The year 1919 was a year of sharp civil war against Kolchak, Denikin and Yudenich. The fight was conducted under extremely difficult conditions of famine and widespread economic ruin. Factories and mills were at a standstill, and the railways were completely disorganized. The Red Army was not properly organized yet and was poorly armed. In many places the Soviet power was not properly established yet, and had not identified itself with the population. Parties hostile to the Soviet power, all those elements who had lived in clover under the old regime—the servants of the landowners and capitalists, the kulaks, tradesmen, etc.—carried on a furious agitation against the Bolsheviks, and played on the ignorance and lack of information among the peasant mass to spread all kinds of cock-and-bull stories among them.
Lenin's name, however, already enjoyed great prestige everywhere. Lenin was against the landowners and the capitalists. Lenin stood for the land, for peace. Everyone knew that Lenin was the leader of the struggle for the power of the Soviets. The masses knew that in every out-of-the-way corner of the country. But Lenin took no direct part in the fighting, he was not at the fronts, and it was difficult for illiterate people in those days, people whose outlook was limited by the secluded life they led, to imagine how anyone could effect leadership at a distance. And so legends grew up around the name of Lenin. The fishermen of Lake Baikal in far-away Siberia, for instance, related about ten years ago, how at the height of a battle with the Whites, Ilyich had come flying up in an airplane and helped them to overcome the enemy. In the North Caucasus people said that although they had not seen Lenin, they knew for certain that he had fought there in the ranks of the Red Army, only he had done so secretly, so that nobody knew, and had helped them to gain a victory.
Today the workers and collective farmers know that although Ilyich had not been at the fronts, he had been with the Red Army all the time heart and soul, he had always been thinking about it, caring for it. They know how hard he had been working to direct the policy into the right channels. He was Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; his activities were varied, but whatever form they took, they were intimately bound up with the questions of the civil war, the questions of the struggle for the power of the Soviets. On March 13, 1919, Ilyich addressed a meeting in Petrograd at which he spoke about the successes and difficulties facing the Soviet power.
"For the first time in history an army is being built on closeness, on inseparable closeness, one might say, inseparable unity between the Soviets and the army. (My italics.-N.K.) The Soviets unite all the working people and the exploited—and the army is built up on the principle of socialist defence and class-consciousness." (Works, Vol. 29, p. 47.)
This unity of interests was expressed in a thousand little ways. The Soviet Government was the Red Army man's own familiar government.
Ilyich liked to sleep with the windows open. Every morning the singing of the Red Army men, who lived in the Kremlin, would burst into the room from outside. "We shall die to a man for the power of the Soviets," sang the young voices.
Ilyich knew perfectly well what was going on at the fronts. He was in direct touch with the fronts and headed the whole struggle, while at the same time he lent an attentive ear to what the masses were saying about the war. I was sometimes present during Ilyich's talks with different people, and I noticed how good he was at drawing them out on subjects that interested him. And he was interested in the whole situation, in everything that went on at the fronts.
