5

p I  [5•1  met Yakov Sverdlov long ago in Ekaterinburg, the town in the Ural Mountains that is now Sverdlovsk. Those were unforgettable days, the days of the first Russian revolution.

p October 1905... A wave of mass political strikes and demonstrations was sweeping the country, an armed uprising against the tsarist autocracy was close at hand, and the villages were alight with the blaze of peasant revolt.

p I was released from prison in Ekaterinburg in the middle of October, pending my trial. They had arrested me in spring when our underground press had been discovered; as a member of the Ekaterinburg committee of the RSDLP  [5•2  I had been involved in our printing activities.

p My first move when I left prison was to make careful contact with my comrades on the Ekaterinburg Party committee, to decide our most fundamental and pressing problem—what to do next. I did not think that I could continue to work in Ekaterinburg; although the local gendarmes and their spies did not know that I was a committee member, my face was too familiar—1 had become fully convinced of that on the day of my arrest. An agent of the secret political police had taken me to prison and stayed while the chief warder filled in my form. I sat with a large woollen shawl thrown over my head and answered his interminable, tedious questions in monosyllables. When he came to my distinguishing features and asked me to remove the shawl so that he could check the colour of my eyes and the shape of my nose—it all mattered to them—the agent interrupted him with a sneer.

p ’Leave her be,’ he commanded. ’We know her looks by heart.”

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p It would be hard to leave my town, the town of my childhood and youth, where I had become deeply involved in revolutionary work and had joined the Bolshevik Party, where I had friends and comrades. But I knew that it was inevitable—I would have to move to another town where the secret police did not know me, make contact with the Party there and start my work anew.

p So it was decided. But no sooner had I made up my mind and was ready to set off at any moment, that I suddenly heard that Comrade Andrei wanted to meet me.

p I had never seen this Comrade Andrei, although I knew that it was Yakov Sverdlov’s party name, the one he was using when he appeared in Ekaterinburg at the end of September 1905, sent by the Party’s Central Committee to represent them in the Urals.

p Even in prison, news about the new Central Committee representative had reached me, and when I came out the local committee was buzzing with talk about him. It seemed remarkably inadvisable for me to see him. After all, it had been decided that I was to leave, the committee approved and I no longer belonged to the local organisation. Did Comrade Andrei want to meet me out of pure curiosity? But supposing the spies used me to get on to his trail—was it really worth risking such a valuable member of our organisation for one single pointless meeting? That is roughly how I saw it, and I said as much to the comrade who brought me the news.

p But my protests fell on deaf ears. It seemed that Comrade Andrei’s rule was to talk to every party member who left the town and he was particularly determined to see me because I had been on the Ekaterinburg committee. I would have to be extremely careful, do everything possible to avoid being shadowed and not give the spies any help. Andrei and the committee could guarantee the strictest security for our meeting and the rest was up to me.

p This left me no room for argument, so a few days later I made my way to the rendezvous point at the agreed time to meet a member of our organisation. On the way I did all I could to confuse my tracks, going from one street to another by way of courtyards and alleys, and I did not go to the assigned place until I was sure I had not been tailed.

p My comrade was already there. He took my arm, and we set off down the main street, pushing through the noisy, jolly crowd, looking for all the world like a courting couple.

p When we reached the dam across the Iset River my friend pointed out a young man—a very young man, really only a lad—who was strolling along in a carefree sort of way. There was nothing striking about him at first glance. He was of average height, slender and smart. 7 His cap was pushed back slightly from his forehead and waves of thick black hair stubbornly jutted out from under it. A simple black Russian blouse fitted his lean body snugly, his jacket was thrown across his shoulders, and his entire compact and dynamic physique radiated youthful energy. His clothes, though well-worn, were clean and neat.

p My first general impression was favourable—but he was so very young! Could this really be the same Comrade Andrei that I had heard so much about? I looked enquiringly at my companion. He silently gave the slightest of nods, let go of my arm and slowed his pace, so that I left him behind. Just then Comrade Andrei noticed us and turned off into a quiet side street, where I joined him.

p Our conversation got off to a lively start, as though we had long been good friends. His voice was really charming—a deep velvety bass, which at first seemed to sit oddly with his slight build.

p Many years have passed and little details about our meeting have slipped my memory, but I do know that Sverdlov made an indelible impression on me that day.

p ’So you’re leaving the Urals,’ he began. ^You’re all ready to cut and run.’

