The Northern Underground, 1863–1917, by Futrell

[p041] Northern Underground: Episodes of Russian Revolutionary Transport and Communications through Scandinavia and Finland 1863-1917, By Michael Futrell. Faber, 32/6. This book covers a very revealing and instructive aspect of Bolshevik history. The reader is treated to an initial surprise in finding it to be dedicated to the memory of two Bolsheviks—Shlyapnikov and Furstenberg (alias Hanecki). The author first establishes the historical continuity of the Northern underground, through Scandinavia and Finland, into Czarist Russia, a continuity which reflected the changing needs of an ever-changing revolutionary movement. It must be appreciated, however, that in those days of pre-World War I Europe, such ‘complica- tions’ as passports, visas and sureties, hardly con- stituted a problem. Freedom of movement was practically unhindered with the one dishonourable exception of Czarist Russia. Here, amidst all the barbaric survivals of the past, there functioned the most enormous and modern engine of oppression— gendarmes, hangmen, inforrhers, reactionary laws, courts, jails, pogroms and well-established places of exile. So it was not surprising that there was a con- tinuous exodus of voluntary and involuntary exiles to Europe. They settled in colonies, often very closed- in communities, in all the capital cities of Europe. This movement, which commenced about the middle of the last century, culminated in a great wave of refugees after the defeat of the 1905 revolution in Czar.st Russia, And they were not just Russians, but Poles, Georgians, Finns, Letts, Estonians, Jews— all the oppressed of Czarist Russia. They were sympathetically received in Europe by Liberals and Social-Democrats alike. Towards the end of the century, two new factors came into prominence, factors which were to make a permanent impression on the Russian revolutionary movement. The first was the growth of the Social- Democratic Labour movement in Western and Central Europe (later to advance into Scandinavia and eastwards into Russia), under the impetus of the work of the first two Internationals. Tne second was tne development of movements for national seif-determination the world over and in particular in tne Austro-Hungarian Empire and in Czarist Russia. Tne activity of each of these two new factors was engendered and heigntened by the ever-increasing penetration of capitalism into new parts of the world. The old society was unaermined, the peasantry being the main sufferers. New classes sprang up—in particular a new and often con- cenirated working class and a capitalist class usually empioyea doing menial services for the greater Western imperialists of France, Britain, Germany or Beigium. Tne anti-Czarist movement quite naturally reflected these changes, throwing up new move- ments and parties, each in turn more or less reflecting the needs and interests of a particular ciass or part thereof. One of these new parties was tne Kussian Social-Democratic Party, a party still in its formative stage (before tne sput of 1903 into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) but based on the new Russian working class. Many of its leaders lived in emigration. BEFORE THE 1905 REVOLUTION Our first acquaintance with this organisation in the book is in the person of a certain M. Vecheslov (later a Menshevik) in the year 1898. In concerns the illegal transport of literature into Russia. The Swedish Social-Democrats (including Branting, later a Prime Minister) and trade unionists helped all the Russian emigre organisations without discrimination. However, that attempt suffered a setback and it was not until 1901 that this ‘line’ was re-opened by

