A Window into the Madness

“We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of the coming revolution.” So opined Vladimir Lenin in January 1917. Even the massive uprising in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) later that March, when significant numbers of the military joined the crowds in protest against food shortages, poor labor conditions, and increasingly unpopular Russian participation in World War I, was not enough to convince this Bolshevik that anything other than a bourgeois, capitalist protest had taken place. The abdication of Tsar Nicholas II bestirred him somewhat, but not to the point of returning to Russia from his exile in Switzerland. However, with the encouragement and support of the German government, who saw revolution in Russia as a way of weakening their enemy in the global conflict, Lenin and 30-odd fellow exiles boarded a train and arrived in Petrograd on April 16.

Lenin had been unsure how he would be received. The Bolsheviks were certainly not the majority in the complex structure of the post-tsarist government, with power split between the liberal Provisional Government, composed primarily of former members of the Duma, the lower house of the legislature, which wielded power in military and international affairs, and the Executive Committee, with a moderate left majority, made up primarily of Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, and Bolsheviks, which controlled domestic matters. Various factions of leftists, with ever-shifting alliances and internecine struggles, fought to gain control of both the Provisional Government and the Executive Committee. With such a variety of political positions, how did Lenin seize control of the Bolsheviks and prevail against all other parties? This is the story of April 1917, translated into English for the first time, as were the first three volumes (or nodes) in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Red Wheel series.

Solzhenitsyn conceived of an epic volume on the revolution when he was 18 years old and a convinced communist. He worked on the novel for 54 years. It did not take him long to discover that the events of February 1917 and the succeeding weeks surpassed the October revolution in significance. Recognizing the important role played by World War I, he wrote August 1914, the first and best-known node of The Red Wheel series. Later volumes, seven in number, cover the months between the fall of 1916 and the following April. Solzhenitsyn regarded The Red Wheel as his most important literary achievement. In his own words, quoted by Joseph Pearce in his excellent biography Solzhenitsyn: A Soul in Exile, he “utilized a number of different literary devices and switched between genres; prose, citations of documents, overview of the current press, a collection of short fragments of glimpses of the life in the different regions, cinematic scripts, [and] Russian folk sayings [are] embedded in the text.” The novels focus primarily on historical figures (roughly 200 are listed and identified in the index of names in April 1917, an invaluable aid), with the experiences, sometimes rather dramatic, of fictional characters representing a spectrum of political and religious beliefs interwoven into the course of events. Among the latter are two who represent Solzhenitsyn’s parents.

Like the other novels in the series, April 1917 places the reader almost as an eyewitness to the maelstrom unleashed by the struggle for power among parties ranging from pro-monarchist, even after the abdication of the tsar, to the Bolsheviks, the most extreme of the revolutionaries. For example, we see Lenin as he arrives at the train station in Petrograd on the 16th and is met by Nikolai Chkheidze, the Menshevik leader, who delivers a welcome speech asserting the need not to abandon democracy as the revolution pursues its course, a notion antithetical to Lenin’s radical agenda. Lenin ignores him and, when he has the attention of a crowd, launches into his own address, calling for a civil war across Europe. Later that day, in another speech, Lenin intensifies the call to action: “It was a lightning strike, that speech! Forces of nature, hitherto dormant, had now arisen, a spirit that would destroy everything, which knew no doubts, no minor human problems. The worldwide socialist revolution was ready to break out from one day to the next.” He denounces the policies of those on the left who hitherto had been allies.

Lenin’s injunctions to the Bolshevik Party became known as the April theses: the replacement of the Provisional Government by a republic of the proletariat with power in the hands of councils of workers (the Soviets), the overthrow of capitalism with state control of all production, and the end of hostilities against Germany. At this point, Solzhenitsyn interrupts the narrative, as he frequently does, to include extracts from the press conveying a wide range of opinions, from “first impression of Lenin’s arguments: an émigré has arrived, who understands nothing of the conditions in Russia…. The Russian Bolsheviks are excluding themselves from the revolution” to “[Lenin] is very skilled in practical questions of domestic policy…. [He] is a communist and this is why his words will penetrate the heart and soul of the Russian peasant, who is already in tune with communism,” though negative critiques prevail.

Throughout late April, Lenin continues to win allies to his radical position. Solzhenitsyn convincingly recreates Lenin’s inner dialogue as he develops plans to fight enemies in the Provisional Government: “Not a moment on the defensive! Constant attack! Deny and stigmatize one hundred percent. Scare them by labelling them! Sully them so they can never clean off the filth!” He writes inflammatory articles for the press, labors for support from the masses, and never ceases meeting with individuals and groups, accusing them of betraying socialism if they refuse to accept his theses. Thus he succeeds in shifting opinion among his associates, who had regarded his theses as sheer madness.

Lenin’s tactical skill and the inability of his opponents to organize effectively against him led to his ultimate triumph. An extremist leader of the most radical party, he created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. April 1917: Book 1 recounts the crucial first steps in this process. (The yet untranslated Book 2 recounts the breakdown of the Provisional Government and its inability to prevent the descent into chaos, after which the October revolution became inevitable.)

The Publisher’s Note at the beginning of the book asserts that the volumes of The Red Wheel can be read independently. This would only be the case for those familiar with the history of the revolution. Though the action can be painstakingly slow at times, all readers will appreciate the behind-the-scenes information about the main actors in this drama, arguably the most consequential event of the 20th century, an event that would wreak untold tragedy not only on Russia but on many other countries around the world.

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