"Mezhrayonka" (1911-1917).

"Proletarian Revolution", 1924, No. 1 (24), No. 2 (25).

I. Yurenev.

"Mezhrayonka" (1911-1917).

I. Petersburg 1911-1912

In August 1911, having served a three-year administrative exile (in the Pinezhsky district of the Arkhangelsk province), I arrived in St. Petersburg. Instead of a passport, I had, as every exile is supposed to, a passing "certificate to my homeland", i.e., in Dvinsk. After living in St. Petersburg illegally for a couple of days, I headed to. Dvinsk, where he served the so-called "military muster" (a month of military drill).

Of the old comrades in Dvinsk by this time there was almost no one.

The party organization eked out a miserable existence; the same Samuil Telzner and several students continued to work; the old workers, with the exception of a small group of railroad workers, who kept themselves extremely apart from the "city," departed from the party. There was no military organization; the committee had only isolated connections with the barracks. The situation of other revolutionary organizations was just as deplorable. The Socialist Revolutionaries, the Poalei Zionists, the Zionist Socialists have come to an end; only the Bund, which had colossal connections in the Jewish artisan mass, held on to any strong hold.

Having received a passport and a certificate of departure from the military muster, I returned to St. Petersburg in the autumn already as a completely legal citizen. At that time, my old comrades lived in St. Petersburg: Anna Ivanovna Voitik, a former member of the Dvinsk Committee, her brother Peter (an excellent agitator who enjoyed great prestige among the working masses in Dvinsk in 1905); Ivan Petrovich Pavlunovsky (now a member of the RCP, in the summer of 1919 he was in charge of the Special Department of the Cheka, now he works as an authorized representative of the State Political Administration for Siberia).

Pavlunovsky in 1910 returned from the Vologda exile, where he was sent on the case of the Kursk military organization of the RSDLP. My impressions of a short acquaintance with him (in 1906 we spent a week and a half together in the Vologda transit prison) were the best. Pavlunovsky went into exile as a young man like me. He was full of energy and faith in the cause of the revolution. Frankly speaking, on my way to St. Petersburg, I had high hopes that I would be able to get into Party work precisely through these comrades. However, I was wrong. "Peter" completely departed from the movement; Anyuta also; under its influence, I. P. Pavlunovsky also avoided party work.

The only thing I got from this group was a connection with Vladimir Abrosimov (he worked in Dvinsk as a professional in 1906-1907; after the February Revolution, he ended up on the list of provocateurs). The latter worked at the Rechkin plant outside the Moscow outpost, had strong connections with the workers, mainly legal organizations. His wife Tanya (a woodworker, was a member of the Dvina Committee in 1906-1907), completely retired from work and devoted herself entirely to the household and children.

My only hope was for Vladimir. I did not receive any connection with the party organization from exile, and therefore I had to, like a "pathfinder", look for them myself. The first meeting with Abrosimov made a deep impression on me. He went downhill a lot, became an ardent liquidator, and, of course, we immediately ran into him as representatives of various party trends. Abrosimov had many connections with the Bolsheviks, but he was in no hurry to introduce me to them, not wanting, as he said, "to strengthen his enemies."

My attempts, in view of the lack of connection with the organization, to create from the group of old party workers, about which I spoke above, an initiative Social-Democratic illegal organization were not crowned with success. Moreover, my personal relations with them deteriorated somewhat, because Anyuta “had come to hate” me for inciting Ivan Pavlunovsky to work illegally.

Thus, I finally had to give up on these comrades (who resurrected for the party and the revolution only after February 1917). In the autumn I began to visit the editorial office of the Zvezda newspaper, where I met Alexander Mikhailovich Novoselov, an old Bolshevik party worker, and Konstantin Stepanovich Yeremeev.

However, as a stranger, it was extremely difficult for me to start talking about party work with them. I was afraid that they would see me as a provocateur. Only after a three-month acquaintance did I enter into the confidence of A. M. Novoselov and began to acquire some party connections through him.

In February-March 1912, I met Nikolai Pavlovich Bogdanov (at that time he worked in the union of woodworkers as a secretary; later turned out to be a provocateur) and his group. Nikolai Pavlovich was the leader of the so-called "central group" of the organization, which numbered several dozen workers and had fairly significant connections among the masses. However, I was not drawn to the "central group". Bogdanov himself, a fussy, nervous, talkative man, made a very unpleasant impression on me. His purely non-conspiratorial nature (in fact, these were just the methods of work of a security guard), the mountains of illegal literature in the apartment, the mass circulation of a wide variety of people to him - forced me to move away from Bogdanov and his group to the side.

In addition to the "central group" in the summer of 1912, the following Social-Democrats also functioned in St. Petersburg. organization: "Petersburg Committee of R.S.-D.R.P." (Bolsheviks) and the "Initiative Group R.S.-D.R.P." (Mensheviks).

PC. had very few employees, frequent failures weakened the organization, and as a result, the work was carried out very unsystematically. However, the "firm" of the Petersburg Committee enjoyed great confidence among the workers, many years of energetic work of the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg did not pass without leaving a trace. Trouble P.K. consisted in the absence of a cohesive authoritative "top"; There were masses of “Tsekist”-minded masses in all districts.

According to Comrade Sergei Medvedev, in the summer of 1912 they actively worked in P.K. Ignatiev (a worker at the Porokhov Plants), and Adrian Ivanov (a Putilov worker), Kudryashev. The work of P.K., however, was carried out extremely poorly, the districts were divided.

As for the "Initiative", it, on the contrary, had a strong headquarters and incomparably weaker ones than those of P.K. communications in the regions; in some areas, "initiators" were numbered in units. The “Initiative” arose in 1911. Its most prominent and energetic members were; V. Abrosimov (worker of the Rechkin plant, provocateur), Braginsky (writer), Chirkin (worker, now member of R.K.P.), Matyukhin (worker of the electric station 1886); Kuzmin (pipe plant worker); also, it seems, Labutin (worker, secretary of the St. Petersburg Union of Metalworkers).

"Initiative" was an association of the left wing of the St. Petersburg Mensheviks. In April, the initiativka convened a broad mass meeting (at B. Grebetskaya) to discuss the question of organizing a unified workers' newspaper. Comrades M. I. Kalinin, Kudryashov, Shkapin (“George”, an old party member known to me from Pinega exile, a wonderful comrade, spoke among the Bolsheviks at this meeting).

I made it my goal to get connections with genuinely working elements. After much effort, I finally succeeded. The same A. M. Novoselov introduced me to a group of old workers of the Narva region (I remember very clearly comrades Kostyukov and Yegorov among them). They stood outside the party work only because P.K. Bolsheviks was actually a fiction at that time and, in particular, did not conduct any work in the Narva region.

The shooting of Lena gave a strong impetus to the mass movement of workers, and Petersburg was a witness to the long-unseen spectacles of thousands of rallies (behind the "outposts") that took place in front of the mounted gendarmes and policemen. At two such rallies, the author of these lines also had to speak. The last rally, or rather extras, outside the Moscow Gate was of a debatable nature: we argued about the role of the trade unions and the party in the labor movement. Vladimir Abrosimov spoke for the Mensheviks, from the Bolsheviks - I. The mood of the extras was on our side. Abrosimov, leaving the meeting instead of me, cursed savagely and said: “You devils are climbing everywhere.” I think, however, that he betrayed me to the security department not exclusively in the interests of his party. Approximately in May, in the premises of the Pravda editorial office, a meeting of a group of party workers convened on my and A. M. Novoselov's initiative took place. I remember that it was attended by: a veteran of the party and revolution, Mikhail Stepanych Olminsky, A. M. Novoselov, a worker of the Porokhov factories Ignatiev (later turned out to be a provocateur) and several other people. We talked about the restoration of party work in St. Petersburg. It was decided to arrange a series of meetings in the districts. Ignatiev offered his services in terms of organizing them in the Porohovsky district. Indeed, he organized, as far as I remember, two or three quite numerous meetings with the most motley composition in terms of factionalism. There were individual Mensheviks at this meeting, and in particular their leader “Roman” (a former member of the Central Committee of the R.S.-D.R.P.), Kudryashov, a Bolshevik, about whom there were bad rumors at that time, Sergei Medvedev (I met him at my comrade in exile, worker Ivan Konst. Mikhailov) and a number of other persons. Not a farthing was gained from these meetings. Then I decided to completely go to work in the Narva region; put a party organization in it and, on this basis, start work on a citywide scale. In the Narva region, the work went well. Such old, devoted, experienced workers as Comrade. Egorov, old man Kostyukov and others, having colossal connections in the regions and enjoying enormous influence among the workers, quickly organized a number of party circles at the Putilov plant (in workshops; at Tilmans; at the Tentelev Chemical Plant). In general, as far as I remember, in the summer of 1912 our Narva organization numbered about 100 people. There were 7-9 circles of the lower, middle and higher types.

