This consent was not given, despite Ilyich's earnest request. His health was a matter of great concern. The joint meeting was due to be held on Thursday, the 3rd, and on Wednesday, the 2nd, Ilyich wrote a letter to the meeting. The joint meeting heard the letter and adopted a resolution along the lines suggested by Lenin. This resolution was promulgated by telegraph to all countries and throughout Soviet Russia and published the next day in Pravda.
Ilyich knew that no car would be sent for him, yet he sat by the roadside that day, waiting for it. "You could never tell!"
Unrest was growing among the German workers. Lenin always attached tremendous importance to the theoretical struggle, to the clarity of theoretical positions. He knew that Kautsky, who had written a number of works popularizing the doctrine of Marx and had criticized the opportunist views of Bernstein, enjoyed considerable prestige in Germany, and was therefore all the more upset and shocked at the extracts from Kautsky's article against Bolshevism published in Pravda on September 20. He wrote immediately to Vorovskv, who was living in Switzerland at the time, where he acted as the official representative of Soviet Russia, to the effect that Zetkin, Mehring and the others ought to publish a statement on theoretical principles making it clear that on the questions of dictatorship Kautsky was presenting the case of vulgar Bernsteinism, not Marxism. Ilyich wrote that it was necessary to have his booklet The State and Revolution, in which he deals with Kautsky's reformist platform, translated into German as soon as possible, and asked that a copy of Kautsky's pamphlet The Dictatorship of the Proletariat should be sent to him as soon as it came out, and that all Kautsky's articles on Bolshevism should be sent to him.
During his rest at Gorki, Ilyich undertook the task of exposing Kautsky. The result was his pamphlet The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Its last lines were written on November 9, 1918. It ends with the words:
"That same night news was received from Germany announcing the beginning of a victorious revolution, first in Kiel and other northern towns and ports, where the power has passed into the hands of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies, then in Berlin, where, too, power has passed into the hands of a Soviet.
"The conclusion which still remained to be written to my pamphlet on Kautsky and on the proletarian revolution is now superfluous."
On October 18 Ilyich had returned to Moscow. On the 23 he wrote to our ambassador in Berlin:
"Convey immediately our most ardent greetings to Karl Liebknecht. The liberation of the imprisoned representatives of the revolutionary workers or Germany is a sign of the new epoch, the epoch of victorious socialism which is now being ushered in both for Germany and the whole world.
"On behalf of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)
"Lenin Sverdlov Stalin."
On October 23 when Karl Liebknecht was released from prison, the workers held a demonstration outside the Russian Embassy.
On November 5, 1918, the German Government accused the Soviet representatives in Berlin of having taken part in the revolutionary movement in Germany, and demanded that the diplomatic and consular representatives of Soviet Russia headed by the Soviet Ambassador Ioffe should leave the country immediately. On November 9, Ioffe, who was on his way back to Russia with the embassy staff, was returned to revolutionary Berlin by the Berlin Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers Deputies.
The first anniversary of the Soviet power was celebrated in a spirit of elation. Towards the end of October Ilyich took part in the derailing of an appeal to the Austrian workers in the name of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, and on November 3 he addressed a demonstration held in honour of the Austro-Hungarian revolution. It was decided to hold the Sixth All-Russian Congress of Soviets during the anniversary days. The congress opened on November 6 with a speech by Ilyich "On the Anniversary of the Proletarian Revolution." Later in the day he made a speech at the ceremonial meeting of the All-Russian Central and Moscow Councils of Trade Unions, and at the evening ceremony of the Moscow Proletkult. On the 7th he spoke at the unveiling of the memorial plaque to the fighters of the October Revolution.
On the 7th Ilyich unveiled the Marx and Engels monument and spoke about the importance of their teachings, their foresight:
"We are living in happy times, when this prophecy of the great Socialists is beginning to be realized. We see the dawn of the international socialist revolution of the proletariat breaking in a number of countries. The unspeakable horrors of the imperialist butchery of nations are everywhere evoking a heroic rise of the oppressed masses, and are lending them tenfold strength in the struggle for emancipation.
