Bolshevik Party technology

L.B. Krasin 

Bolshevik party technology

The Second Congress of the RSDLP was in fact the first congress at which the formation of the party was completed and the history of Bolshevism began. This congress established certain organizational principles. In the debates that arose around the question of §1 of the Party Rules, the differences in the views of the Mensheviks, who defended the petty-bourgeois point of view of the liberal party charter, and the Bolsheviks, who, with the theses of Lenin, laid the actual foundation of a disciplined revolutionary proletarian party as a combat weapon the working class in the struggle for its liberation. This significance of the party congress has long been fully appreciated in the party literature, and we are least inclined to challenge it.

Our task here is to point out another area of ​​party work that has become, thanks to this congress, no less important factor in the building and further development of the party. We are referring to the importance of the Second Congress in the establishment of a centralized technical apparatus in practice, the establishment of a communications service, the organization of party finance, the organization of printing and transport equipment (transfer of people from abroad and vice versa, transportation and distribution of literature). With the advent of the center set up by the foreign congress, and with the co-optation of a number of party workers operating in Russia itself, a permanent link was established for the first time between Geneva and the most important industrial centers in Russia, in which practically Social-Democratic work was conducted. When there was a party in the underground, one could not use legal methods of communication. We had to establish a complex system of addresses, appearances, passwords, organize secret points in the Russian centers, relying on sympathetic bourgeois layers, use doctors, dentists, technical and commercial enterprises, etc. to receive people, send and receive foreign letters, etc. The Party after the Second Congress set itself the task of organizing all the methods of communication for the first time, and in a short time there arose a special apparatus for the implementation of this connection, using sometimes quite sophisticated technical rhymes.

I recall with what feeling in the dark photographic room of the "Electric Force" in Baku that in 1903 I manifested the first manifesto of the Central Committee elected at the second congress sent to me in Baku on a photographic photosensitive film. This method was chosen so that in the event of an accidental failure of the letter, its contents could in no way become known to the gendarmes. The manifested film served for our printing house with the first original from which the set was made, and in a few days tens of thousands of copies of this manifesto were already transported to different parts of the country by our transport body.

It seems that Napoleon owns the saying: "Money is the nerve of war." But revolutionary work could not be conducted without money, and therefore the organization of the finance of the party faced us one of the most urgent tasks immediately after the II Congress. As a member of the Central Committee, I, as a member of the Central Committee, had to stand quite close to this matter, and which methods we did not use to build up those, in a literal sense, pennies on which party organization and technology were built in the first years of their existence! Of course, all participants in party circles and organizations were subject to certain fees, but, unfortunately, these fees almost never reached the central collegium and were spent either on local needs of organizations or sent directly abroad to Iskra as a newspaper or brochure literature . I had to find other means. One of the main sources was the imposition of all other oppositional elements of Russian society, and in this matter we achieved considerable virtuosity, competing with the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In those times, with minimal differentiation of classes and with general hatred of tsarism, it was possible to raise money for social democratic purposes even in circles of supporters of the "Liberation" of Struve. It was considered a sign of a good tone in more or less radical or liberal circles to give money to revolutionary parties, and not only large lawyers, engineers, doctors, but also bank directors and bureaucrats, among those who fairly regularly paid monthly fees from 5 to 25 rubles state institutions. Over time, it was possible to bring to the cause of financial support for the party some patrons from the layers and spheres, it would seem, who did not sympathize with the working-class movement at all. Suffice it to say that S.T. Morozov, a large Moscow manufacturer, regularly contributed to the disposal of our Central Committee at those times quite large sums, and the last installment was personally received from me by S.T. two days before his tragic death [2].

