We were having a conference on education in the building of the Second Moscow State University. Two days be fore that Ilyich had spoken there. The conference was drawing to a close and I was making ready to go home. I had promised to give a lift to a school-teacher acquaintance of mine, who lived in the Zamoskvoretsky District. A Kremlin car was waiting for me outside, but the chauffeur was a stranger to me. He drove us to the Kremlin, but I told him to take our passenger home first; the chauffeur did not say anything, but on reaching the Kremlin he stopped the car and made my companion get out. I was surprised at the high-handed way he carried things and was going to give him a piece of my mind, when we drove up to our entrance in the C.E.C. courtyard, where Gil, our chauffeur, who always drove us in the car, met me outside. He began telling me that he had driven Ilyich to the Michelson Works and a woman there had shot at Ilyich and wounded him slightly. Obviously, he was trying to break the news to me gently. He looked very upset. "Tell me—is he alive or not?" I demanded. Gil said he was, and I ran inside. Our apartment was crowded; strange-looking overcoats hung on the hall-stand, and the doors were all wide open. Next to the hall-stand stood Sverdlov, looking grave and grim. Glancing at him, I decided that it was all over. "What are we going to do?" was all I could say. "It's all been arranged with Ilyich," he said. My worst fears are confirmed, I thought. I had to pass through a small room, but it seemed an eternity to me. I entered our bedroom. Ilyich's bed had been moved into the middle of the room, and he was lying on it with a bloodless face. Seeing me, he said in a low voice after a minute's pause. "You've come, you must be tired. Go and lie down." The words were irrelevant, but his eyes said something quite different: "This is the end." I went out of the room so as not to upset him, and stood in the doorway so that I could see him without being seen myself. When I was in the room I hadn't noticed who was there, but now I saw Lunacharsky in there—he had either just gone in or had been in there before. He was standing at Ilyich's bedside looking down at him with frightened piteous eyes. Ilyich said to him: "What's there to look at."
Our apartment was like a camp. Vera Bonch-Bruyevich and Vera Krestinskaya—both of them doctors—were fussing around the sick man. A dressing-station had been fixed up in the small room adjoining the bedroom, inhalation bags had been brought, medical assistants sent for, and all kinds of phials, and solutions, and cotton wool had appeared.
Our temporary domestic help, a Lettish woman, was so frightened that she locked herself up in her room. Someone got busy in the kitchen lighting the oil-stove, and Comrade Kizas rinsed blood-stained dressings and towels in the bath tub. The sight of her reminded me of the first nights of the October Revolution at Smolny, when she had sat up for nights without getting a wink of sleep, going through the telegrams that had come pouring in from all sides.
At last the surgeons arrived—Vladimir Rozanov, Mints and others. There was no doubt about it—Ilyich's condition was dangerous, his life hung by a thread. When Gil, together with some other comrades from the Michelson Works, had brought him to the Kremlin and wanted to carry him in, Ilyich would not let them. He had walked up to the second floor by himself. Blood flooded his lung. The doctors also feared a puncture of the gullet, and forbade him to drink anything. He suffered from thirst. Shortly after the doctors had gone, leaving a hospital nurse with him, he asked the nurse to go out and call me in. When I came in Ilyich was silent for a while, then said: "Fetch me a glass of tea, will you." "Didn't the doctors say you were not to drink anything," I answered. The trick had not worked. Ilyich shut his eyes, saying: "All right, you can go." Maria Ilyinichna was busy with the doctors. I stood by the door. I went to Ilyich's private office at the end of the corridor three times during the night—Sverdlov and other comrades sat up all night there on chairs.
The attempt on Vladimir Ilyich upset not only all the Party organizations, but the broad masses of the workers, peasants and Red Army men. What Lenin meant for the revolution was suddenly brought home to them with special force. The press bulletins concerning his condition were followed with anxiety.
On the evening of August 30 a statement was issued by the Party over Sverdlov's signature concerning the attempt on Lenin's life. It said: "The working class will respond to attempts against its leaders by rallying its forces and by a ruthless mass terror against all the enemies of the revolution."
The attempted assassination of Lenin made the working class close its ranks and work still harder.
The Party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries began to break up.
The day after the attempt on Lenin, a statement was published in the newspapers by their Moscow Bureau saying that the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was not privy to the crime. Already after the July revolt of the Left S.-R.'s its members had begun to withdraw from the party, especially workers. A section of the party calling itself Narodnik-Communists had split away. This section, headed by Kolegayev, Bitsenko, A. Ustinov and others, had been opposed to violent action against the peace of Brest, to acts of terrorism, or to active struggle against the Communist Party. The remaining membership had tended still more rightward and supported the kulak revolts, but their influence was on the wane. The attempt on Lenin intensified this process of disintegration in the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and undermined its influence among the masses still more.
The hopes of the enemies of the Soviet Government were dashed. Ilyich pulled through. The doctors' reports grew more optimistic day by day. They and everyone else who surrounded Ilyich cheered up. Ilyich cracked jokes with them. He was forbidden to move about, but on the quiet, when there was nobody in the room, he tried to sit up. He was eager to get back into harness. At last, on September 10, Pravda reported him to be out of danger, and added a note from him to the effect that he was convalescing and asked people to stop bothering the doctors with phone calls enquiring about his health. On September 16, Ilyich was permitted to attend the Council of People s Commissars. He was so excited and nervous that he could hardly stand on getting out of bed, but he was glad to be able to get back to work at last.