"Let the memorials to Marx and Engels again and again remind the millions of workers and peasants that we are not alone in our struggle. Side by side with us the workers of more advanced countries are rising. Stern battles still await them and us. In common struggle the yoke of capital will be broken, and socialism will be finally won!" (Works, Vol. 28, pp. 146-47.)
On November 8, 9, 10 and 11 Ilyich was completely carried away by the news of the German revolution. He was continuously addressing meetings. His face beamed with joy, as it had beamed on May 1, 1917. The days of the first October anniversary were the happiest days in his life.
Never for a moment, however, did Ilyich forget what a difficult path still lay ahead of the Soviet power. On November 8 he addressed a conference of the peasant poor of the Moscow Region.
The delegates gathered at the Moscow Conference of the Poor Peasants' Committees looked pleased. One tall delegate, dressed in a blue caftan, stopped before the bust of a scientist as he was going upstairs, and remarked with a smile: "We could do with that in the village." The delegates spoke mostly about what they would take and how they would share it among themselves. Ilyich spoke to an audience of poor individual farmers for whom the questions of collectivization in agriculture, the collective cultivation of the land were not a pressing problem. Comparing the temper among the delegates of the Poor Peasants' Committees with that of the delegates to the Second Congress of Collective Farmers, one is amazed at the progress that has been made, the tremendous task that has been achieved.
Ilyich realized that this was going to be a long job. He clearly saw all the difficulties, but considered it a decisive issue. "The conquest of the land, as every other conquest by the working people, is only secure when it rests on the activity of the working people themselves, on their own organization, their determination and revolutionary steadfastness.
"Did the toiling peasantry have such an organization?
"Unfortunately, they did not, and therein lies the root cause of all the struggle's difficulty." (Works, Vol. 28, p. 153.)
Ilyich indicated the path of organization. It was to get the upper hand of the kulaks and to join forces with the working class.
"...If the kulak is left intact, if we do not get the better of those blood-suckers, we shall inevitably have the tsar and the capitalist back again.
"The experience of all the revolutions that have so far occurred in Europe strikingly proves that the revolution inevitably suffers defeat unless the peasantry gets the upper hand of the kulaks.
"All European revolutions ended in naught precisely because the countryside failed to get the better of its enemies. The workers in the towns overthrew the tsars—yet after a while the old order of things was re-established." (Ibid., p. 153.)
"In former revolutions the poor peasants had nowhere to turn for support in their difficult struggle against the kulaks.
"The organized proletariat—which is stronger and more experienced than the peasantry (it gained that experience in earlier struggles)—is now in power in Russia and is in possession of all the means of production, the mills, the factories, the railways, ships, etc.
"The poor peasants now possess a reliable and powerful ally in their struggle against the kulaks. The poor peasants know that the city is behind them, that the proletariat will help them, is in fact already helping them with every means in its power." (Ibid., p. 154.)
"The kulaks awaited the Czechoslovaks impatiently. They would most willingly have enthroned a new tsar, in order to continue their exploitation with impunity, in order to continue to dominate the farm labourer and to continue to grow rich.
"And salvation was wholly due to the fact that the village united with the city, that the proletarian and semi-proletarian elements of the countryside (i.e., those who do not employ the labour of others) started a campaign against the kulaks and the parasites together with the city workers." (Ibid., p. 155.)
Ilyich goes on to outline the prospects of reorganizing the whole system of rural life.
"The solution lies only in social cultivation of the land.... Salvation from the disadvantages of small-scale farming lies in communes, cultivation by artels, or peasant associations. That is the way to raise and agriculture, to economize forces and to combat laks, parasites and exploiters." (Ibid., p. 156.) November 16, 1918, saw the opening of the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers, held under the auspices of the Committee of the C.C. of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) for Agitation and Propaganda Among the Women Workers. Inessa Armand, Samoilova, Kollontai, Stael, and A. D. Kalinina worked hard on the organization of this congress. It was attended by 1,147 delegates It was a congress of women workers only, and no peasant women were present—we had not got to that yet. Neither was the question of the work among the national minorities raised at that congress. In his speech at the congress, however, Ilyich spoke of what was uppermost in his mind, namely, of the village and of how women could be emancipated only under socialism. "Only when we shall pass from small household economy to social economy and to social tilling of the soil," said Ilyich, "will women be fully free and emancipated. It is a difficult task. Committees of Poor Peasants are now being formed, and the time is at hand when the socialist revolution will he consolidated.
