John Kenneth Galbraith in the documentary episode previously linked discusses Lenin's career in exile and his return to Russia in 1917 via Germany, in what became known as the "sealed train," which in the July Days events of 1917 would become the (very thin) basis of Karensky's Provisional Government charge that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were acting as foreign agents of the Kaiser. In the companion volume, The Age of Uncertainty (1977), he writes:
Following jail and a three-year sentence in Siberia, [Lenin] had been out of Russia (except for short periods during and after 1905) since the beginning of the century. But the Polish police were tole rant, even friendly - Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, speaks of them with appreciation. And access to Russia was easy. Revolutionaries came and went across the border, many coming to visit Lenin whose stah1re as a revolutionary leader was now widely accepted. Though easy, it remained a wonderfully conspiratorial traffic. Once one Muranov, a leading Bolshevik member of the Duma, came to visit Lenin . He had parliamentary immunity so no one could question his right to travel. Nonetheless he made a clandestine crossing. When Lenin rebuked him for doing so, he apologized and explained that it had never occurred to him that one could cross a border legally.With the outbreak of the war, Lenin wound up in Switzerland, where among other things he spent a great deal of his time and energy organizing antiwar conferences.
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| Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) |
But with the February Revolution, the pace of history had quickened for him:
In the next days Lenin was desperate. How could he, and they [his colaborators in Switzerland], get to Russia? An airplane? That was mentioned, though in those days only as an idle dream. Out through France? The French would not think Lenin a helpful influence in Petrograd. They would arrest him forthwith. He could not lead a revolution from a French jail. To go through Germany would be to risk the suspicion, when he arrived in Russia, that he was a German agent. Still, that was the only chance. The German view of Lenin 's contribution to the Russian war effort, which was surprisingly sophisticated, was the same as that of the French but it led to the opposite conclusion. How good to have Lenin in Russia.Rex Wade (The Russian Revolution, 2017) gives the same picture of Lenin's trip:
With, one must believe, a good deal of initiative and skill, a Swiss socialist, Fritz Platten, made an arrangement: Lenin would go through Germany. But it would be on an extraterritorial or non-German train. The concept of an extraterritorial train passing over the German railroads proved too difficult for the average later historian, and from this came the reference to a sealed train. And eventually it came to be imagined that the Germans had sealed Lenin up because they wanted protection from the Bolshevik infection. They weren't that troubled. It was Lenin who wanted to minimize his exposure to the Germans.
About twenty of Lenin's fellow Bolsheviks were on the train. There was a child or two, and also Inessa Armand, a sharply beautiful, French-born revolutionary and a close friend, brilliant collaborator and possibly - it does not seem important - a mistress of Lenin 's. The journey was not a very festive excursion. Lenin was deeply worried about his reception in Russia. After all, Germany and Russia were still at war. He might not even be allowed in. He was, although Fritz Platten was excluded as a foreigner. On April 3, 1917 (according to the Russian calendar), he arrived at the Finland Station in Petrograd. In October he took power. [my emphasis in bold]
The Germans, after all, had an interest in helping the radical antiwar Russian socialists get home where they might help disrupt the government and war effort, just as Britain and France had an interest in hindering them. This led to the famous and much misunderstood “sealed train,” where the Russian radicals, in an effort to defuse the inevitable charges of cooperation with the enemy in wartime, were given a special status whereby no German would enter their car during the trip across Germany and all contact would be via a Swiss intermediary. Feeling that the need to return to Russia and participate in the politics of the revolution outweighed the dangers of being labeled a “German agent,” Lenin made the trip.During early July, the Provisional Government pulled out the charge that Lenin was working for the Germans:
... the government released documents purporting to show Bolshevik ties with Germany, which brought some previously “neutral” garrison regiments out in support of the Soviet leaders while dampening the enthusiasm of many demonstrators. These charges, printed and distributed on the 5th, produced a sensation and led to a sudden drop in the Bolsheviks’ popularity. Lenin and several leading Bolsheviks fled into hiding in Finland to avoid the arrest warrants issued by the government, while some local leaders found themselves abused or even attacked by their fellow workers and soldiers.It was bogus propaganda, but it did turn public opinion momentarily against the Bolsheviks. The government had been concentrating much of its political propaganda against the Bolsheviks, "The July Days were not, as the Bolsheviks’ opponents immediately asserted (and later mythology repeated), an abortive planned Bolshevik coup. They represented a genuine outburst of popular discontent."