Cut and run—the very idea! I put my detailed and well-considered arguments to him, convinced that my reasons for leaving were unimpeachable.

p

p Andrei was a good listener, immediately getting to the kernel of any issue, and able to provide the very words one was seeking.

p He heard me out and then said: ’The point is that people who know the local conditions are vital to the Party these days. You ran a study circle in the Yates factory, you know the Verkhny Isetsk plant, you know the people and understand the work here. And you’re known to the local workers and the organisation. Now, where will you be of most use—here or elsewhere? Clear as day. It’s essential to the Party that you stay in Ekaterinburg.

p ‘You could be caught, you could be followed, you won’t be able to visit people, attend workers’ groups or go to conspiratorial meetings in private flats... True enough, fine reasoning, taking things as they were, but things are changing all the time. Revolution is coming on the crest of a great wave and it’s spreading to all corners of the country, to the Urals, to Ekaterinburg. Every day more and more people, politically conscious workers mostly, are joining the movement. So even if they increase the number of spies, which is not so easy and takes time, there still won’t be one spy for everybody. They’ll get confused and dash from one suspect to another—and that will only make our task easier. And besides,’ Andrei smiled ’what are spies for if not 8 to be taken for a ride? The more certain you are that you could be followed, the craftier and more careful you’ll be—and the more smartly you’ll fool them.’

p That is how our forthright and resolute Andrei scotched the ideas that I and many others in the area had about the rules of conspiratorial behaviour, showing us that those rules could be a hindrance in this new situation. After this conversation I saw clearly that the expansion of the revolutionary movement posed new problems and demanded a new approach.

p Sverdlov was hardly twenty then, but in one brief conversation he taught me to see our work as part of a movement involving all Russia’s proletariat and peasantry; he opened up new horizons for me.

p And I stayed in Ekaterinburg.

p That is how I began my work with Comrade Andrei—with Yakov Sverdlov.

p At that time our revolutionary activity in the Urals faced a number of problems that were strictly local. The proletariat there was not only unusual in itself, it had a unique history.

p Russian metallurgy began in the Urals in the early eighteenth century, with the construction of huge mining and metallurgical enterprises. As Russian capitalism developed, the centre of the industry moved south and several new factories appeared, with more advanced equipment. The system in those southern factories was purely capitalist: the worker bound himself to his master by the sale of his labour. After the abolition of serfdom  [8•1  the Ural workers no longer belonged body and soul to their master and no longer had to do obligatory labour in the factories, but numerous vestiges of serfdom still held the whole vast area, as big as several European states combined, in a firm and intricate grip. The factory workers were in a state of semi-servile dependence, attached to their masters by the chains of hoary custom. Unlike other workers, they had been born and raised in the very factories where generations of their own families had laboured in eternal slavery for generations of masters.

p They were not freed from obligatory labour in the factories until 1863; then they received plots of land and pasture in the areas which belonged to the factories, and were accorded water and wooding rights on their masters’ lands. And this bound them to their factories no less firmly than serfdom had.

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p But garden plots and pasture alone could not feed the worker’s family; the factory remained his main source of income, and there things went from bad to worse. South Russian metallurgy was successfully competing with the Urals, forcing the owners there to install new machinery and cut down their work force in order to preserve their profits.

p This further embittered the workers and increased their determination to oppose the status quo. Strikes and walkouts, the usual methods of attack, were not always successful, though, for certain owners had no objection to shortening the working day or closing down completely for two or three days. Only long strikes, where the workers were fully behind their leadership, were worthwhile.

p The matter was further complicated in that the factories were not in the towns but were scattered throughout the area, often tens of hundreds of miles away from each other, from inhabited areas, and from the railways.

p Meanwhile echoes of the shots fired on the Palace Square in St. Petersburg on 9 January 1905 reached us.  [9•1  Revolutionary activity in Russia took an upswing, and the Ural workers reacted with enthusiasm. Occasional strikes broke out, which, though not always successful, spread from one factory to another and brought the class struggle, like a consuming fire, to the area.

We Social-Democrats had to find a way of mastering the workers’ ancient hatred of the factory owners and the tsar’s local officials, the police and the bureaucrats in particular, and of organising it to sustain the class struggle. To do this we would have to be on continual guard against other political elements in the area—the Socialist-Revolutionaries  [9•2 , the Mensheviks,  [9•3  the anarchists and the

10 petty bourgeoisie, whose influence extended to some of the less perceptive members of the proletariat.