Representatives of the circles made up the Narva Regional Committee of the R.S.-D.R.P. Our committee was not approved by any of the highest party authorities, but in the absence of such it could not approve. That was a time when there was no systematic party work and "whoever took a stick was a corporal."

Since it was summertime, the housing problem was solved by us extremely easily. We gathered in the groves and meadows beyond the Narva outpost. It was very difficult for spies to penetrate there, because the district was purely a workers' district, and a rare spy "flew" into the thick of the workers' quarters.

In May or June, we published the first, technically excellently executed leaflet. It spoke about the tasks of the labor movement in Russia, of course, about the Lena massacre, about the need to recreate the illegal party.

The leaflet was written by me; A. M. Novoselov took upon himself the organization of its printing, who managed, through acquaintances of printers, to publish our appeal in some legal printing house. The leaflet was printed in approximately 1,000 copies. and dispersed very widely in St. Petersburg.

The group of N. P. Bogdanov, with whom we had no organizational ties, having learned that the Narva region was on its feet, again began to make all sorts of attempts to contact us organizationally. The "central group" consisted of very motley elements ("the Vperyodists", among them N. P. Bogdanov, the Bolsheviks of the Leninist type, and finally the Mensheviks). Bogdanov's group, which by that time had contacted representatives of the Menshevik O.K., tried in every possible way to ensure that our organization sent its representative to the upcoming "August Conference" (Mensheviks, Vperyodists, Trotskyists, Bundists).

I remember that at the apartment of Maria Vasilievna Zhuravleva I was introduced to some party worker from OK circles, she tried to convince me for a long time and unsuccessfully to take part in the said congress. Our Narva Committee unanimously declared itself against contact with the August bloc.

In June of the same year, we contacted the Nevsky and Moscow regions. In Nevsky there was an insignificant but rather strong party group that existed just as autonomously as our Narva region.

Our plans for the gathering of the St. Petersburg organization seemed to be beginning to materialize. However, the security department did not doze off and on June 16 made quite large arrests among the leaders of the St. Petersburg revolutionary movement. Among others, I was also arrested. For two weeks I had to sit in the Kolomna police department, where I met a group of workers from the autonomous Narva region. I remember from them very clearly the mighty figure of Comrade Sirota, then Comrade Kozlovsky.

Apparently, the Okhrana failed to penetrate into the Narva region, because, apart from me, none of them were arrested. The Okhrana could not show me any concrete evidence. In the end, it turned out quite original when the Provincial Gendarme Directorate told me that I was associated with the St. Petersburg Menshevik Initiative Group.

After spending several months in the pre-trial, I was released, but with the so-called "points". It seems that by that time there were sixty-four of them. "Points" are those places in which seditious people did not have the right to reside.

I chose Ligovo (ten versts from St. Petersburg) as my residence, as many of the “supervised” did. I had to temporarily stop my party work. Forcedly unemployed, in the party sense, I spent time intensively working in Pravda and in the Marxist journal Enlightenment*. In March 1913, I decided to leave the beautiful places of the League and disappeared from the horizon of the Okhrana in the city of Bobruisk, Minsk. lips., where he lived until the autumn of 1913.

The emergence of "Mezhrayonka" and its work in 1913 - 1914

Returning to St. Petersburg at the end of October, I again made an attempt to enlist my old comrades (Anyuta Voitik, Pavlunovsky and others) in party work.

The attempt ended in a decisive failure. Only my old comrade in the Dvinsk organization of students, Maria Yakovlevna Ratner (a Bestuzhev student, party nickname "Mara") expressed a desire to go underground.

Resuming contact with A. M. Novoselov, through him I met with the deputy of the III State. Duma by Nikolai Maksimovich Yegorov, a Menshevik, but in essence a good revolutionary Social Democrat, with a unity minded. During our frequent meetings, we repeatedly discussed with him and Novoselov the acute issue of that moment, the question of party building in Russia.

Sharing the main political line of St. Petersburg. Com. Bolsheviks, we rejected many of his methods of work. Moreover, we refused to "recognize" the Bolshevik Conference of 1912 as the conference of the entire R.S.-D.R.P. Finally, we had an extremely low estimate of the true strength of the Petersburg Committee.

As a result of long conversations and discussions, we decided to start building a new party organization independent of P.K. and from the Initiative. Our work is based on the principle of uniting the Bolsheviks and the revolutionary Social-Democrats. In relation to the Mensheviks, our position was quite definite: we were for unity with those of them who recognized the illegal party and general party decisions until the last, general conference in 1908.

In creating a new organizational body, we naturally ran into reproaches for widening and deepening the split in the Party.

Our initial positions were as follows: 1) there is no party - it must be built, 2) factions are weak, 3) the workers have a huge desire for unity (there were a lot of examples of this desire), 4) since the party is being recreated , then it must be built on a sound basis from below, breaking the factions and rallying the workers-party.

Our plan for Party unity would have been absolutely impossible in 1906, before the Stockholm Unity Congress, when the factions were strong and each of them was in fact a party that carried on extensive work. Now, however, the "3rd Fraction" was the cement that could solder a significant mass of both Bolsheviks and Party Mensheviks. Here I must say that our organization (contrary to the assertions of some comrades) did not arise by splitting away from already existing factions. The security department also accused us of breaking away. Here is what was said in the memorandum of the Okhrana on the case of the Interdistrict Committee:

“In the last days of March of the past month of 1914, along with appeals from other underground organizations calling on workers to strike and demonstrate on the anniversary of the Lena Events (April 4), for the first time, according to secret information sources, printed appeals appeared in Petrograd on behalf of Petersburg Interdistrict Commission of the R.S.-D.R.P.

In fact, there was no "split"; The work was started by a group of comrades who were temporarily not in any of the factions.

The “obedinka” began its existence in November 1913. The following comrades were its founders:

1) Novoselov, A. M. (worker, old Bolshevik), 2) Egorov, Nikolai Maksimovich (worker, deputy of the III G. Duma, Menshevik), 3) Adamovich, Elena Mikhailovna (intellectual, old Bolshevik) and 4) Korenev, I. (intellectual, party nickname of that time "Andrey", Bolshevik).

These people worked out the platform for the organization for quite a long time and even longer ... came up with a name for it. The latter sounds rather funny but finding a suitable "nickname" for the new organization was not easy, given our desire to emphasize that we are a citywide organization, not a local group. Since the work was just beginning, we did not want to call ourselves a “committee”, because we were afraid of reproaches of imposture. As a result of long discussions, the organization was called an "interdistrict commission". This name emphasized the citywide nature of the organization, as well as its ... youth.

In early December, on behalf of the "mezhrayonka", a platform leaflet was issued, which indicated the reasons for the emergence of a new "third organization", its tasks and, in particular, spoke of the imperative need for party revolutionary work in the army. The leaflet ended with a call for the unity of "all revolutionary Social-Democrats." and the usual revolutionary-democratic slogans.

