p Sverdlov was released in September 1909 and went back into the thick of things without delay, finding that the situation in the country and in the Party had changed beyond recognition during his imprisonment. The police had ruthlessly crushed the Party, arresting the local leaders and destroying the workers’ newspapers. Underground work was even more difficult than before.

p The suppression of the first Russian revolution between 1905 and 1907 had totally demoralised the Mensheviks, who were now urging the working class to compromise with the bourgeoisie. They had taken a liquidationist position, openly insisting on the abolition of our underground network. Meanwhile Trotsky and his followers were sitting on the fence, recommending conciliation with the liquidationists— simply playing into their hands.

p Even some Bolsheviks had begun to vacillate, advising us to stop using legal methods of furthering the class struggle.

p The Party was undergoing a crisis, and it was clear to Lenin that only by relentlessly opposing opportunism, in whatever guise and from whatever source, could the organisation emerge from that crisis and lead the people to victory in the forthcoming revolution.

p Sverdlov was released with no money at all, with the clothes he had on, a change of linen and a bundle of books. He had nowhere to live; he did not even have a coat to protect him from the autumn chill.

p Fortunately there were still a few comrades left in Ekaterinburg. They scraped some money together and begged a second-hand coat from a rich liberal sympathiser; it had to be taken up, for it reached to Sverdlov’s heels, but was more or less wearable. Indeed, it served him long and faithfully, accompanied him to prison and exile, and 44 was still with him when he became Chairman of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee. He just never troubled to buy another.

p Although he could have stayed in Ekaterinburg for a while, living with his colleagues, he had definitely decided in prison that he could no longer work there; reaction was rife and almost every policeman, every spy, knew his face. Besides, he felt unprepared— he needed to study the latest Party literature, to find out from the Central Committee where they felt he would be most useful. So he stayed only long enough to collect his fare for Petersburg, which seemed the best place to contact the Central Committee. He knew that I was waiting for him there.

p I had been released the year before, in the autumn of 1908, and had settled in the capital, where I joined the local Party organisation through Baturin, a comrade from the Urals, and began my work anew.

p I soon found a job, as a clerk in the Provincial Book Wholesalers, with pay which was meagre but regular. I took a small room on Vassilyevsky Island, and began to wait for Sverdlov with mounting agitation, naturally enough, because, except for a few fleeting moments under a warder’s eye, we had not met for almost three and a half years. One evening when I came home I found him waiting for me.

p That evening and the next few days seemed to fly by—we had so much to say to each other. Of course we were comrades in arms, and good friends, but we were also in love, and our love was a constant source of joy and strength to us. Sverdlov once wrote to me from prison: I am doing all I can to conserve my strength, and knowing that you’re there gives me that air of cheeriness and optimism that is a vital part of me.’

p Sverdlov’s full and interesting letters reflect their author so clearly; it is unfortunate that 1 no longer have them all. I kept them with me during my days in the underground, when I was imprisoned, transported and in exile, and in the years when every scrap of paper had to be destroyed in case the gendarmes laid their dirty hands on it; I gave them to friends for safe keeping; I made secret caches; then I spent years collecting them together. It is hardly surprising that some of them are lost.

p Sverdlov confided his plans to me; more than anything else he wanted to go abroad, if only for a month or two, and meet Lenin. In prison his long-standing dream had grown into a consuming desire.

p But it was not to be, for at that time every Party worker of note was needed in Russia and money was short. And he was soon to be arrested again and exiled, to enjoy a few days of freedom and then to be sent back for a second term of exile in Siberia.

p A number of colleagues in Petersburg advised him to go to Finland 45 and meet Sergei Gusev,  [45•1  who was in close touch with Lenin and the Central Committee.

p Sverdlov did not hesitate. His reputation had preceded him, and Gusev welcomed him with open arms, immediately invited him to stay and produced the most recent Party magazines and newspapers. He also brought him up to date with developments within the Party. He was a particularly useful informant because he had recently visited a number of Party organisations at Lenin’s request and was well acquainted with the situation at the grass roots.

p Sverdlov stayed there for about a week. On the first Sunday I went to Finland—not a complicated trip in those days—to spend a few hours with him. As I had suspected, he was deep in study and working between 16 and 18 hours a day, hurrying to make up for lost time.

p In the late autumn of 1909 he suddenly received orders from the Central Committee to go to Moscow, where the Party was in disarray, having suffered several major setbacks of late. Sverdlov’s assignment was to set things right.

p He left for Petersburg without delay, with a passport in the name of Ivan Ivanovich Smirnov. We had one more day together and parted, not knowing what the future would bring. A day later He was in Moscow and set to work to re-establish broken contacts, bring the more politically conscious workers into the Party and give new life to the Moscow area RSDLP committee and Party bureau. His experience and energy brought rapid results.

But Moscow was teeming with informers (or, as the Moscow Bolsheviks put it, completely ‘spyified’) and it was not long before he was betrayed to the secret police. He was arrested on 13 December 1909 at a meeting of the Moscow Party Committee, only three months after his release from prison.