S.T. Morozov left after his death an insurance policy, the greater part of which the executors ST, according to his instructions, made long before his death, was also transferred to the disposal of our Central Committee. Significant amounts were received by our party through M. Gorky, who gave his money and attracted various wealthy people to the cause of helping the party. Incidentally, through the intermediary of M. Gorky, the connection between our Baku technique, which needed money, was first established, and A.D. Tsyurupa, who then ruled in the Ufa province with Kugushev's estates and supported us from that moment with a systematic sending of money. Quite a lot of money was also collected by all kinds of enterprises, including performances, evenings and concerts. Our Caucasian technical organization used the arrivals to the Caucasus quite successfully. Komissarzhevskaya, giving part of the fees for the needs of the party. One of the evenings with V.F. Komissarzhevskaya, which was held with great success, was arranged in Baku by accident in the very same house where the chief of the local gendarmerie administration lived. In the subsequent period of the party's existence, it was possible to organize a number of commercial enterprises that yielded significant revenues. It is worth mentioning the fairly large inheritance received by our party from the student of Schmidt, tortured by the tsarist government in Moscow prisons, who bequeathed to the party his share of participation in the partnership of Vikul Morozov. The receipt of this money was accompanied by a dispute with some co-heirs, and as a curiosity it can be noted that the majority of the arbitration court that awarded this money in our favor consisted of the SRs Minor, Bunakov and others. There were also very touching cases. So, one day a young girl came to us in St. Petersburg and announced the sympathy of the party and the desire to transfer to the party's property the small estate that had inherited from her somewhere in the south of Russia. In view of the minority, the donor had to resort to a somewhat complex combination, namely, the preliminary issuance of her marriage and the sale of property already with the permission of her husband. For the disappointment of those of our enemies who, while reading these lines, will be ready to reproach our party for reproaching our minor girls, I can add that the sacrificer, Fedosya Petrovna Kassesinova, is now in the ranks of our party, holding a modest position as a cryptographer in one of our trade missions. Her husband, unfortunately, died, fighting for the republic on the Siberian front. One day a young girl came to us in St. Petersburg and announced the sympathy of the party and the desire to transfer to the party's property the small estate that had inherited from her somewhere in the south of Russia. In view of the minority, the donor had to resort to a somewhat complex combination, namely, the preliminary issuance of her marriage and the sale of property already with the permission of her husband. For the disappointment of those of our enemies who, while reading these lines, will be ready to reproach our party for reproaching our minor girls, I can add that the sacrificer, Fedosya Petrovna Kassesinova, is now in the ranks of our party, holding a modest position as a cryptographer in one of our trade missions. Her husband, unfortunately, died, fighting for the republic on the Siberian front. One day a young girl came to us in St. Petersburg and announced the sympathy of the party and the desire to transfer to the party's property the small estate that had inherited from her somewhere in the south of Russia. In view of the minority, the donor had to resort to a somewhat complex combination, namely, the preliminary issuance of her marriage and the sale of property already with the permission of her husband. For the disappointment of those of our enemies who, while reading these lines, will be ready to reproach our party for reproaching our minor girls, I can add that the sacrificer, Fedosya Petrovna Kassesinova, is now in the ranks of our party, holding a modest position as a cryptographer in one of our trade missions. Her husband, unfortunately, died, fighting for the republic on the Siberian front.

We needed the money mainly to maintain printing equipment and transport. Party workers usually lived at their own expense, interrupted by casual activities, lessons, or support from relatives and friends. Only much later, after 1905, it was decided that a small number of party workers should be systematically supported from the party's cash register. But even at this later time, it was about literally pennies of 25-30 rubles a month. It was necessary to give money only for more or less serious trips, in particular - connected with illegal border crossing, payment to smugglers, etc.

Transportation of literature and its storage cost a fair amount of money: it was necessary not only to pay freight, but also to remove warehouses, premises, and start up front companies.

But the greatest expenditures went to the printing technical equipment, the purchase and equipment of printing houses, the purchase of paper, the font and the contents of typesetters and printers.