[p042] ORGANIZING FOR VICTORY Vladimir Smirnov (later a prominent Bolshevik). He chose the labyrinthine passages between the thousands of little islands known as the Aaland Islands, which lie on the Finnish side of the Gulf of Bothnia, Smirnov, then a student, successfully enlisted the services of Finnish and Swedish sympathisers. In 1902 he had to change to the Zilliacus line! Old Konni Zilliacus, a colourful Finnish nationalist, smuggler and gun-runner, had his own axe to grind, for his homeland was then ground under the heel of the Romanovs. Smirnov also found help from a new source—the Swedish Young Socialists, then under the leadership of Hinke Bergegren. They rendered yeoman service to the Russian socialists, by then split into rival factions. He arranged the transport of comrades, organised hospitality for the hundreds of penniless refugees from 1905, and helped make the arrange- ments for the 4th Congress of Russian Social- Democracy held in May 1906 at Stockholm. Another route into Russia was via the Northern waters of Norway to Russia. Here, the Russian and Norwegian populations of the fishing settlements in the region of Vardo and Kirkenes in the Arctic circle barely respected national boundaries. Sympathetic Norwegian Social-Democratic smugglers provided hospitality and even printed for the Russians. At the dispatch end of these pipelines were, of course, the emigres—Lenin and his ‘staff’—Zinoviev, Krupskaya (Lenin’s wife) and Lilina (Zinoviev’s wife). Krupskaya, however, handled the organisa- tion of the ‘mail’. She held the threads that ran at first from London, and later from Poland and N. K. Krupskaya, 1869-1939: Lenin’s wife, secretary and collaborator. After Lenin’s death supported joint Left Opposition. Capitulated to Stalin. Threatened with blackmail by Stalin. Wrote ‘Memories of Lenin’ under scrutiny of censor. Switzerland to Russia via the Northern routes and via Poland (where Piatnitsky was in charge), together with caches of literature in the major ports of Europe, and during the Russo-Japanese war as far abroad as India and China. Meticulously and painstakingly Krupskaya checked and cross-checked 1. He owned a shipping ‘line’ (one or two craft), which were used for smuggling propaganda and arms. Father of the British Labour MP of the same name. 203 the dispatch and delivery of every letter, cheque and packet, sent detailed instructions to her agents about the technique of using the post. Year in, year _ out, she carried out these assignments for the Party. Finland proved to be an excellent intermediary stage to Russia. Enjoying special constitutional privileges within the Czarist empire and affording a sympathetic protection by Finns, even from judiciary and police officers, Russians were able to work ‘less illegally’ than in Russia proper. There were facilities for conferences, meetings, schools and even printing, if taken in moderation! Finland and especially Helsinki and the regions on the doorstep of St, Petersburg were therefore a bridge- head to Russia. In charge at that end was Krassin. The ‘mail’ used to be driven straight into the Finland station at St. Petersburg on trains manned by Finnish crews. Here it was picked up by Bolshevik railway mechanics and disposed of. At other times it was dropped off a few stations before the Russian border and then smuggled across the borders by other forms of transport. Another expedient was to utilise the convenient situation of the estates of wealthy relatives of Bolsheviks like Burenin and Ignatyev,? properties which lay athwart the frontier. Funds were raised from tours made by Gorky and from Burenin’s charity concerts, from expropriations and marriages. Subordinate to Krassin and in charge of the armed fighting organi- sation of the Bolsheviks was Burenin, posing as a pianist and amateur impresario. He set up an explosives training centre for the Bolsheviks in Finland, but this school fell in the police dragnet during the ebb of the revolution in 1906-7. Krassin and Burenin were arrested and Lenin had to flee, very nearly losing his life crossing to a ship over thin ice. AFTER ‘1905’ The defeats of 1906-7 resulted in the temporary defections of Krassin, Burenin and Smirnov and the slow rise of factional fever amongst the emigres. Though this sometimes impeded the organisational activity of the party Lenin was able to restore its proper functioning and the Morozov windfall came in very handy. The communications with Finland were re-opened by Tomashevsky in 1908 but the Polish route of Piatnitsky was preferred. In 1908, however, Kobetsky settled in Copenhagen and opened a direct mail service for Krupskaya for Lenin’s new paper Proletary. Lenin seems to have checked on the work at Kobetsky’s end when he was at the Copen- 2. Ignatyev for instance was married off to an heiress of the Moscow millionaire Morozov. The money became available only later, in the dark days of 1907.