At that time, the “interdistrict” did not yet have its own technique, and the “platform” (written by “Andrey”) was typed and printed, as was often done at that time, in one of the legal printing houses (A. M. Novoselov organized this business).

We got connections with the working masses through Elena Mikhailovna and Novoselov, who had been working in the St. Petersburg Bolshevik Organization since 1906.

In particular, in the Vasileostrovsky district, we got in touch with the workers through the secretary of the district branch of Petersburg. Union of Metal Workers, Bolshevik, Comrade Nikolaev. The latter, being an orthodox “Leninist,” committed a “crime” against his party only because he politically trusted us, and most importantly, because Petersburg. com. Bolsheviks at that time almost did not function. The first contacts were received by us in the Vasileostrovsky district (Pipe plant, 2nd workshop).

Meetings of the first working circle (8-10 workers and workers) of the "mezhraionka" took place at Comrade. Ivanov (pipe maker) on Uralskaya street, 2. At the very first meeting, I presented our “platform” to those present. After a rather lively discussion, the participants adopted a resolution (abstracts) proposed by the speaker. Having dealt in the main, the meeting moved on to the "organizational issue" (membership fees, election of a representative for communication with the "mezhrayonka") and to discussing the study program of the circle.

As far as I remember, on the organizational issue, it was decided to deduct 2% of salaries to the organization; representative (in fact, the secretary of the cell) was elected comrade. Ivanova (later it was the worker Anyuta). For classes, the usual Marxist program of that time for medium-type circles was adopted. Our first circle quickly grew and soon, for technical reasons, it had to be divided into two.

The attraction of workers to the organization at that time was enormous. We felt with joy that the dead streak in the life of the party underground had been passed and that the “epoch of renaissance” was beginning. Very soon we contacted almost all the workshops of the pipe factory and most of the factories and factories of the entire area. I must say that having entered the thick of the workers, we did not meet other illegal organizations. We came across factional-minded workers, but there were no factions. The foregoing applies not only to the Vasileostrovsky district, but also to the Moscow, Nevsky, and Petersburg districts.

The work of the “mezhrayonka” actually consisted at that time not in “unification”, but in the creation of a citywide St. Petersburg party social-democratic party organizations.

At the very end of 1913 or at the beginning of 1914 through our Vasileostrovtsy. contacts were obtained with the Petersburg region, and at the same time with the workers' Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

The most prominent figure among the Mensheviks of the Petersburg region at that time was a worker of the Vulkan factory, comrade. "Savva" (Shevchenko), who enjoyed great influence both at the factory and in professional organizations (he left for Tsaritsyn in 1917). "Savva" was undoubtedly a gifted, intelligent person, direct to the point of harshness. Disillusioned with Menshevik legalism, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to work in the "mezhrayonka". Of the Bolsheviks, it should be noted the worker Valentin Serikov (the Vulkan plant), now a member of the Russian Communist Party, and assistant to the head of the Petrograd port.

As now, I remember the first "initiative" meeting of the workers and workers of the Pitersky district, devoted to questions of party building and party unity. At the meeting (it seems that it took place at the worker Maria Ivanova, in the house of Countess Panina) there were about 20 people, including: "Savva", Claudia Prokofievna - a dressmaker, Maria Ivanovna - a worker, printers - "George", Egorov from Kirchner, Ageev and others.

The proposal of the "mezhrayonka" to start illegal party work under the slogan of the unity of the revolutionary elements of the Social-Democrats. was greeted by the audience - speaking without exaggeration - with enthusiasm.

The unity of the party, which was preached by the "mezhrayonka", was by no means the unity of "all Social-Democrats", unity on the basis of the recognition of a common "program". Comrade's approval Shlyapnikov (“The Eve of the Seventeenth Year”, Part I, p. 63), that “soon (at the end of 1916) the “unified” members themselves began to limit the circle of Social Democrats to be united” is fundamentally wrong and is explained by the factual isolation of Comrade. Shlyapnikov from the life of the party organization during the war. We began to "limit the circle" from the very first steps of our work. "Unity at all costs and with anyone" was strongly rejected by us.

The success of the work of the "mezhrayonka" in the Pitersky district was great. Thanks to the enormous energy of "Savva" - Shevchenko, Prokofieva and others, by mid-May we managed to establish contacts with almost all the plants, factories and printing houses of the region (most had cells); the number of members reached two to three hundred people. At a meeting of cell delegates, a district committee was elected (18 of the largest enterprises had representation in it).

Communication with the Interdistrict Committee was kept by comrades. Serikov and Shevchenko. With the help of the latter, we attracted to the organization comrade. Ivan Ivanovich Yegorov, a popular worker in the region, was an old revolutionary and party member. In the Pitersky district, I again met with the provocateur N. P. Bogdanov, already mentioned above, who stubbornly wanted to join our organization. However, we did not trust him. I remember the special decision of the "mezhrayonka" not to let Bogdanov work.

In addition to the Vasileostrovsky and Petersburg districts, by the summer of 1914, the organization also received connections in Moscow (the Rechkin plant, Skorokhod ”and one printing house). However, the war prevented the organizational design of this region.

The leading center of the “mezhrayonka” until the autumn of 1914 was very weak, and the districts were represented in it not constantly, but only sporadically. In fact, the center was Yegorov, Novoselov and "Andrey". My comrade from the Arkhangelsk exile, the Sormovo worker-intellectual, “Vperyodist” Ivan Petrovich Flerovsky, also entered the center.

In the summer of 1914, we strained every effort to put the center on firm footing. In July, in the forest near Grafskaya station, we convened a meeting of representatives of the districts; The most important item on the agenda of the meeting was the organizational issue and, in particular, the election of an inter-district committee (instead of the temporary "Commission").

The districts were presented very solidly. However, the meeting was not destined to take place. We were tracked down by spies, and we barely carried our fast legs from the pursuit of mounted policemen.

The literary and publishing activities of our organization before the start of the war were rather modest. The fact is that only after considerable effort we managed to establish a manual printing house.

As far as I remember, from the end of 1913 until the beginning of the World War, we issued the following leaflets: 1) "Platform" (copy 800-1,000), 2) "By January 9th" (1,500-2,000 copies), 3) "On the Anniversary of the Lena Massacre" (2,000 copies) and 1) "On the 1st of May" (1,500-2,000 copies).

In addition to the above leaflets of a special, so to speak, nature, we have issued two more - a general one and one devoted to the July general strike.

The May leaflet was, at the request of the Mensheviks of the St. Petersburg region of our organization, preliminary discussed at a plenum of the district committee. We did not object to this proposal (it came from Comrade "Savva") both for reasons of tact towards the Mensheviks and for political educational reasons. The leaflet was written in brightly revolutionary Bolshevik tones, and its unanimous acceptance by the St. Petersburg district committee greatly raised the prestige of our organization.

In the summer of 1914, the “mezhrayonka”, being organizationally rather weak, conducted extensive mass revolutionary work and work to “propaganda” the idea of ​​the unity of all revolutionary Social Democrats. Our work was in the nature of a fierce struggle with representatives of the extreme poles of Russian social democracy.

In the Petersburg region, where we succeeded in recruiting large Menshevik forces into the organization, strong battles were repeatedly fought both with the "initiative" and with the "pure" liquidators. In Novaya Derevnya, a number of crowded workers' meetings were held, which, in addition to the Mezhrayontsy, were also attended by representatives of the right and left wings of the then St. Petersburg Mensheviks.

Bulkin (now, it seems, a member of the RCP) usually spoke with great passion on behalf of the "rights"; from the left - the St. Petersburg initiative group - a young worker, a printer by profession, comrade Savinikhin. Bulkin was an anti-party liquidator of the purest water, and his funeral speeches on the theme that the old illegal party had perished were clearly dissonant with the mighty upsurge of the mass working-class movement and, of course, could not meet with sympathy from the workers who were participants in the meeting.

