I would come to Ilyich—at the end of 1919 he looked very bad (there is a photo of him going to the courses, which shows how bad he looked—worn out and harassed) —and he would sit there silent. I knew that all I had to do to take him out of himself was to tell him something about the life of the Workers' Faculty students or the Soviet-Party School. And there was plenty to tell him about. He was interested in hearing how people were becoming more socially alert, how they were increasingly becoming aware of the tasks that faced them. We discussed the subject a good deal.
A Party Week was organized in Petrograd between August 10 and 17; at the same time, in accordance with the ruling of the Eighth Party Congress, a re-registration of Party members was carried out, which lasted till the end of September. Between October 8 and 15 a Party Week was held in Moscow.
On October 11 Ilyich wrote his article "The Workers' State and Party Week" which gave a forceful expression of his views on the Party, on what the new government apparatus should be, and how important it was to staff it with as many workers and peasants as possible.
"Party Week in Moscow falls at a difficult time for the Soviet power," Ilyich wrote in that article. "Denikin's successes have given rise to a frenzied increase of plotting on the part of the landlords, capitalists and their friends, and increased efforts on the part of the bourgeoisie to sow panic and undermine the strength of the Soviet system by every means in their power. The vacillating, wavering, ignorant petty bourgeois, and with them the intelligentsia, the Socialist-Revolution aries and Mensheviks, have, as is usually the case, become more wobbly than ever and were the first to allow themselves to be intimidated by the capitalists.
"But the fact that Party Week in Moscow falls at such a difficult time is, I think, rather an advantage to us, for it is much better for the cause. We do not need Party Week for show purposes. We do not need fictitious Party members even as a gift. Our Party, the party of the revolutionary working class, is the only government party in the world which is concerned not in increasing its membership but in improving its quality, and in purging itself of 'self-seekers.' We have more than once carried out re-registration of Party members in order to get rid of these 'self-seekers' and to leave in the Party only politically enlightened elements who are sincerely devoted to communism. We have taken advantage of the mobilizations for the front and of the subbotniks to purge the Party of those who are only 'out for' the benefits accruing to membership of a government party and do not want to bear the burden of self-sacrificing work for communism.
"And at this juncture, when intensified mobilization for the front is in progress, Party Week is a good thing because it offers no temptation to the self-seekers. We extend a broad invitation into the Party only to the rank-and-file workers and to the poor peasants, to the labouring peasants, but not to the peasant profiteers. We do not promise and do not give these rank-and-file members any advantages from joining the Party. On the contrary, just now harder and more dangerous work than usual falls to the lot of Party members.
"All the better. Only sincere supporters of communism, only persons who are conscientiously devoted to the workers' state, only honest working people, only genuine representatives of the masses that were oppressed under capitalism, will join the Party.
"And it is only such members that we need in the Party.
"We need new Party members not for advertisement purposes but for serious work. These are the people we invite into the Party. To the working people we throw its doors wide open." (Works, Vol. 30, pp. 45-46.)
Further Ilyich repeated what he had said at the funeral of Sverdlov—that there were many talented organizers and administrative workers among the working class and the peasantry. It was to these that he appealed to tackle socialist construction.
"If you are sincere supporters of communism, set about this work boldly, do not fear its novelty and the difficulty it entails, do not be put off by the old prejudice that only those who have received a formal training are capable of this work." (Ibid., pp. 46-47.)
The article ended with the words: "The mass of the working people are with us. That is where our strength lies. That is the source of the invincibility of world communism." Ilyich, in those difficult times, ceaselessly appealed to the workers and the Red Army men in speeches and articles. His words roused them. The workers of Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Ivanovo-Voznesensk went to the front en masse.
"The power of the workers' and peasants' sympathy for their vanguard," wrote Ilyich, "was itself sufficient to work wonders.
"It is indeed a miracle: the workers who have experienced the untold torments of hunger, cold and economic ruin have not only kept their spirit up, preserved all their devotion to the Soviet power, all their energy of self-sacrifice and heroism, but are taking upon themselves, despite their unpreparedness and inexperience, the burden of steering the ship of state! And this at a time when the storm has reached a furious pitch.
"The history of our proletarian revolution is full of such miracles. Such miracles will lead certainly and positively—whatever the separate painful ordeals may be—to the complete victory of the world Soviet Republic." (Works, Vol. 30, pp. 53-54.)
The young people, too, were eager to go to the front. We political-education workers were busy at the time with the first Soviet-Party School, at which we tried to give the young people not a "formal" training, of which Ilyich so sharply disapproved, but knowledge that would equip them to grasp and meet the events they were living through. We were awfully glad when Ilyich came to address the graduates of the first Soviet-Party School on October 24, 1919.