[p043] 204 hagen Congress of the 2nd International in 1910.3 Here Lenin made a bloc with the left socialists of Scandinavia, Finland, France and Germany, beginning a great labour which was to culminate in the setting up of the Third International. By 1912, however, conditions had so eased in Russia as to permit the publication of Pravda in that country, although it was sometimes forced to change its name in order to continue publication. Lenin and his staff were between 1912 and 1914 resident in Austrian Poland. However, the outbreak of World War I changed alli this. Lenin had to move to Switzerland once more and the Russian Pravda could not be published. In addition, all communications via Eastern Europe were disrupted by the active war fronts in that region. Once more, Northern Europe with its neutral states became a vital communications base. WORLD WAR I This is when we meet Shlyapnikov, a Bolshevik metal worker, who had spent many years working in factories in Europe. He slipped out of Russia to Stockholm. From then on constant change of identity, his knowledge of a few European languages, = A. G. Shlyapnikov (Alexander Belenin) (1885-1937 or 1943) Commissar for Labour. Led Workers’ Opposition. Capitulated to Stalin. Died in = prison. L. B. Krassin (Nikitich) (1870-1920° Chemical engineer ané diptomat. together with his working skills and the good sense of a worker, enabled him to survive this whole period up to the October Revolution. Others were less fortunate. Alexandra Kollontay (once a Menshevik) caught up in her anti-war work was expelled from Sweden to Denmark. In 1915 she moved to Oslo. Bukharin was sent by Lenin via London to re-inforce Shylapnikov who picked him up in London. In London he found funds from Litvinoff. Money also began to come through from Lenin. In the meantime, the courier service to Sweden was working with the help of the Scandinavian socialists. The growth of a powerful left wing in Norwegian and Swedish social-democracy also came 3. See Maisky’s otherwise incomplete memoirs for an interesting account of Lenin’s work at this Congress. LABOUR REVIEW—Summer 1963 to the aid of the Bolsheviks in other ways, They supported Lenin at the Zimmerwald Conference. In turn Bukharin and Kollontay wrote in their journals, Stormklockan (Swedish) and Klassenkampen (Norwegian) in their support. In 1915 Kollontay attended the Norwegian SD Conference. In the winter of 1915-16 and again in late 1916 she visited the US on lecture tours. The rest of her time was taken up attending to the Bolshevik mail. A. Kollantay 1872-1952 Led Workers’ Opposition. Capitulated to Stalin. Soviet diplomat. N. I. Bukharin 1888-1938 Leader of Right Opposition to Stalin. Shot. In 1915 the Stockholm group seems to have been strengthened with the arrival of Piatakov and Eugenia Bosch. Karl Wick, a Finnish socialist, was attracted to these Russians and he enlisted the help of Kilbom. In the summer of that year Shlyapnikov went up north, made a trial run of parcels through Haparanda-Tornio, scouted the Norwegian arctic route and returned to Stockholm. In October, leaving the others in charge, he went to Haparanda again, slipped over the frontier (quite a story in itself) reverted to a Russian passport and took a train to Petrograd. Here he carried out his assign- ment, which was to set up a Petrograd Bureau for the Central Committee in exile, organised a system of couriers to pick up literature arriving in Southern Finland and made a brief check over the work in Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod. But soon the police were hot on his trail and he had to return in February 1916 to Sweden. Transport continued with police disruptions at the Petrograd end (Lenin’s sister was jailed from July to October 1916) and problems at Stockholm—shortages of cash and Bukharin’s polemics with Lenin. Swedish police surveillance of the political activity of Bukharin and his group increased, and in March 1916 he and others were expelled on trumped-up charges. They were forced to move to Norway. The expulsion arose from the activities of the left Swedish Social-Democrats who held a workers’ peace congress in March 1916. In another part of the same building in which this congress was held, the Russians held one of their own regular meetings. The police leapt at the oppor- 4. On September 1915, 38 delegates representing the working class of 11 nations, assembled in conference. They issued the anti-war Zimmerwald Manifesto.