Ivan Krastev in Analogie zum Jahr 1917? APuZ 34-36:2017 gives a somewhat vague description of this story, focusing primarily on whatever intent the German Kaiser had to actually radicalize the Russian Revolution under way, it didn't work out that way:
Der Plan der deutschen Reichsregierung, die revolutionären Kräfte in Russland zu unterstützen, um letztlich eigene geopolitische Ziele zu erreichen, nahm kein gutes Ende. Die Revolution beendete zwar Russlands Teilnahme am Ersten Weltkrieg, verbreitete jedoch in ganz Europa das Revolutionsfieber – und brachte den Bürgerkrieg sogar nach Deutschland.It's not exactly clear what Krastev means by bringing "civil war to Germany."
[The German government's plan to support the revolutionary forces in Russia, in order to reach its own geopolitical goals in the end, came to a bad end. The revolution did end Russia's participation in the First World War, nevertheless spread revolution fever all through Europe - and even brought civil war to Germany.]
And his vagueness in discussing it leaves it unclear how much if any of the old trope he wants to keep alive.
Das kaiserliche Deutschland hegte keinerlei Sympathien für Lenins revolutionäre Träume. Wäre der eigenwillige Bolschewik Deutscher gewesen, hätte die Obrigkeit ihn ins Gefängnis geworfen. Lenin war aber Russe und der deutsche Führungsstab der Ansicht, die verschiedenen revolutionären Gruppen seien für Deutschland im Krieg hilfreich. Also wurden sie unterstützt. Berlins Ziel war es, Russland dazu zu bringen, sich aus dem Krieg zurückzuziehen – oder zumindest Chaos in Russland zu stiften. Die Deutschen prägten ein eigenes Wort für diese spezifische Art der Einflussnahme: „Revolutionierungspolitik“.Wade writes, "The myth of Lenin as a German agent and of the Bolsheviks as surviving only because of 'German gold' is only the most historically enduring of the many conspiracy theories current in 1917."
Wade cites Semion Yandres' study, The Bolsheviks' "German Gold" Revisited Carl Beck Papers #1106 (1995). It's a readable piece of forensic history. German records on the supposed money transactions between the German government and the Bolsheviks had been available earlier. But only after the fall of the Soviet Union were some key original documents made available to researchers. The accusations that the Provisional Government had published during the July Days, aka, the June Uprising, were based on a series of 66 telegrams involving financial transactions of what Yandres calls the Parvus--Kozlowski firm. The Kerensky government brought charges against several Bolsheviks, alleging that the transactions were a front for fund transfers from the German government through Stockholm to the party. Part of the case was based on the argument that the language in the telegrams involved the use of a code to hide messages. The Bolsheviks had seized power and dropped the charges before they were vetted in court.
Yandres on the findings of his analysis of the 66 telegrams: "The present work provides an analysis of each individual telegram as well as of the entire group of 66, and finds no support in them for the July accusations. In fact, the telegrams contain no evidence that there were any funds transferred from Stockholm to Petrograd, let alone funds that wound up in Bolshevik coffers." He also found that "no evidence that the telegraphic correspondence maintained between Petrograd and Stockholm was coded." Not only that, in the transactions in question,"Goods were sent to Petrograd, and payments traveled back to Stockholm - but never in the opposite direction." (emphasis in original)
Yandres even found that the Provisional Government's own internal investigation had found that the telegrams didn't support the charge.
Notwithstanding a persistent search for proof that the Bolsheviks received German funds through the Parvus-Fürstenberg-Kozlowski-Sumenson network (the Provisional Government thoroughly examined not only the records of Sumenson's commercial activities but also all foreign monetary transactions into Russia between late 1914 and July 1917), the investigation concluded that there was no evidence of the "German connection."(Jakub Furstenberg was a Bolshevik who also used the name Hanecki. Parvus, who Yandres describes as a "Russo-German Social Democrat" whose real name was Alexander Israel.)
It would have been surprising under the circumstances of 1914-17 if there had been no contact at all between German agents and the Bolsheviks. And Yandres speculates that the reason the Soviets never released the telegrams themselves was because "they do reveal the existence of close contacts between prominent party figures from Lenin's immediate circle and German agents in Scandinavia. It is quite certain that these ties were close enough to prevent the Bolsheviks from openly acknowledging them."