The advantage of our position was that our opponents "devoured" each other. These discussions usually ended in the moral and political defeat of the "pure" liquidators, of whom not only individual workers but entire groups defected to us. As for the "initiative", it, being, at least in words, for an illegal party and in every possible way welcoming the idea of ​​the unity of the latter, did not agree with the positions put forward by the "mezhrayonka" on this issue.

"Initiative" was a supporter of the unification of Russian social democracy on the basis of the recognition of a general party program. Such a broad platform of "initiative" was rejected by us in the most resolute way.

Our speakers revealed to the workers the ultimately anti-Party essence of the "initiative" which was under the strong ideological influence of the "pure" liquidators.

The summer of 1914 was characterized by an extreme revival of the party underground on the street. Every Sunday dacha trains brought dozens and hundreds of workers and intellectuals to Grafskaya, Shuvalovo, etc. All organizations of St. Petersburg was richly represented there. More than once I had to meet in this area with Comrade. Badaev, V. Schmidt (now People's Commissariat of Labor) who worked at that time under the nickname "Vladimir", "Foma", Nina Shutko (who had just returned from exile), Kiselev and others.

The base for all the public coming on party business to Grafskaya and Shuvalovo was a farm near the Grafskaya station. As a rule, the meeting participants did not stay long at the farm; having received information from the organizers about the place of the extras, they followed the “address” given to them, and most often they did not find the meeting, but only the next patrol, who already sent them where they should.

In June, we convened a large, for those times, non-party meeting (60-70 people were present), at which our speakers delivered a report on the state of the party and, in particular, on its unity. "Savva" - Shevchenko, "Andrey" - I and Ivan Petrovich Flerovsky spoke from us. Counter-reports were made on behalf of the liquidators by Bulkin, on behalf of the "initiative" - ​​by Chirkin (now a member of the RCP, working for the cooperatives), on behalf of the St. Petersburg Committee - comrade. "Thomas".

After a heated debate, the meeting adopted our resolution by an overwhelming majority. By the way, only two of them were proposed: ours and Leninskaya; the liquidators and Mensheviks did not submit their proposals.

Speaking of the summer of 1914, we must talk about one as yet unexplored side of the activity of the "mezhrayonka": its relationship with the Plekhanovites and, in particular, with the newspaper Unity.

Here is how it was. At the end of April, or at the beginning of May, a representative of a foreign group of Plekhanovites arrived in St. Petersburg, a Bulgarian student Nikolai Petrovich Stoyanov. He was instructed by G. V. Plekhanov to organize in Russia a legal social-democratic anti-liquidationist (alliance trend) workers' newspaper.

The Plekhanovites in Petersburg were extremely weak; they had no party organization. All that Plekhanov had at his disposal in St. Petersburg were individual connections with the workers, a group of writers and ... the "Plekhanov faction" in the Fourth State Duma - Buryanov. Nikolai Petrovich Stoyanov appeared to him. Having looked around a little, he, together with Buryanov, began to establish contacts both in legal Marxist literary circles and in the party underground.

Naturally, the attention of the Plekhanovites was first of all drawn to the “mezhrayonka”. I do not remember exactly - through whom (it seems that through Alexander Mikh. Novoselov) Stoyanov's group contacted us. My first meeting with Stoyanov took place at Buryanov's apartment. Stoyanov, in a broken Russian-Bulgarian dialect, outlined to me the plan of G. V. Plekhanov, which boiled down in its main features to waging a vigorous struggle against the liquidators and for the creation of a united Social-Democrat through the medium of the newspaper, through joint efforts.

Stoyanov did not have the proper clarity on the last question. My impression of the conversation about him was pretty decent. Mezhrayonka, after discussing my report on the negotiations with Stoyanov, decided to get closer to the Plekhanovites and try to assimilate them.

Soon a broader meeting was convened, consisting of representatives of the Plekhanovites and the Mezhrayonka, to discuss the question of the newspaper. I remember that the first ones were present: N. P. Stoyanov, Buryanov, O. Zagorsky; from the latter: "Andrei", Ivan Petrovich Flerovsky, D. M. Novoselov, third-deputy member Nikolai Maksimovich Egorov, and, it seems, Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan. The situation was as follows: the Plekhanovites had money (albeit very little—something around 15,000 rubles) and solid literary forces; we, on the other hand, had almost no money at all, it was also poor with writers, but on the other hand we had enormous ties with the working-class regions. This was our strength. Both we and the Plekhanovites understood this. We knew that without our support, Unity (as it was decided to call the new newspaper) would wither away. Going to an agreement with the Plekhanovites,

The political line of the Plekhanovites of that time was, on the whole, tolerable, and the connection with them could not compromise us in the eyes of the unity-minded Bolshevik workers and significantly increased our chances in the fight against the Mensheviks.

An agreement was reached between us and the Plekhanovites regarding the publication of the newspaper and its distribution. A "parity" edition was drawn up. From the Plekhanovites it included: Stoyanov, Buryanov and Zagorsky, from us - "Andrei" - (I), Yegorov and Flerovsky. Stoyanov was elected secretary of the editorial office, Buryanov was elected "supervisor"; the expedition was entrusted to A. M. Novoselov.

I must note here that Unity was not considered the official organ of the Mezhrayonka. However, in fact, due to the fact that we campaigned in the regions for the support of this newspaper and organized its distribution through our regional cells, the organization also bore political responsibility for it.

Soon, after the beginning of joint work with the Plekhanovites, it turned out that it would not go smoothly. Discord began within the editorial office. They arose because Plekhanov demanded that all articles sent to us by the foreign editors of Unity (Plekhanov, Desnitsky, and others) be published in the paper without abridgements or corrections. Our "troika" never agreed with this demand, and N. P. Stoyanov found himself in a very difficult situation.

It was impossible to break with us, but Stoyanov, of course, did not dare to disobey GV Plekhanov. These disagreements deepened especially after, at our insistence, the editors did not publish a number of articles received from abroad, which aroused Plekhanov's great anger. I remember the panic Buryanov was in when he received scolding after scolding from Plekhanov for the newspaper's too left-leaning direction and for the unceremonious treatment of articles by members of the foreign editorial board.

The root of our conflicts with the Plekhanovites consisted mainly in the fact that certain articles of the foreigners did not fully correspond to the line of our organization; a strong aroma of opportunism wafted from these huge, wordy articles.

Since our organization took an active part in the newspaper, it was responsible for it. Some rank-and-file members of the organization quite reasonably did not take into account the fact that "Unity" was not our official body. In the end, we preferred to break the "unity" with the Plekhanovites in order to prevent friction within the organization. It was quite clear that we could not cook porridge with Plekhanov. We ended up pursuing a line of gradual disassociation from Unity. The progressive alienation between us and the Plekhanovites ended in a complete rupture.

Further, I consider it not superfluous to say a few words about the St. Petersburg "Trotskyites". There was no "Trotskyist" organization in St. Petersburg at the time I am describing, in working circles, "Trotskyists" numbered in the few. Among the social-democratic intelligentsia there was a group of supporters of Pravda (foreign) who kept in touch with Vienna.

In the summer of 1914, this group began publishing the journal Borba. Nothing came of her attempt to reach an agreement with us about unification. The "Borbists" held too liberal views on the question of who should be called into the united Social-Democratic Party. The "struggle" approached considerably in this respect the position of the "initiative" group. The entire connection of the Mezhrayontsev with Borba was limited to one or two articles placed in it by IP Flerovsky.

The imperialist war that broke out so unexpectedly dealt a heavy blow to all parties and trade union organizations. General mobilization, mass arrests, and most importantly, the feeling of confusion that seized not only the broad masses of workers in the first days of the war, but also individual leading party workers and even entire groups, led to the fact that work in the districts almost temporarily came to a standstill.

The Petersburg proletariat, which a few days before the declaration of war had gone through a general strike; who went to demonstrations and built barricades on the Vyborg side, fought with the Cossacks and the police - with rare exceptions, did not react in any way to the declaration of war.

