p When Sverdlov arrived in Petersburg towards the end of December 1912 he had almost no contacts and did not know how to communicate with the Central Committee or with Lenin, who was still living abroad. The only certain thing was that any false move or careless contact could send him straight back to prison or exile.

p On 23 December he wrote to Narym. The best he could say was 65 that he was alive, achieving nothing, sleeping in a different place every night and seeing only those people that he absolutely had to, who were few indeed.

p The position began to improve slowly with the help of Mikhail Olminsky, who put him in touch with a number of Leninist Bolsheviks. He was soon in contact with the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma and finally reached Lenin and the Central Committee. He himself was now a member of the CC, having been coopted in his absence.

p He went to stay with Fyodor Samoilov, a Bolshevik worker and Duma representative, and took up the two tasks that the Central Committee had assigned him, supervising Pravda, which had begun publication in December 1912, and providing whatever help the Bolshevik faction in the Fourth State Duma needed. Pravda, and the Duma were vital to the Party’s legal activities and to the extension of its influence as it strove to unite and organise the people.

p Grigori Petrovsky, one of the older revolutionaries, told me: Sverdlov quickly became involved in all aspects of the Party’s work. He helped us in the Duma faction, ran Pravda, worked in the Central Committee’s Russian Bureau and headed the Petersburg Party Committee.’

p But he followed Lenin’s orders to concentrate on Pravda, doing all he could to check the lack of editorial discipline and organisation that Lenin had pointed out, and to prevent the unforgivable delays that sometimes occurred in carrying out Central Committee directives or in printing Lenin’s articles.

p Although he was careful, it was not long before the secret police knew that he was back in Petersburg. Indeed, they were aware of almost every move he made, for at that time they had the services of a man called Malinovsky, a case-hardened informer who worked simultaneously for the Petersburg police department and the Moscow secret police and had so cleverly ingratiated himself that he had been appointed to the Central Committee at the Prague Conference and was also a member of the Bolshevik Duma faction. He was in everyone’s confidence, and he passed on all his diligently amassed information to the secret police.

p They shadowed Sverdlov more and more openly and persistently, biding their time, fully confident that Malinovsky would not let him slip away.

p In early February the caretaker approached Fyodor Samoilov to say that he knew there was an unregistered person’ living in his room; he had seen secret police in the yard, assumed they were watching Sverdlov and was worried that when the arrest finally came both he and Samoilov would have some explaining to do. Samoilov seemed to 66 dismiss the matter but let Sverdlov know immediately and called together the Duma deputies, with Malinovsky, of course, among them. It was agreed that Sverdlov should quickly move to a safer place.

p When darkness fell, the deputies, with Sverdlov hidden in their midst, went into the yard and helped him to climb the fence that backed on to the River Neva. Malinovsky was waiting there with a cab and they made their ‘get-away’ together to Malinovsky’s flat.

p A wonderful get-away—in trying to save Sverdlov they had unwittingly handed him over to a tsarist informer, though of course the police did not mean to compromise their valuable agent by seizing Sverdlov in his flat. Beletsky, the intelligent and crafty head of the police department and Malinovsky’s immediate superior, had ordered him to take Sverdlov to some place where he could be arrested. But Sverdlov himself had not intended to stay with Malinovsky, although he trusted him completely; on 9 February 1913 he moved in with Grigori Petrovsky and his wife Domna.

p I had come to Petersburg with Andrei only the day before. As I had been corresponding with Sara, Sverdlov’s younger sister, I went directly to her, leaving my things at the station. Since Sara had links with Central Committee’s Bureau and the Petersburg committee and often helped Sverdlov, she knew where he might be. Moving around so much, he had been unable to let me know where he could be found.

p The next morning Sara took me to the Petrovskys but Sverdlov had not yet arrived. They made me welcome, though, and I met there an old comrade from the Perm committee, Bina Lobova, who was on the Pravda editorial staff and acting as secretary for the Bolshevik Duma faction.