"Comrades," he began. "You know that what has brought us here together today is not only a desire to celebrate the graduation by most of you at the course at the Soviet school but also the fact that about half of all the graduates have decided to go to the front in order to give fresh, extraordinary and substantial aid to the troops who are fighting there."
After describing the difficult situation at the fronts without any attempt to gloss it over, Ilyich went on: "That is why, hard though this sacrifice is—the sending to the front of hundreds of graduates who are so badly needed for work in Russia—we have nevertheless consented to grant your wish." (Ibid., pp. 57, 62.)
Ilyich then went on to describe the work that confronted the Soviet-Party School graduates:
"To those who are going to the front as representatives of the workers and peasants there can be no choice. Their slogan should be—death or victory. Each of you should be able to approach the most backward and undeveloped Red Army men in order to explain the situation to them in the plainest language from the standpoint of the working man, help them at a time of difficulty, remove all vacillations, teach them to combat the numerous manifestations of sabotage, inertia, deceit or treachery. You know that there are still many such manifestations in our ranks and among the commanders. This is where we need men who have gone through a course of training, who understand the political situation and are in a position to help the broad masses of the workers and peasants in their fight with treachery or sabotage. Besides personal bravery, the Soviet power looks to you to render the utmost assistance to the masses, to put a stop to all vacillations among them, and prove to them that the Soviet power has forces to which it resorts whenever it is in difficulties." (Ibid.,pp. 63-64.)
The Soviet-Party School graduates justified the confidence placed in them.
Ilyich's speech was also a programme for all our political-education workers.
It was not only at public meetings that Ilyich spoke about what was uppermost in his mind. He spoke about it at home, too, especially when close comrades visited us. At the end of 1919 a frequent visitor was Inessa Armand, with whom Ilyich liked to discuss the prospects of the movement. Inessa's daughter had been at the front, and had narrowly escaped being killed during the bomb outrage in Leontyevsky Street on September 25. I remember Inessa coming to us once with her youngest daughter, Varya, who was quite a young girl at the time and afterwards became a staunch member of the Party. Ilyich liked to indulge in day-dreaming in their presence; I remember how Varya's eyes used to sparkle. He liked to chat with our domestic help Olimpiada Zhuravlyova, mother of the woman writer Boretskaya. Zhuravlyova had previously worked in the Urals as an unskilled worker at an ironworks and afterwards as office cleaner at Pravda. Ilyich thought she had a strong proletarian instinct. Sitting in the kitchen (by force of old habit he liked to have his meals in the kitchen), Ilyich liked to talk with her about the future victories.
Ilyich was not mistaken—we celebrated the second anniversary of the Soviet power with victories.
When Denikin at the beginning of October threatened Orel, the Central Committee of the Party sent Stalin to the Southern Front as a member of the Revolutionary Military Council. Stalin proposed a new plan for an offensive, which was adopted by the Central Committee. Vladimir Ilyich fully supported it. Things at the Southern Front quickly took a turn for the better. On October 19 our troops dealt a crushing blow to generals Shkuro and Mamontov at Voronezh. On the 20th Orel was recaptured, and on October 21 the Pulkovo battles inaugurated the defeat of Yudenich, who had been advancing on Petrograd.
On the anniversary of the October Revolution Ilyich sent ardent greetings to the workers of Petrograd, wrote an article in Pravda "The Soviet Power and Women's Position", and an article for the peasants in Bednota "Two Years of Soviet Power."
On November 7, Ilyich addressed a joint meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Moscow Soviet, the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, and factory-committee delegates on the subject of "Two Years of Soviet Power." Ilyich did not like speaking at ceremonial meetings, and his speech at this one was a purely business-like speech without any propaganda. It was none the less a stirring speech, which roused enthusiasm and a storm of applause.
Ilyich said that the most important achievement of the Soviet power during the past two years had been "the lesson at building up the workers' state ... the workers' participation in running the state." "...The most important job that we did was that of remodelling the old machinery of state, and hard though this work was, we see the results of the efforts of the working class in the course of two years and can say that in this field we have thousands of representatives of the workers who have been through the whole fire of struggle, ousting the representatives of the bourgeois state step by step. We see workers not only at the state apparatus, we see their representatives in the food supply business, a sphere that was dominated almost exclusively by representatives of the old bourgeois government, the old bourgeois state. The workers have created a food supply apparatus."
The percentage of workers on the government staffs rose from thirty to eighty in 1919.