"It is only now that the poorer section of the population in the villages is organizing, and in these organizations of the poor peasants socialism is acquiring a firm foundation.
"It has often happened before that the cities became revolutionary and the countryside took action afterwards.
"The present revolution has the countryside to rely on, and therein is its significance and strength." (Ibid., p. 161.)
In every speech he made, Ilyich spoke about the peasantry and the collectivization of the land. In conversation and during our walks he often touched on the subject of Karl Marx's letter to F. Engels in 1856, in which Marx wrote: "The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid....""
Addressing the First All-Russian Congress of Land Departments on December 11, 1918, Lenin said:
"It is impossible to live in the old way, in the way we lived before the war. And the waste of human toil and effort associated with individual, small-scale peasant production can no longer be tolerated. The productivity of labour would be doubled or trebled, the economy of human labour in agriculture and human production would be doubled and trebled, if a transition were made from this disunited, small-scale production to social production. (Works, Vol. 28, p. 319.)
While living in Switzerland I had suffered from a serious form of goitre. An operation and mountain air had checked the disease to some extent, but its aftereffects had told on my heart and undermined my strength. After the attempt on Ilyich's life, the shock of it and the worry over his health caused a serious relapse in my own condition in the autumn. The doctors kept me in bed, gave me all kinds of medicines, and forbade me to work, but it didn't help. There were no nursing homes in those days. I was sent to a forest school at Sokolniki, where all talk about politics and work was taboo. I made friends there with the children, and Ilyich visited me almost every evening, in most cases with Maria Ilyinichna. I lay there during the end of December 1918 and January 1919. The children very soon came to regard me as a close friend and told me about everything that agitated their minds. Some showed me their drawings, others told be how they had gone skiing; a nine-year-old boy was grieved that there was no one to cook dinner for his mother; usually he had done it. He cooked a soup from potatoes, and "fried" potatoes in water; when his mother came home from work she would find dinner ready, waiting for her. There was a little girl at the forest school who had been transferred there from an orphanage. She had picked up some typical habits there, such as worming herself into the good graces of the strict teacher, and telling lies. She had a mother, a prostitute, who lived at Smolensky Market. The mother and daughter were passionately fond of each other. Once the girl told me with tears in her eyes that her mother had come to see her in freezing cold weather with almost nothing on her feet; her lover had stolen her boots and sold them to buy drinks, and her mother had frozen her feet. The girl was always thinking about her mother; she did not eat her bread rations, and put them away for her mother; after dinner she would hunt about for crusts, and if any were left over, would collect them for her mother.
Many of the children told me about their lives. The school had little to do with real life. In the morning the pupils had their lessons, then they went out skiing, and in the evening they made fir-tree decorations.
Ilyich often joked with the children. They became very fond of him, and looked forward to his coming. At the beginning of 1919 (Old-Style Christmas) the school arranged a fir-tree party for the children. With us in Russia the Christmas tree was never associated with any religious rites; it was just an evening party to amuse the children. The children invited Ilyich to the party. He promised to come. He asked Bonch-Bruyevich to buy as many presents as he could for the children. On his way to me that evening with Maria Ilyinichna, his car was held up by bandits. The latter were taken aback when they learned who it was they had attacked. They made Ilyich, Maria Ilyinichna, the chauffeur Gil and Ilyich's bodyguard—whose hands had been engaged holding a jug of milk—get out of the car and drove away in it. At the forest school we were all waiting for Ilyich and Maria Ilyinichna and wondering why they were so late. When they reached the school at last they looked rather queer. Afterwards, in the passage, I asked Ilyich what the matter was. He hesitated for a moment for fear of upsetting me, then we went into my room and he told me all about it.
