sang songs, repeated their pledge of loyalty to the socialist revolution and, having spent several hours in Red Square, returned to ’their districts to finish celebrating this Day of International Solidarity of the Workers of the World.

p Red Square was also quite different from what it is now. The graves of those who had died for the revolution stretched in a bare, bleak row under layers of turf along the Kremlin wall. The square was cobbled. Two tram-lines ran along the edge of it. The tram-cars screeched and groaned up the slope by the Museum of History, then rumbled down to the narrow structure that was the Moskvoretsky Bridge of those days. The row of mean buildings running from the foot of the Cathedral of St. Basil made the square seem smaller and more cramped than it does now.

p That May Day, in 1919, it looked more festive thaif it ever had. The shopping arcade now known as GUM was draped with two huge scarlet banners, 339 one portraying a worker, the other, a peasant. Red pennants fluttered from every battlement of the Kremlin wall and even the statues of Mifiin and Pozharsky had red flags planted in their fists. On the ancient execution platform the new memorial to Stepan Razin stood under white drapes; it was to be unveiled that day. The fresh grave of Yakov Sverdlov was a mass of flowers.

p The sun shone brightly. The trees were speckled with buds and their green tracery stood out against the clear sky. Everyone was in a joyful mood. News of victories by the Red Army was arriving from the fronts. Songs could be heard among the crowd and friends welcomed each other with a greeting that in those days was only just beginning to come into its own: "Happy May Day, Comrades!" Young people were chanting some of Demyan Bedny’s latest verses:

p O Scheidemann, you dirty scamp,
What pleasure life will bring,
When I set eyes upon the lamp
From which I know you’ll swing.

p At about mid-day Lenin came on to the square and was welcomed joyously by the cheering crowd. He gave an inspiring address, which he concluded with the words: "Long Live Communism!" Then he walked from one platform to another (there were several positioned in various parts of the square, so that everyone present could hear Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders). But someone stopped Lenin and handed him a spade 

p That year May Day had been declared a treeplanting day. Though it was still hemmed in with enemies, the Soviet Republic had decided to plant some young trees.

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p Chuckling to himself and rubbing his hands, Lenin took the spade and started digging beneath the Kremlin wall.

p When the hole had been dug, a cart loaded with saplings drew up and Lenin was handed a slender young lime-tree. He placed it carefully in position, packed some earth round it, watered it in and, only when the job was finished, walked on and climbed the next platform.

p In his first speech that day he had summed up the past; now his thoughts turned to the future, to the new world emerging from the smoke of war that lay thick over Soviet Russia. He saw that future both in the children who stood listening to him at the foot of the platform, and in the young trees that had just been planted.

p People leaned on their spades and listened to him.

p “Our grandchildren,” he said, raising a hand that was still caked with dirt, "will look upon the documents and relics of the capitalist system as something quite outlandish. They will have difficulty in imagining how trade in the necessaries of life could ever have been in private hands, how the factories and mills could ever have belonged to private individuals, how one man could have exploited another, how there could ever have been people who did no work. Up to now, what our children will see has been talked of as if it were a fairy-tale, but now, comrades, you perceive quite clearly that the edifice of socialist society, of which we have laid the foundations, is no Utopia. Our children will build this edifice with even greater zeal.”

p He looked down at the children and after a slight pause said:

“We shall not see this future, just as we shall not see the crowning glory of these trees that have been 341 planted today; but our children will see that time. It will be seen by those who are in their youth today___"

p A burst of clapping announced the end of the first half of the concert. Everyone stood up stamping their feet and slapping themselves to get warm. Lenin also rose to his feet.

p He put on his hat, struck his fists together, then turned round and saw Mother and me.

“Ah, Elizabeth-Sparrow!" he called out, using the nickname I had been given as a girl. He greeted Mother, then myself with that firm, quick handshake of his.

p Yes, all those things actually happened.

p And when you remember them today, it makes you want to be better, nobler, and always worthy of the lofty title of Communist.

Translated by Robert Daglish