One of the reasons for this passivity was that the July strike, which was actually led by no one and proceeded stormily and spontaneously, aroused a certain kind of reaction among the working masses, disappointment both in the success of the struggle and in the party organizations.

By the time the war began, the latter were generally rather weak. The St. Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks had great connections with the workers but was very weak organizationally. "Initiative", which had a good intellectual headquarters, had no masses - with the exception of the Vyborgsky and Vasileostrovsky districts. The Plekhanov group, being almost exclusively intellectual, did not have any influence in the workers' quarters, and, in fact, did not strive for this. The Party organizations got rid of the temporary hitch in their work in different ways. The Petersburg Committee recovered very quickly; as for the "Initiative", until 1917 it was in confusion and hesitation.

The Petersburg Plekhanovites fell into a panic. Their tragedy lay in the fact that the outbreak of the war interrupted their communication with foreign countries, and they were left "without directives." Meanwhile, the situation created by the war demanded from each party or group that had any serious claim to leadership of the working masses a definite answer to the question of its attitude towards the war.

Defensiveness, neutrality, or war against war—these were the fatal questions of that moment, to which urgent, clear answers had to be given.

Our organization, at its emergency meeting on July 20, unanimously adopted the slogan "war to war." It was decided to immediately issue a leaflet to the workers. We did not issue practical slogans in this leaflet, and indeed we could not. There was no point in calling on the workers to strike in protest against the war or to take more active action, for in those days such a call was doomed to failure. Protesting against the slaughter that had begun, we called on the workers to strengthen their illegal organizations, the illegal press, and so on. If the conditions of underground work in St. Petersburg was extremely difficult before the war, then with the beginning of the latter, they naturally deteriorated many times over. I remember with what difficulty we managed to organize the publication of a leaflet devoted to the war. This leaflet (written by "Andrei") was composed in the apartment of Lev Mikhailovich Karakhan, who entered the mezhrayonka in the summer of 1914. The proclamation was rewritten for typesetting by L. M. Karakhan's wife, Klavdia Efremovna. Only on July 28 or 29 was our leaflet printed (1,000-1,500 copies) and distributed throughout the districts. The distribution was well staged. The leaflet found its way into almost all the major enterprises*.

* The proclamation of the inter-district, about which Comrade Yurenev speaks, is reprinted in the collection Pamyatn. agitation Literature R. S.-D. R.P. Volume VI. Issue. I. Proclamations of 1914, Ispart, Gosizdat, II. 1923, pp. 81-82. A proclamation beginning with the words: “Comrade workers! Done!” — ends with the following slogans:

“Down with autocracy! Down with the war!!

“Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat!

"Long live the revolution!

"Long live the democratic republic!" 

Note. ed.

By the time of publication, our leaflet was the first. Somewhat later, a leaflet of the Petersburg Committee came out. As for the "Initiative", it seems that she did not react in any way to the declaration of war.

Our attempt to enlist Stoyanov's group in the joint publication of the leaflet ended in failure: the Plekhanovites refused to attach their own to our signature under it. I remember my conversations with N. P. Stoyanov on this subject. Truly, it was a pity for the man. “Personally,” he told me, “I fully agree with your line on the question of the war, but what Georgy Valentinovich will say, I don’t know. I cannot take the liberty of defining the line of the Plekhanovites on such a fundamental question. My conversations with him ended with the fact that the leaflet was published only with the signature of the “mezhrayonka”.

I must note that N. P. Stoyanov, an undoubted anti-defencist at that time, provided us with some financial assistance, which facilitated the publication of the leaflet.

After the declaration of war, some of our fellow district workers showed confusion. The German "armored fist" hypnotized them, and they "staggered". Unfortunately, Savva-Shevchenko also belonged to the number of those who hesitated. However, our inner moods were very soon outlived by us, and work, starting from August, went at full speed. By September, the districts had become stronger, and the center of the organization began to function correctly.

Vasileostrovsky district was the last citadel from the first days of its foundation. As I said above, work in it began as early as the end of 1913. However, it developed widely and gained strength only from the second half of 1914.

Vasileostrovsky district has a rather original history, and therefore it is necessary to say more about it.

During the pre-war July strike, so-called "strike committees" spontaneously sprang up in some areas, organs for guiding the movement. In the vast majority of cases, they conducted their work at their own risk and fear. Such a strike committee also arose in July in the Vasileostrovsky district. The committee was organized on the basis of the interparty principle. It represented all the revolutionary socialist elements existing in the region. It was personalrepresentation along party lines. According to the comrades who worked on the committee, it consisted of the following persons: 1) Yakov Pavlovich Kubyshkin, a young worker of the 8th workshop of the Pipe Plant, an inter-district member by party membership, 2) Vasily Shunyakov, a compositor of the printing house of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences - a Bolshevik, 3) Zhigarev - a Bolshevik 4) Unuchik, a worker at the Pipe Factory, is a Bolshevik; 5-7) one Menshevik and two Socialist-Revolutionaries.

With the outbreak of the war, the strike committee disintegrated, but the personal connection between its members (workers from the same district) was naturally preserved. Our organization decided to use the remnants of the strike committee in the sense of drawing it into our organization. We began to act through Comrade Yakov Kubyshkin, mentioned above. In August, Kubyshkin and Shunyakov convened (at the apartment of Comrade Yakovlev, a worker in the third workshop of the Pipe Plant) a meeting of representatives of the following Academy.

The meeting was attended by 11 people, among them - in addition to the initiators - Zhigarev, Ivanov, Averin, Anna - an employee of the 2nd workshop of the Pipe Plant. At the meeting, the question was raised about the current situation and about party building. Those assembled decided to organize an illegal party and temporarily "autonomous" district and, without hesitation for a moment, declared themselves the district committee of the R.S.-D.R.P.; as expected, they elected the executive committee of the district committee. The latter included the following comrades: 1) Yakov Kubyshkin, 2) Zhigarev, and 3) Shunyakov. The "Executive Committee" was instructed to establish contact with other enterprises of the district; organize regional equipment; to get in touch with the Petersburg Committee and with the Mezhrayonka by sending a representative to each of these organizations for "acquaintance and observation" - and, finally, to prepare the following,

The members of the Executive Committee, young workers full of energy and thirst for struggle, for the most part able and intelligent people, launched a great deal of work. Already 2-3 weeks after the August meeting of the initiative district committee, executive. the committee convened a meeting of representatives of fourteen plants, factories and printing houses of the region. Eleven of these enterprises had illegal party cells, the rest had reliable personal connections. Each cell delegated one representative to the meeting of the district committee.

According to Yasha Kubyshkin and other comrades, at that time the "autonomous" Vasileostrovsky district united approximately 80-90 people.

The Mezhrayonka, which by this time had attracted the influential comrade Shunyakov into its ranks, found that the moment had come to begin decisive action in the sense of drawing the district to its side. Our "agent" in the area, comrade. Kubyshkin, received directives from the mezhrayonka on how to act, and a draft platform that was to be proposed to the assembly of the autonomous region. This platform was the platform of our organization. Decisive anti-defencism, the reconstruction of the party on the basis of the unity of the revolutionary elements of the Social-Democrats. Here are her highlights. I. P. Flerovsky participated from us at the meeting of the Vasileostrovtsy. After a rather lengthy debate, the Vasileostrovsky District Committee unanimously accepted our platform: only one comrade. Unuchik abstained from voting. Since that time, the Vasileostrovskiy district has actually become our district. Formally, he still continued to be boundboth with us and with the Petersburg Committee, but this "independence" was already the purest fiction.