The most powerful typographic technique was possessed by our Baku printing houses. The Baku printing house was conceived in 1901 by our late comrade Lado Ketskhoveli, who died prematurely. We could already give some money at his disposal; but there was no way to buy a typewriter and systematically buy paper, paint, font, etc., without having a gubernatorial certificate for the right to open a printing house. Comrade. Lado very easily got out of this difficulty. He drafted in his name a certificate on behalf of the Elisavetpol governor for the right to open a printing house, copied this certificate on the form received with the governor's title and then he himself signed this document for the governor. When we began to doubt the possibility of doing something on this indisputably falsified document, he even got out of trouble and after a few days, triumphantly, showed us a paper with seals and notarial assurances. He simply took a copy of the forged identity and, having certified this copy from the Baku notary, he received, thus, a document on which there was not even a single forged signature. With this document, Lado successfully acquired the necessary car and materials, and the underground technology of the RSDLP began work in Baku and did not stop it until 1905, when our Baku printing house on the occasion of the revolution moved to a legal position and quite solemnly together with a significant part of the workers themselves was established in St. Petersburg in a large commercial printing house of the "Delo" partnership, which was founded to print the "New Life" and other Bolshevik publications. He showed us a paper with seals and notarial assurances. He simply took a copy of the forged identity and, having certified this copy from the Baku notary, he received, thus, a document on which there was not even a single forged signature. With this document, Lado successfully acquired the necessary car and materials, and the underground technology of the RSDLP began work in Baku and did not stop it until 1905, when our Baku printing house on the occasion of the revolution moved to a legal position and quite solemnly together with a significant part of the workers themselves was established in St. Petersburg in a large commercial printing house of the "Delo" partnership, which was founded to print the "New Life" and other Bolshevik publications. He showed us a paper with seals and notarial assurances. He simply took a copy of the forged identity and, having certified this copy from the Baku notary, he received, thus, a document on which there was not even a single forged signature. With this document, Lado successfully acquired the necessary car and materials, and the underground technology of the RSDLP began work in Baku and did not stop it until 1905, when our Baku printing house on the occasion of the revolution moved to a legal position and quite solemnly together with a significant part of the workers themselves was established in St. Petersburg in a large commercial printing house of the "Delo" partnership, which was founded to print the "New Life" and other Bolshevik publications. having witnessed this copy from a Baku notary, received, thus, a document on which there was not a single forged signature. With this document, Lado successfully acquired the necessary car and materials, and the underground technology of the RSDLP began work in Baku and did not stop it until 1905, when our Baku printing house on the occasion of the revolution moved to a legal position and quite solemnly together with a significant part of the workers themselves was established in St. Petersburg in a large commercial printing house of the "Delo" partnership, which was founded to print the "New Life" and other Bolshevik publications. having witnessed this copy from a Baku notary, received, thus, a document on which there was not a single forged signature. With this document, Lado successfully acquired the necessary car and materials, and the underground technology of the RSDLP began work in Baku and did not stop it until 1905, when our Baku printing house on the occasion of the revolution moved to a legal position and quite solemnly together with a significant part of the workers themselves was established in St. Petersburg in a large commercial printing house of the "Delo" partnership, which was founded to print the "New Life" and other Bolshevik publications.

The next head of the Baku technique was Trifon Teimurazovich Yenukidze (nickname "Semyon"), now the head of our state factory of bank notes. Semen-Enukidze greatly expanded the legacy left to him by Comrade Lado. All work was built on the principle of the strictest conspiracy, with the use of original technical methods, hardly more than anywhere else and used by anyone. For the import of paper and the removal of finished goods, Semen very skillfully used some seclusion in which the Tatar population of Baku lived, which was not particularly friendly towards the police, placing a printing house in the Tatar quarter. The printing house, although expanded, but equipped with still used machines, did not satisfy the "Seeds"; he put forward a plan for the acquisition of a new high-speed printing press at the Augsburg plant and, with his characteristic persistence, did not lag behind me and N.P. Kozenenko, an old Social Democrat who was then part of our Baku organization, until we made the right amount, about two or three thousand rubles, and did not get this car out of the country. To install it, it was decided to find a new room and arrange the whole thing so that, under no circumstances, fear a failure. The room where this machine was installed and worked was separated from the house where the typesetters and printers lived, a special underground passage closed with a massive concrete slab that fell into the underground, which could not be found in any way without knowing the secret. The printing room itself was illuminated with an alcohol-lamp and on all sides it was closed, located inside a fairly extensive building, which included in the neighboring possession the crew sheds, stables and barns for oats, barley and fodder. Only after making the most accurate external measurement of the neighboring building that was in the possession of another person and measuring all the internal chambers and rooms, you could, having put it all on the plan, to see that in the middle there is some empty space to which there is no access from other parts of the room . In this and that place was placed the printing department of our printing house, connected by a secret passage with another house in the neighboring section where AS lived. Yenukidze and other comrades. Intelligence of the Baku police and gendarmes was, of course, insufficient to open such a printing house, and even in the event of the failure of all personnel led by A.S. Yenukidze's printing house itself would not have perished, and for its resolution it would be necessary only to rent again the house in which A.S. Yenukidze and from which a secret passage led into the building of stables and barns. The same last building belonged to the Tatar-cabman, a friend of "Semyon", who in no way would have given out to the printing house. Living in the house printers and typesetters were subjected to the strictest discipline and had no right to leave the house at all. After a certain period, each of them received leave, but he was not allowed to go to Baku. The comrade who got his vacation was obliged to come to the train station by the evening train and go to Tiflis, Kutais or Batum, where he spent his holidays. Inside the printing house, except for "Seeds" and me, who occasionally visited it more for the purposes of technical advice or expertise, no one was absolutely allowed, and the failure was absolutely excluded.

In 1904, after my move to Orekhovo-Zuevo, Semen, having handled the case in Baku in the hands of A.S. Yenukidze, moved to Moscow, and we set about building a similar printing plant somewhere on Lesnaya Street, with the legal cover being the trade in Caucasian cheese, nuts, wine, etc., and as working people it was supposed to invite the same experienced of our comrades from Baku. I must say that the work in the stuffy and close printed, especially in the summer, was a real hell and our compositors and printers were carrying out a truly heroic work.