[p044] ORGANIZING FOR VICTORY tunity, framed the left Swedish socialists and the Russians together, clapped the prominent Swedes in prison and expelled the Russians, The author deals in great detail with this case since its reper- cussions were later to be known to the labour movement as the Kruse-Keskula case. The neutral states during that war teemed with agents of the rival belligerent powers, agents of the various socialist and nationalist movements illegalised by their governments for refusing to support the imperialist war, fiddlers and black marketeers of every nationality dealing in contra- band. Often the imperialist go-betweens went in the guise of social-democrats and they fished for contacts in each others’ camps. There were also genuine do-gooders in this world of intrigue and they were often and quite understandably taken for agents. In the thick of this the Bolsheviks had to live and function. In the circumstances too, it was inevitable that some of the strands of the com- plicated webs spun by these agencies got snarled up with one another. Keskula was an Estonian nationalist and a very able one at that. But he also happened to have been a Bolshevik organiser in the Baltic states in 1905. Turned nationalist, he was as Machiavellian as Zilliacus the Finn had been. (Estonia, Keskula’s homeland, was like Finland also part of the Czarist Empire at that time.) Due to his Bolshevik past and the suspicion that he was a German agent he had to work through agents in his relations with them. He obtained the confidence of the not incorruptible Bogrovsky, Shlyapnikov’s deputy in Stockholm. He also had a direct agent, a fellow Estonian, Zifeld, in Lenin’s circle in Switzerland. Keskula helped the Bolsheviks through these agents with money and it seems printed some of their literature unknown to them. Sometimes too, it seems, he turned out faked Bolshevik literature. He was however able to conceal most of this activity from investigation. To finance his private project of an independent Federation of Baltic states he obtained 200,000 to 250,000 marks from the German government. (He incidentally ‘repaid’ the sum to the Germans after the war at the height of the inflation!) Another instrument (not agent) of Keskula was the do-gooder, Danish journalist Kruse, Kruse was a friend of the Bolsheviks. When Keskula caught Bogrovsky pocketing money given to finance Bolshevik publica- tions he got Kruse to denounce him to the Bolsheviks. This made Bukharin prick up his ears. So later when Bukharin and. company were so unceremoniously bundled out of Sweden Bukharin thought Kruse had denounced them to the Swedish authorities, a presumption based on certain co- incidences which did not lend themselves to such arbitrary conclusions. That thé decision to expel 205 them, however, was the work of pressure from the German government and/or the work of Keskula, independently of Kruse, cannot be excluded. At that time there was great pressure being put on Sweden by Germany for a ‘more sympathetic’ neutrality. The Swedish conservatives responded favourably, and as is usual in these circumstances the Swedish left socialists were the only ones who seriously resisted this move. Hence the persecution of the latter by the police. Since the Bolsheviks were the mentors of the left socialists they too were considered a hindrance and were thrown out. This more anti-Russian foreign policy of Sweden could have pleased Keskula as one more nail in the Czarist coffin, though at a price. He seems to have dropped out of sight soon after this affair. Shylapnikov was not expelled along with the others as he did not indulge himself in public political activity like them, with the single exception of an intervention at the November 1914 Congress of the Swedish Social-Democracy, where he denounced the social patriotism of the German party. To add to the difficulties of 1916, there was no money and the ‘mail’ was irregular. So he spent from June to September of that year travelling to the US, where he succeeded in hawking some papers on the con- dition of Russian Jewry, for the sum of $500. He returned to find Bukharin with his passport and identities mixed up, trying to get a ship to America. After straightening out that problem he turned his attention to Russia. In October of that year he travelled to the North, crossed the frontier on skis, travelled south, getting arrested on the way and escaping, With a Finnish passport he crossed to Petrograd and found the city party bureau decimated. So he set it up again with himself, Zalutsky (another worker) and Molotov (then a student) on it. The courier service was restored and money raised from Gorky. In those winter months unrest was evident amongst the masses. Defeats at the front, hunger at home and intolerable exploitation in the factories exploded into the March Revolution of 1917. THE MARCH REVOLUTION Shylapnikov soon found himself at the head of the metal workers’ union in Petrograd and was elected to the EC of the Petrograd soviet in March and on to its propaganda committee. The line of the Party Press under his guidance was to elect representatives to the Provisional Government. In fact they had no line. Confusion reigned. The next thing they knew was that Stalin and Kamenev returned from exile in Siberia and, exercising their prerogatives as Central Committe: members, seized control of Pravda, They commenced a line of collaboration with the Provisional Government. Their editorial regime antagonised the Petrograd: working