The area had its own press and equipment (hectograph and well-equipped manual printing house). The publishing activity of the district was controlled by us. In the fall, a sheet of general political content was issued signed by the inter-district committee and the Vasileostrovsky "district collective" *. This state of affairs in the region, of course, did not suit the Petersburg Committee in any way. Vasileostrovsky district (one of the most important in St. Petersburg) was the subject of constant "desires" of the St. Petersburg Committee. The latter at that time was extremely weak. Comrades closely associated with him testify to this. So, for example, comrade. Zhigarev in the Red Chronicle speaks of the connection of the Bolsheviks of the Vasileostrovsky district "with the remnants of the St. Petersburg Committee." These remnants began work to win the district over to their side. Although P.K. it was not much, however, his “firm” enjoyed great confidence among the masses, and we had to spend a lot of effort before we finally “repelled” the pressure of the Petersburg Committee.

* In November 1914, signed by "Vasily-Ostrovsky District Committee and the Interdistrict Commission", a printed leaflet was published calling on the workers to demand the release of 5 arrested members of the Social-Democrats. faction (Bolsheviks) State. Duma. On the sheet there is a note that it was printed in the “printing house of the district”. The leaflet was reprinted in full on Sat. “Monuments of agitation. Literature R.S.-D.R.P. T. VI. Issue. 1 of the 1914 Proclamation, p. 108-109. Note. ed.

In the fall, the latter turned to the Vasileostrovtsy with a demand to "decide in one direction or another." Lenin's wing in the autonomous region began to grow stronger. To resolve the issue of the formal position of the district, a special delegate meeting was convened. After an incredibly fierce debate, by a majority of one vote (the voice of the chairman), the meeting decided to join the St. Petersburg Committee.

However, this decision was protested by our supporters in the cells. In view of this, the executive committee of the district recognized the need to convene a new meeting, more correctly represented. A week later, a new delegate meeting was held. This time, by an overwhelming majority of votes, it was decided to unite with the mezhrayonka.

After that, P.K. gave his supporters the order to break away from the district and form their own, Bolshevik. This split took place but weakened the organization extremely slightly. In P.K. two cells left: the Cable Plant and Siemens-Schuckert. In addition, Zhigarev and Unuchik "personally" left. The attempts of the breakaway comrades to enlist behind them a group of Latvian workers who were very close-knit and influential in the area (25 people) were not crowned with success. The influence of the inter-district on Vasilyevsky Island is quite clearly confirmed by Comrade I mentioned more than once. Zhigarev. He says bluntly: the masses followed us and that P.K. there were no workers, and those that were were very young, inexperienced and not very active.

Instead of the departed comrade. Zhigarev in Spanish. The district committee committee elected an old party worker, a member of the Latvian group, a worker of the Possel horseshoe factory, comrade. Wever. Work in the area went very well. It could have gone even better if it were not for the lack of propagandists.

Petersburg. The committee, which suffered a defeat in the Vasileostrovsky district in the fall, did not lay down its arms and, having become stronger organizationally, launched a new attack on us in a number of districts, including Vasileostrovsky. Here she was most persistent. At crowded meetings of the most active members of the mezhrayonka and St. Petersburg. Committee, more than once the question of the tasks of the party and party building was very fiercely debated. In general, we systematically defeated P.K.

Of the discussions with its representatives, I especially remember one when, as a speaker from P.K. Comrade spoke. "Kirill". This is Kirill Ivanovich Shutko, an old intellectual, a party worker, who left in 1911-1914. Vologda exile; smart, knowledgeable, but with anguish and "skepticism" comrade. He could well be called the Hamlet of the Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks. The speech of "Kirill" was not an example of the speeches of other speakers from P.K. serious, thoughtful, but there was no conviction in her;there was no inner sense of self-righteousness. “Kirill” finished his (final) speech in an extremely original way - he admitted that the inter-district thesis that the Bolshevik Leninists did not have the right to appropriate the company R.S.-D.R.P. quite correct. This is a confession made by the official representative of St. Petersburg. Committee, made a stunning, depressing impression on the Leninist workers present at the discussion and strengthened the spirit of our supporters. Our fierce enemy, the young energetic worker comrade, was especially upset and indignant at the speech of "Kirill". Mavrin (now a member of the Russian Communist Party, works in St. Petersburg - manages the plant of the former Becher).

Poor "Kirill" received from Petersburg. Committee of the head washer of exceptional energy. Nina Ferdinandovna Agadzhanova (party nickname "Nina"; a wonderful comrade, fanatically devoted to the cause of the revolution and the party; a Leninist to ecstasy) took him up on hostility. The attempts of the St. Petersburg Committee to tear off the Vasileostrovtsy from us stopped only by the beginning of 1915.

Until April of that year, the executive committee of the district consisted of the following persons: 1) Shunyakov, 2) Kubyshkin and 3) Vever. The district secretary was Kubyshkin. representatives to the center. organizations were the latter and Shunyakov.

In the autumn of 1914, the organization took firm root in the Gorodsky and Narva districts. In the summer, the Gorodskoy district was extremely weak, only by autumn (around October) did we get reliable contacts with printers (typesetter Iosif Petrovsky, Menshevik) and tanners (case maker Nikolai Petushkov, now a member of the Russian Communist Party, works in the G.P.U.). The safe house in our district was owned by the woodworker Andrey Gusev, an anarchist by conviction, who provided great technical services to the mezhrayonka.

The first initiative meeting of the City District was attended by 15 people. Of these, in addition to Petrovsky and Petushkov, I remember Dmitry Bulatov, a worker at the Breitgam factory (now a member of the RCP, was secretary of the Smolensk Provincial Committee), Sergei Markin (compositor), one representative from the Volkov factory. At this meeting, a plan of work in the region was outlined. First of all, the task was set to contact as far as possible with all enterprises. It was painstaking work. I had to worm out from the meeting participants who had what kind of connections; give directions on who to meet. Generally speaking, the audience had to be instructed how to conduct organizational work.

Two or three weeks later, at the apartment of the same Andrey Gusev, a new, this time, already more seriously prepared district meeting was held. Eighteen enterprises were represented at it. There were 25-30 people in total at the meeting. Those who gathered without much debate accepted the platform of the mezhrayonka. I do not think that they understood very well the intricacies of our disagreements with the Leninists; they joined us because they could not go with the Mensheviks; they were repelled from the Bolsheviks by the steep line of Pravda; the main role was played by the lack of proper work of the St. Petersburg Committee. The meeting elected an executive committee of the district of three people. Petrovsky and two other comrades entered it.

The city district was useful to the organization, among other things, in that it finally gave us, thanks to extensive connections with printers, the opportunity to set up a good party printing house. The organizer of the latter was the indefatigable "nosy", in the good sense of the word, who knows all the typographical people, Joseph Petrovsky. He managed to quickly set up a printing house and supply it with a large number of fonts of every kind.

Soon, through Petrovsky and Gusev, our committee received contacts in the Narva region. In it, before the start of the war, neither ours nor P.K. had. The party public of the district was grouped around the first Narva Educational Society (comrade A. Bodrov was the chairman). With the outbreak of the war, this society was closed, like all other workers' organizations. Then a group of active Social-Democratic workers, deprived of legal opportunities, formed an "initiative group" and decided to carry on active party work underground at their own peril and risk.

About mid-August, this group convened a meeting of representatives of the factories and factories of the Narva region. Not only Bolsheviks were invited to this conference, but also revolutionary-minded Mensheviks (for example, the Putilovite Egorov). 15 people participated in the meeting. Most of them were Putilov workers.

Of the participants in the meeting, I know the following persons: Andrei Bodrov (“Boris”), a young worker in the model workshop of the Putilov factory (now a member of the Russian Communist Party, was an adviser to our plenipotentiary representation in Bukhara, recently switched to economic work), 2) Yakovlev, a Bolshevik worker cannon workshop of the Putilov factory, 3) Belkin, a worker in the shell workshop, 4) Davydov.

The meeting set itself the goal of creating an illegal party organization in the region. Having fixed itself as a district, it elected an executive commission - the "troika", which was instructed to establish contacts with all the enterprises of the district, organize cells in them, and also contact party centers. Bodrov, Belkin and a Bolshevik cannon workshop worker, known in the region under the nickname "Ruffy", were elected to this trio.