Yandres notes that Parvus, one of the principle figures in the Stockholm transfers, may have transmitted funds to the Bolsheviks in other ways, noting that the German government did provide Parvus significant funds "to promote revolution in Russia." And he writes, "In August 1917, Carl Moor, the Swiss socialist and agent of the German (and before that, Austrian) government, approached the members of the Bolshevik Foreign Bureau in Stockholm with an offer of financial support to the party. ... Recently declassified records of the Central Committee reveal that in summer 1917 the Bolshevik Foreign Bureau in fact did receive from Moor a contribution in an amount then valued at 230,000 German marks." He goes on to explain, "it was used by the Foreign Bureau to finance the so-called Third Zimmerwald Conference of anti-war socialists (including German!), which met in Stockholm in September 1917. Thus far, this is the only documented proof that the Bolsheviks received German funds before coming to power."
As we've been often reminded in the United States the last few months, the meaning of contacts between political figures and foreign governments can be unclear from the outside. In the case of the Zimmerwald conference in the summer of 1917, both of the "dual governments" in Russia, the Provisional Government and the Soviets, were cooperating on a peace initiative that included supporting the convening of the conference. So it's not clear that the government would have regarded even taking German funds as a subversive act in itself. They might have taken that as a gesture by the German government as a possible willingness to engage with a peace proposal.
In any case, there is nothing in that record that could remotely carry the weight of a conspiracy theory that the October Revolution was primarily a German "regime change" operation!
Historian Jan Kusber in his brief article "Des Kaisers Bolschewik" 1917 (Zeit Geschichte 2:2017) seems to take it for granted that big bucks from the Kaiser came to the Bolsheviks, citing the funds that the German government transmitted to Parvus obviously went to them, without citing the strong qualifications in Yandres' paper. The 230 thousand German marks cited above going to support organizing the Zimmerwald Conference came from Carl Moor, who, Yandres is careful to explain, "was working independently of Parvus."
Kusber seemingly excessively willing to credit the "German gold" story, he makes a similar comment to Ivan Krastev's, making the story a warning to governments putting too faith in regime-change operations in countries considered hostile:
Doch am Ende sollte es Lenins Plan sein, der aufging: Die Zugeständnisse von Brest-Litowsk waren nur vorübergehend. Und die Bolschewiki hatten aller Welt gezeigt, dass eine sozialistische Revolution moglich war. Revolutionare Stimmung breitete sich auch in Deutschland aus und führte im November 1918 zum Sturz der Monarchie. Die Bolschewiki wiederum eroberten im Bürgerkrieg viele Gebiete des alten Zarenreichs zurück, und die Sowjetunion stieg zur Weltmacht aus. Insofern war der Transfer des Revolutionärs durch seine konservativ-imperialen Kontrahenten ein Lehrstück fur eine Politik, die das Gegenteil dessen erreichte, was sie beabsichtigte. Dieser Befund ist so offensichtlich, dass es erstaunt, wie wenig auch gegenwärtig die nicht intendierten Effekte derartiger Strategien bedacht werden.As much as I like the warning that Krastev and Kusber make against reckless thinking on regime change operations, the analogy doesn't work for me in this case. While the Germans may have wanted to stir up trouble, there is just no reason to think that their goal was a Communist/Bolshevik government in Russia. And, as explained above, the amount of support they are actually known to have provided to the Bolsheviks could scarcely have been decisive in the outcome.
[But in the end, it would be Lenin's plan that came to pass: the concessions of Brest-Litowsk were only transient. And the Bolsheviks had shown the world that a socialist revolution was possible. A revolutionary atmosphere spread even in Germany and in November 1918 led to the overthrow of the {German} monarchy. The Bolsheviks in the civil war reconquered many areas of the old Czarist Empire, and the Soviet Union rose to be a world power. In so far, the transfer of the revolutionary {presumably Lenin in the "sealed train" is meant here} by his conservative Imperial foes a lesson about a policy that achieved the opposite of that which it intended. This finding is so obvious that it is suprising how little even today the unintended consequences of that kind of strategy are considered.]
Historical analogies are tricky.
I'm intrigued to see that in the New York Times Red Century series piece with he cheesy-but-catchy title How German Condoms Funded the Russian Revolution by British writer Catherine Merridale 07/17/2017 states as a fact that Fürstenberg's firm was laundering money to the Bolsheviks. She doesn't give much detail. But she certainly seems to be talking about the Parvus-Fürstenberg operation that Semion Yandres researched. If she's working with new archival information beyond what Yandres drew upon, she doesn't indicate it.
Another entry in the "Red Century" series by historian Sean Mcmeekin, Was Lenin a German Agent? New York Times 06/19/2017, refers to supposed extensive support by the Germans to the Bolsheviks, including the charges brought by the Provisional Government based on the 66 telegrams, with no indication that research like that of Yandres has been published.
This doesn't give me a lot of confidence in how carefully the Times' "Red Century" series has been edited.
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