[p045] 206 May 1917: Founding Congress of Swedish Left Socialist Party. L. to r. Furstenberg, Radek, Kolarov, Lindhagen, Kirkov, Héglund. class. As Shylapnikov remarks, the enemies of the Petrograd workers ‘smiled maliciously’, while the workers themselves grew indignant and demanded the expulsion of the editors. Lenin and his party secured through the good offices of the Swiss Social-Democrats permission to travel through Germany in a sealed train. They travelled via Denmark, Sweden and Finland to Russia. The party stopped off in Stockholm where a reception was held by Swedish socialists in their honour. Here Lenin had to leave behind Radek and Furstenberg, who were refused permission to enter Russia, and they constituted themselves a kind of press bureau for the Bolsheviks. THE APRIL THESES Lenin struck Petrograd like a thunderbolt and it seems it was half expected, He called for an end to the war and and end to collaboration with the Provisional Government, an end to left-faking, especially in the ranks of the Bolsheviks. The editorial board was cleaned up and the sights set for the taking of the power. This aroused the hatred and hostility of all property-lovers, and before long the Russian vress was baying for the blood of the Bolsheviks. Finally, in July 1917. the Provis‘onal Government, buttressed by the Menshevik, Socialist- Revolutionary and Kadet (capitalist) parties, the militarists and the re-introduction of the death penalty at the front, summoned up its last remaining strength for a major offensive against the Germans. As everyone expected,-that offensive collapsed but the Bolsheviks were made scapegoats. Rumours of the Bolsheviks being German agents grew to fever pitch. Leaders of the Petrograd soviet were arrested and Lenin and others had to go into hiding. LABOUR REVIEW—Summer 1963 It was now that the celebrated 29 telegrams ‘proving’ Lenin’s ‘guilt? were published. These were telegrams exchanged between Lenin and his agents, Furstenberg (Hanecki) and Kozlovsky. From that day on, so-called experts have fastened on these and have succeeded in proving exactly nothing. However, what interests us here is that the author has done some very interesting and original research into this same problem. And what has he uncovered? That Furstenberg was held in the highest confidence of Lenin, having collaborated with him up to 1915; that Furstenberg had resided in Denmark since June 1915 when he arrived from Switzerland, having moved there from Poland on the outbreak of war. That he had established a trading company in Copenhagen, called Handels-og Eksportkompagniet A/S with himself as chairman of the board of directors. However, the interesting part of the business, it now transpires, is that the entire declared capital for that business was put up by Parvus and Sklartz. Now Parvus was a notorious central European social-democrat whom Lenin himself would not touch with a barge- pole, because of the extent to which he was com- promised with the German ruling class. That is all. _The author has also tracked down some of old Furstenberg’s business exploits and everything points to a thriving trade having been plied by him in drugs, medical supplies and ‘rubber goods’ of every description. They were bought from German dealers in Copenhagen and smuggled to Sweden where they were purchased by Russian governmental representatives. This contraband, of which there was an acute shortage in Russia, naturally fetched very high prices and, it is presumed, the profits. (or what was left of them after squaring the touts and other ‘technicians’) might have helped the party finances. Austrian state archives allege that a certain Swiss acted as liaison between Switzerland and Scan- dinavia in 1915-16 but failed to identify him. Much later on, in October 1917, it seems that the Bolshevik Party Central Committee had to reject offers of money from Karl Moor, a Swiss social-democrat; while in the summer of 1917, another Swiss socialist, Gustav Mayer, working for the German foreign office, fished around Radek and Furstenberg in Stockholm. All in all that summer of 1917 must have been a hectic one. For at the same time the counter- parts of the German agents, the French and British ‘socialist’ agents, Albert Thomas and Henderson, strove might and main in Petrograd to keep the Russian workers in the war. They were all too late. Three months later the Bolsheviks were at the helm of-state. A story well told, sympathetic to its subject and full of lively anecdotes.

[p046] Post-war France