p It took the police a very long time to track Sverdlov down, although they were looking for him with undiminished eagerness and the price on his head was a great incentive for their spy network. The places where he met his contacts and where he held meetings were kept such a close secret that not even the Perm committee ever knew where he was going.

p Our meetings were also carefully guarded. When Andrei spoke to the workers, they would gather close round him, not allowing the police to get near. Afterwords they would hide him in the crowd, give him a change of clothes and remove him to somewhere safe.

p The secret police were mad with frustration. This criminal, this revolutionary known throughout the Urals, this Andrei was going about his business literally under their noses. Their informers were constantly sending in reports that Andrei had appeared to give a speech at this factory or that but they never got there in time to arrest him.

p Telegrams flew out of Perm in all directions, even going as far as the Volga. The provincial police administration were in a panic, were demanding his arrest, but time went on and he was still at large.

p It would be hard even to summarize Sverdlov’s travels in the spring and summer of 1906. One day he would be chairing a Party committee meeting in Perm and the next, it seemed, he was in Ekaterinburg. By the time the police got on to his trail, he was in Ufa. They sent a telegram to Ufa—and he was back in Perm.

p He would turn up in Tirlyan, Alapaevsk, Sysert, Kushva, Nizhnyaya Tura... He would hold instructional sessions for the local Bolsheviks, lead meetings, chair committees, speak to the workers.... And meanwhile the secret police were vainly rushing from one end of the Urals to the other.

p One day he went to a large gathering of workers at the Rezhevsk plant. Andrei was to speak by the pond; police look-outs encircled the place. They did not dare to arrest him then and there in front of the workers, but calculated that it would be easier when the crowd began to disperse. They waited for two hours, the meeting ended, but no one was there. By then Sverdlov was far away—some friends had rowed him across the pond during the meeting to where some horses were hidden.

p There was an underground Party meeting near Nizhni Tagil, by the River Vyika. The writer, A. P. Bondin, who was present, remembered how silence fell when Andrei began to speak. His eyes, profound and wise behind his glasses, seemed to rivet the attention of his listeners. His measured speech was easy on the ear. and so persuasive...

p ’Sverdlov spoke about the clash with capitalism, about ways of nationalising agriculture through revolution, about arming the workers, about the merciless battle against traitors and informers.”

p But that was one of Andrei’s last speeches in the Urals before the fall of tsarism.

p Every day it became more difficult to work under cover. The secret police were sending even more informers out to join our ranks and demanding an extra effort from the established ones. One of them actually wormed his way into the Perm committee. His name was Yakov Votinov and he held a particularly trusted position, being in charge of our cache of weapons.

p In April an entire propagandist group was arrested along with its leader, Sasha Sokolov. Summaries of the discussions that had taken place, some underground literature and copies of the Party programme were confiscated. The committee realised from the subsequent searches and the questioning that the prisoners underwent, details of which filtered out to us, that this had not been a chance arrest—it bore the mark of an experienced informer.

p Sverdlov became even more circumspect. He never spent two nights in the same place and tried not to go out during the day. He continued to travel, taking even greater precautions than before. But, though he could slip through the spy network, it was more difficult to protect himself against an informer who was working alongside him, pretending to be an ally and a comrade.

p On 10 June 1906 Sverdlov returned to Perm after one of his trips. 27 It had been decided that we would leave that night; we simply could not remain there any longer. A committee meeting had been arranged to re-allocate our duties among the others, to agree on who should be sent to other towns and who should be summoned to Perm.

p Sverdlov and I had considerable difficulty in getting to the flat where the meeting was to be held. We had decided to go together but as soon as we went out we found ourselves followed by not one but several spies. By changing cabs a number of times and going through courtyards and alleys, we finally lost them; at the town boundaries we checked that our shadows really had gone.

p ’That doesn’t look good,’ Sverdlov said. ’l mean, they were after us all right, but they didn’t get us ... it’s very odd. Think about it—they were literally on our heels, but didn’t touch us. I wonder what their game is.’

p It seemed highly suspicious to me too. It was obvious that there was something unpleasant afoot; they surely had some reason for not arresting us. For some time we had been convinced that there was an informer on the committee; we even suspected who it was and had begun to check on him and exclude him from certain activities. Now it seemed clear that he had let the secret police know about our meeting in advance, but they no doubt wanted to know our plans, to hear Sverdlov’s instructions to the committee and so had decided to let us hold our meeting and arrest us as we left.

p Sverdlov summed it up: ’There’s not much to discuss; we have no alternative. We can’t throw it all up and clear off. We’ll have to carry on and get away as quickly as we can, try to outrun them. A huge risk, I know, but there’s nothing else for it.’

p We got to the meeting place without further complications; there did not seem to be any spies around the house. Evidently, if the police knew about our arrangements, they had posted their lookouts at a distance, so as not to alarm us prematurely.

p Our comrades had already assembled, and Sverdlov began the meeting without wasting any time. All the issues were quickly decided; Sverdlov, calm and unruffled as ever, told everyone exactly what he expected of them.

p At the end he advised them to wait for five or ten minutes after we had gone and then to leave in ones and twos as usual. I could see why: we had to make our way quickly to the Kama wharf where it would be easier to disappear, before our informer could get away from the meeting and let the police know that we had left.

p But for once we underestimated our opponents. Andrei was considered such a fine catch that the beaters were out in force. They had even brought in spies from Ekaterinburg who knew his face.

p Not quite half-way to the wharf we noticed that we were being followed. As we had feared, they had surrounded the entire block in case the informer did not reach them in time to let them know when we had left.

p ‘We’ll have to take a chance,’ Sverdlov whispered to me. ’Down that alley, take the first cab we see.’

p We turned down an alley where we could see a cab stand, but strangely enough the place suddenly began to fill with people. Some suspicious-looking types came towards us, we heard steps behind us; civilians and military alike were converging on this absolutely unremarkable little street. We could see police in the dim distance.

p Then a cab appeared. Sverdlov calmly asked him to take us to the wharf, but he brusquely replied that he was not free. So did the next. We knew that it was all over. Now we had to keep calm, keep calm— we quickly said all that we had to say to each other, walking arm in arm and looking so unconcerned that the officer who was going to arrest us hesitated as he came near, and actually went by.

p I thought that maybe we had got away with it, but a few steps further on a voice was raised behind us: ’Well come on, then, get them!’ They swooped down on us from all sides, pushing Sverdlov into one cab and me into another. Some policemen jumped on to the footboards, there was a whistle, and off we went at full pelt.

p The secret police could really congratulate themselves: Andrei, the elusive Andrei, was in their hands at last! But their joy was shortlived—they could arrest Sverdlov and throw hundreds of Bolsheviks into prison, but they could not reverse the course of history or strangle the powerful revolutionary movement that now had a hold on the entire Ural proletariat.

About the middle of 1906 the movement lost its impetus, while the forces of reaction grew even more savage. But the intensified official campaign against us only proved how firmly rooted the Ural Bolsheviks were, how sound and capable their core—the core that Sverdlov, on the orders of the Central Committee, had created and fostered.