Belkin and "Ershisty" were Bolshevik-Leninists; Bodrov was a Menshevik-party member. The work of the troika was carried out very vigorously and successfully. Already by mid-October in the "Narva district of R.S.-D.R.P." there were about 125-130 members. The basis of the organization, of course, was the Putilov factory, which had party cells in the shell, boiler, cannon, tower and model workshops.

In addition, there was a cell at the Tentelevsky chemical plant, with Tilmans in the Baltic workshops. At the end of October or at the beginning of November the district was quite settled. According to their factional affiliation, 90% of its members were Bolsheviks.

A "delegate meeting" was held regularly, consisting of representatives of the cells. Instead of a temporary troika, an executive committee of the district committee was elected consisting of 5 people: 1) Bodrov, 2) Belkin, 3) "Ershisty", 4) Baranovsky, a Bolshevik, a worker at the Putilov shipyard, 5) Yakovlev, a Bolshevik. However, the district, despite such a good organization, did not have its own printing house and ate exclusively the leaflets of the mezhrayonka. According to trustworthy comrades, in the second half of 1914, only our leaflets were encountered in the factories and factories of the Narva region; In this period, the Narva residents did not feel any other organization except for the inter-district.

In November, some members of the "autonomous" Narva organization began to attend meetings of our circle of workers in the Narva region. This circle consisted mainly of Putilov workers (Bogdanov, Zhuravlev, and others). A. Bodrov was among the members of the "autonomous" organization who visited him. Through him, who completely joined the inter-district, we got in touch with the above-mentioned autonomous organization of the Narva region.

On our initiative, a joint delegate meeting of representatives of the cells of the Autonomous Region and our groups was convened in November. Without much discussion, the meeting unanimously decided to enter the mezhrayonka. A. Bodrov was elected as a representative to our city center. At the very end of 1914, "horse patrols" of St. Petersburg appeared in the area. Bolshevik Committee. Began "agitation and propaganda" for the annexation of the area to the Leninists. However, until the beginning of 1915, these attempts by P.K. remained unsuccessful. Only after the inter-district organization suffered significant losses during arrests in February and the Narva district committee "hung in the air" did the St. Petersburg Committee managed to win it over.

It must be added that in the spring of 1915 a major failure occurred in the region, and the organization was completely defeated.

Speaking about our work in the Narva region, it must also be said that the so-called. The "First Narva Workers' Evening Courses" (200-300 workers' apprentices) were under our exclusive influence.

As for other districts, several circles functioned in Petersburg. There were cells at the Pulkan factories, at Kirchner, at the Langenzipen factory.

The work was headed by the already mentioned Valentin Serikov. In the Petersburg region, we also had to make war with P.K., but with less success than in other regions. In particular, I had to endure a fight with Comrade. Ivar Smilga (his then party nickname was "Eugene"). It was like this: the workers of several factories, mainly Bolsheviks, wished to hear a report from the mezhrayonka. We, of course, willingly responded to this desire. My report was scheduled. The audience, as I immediately felt it, was specially selected, definitely Leninist-minded. Of course, we had no chance of success here. I was shattered and fled.

In addition to "Eugene" I remember the following employees of St. Petersburg. Committee of the end of 1914: "Kirilla", "Nina", "Peter" (Peter Zalutsky) "Leonida" (Stark Leonid), "Foma", Lutovinova.

In addition to the Narva, Vasileostrovsky, Gorodsky and Petersburg regions, our organization also worked in the Moscow region. There was a cell at the Skorokhod factory, there were connections in other enterprises and printing houses. However, the work was not wide-ranging. Our base was the Skorokhod factory.

The total number of mezhrayonka members at the end of 1914 reached approximately 300-350 members, of which about 60 percent paid membership dues.

I have already pointed out above that in the second half of 1914 the "center" of the mezhraionka became stronger than in the summer, when the organization undoubtedly had more members, and the work was of a very broad character.

At the end of 1914, at one of the meetings of the "inter-district commission", it was decided to be renamed the committee. The first composition of the committee was as follows: 1) Yakov Kubyshkin, from Vasileostrovsky district, 2) Shunyakov, from Vasileostr. district, 3) A. Bodrov, from Narvsky, 4) Iosif Petrovsky, from City, 5) Pavlov, from Moscow, 6) "Andrei" (I) - actually the secretary of the committee and 7) Maria Yakovlevna Ratner ("Mara", student, was a member of M.K. as a representative of the propaganda group). This composition of the committee lasted until February 1915. We usually gathered at the worker of the Pipe Plant, comrade Ivanova, Uralskaya st., 2.

The functions between the members of the Committee were, although not very precisely, nevertheless divided: technology (printing house) was in charge of Joseph Petrovsky; Finance, it seems, comrade. Shunyakov; "Mara" was a representative of our very small propaganda group, consisting mainly of students and female students, and worked among female workers.

I had to do everything that was required by the interests of the work.

Speaking at one time about the City District, I pointed out that with its help we managed to establish a good illegal printing house.

It was kept in the apartment of the worker "Andrey" (a young, wonderful comrade, a Latvian, a Bolshevik, I don't remember his last name), on the Petersburg side, along Bolshaya Ropshinsky street, house number 9, apt. No. 14. He constantly worked in the Andrey technique, with raids by Joseph Petrovsky and Yasha Kubyshkin. It contained five leaflets * and half of the first issue of the Vperyod inter-district organ. Ready-made sheets were sent to a special safe house on the Petersburg side, and from there they were transported to the districts.

* In December 1914, a printed proclamation was issued on behalf of the “Petersburg Interdistrict Commission” (“Comrades, workers! The cruel, monstrous war has been going on for five months!” ...), directed against the imperialist war and calling on the workers to organize and join the R.S.- D.R.P. The proclamation was reprinted on Sat. “Monuments of propaganda. literature R.S.-D.R.P. Volume VI. B. I. Proclamations of 1914, pp. 115-116. Note. ed.

The Committee very keenly felt the need to publish an illegal newspaper and already in November decided to take all measures to set up one. We had to overcome many difficulties before we were able to prepare the release of the first issue.

The fact is that such a large publication required a lot of fonts of different varieties; in addition, it was necessary to stock up on paper. Now all this seems to be mere trifles, and at a time when every careless step in the work threatened with failure, one had to spend a lot of time and energy on the most modest tasks. The organizer of the technical side of our magazine was an energetic worker, Comrade Joseph Petrovsky.

At the suggestion of Comrade Flerovsky, we named our newspaper Vperyod . Its editors included "Andrey" (I), I. P. Flerovsky and "Mara". For the first issue were planned: an advanced one (about the tasks of the newspaper and our organization); the article "On the Causes of the World War" (written by me); an article on the organizational issue, as well as a "chronicle".

As a precaution, so that the originals of the written articles did not fall into the hands of the Okhrana, copies were taken from the latter by comrades who stood completely apart from work, copies of which went into typesetting. At first, "Forward" was printed by "Andrey", but it was not possible to finish his work, because surveillance was noticed behind the apartment. In view of this, the committee decided to stop work and transfer the printing house to another, more reliable place. By this time, we had a plan to deliver equipment in Novgorod.

The printing house was moved in parts beyond the Narva outpost to the apartment of comrade. Bodrov (not "Boris"), a worker at the Putilov factory. He had to keep it until Sergei Markin, who was entrusted with the organization of printing houses in Novgorod, prepared an apartment for her.

On the evening of February 2, 1915, Sergei Markin brought the printing house to the Nikolaevsky railway station and was about to “plunge” into the car, when he was unexpectedly seized by the gendarmes. During interrogation in the security department, he was so intimidated and confused by the head of the secret police, who promised him "execution" in case of concealment of "accomplices" and two or three years in prison in case of "sincere repentance", that he betrayed everyone he knew, saying beyond the truth all sorts of nonsense.