On September 16, Ilyich presided over a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars. Later in the day he wrote a message of greeting to the Conference of Proletkult Organizations. The Proletkult was a great influence in those days. A shortcoming of the Proletkult, in Ilyich's opinion, was that its work was insufficiently linked with the general political tasks of the struggle, that it did enough towards stimulating the consciousness mass, advancing workers to the fore, and preparing them for administration of the state through the medium of the Soviets. In his message of greeting to the conference he made it a point of mentioning the political tasks that confronted Proletkult. Another article written by him a couple of days later was "On the Character of Our Newspapers" in which he urged the newspapers to have a keener eye for what was taking place around them. "Closer to life. More attention to the way the mass of the workers and peasants are in deeds building something new, in their everyday work. More verification of the fact to what extent this new is communistic." (Works, Vol. 28, p. 80.)
Vladimir Ilyich started work by coming straight to grips with the food problem. He took an active part in drafting the decree introducing the tax in kind for farmers. However, he quickly realized that this daily round of intensive administrative work was too much for him, and he consented to take a fortnight's holiday in the country. He was taken to Gorki, the former country house of Reinbot, ex-governor of Moscow. It was a fine house with verandas, a bathroom, and electric lighting, richly furnished, and standing in an excellent park. The ground floor was occupied by the guards—until the attempt on his life this matter of a bodyguard had been very haphazard. Ilyich was unused to it, and the guards themselves had but a faint idea of what they were supposed to do. They greeted Ilyich with a speech of welcome and a big bunch of flowers. Both the guards and Ilyich felt exquisitely embarrassed. The surroundings, too, were new and strange to us. We had been accustomed to living in humble dwellings, in inexpensive rooms or cheap boarding-houses abroad, and here, in these rich chambers, we did not know what to do with ourselves. We chose the smallest room to live in—Ilyich died in that room six years later. But even that small room had three large plate-glass windows and three cheval-glasses. It was some time before we got used to the house. The guards took time fitting themselves into it too. I remember the following incident, it was the end of September, and getting rather cold. The large room ad joining the one we had moved into had two fireplaces in it. We had got used to fireplaces in London, where in most of the houses it is the only form of heating. "Light the fire, will you," Ilyich said. The guard fetched some wood and began looking round for the chimney pipe, but there wasn't any. Well, thought the guards, maybe these foreign fireplaces don't have chimneys. They lit the fire. But that fireplace proved to be there merely for decoration, and was not made to be heated. A fire started in the garret, and had to be put out with water, as a result of which part of the ceiling plaster came down. Gorki afterwards became Ilyich's regular summer haunt. By that time the place had been properly "mastered" for the purpose of relaxation and work. Ilyich took a liking to the balconies and the big windows.
He was rather weak after his illness and it was quite a time before he felt strong enough to go outside the grounds. He was in high spirits, what with the sense of recovering health and the realization that a turning point had been reached in the whole situation. Things at the front were beginning to look up. The Red Army was winning. On September 3 the workers in Kazan rose against the Czechoslovaks and the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries,who had seized the power. On the 7th the Soviet troops took Kazan, on the 12th Volsk and Simbirsk, on the 17th Khvalynsk, on the 20th Chistopol, and on October 7 Samara. On September 9 the Soviet troops occupied Grozny and Uralsk. Obviously, things had taken a turn for the better. On the anniversary of the Soviet power Lenin rightfully remarked in his speech that the scattered detachments of the Red Guard had now been moulded into a strong Red Army.
We received regular reports at Gorki testifying that the revolution in Germany was gathering head.
On October 1 Ilyich wrote to Sverdlov in Moscow:
"Things have so 'accelerated' in Germany that we must not lag behind. And that is what we are doing. "Tomorrow, a joint meeting must be called of
The Central Executive Committee
The Moscow Soviet
The district Soviets
The trade unions, etc., etc.
"A number of reports should be made on the beginning of the revolution in Germany.
"(The victory of our tactics of struggle against German imperialism, and so forth.)
"Adopt a resolution
"The international revolution has approached in a week to within such a distance that it is to be reckoned with as an event of the immediate future.
"No alliances either with the Government of Wilhelm or the Government of Wilhelm+Ebert and other scoundrels.
"As for the German working-class masses, the German toiling millions, when they started with their spirit of protest (so far only spirit),
we are beginning to prepare for them a brotherly alliance, grain, military aid.
"We shall all give our lives to help the German workers in pushing forward with the revolution which has started in Germany.
"Deductions:
1) Ten times more effort in procuring grain (sweep up all stocks both for ourselves and for the German workers).
2) Ten times more enrolment in the army. We must have an army of 3 millions by the spring to help the international workers' revolution.
"This resolution to he telegraphed over the whole world Wednesday night.
"Fix the meeting for 2 p.m. on Wednesday. We shall start at 4. Give me the floor for a 15-minute speech. I shall come down and go back again. Send the car for me tomorrow morning (and tell me on the phone that you agree).