p The Petrovskys unhesitatingly invited me to stay in their large flat, and after a really hard journey from Tomsk with Andrei I was only too glad to accept. Domna and Bina insisted that my things remain in the left luggage office overnight; they said they would go with me the next day and help me carry them. They did go, indeed, but not with me...

p It was late in the evening when Sverdlov came. Although he was as cheerful as ever and bubbling over with plans, he was taking his situation seriously and frankly admitted that having the police on his heels was unpleasant. He assumed that the police had been looking for him at Samoilov’s, which meant that they had somehow managed to track him down but he could not see how. He knew, however, that he would now have no peace from them.

p He felt he must move as soon as possible. Samoilov and Petrovsky were both Bolshevik Duma deputies; the police would probably draw the obvious conclusions. 1 agreed with him, but Petrovsky only 67 laughed: ’Have you forgotten, old chap, that I’m a deputy and we have official immunity, even in this country. Relax—no one’s going to touch you in my flat.’

p Sverdlov was incredulous that Petrovsky could think of his immunity’ seriously; to him it was obvious that the police could take it with a pinch of salt. A friendly wrangle began but Petrovsky failed to shake Sverdlov’s conviction that he should get away from ’all these deputies’ without delay.

p We talked so much that it was late before we ate and almost midnight before Sverdlov and I went to our room, where little Andrei had long been snuffling peacefully in his sleep. Then we stayed up until dawn, talking about my journey, our comrades in Narym and Sverdlov’s work in Petersburg. Just as we were settling down to sleep, there was a piercing, insistent ring at the door. Sverdlov listened a while, then said calmly: Now we’ll see who was right. So much for official immunity! Looks like they’ve come for me. Goodbye, darling, be strong. Look after yourself and Andrei. You’re on your own again, love, and I think it will be for a long time...’

p The police were already bursting into the room. There was a gendarme officer, several police officers and a number of underlings, including some civilians. The baby woke up and began to sob. Petrovsky complained loudly and demanded respect for his official immunity, and much good it did—they even forcibly prevented him from telephoning the police department. They took Sverdlov to the Crosses, a notorious Petersburg prison, and sent me and the baby to the preliminary detention cells, where I had been two years previously.

p A passionate protest against our arrest appeared in Pravda the next day.

p It was several months later that Sverdlov was exiled, by order of a special tribunal, for five years. I was sentenced to two years’ banishment under strict police surveillance. The essential difference between exile and banishment was that I was not transported with other convicts but had to make my own way. So at the end of April 1913 I was on the streets of Petersburg, destitute, homeless and with a gravely ill child on my hands.

p Andrei had suffered in prison. I tried so hard to save him the best food and get him a little milk or fruit but the prison fare finally gave him dysentery. By the time we were released he was seriously ill and I simply did not know what to do. I thought of going to Sara’s, but she herself was in hard straits, living in a tiny room and struggling along pn bread and water. I decided to go to the Petrovskys. 68 Though I had only been with them for a few hours, I counted on their advice and help, as Bolsheviks and friends of Sverdlov.

p Petrovsky’s wife opened the door, and gathered me into her arms, sobbing. They understood the problem immediately, and unquestioningly took me in. My being in Petersburg was a problem but Petrovsky willingly went to petition the police for permission to extend my stay at least until the baby was better. Although he was ultimately refused, I had two weeks’ respite, during which those kind people surrounded Andrei and myself with tenderness.

p Sara was told and came straightaway, followed by Mikhail Olminsky and Vladimir and Vera Bonch-Bruevich. Vera and Sara were doctors; for the first few days of our stay they took turns in sitting at Andrei’s bedside with me and thanks to their skill he did not die.

I said my goodbyes to the Petrovskys at the beginning of May 1913 and went home to Ekaterinburg, where I was to spend the first part of my exile. I was separated from Sverdlov yet again and was destined to be for a long time...