The organization of the Moscow printing house was somewhat delayed by the failure of the Central Committee, arrested at the apartment of writer Leonid Andreev. I accidentally managed to avoid arrest, but I had to temporarily move to an illegal position and go to Smolensk, then to Odessa, then to Petersburg, and in the meantime the III Congress arrived, and in April 1905 I went to Geneva. "Semyon" stayed in Moscow and, despite all the difficulties, brought to completion this rather complicated and demanding significant funds enterprise. Then the events of 1905 broke out, and temporary freedoms allowed us - alas, prematurely - to move to a legal position and even make the mistake of exporting our small but magnificent Baku machine to St. Petersburg [3].

Comrade. "Semyon" moved to St. Petersburg and was the technical director of a fairly large legal printing house of the "Delo" partnership, in which Novaya Zhizn and other publications were printed. The Caucasian comrades who brought a Baku car to Petersburg gave me also a perfectly intertwined album of all editions of the Baku printing house, starting with the first proclamations printed by Comrade Lado, and ending with the numbers of Iskra published in Baku. Unfortunately, with one of the searches this album was taken away from me and, evidently, the secret police died somewhere in the archives.

I will mention briefly about the printing of Iskra in Baku.

The connection between us and the "Spark" was Halperin, the party nickname "Konyaga." The whole of our Baku organization in Geneva from Nadezhda Konstantinovna Ulyanova-Krupskaya was registered under the name of "horses". When the news arrived in Geneva from the "horses" that they had brought their equipment up to the altitude allowing full printing of Iskra's numbers, it was decided to organize the sending of matrices in Baku, ie, cardboard prints from the set, which, by flooding them with printing metal, could give a cliche of a whole page, suitable for printing. We agreed with Konyaga that these cliches will come to Baku in my name inside the cover of any technical or scientific atlases with drawings or drawings of the appropriate content so as not to cause suspicion at the customs. One fine morning, I, who was then the builder of an electric power station in Baku on the Bayil Cape, received a summons from the customs office about the arrival of a foreign parcel in my name. I go to the customs, and - oh, horror! - they give me a crudely intertwined atlas with covers, thick in a kind finger, filled inside with some popular prints of tigers, snakes and all sorts of animals that do not have the slightest relation to any technique or science.

No doubt, God forbid us in this technical enterprise, and sleepy Baku customs officials were his allies in this business. In the Geneva archives, probably, it will be possible to find our abusive letters to the foreign center about such negligence, which could result in a great failure. Fortunately, this did not happen, and the measures that followed later succeeded in sending the transfer of matrices and even thin paper for Iskra, which could not be obtained in Russia.

The other comrades will tell me more about the literature transport and transportation abroad and back people, I can only note that this technique was also quite high, and our party developed the real experts of its craft, thereby minimizing the failures, that is, the loss people and literature.

I must also mention a special technical group under the Central Committee of our Party in 1905. This group had already more combat missions in organizing the armament of our personnel, mainly the St. Petersburg organization. Especially great practical results were difficult to achieve, and in particular the Gaponov enterprise - an attempt to deliver to Russia a significant transport of rifles on the ship "John Crafton" - was wrecked. However, our technical team was involved in this case in its final stage, when there was no way to correct the gross mistakes made. At the request of local organizations and workers' districts in St. Petersburg, the group had to take care of supplying these organizations with the necessary combat material. Brought to the cause of outstanding technology,

Our party was always famous for the strict ideological consistency of its political line, and this was, of course, the main reason for its success, the rumor about which the world is now full of.

But, summing up the results of party work on its 25th anniversary, we should also kindly mention the Bolshevik party technique, which, especially during the years of underground existence, helped our great and beloved Ilyich to forge the strong, steel-like military weapons of the working class-the Russian Communist Party (the Bolsheviks ).

 Notes

[1] Leonid Borisovich Krasin ("Nikitich"). Years of the Underground. Collection of memoirs, articles and documents. Compiled by the "Circle of Friends of Krasin" edited by M.N. Lyadova and SM Pozner // State. out of. Moscow-Leningrad. - 1928. - P. 140-148.

[2] He shot himself in Cannes. I drove to ST, in Vichy, returning from the London III Congress in 1905, found him in a very depressed state at the time of departure to the Riviera, and two days later, returning illegally from Bern to Russia, on the train read the news of his suicide. (Note LK)

[3] I was just informed that our underground printing house on Lesnaya Street was being restored as it had in 1905. (Note LK)