According to Markin's slander, in the next 2-3 days, the following were arrested: Andrey Gusev, Zhuravlev (Putilovets), Petushkov (tanner), Bodrov (not "Boris"), Bogdanov (Putilovets), Iosif Petrovsky and me.

I was taken on the street at 10 am on February 5th. In the evening in the Okhrana, I had a "face-to-face confrontation" with Markin, who recognized me. To the guard's question to Markin: "Do you know this man?" I accepted his hands and categorically refused to confirm the identification. The confrontation ended with that.

Along with efforts to put up an illegal newspaper, the committee sought to create a special military organization. We had connections with the barracks both in St. Petersburg (Kexholmsky and Preobrazhensky regiments) and in Kronstadt, but there were no organized cells. The military part of the work of the inter-district was entrusted to "Mara". Unfortunately, her efforts were not crowned with success, and this happened primarily because of failures.

(End to follow).

I. Yurenev.

"Mezhrayonka" (1911-1917).

"Proletarian Revolution", 1924, No. 2 (25).

The February arrest dealt a rather tangible blow to our organization. However, two weeks after the failure, the work went on as before. By this time, our Committee had succeeded in attracting a very valuable group of active old party workers-internationalists to the membership of the organization. Of these, I must first of all mention such a devoted, honest, experienced and selfless comrade as Lyudmila Modestovna Bystrov (a Bolshevik, a member of the RCP from the day the Mezhrayonka merged with the RCP, in 1920/21 she was a member of the presidium of the Pskov Gubernia Executive Committee). She worked under the nickname "Irina". Further, another old Bolshevik, Lina Leontievna Leonova, worked very actively. On Vasilyevsky Island, the school where she was a teacher was the headquarters of the Mezhrayonka.

The organization was greatly benefited by Alexander Lvovich Popov (an intellectual, an excellent comrade, an internationalist; unfortunately, a comrade not too firm in his views). He worked in our organization as an organizer, propagandist, "writer" of proclamations and articles in legal journals.

At the same time, Nikolai Abramovich Chernov, a lecturer at the Psycho-Neurological Institute, a Plekhanovite (now standing outside the parties), entered the work on the mountain for the organization.

At the same time, Comrade Konstantin Sukhanov (not to be confused with N.N. Sukhanov-Gimmer) was an active member of the organization. In 1917, he joined the Bolshevik Party, was chairman of the Vladivostok Soviet and was shot by the Japanese.

Our districts (with the exception of Narva, which ceded to P.K. Bolsheviks after the failure) continued to work actively and became much stronger organizationally. Several new active workers came forward in the districts.

In the first half of 1915, the Interdistrict Committee consisted of the following persons: 1) Yakov Zhubyshkin, 2) Vasily Shunyakov (both from the Vasileostrovsky district), 3) worker of the Vulkan plant Petrov, from the Petersburg district, 4) textile worker Iv. Saveliev, from City, 5) Pavlov, from Moscow, 6) A. L. Popov, 7) "Irina", 8) Lina and 9) L. Karakhan *.

* Karakhan joined us back in 1914. He began to work quite actively in 1915. Comrade. Karakhan is a Menshevik by factional "orientation", in the R.S.-D.R.P. since 1907; in 1912 he worked with the faction of the State. Dumas; joined the Bolshevik Party in July 1917; on the Soviet side - a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs and the plenipotentiary of the S. S. S. R. in China.

The organization maintained, as in 1914, personal ties with the Plekhanov group.

At the beginning of 1915, in order to establish contact with foreign groups of internationalists, a special delegation was equipped by the Committee. It included A.L. Popov and another comrade*. According to Comrade. Karakhan, Comrade Trotsky was especially “sympathetic” to the Mezhrayonka delegate. However, nothing specific from the mission of Comrade Popov failed. Soon the connection with the foreign countries broke, and the Mezhrayonka carried on the work at its own risk and fear, being completely independent organizationally and politically.

* A. L. Popov and N. P. Stoyanov went abroad at the end of December 1914. Stoyanov remained in Geneva, and Popov returned to Petrograd in March 1915 (see A. Popov, Page of memoirs about work in the Mezhrayonka " - "Prol. Revolution", No. 10 (22), 1923). Note. ed.

Shortly after the failure of our printing house in February, the Committee managed to establish a new manual one and set about organizing a large enterprise - the purchase of a legal printing house.

Money for the purchase of such (15-20 thousand) was given to the Committee of comrade. A. L. Popov. Comrade's attempt Karakhan failed to acquire a printing house in her name. The purchase in the name of Romanov (a worker, a Siberian) ended very sadly: Romanov fled with the money he received from Karakhan (10-12 thousand rubles). Karakhan decided to find Romanov at all costs, and, like Pinkerton, he searched St. Petersburg and Moscow. Traces of Romanov led to Ponevezh, where Comrade went. Karakhan. Quite by chance, he met Romanov there on the street and after a conversation with him, threatening the "fugitive" with a weapon, delivered him to St. Petersburg. However, the organization did not receive any money. Romanov kept delaying the delivery of them and, a few days after his arrival in St. Petersburg disappeared "from under the supervision" of the organization. Soon, Comrade Karakhan received a letter from Romanov in the mail, in which he demanded that the organization leave him alone and threatened to turn to the police for help otherwise.

In the end, the printing house was nevertheless acquired in the name of the mother of L. M. Karakhan. The technical side of the work in the printing house was in charge of two old party comrades-printers - Kalmykov and Ivan Sibiryak. However, in the acquired printing house, the Committee managed to print only one proclamation.

An attempt to put the publication of a legal internationalist magazine also ended in failure. On the eve of the congress of military-industrial committees, the organization negotiated with N. N. Sukhanov about acquiring the journal Sovremennik from him; however, these negotiations did not lead to anything concrete. Then it was decided to publish their own magazine. They called it "New Earth".Permission was received from the mayor's office. It seemed that the magazine would soon begin to appear. His editors (Karakhan and Popov) were fully provided with literary material, submit articles to Trotsky, Manuilsky, Antonov-Ovseenko, Lozovsky I. etc. However, the magazine never saw the light of day. On September 1, L. M. Karakhan was arrested (on the street). The printing press had to be liquidated. Its font was partly distributed among the printing houses of the mezhrayonka, partly given to the St. Petersburg Committee. Negotiations about this led L. Stark. The font was passed through Khrulev, who later turned out to be a provocateur.

In the summer of 1915, the organization still managed to organize the publication of the legal fortnightly Tekstilshchik. The editorial board of the journal was placed in the Board of the Union. However. "Textilshchik" did not last long. It was closed by the mayor after the release of the first three issues.

In addition to publishing this magazine, the organization managed to do what it "stumbled" in February 1915 - to publish in October the illegal magazine Vperyod. I printed it, as well as leaflets from the organization of Comrade. Prokhorov, draftsman of a metal plant, who worked under the nickname "Yezhov".

I remember how glad we were, who were sitting in the Preliminary at that time, when we managed to get one issue of our magazine Vperyod from "outside".

The political work of the Mezhrayonka consisted in a stubborn struggle against defenseism, the spokesman of which was the so-called "working group" under the Central Military-Industrial Committee.

Mezhrayonka and Petersburg. The committee also worked during the described period in fairly close contact; jointly held many strikes and jointly fought against the Gvozdevites. So, at the end of August 1915, during a discussion (at the Aivaz plant) of the issue of the military industry. committees, Karakhan and the Bolshevik L. Stark held a united front against Kuzma Gvozdev. This meeting, as expected, did not lead to any results. The differences between the major groups were too great for a common language to be found.

IV. 1916

At the beginning of the year, the organization received through comrade. "Irina" is connected with the St. Petersburg students. Among the young people involved in the work were the psycho-neurological student Isai (his real name is unknown to me; he lived on the passport "Davydov"; Menshevik; at the end of 1916 he did not migrate to Mezhrayonki to the Petersburg Initiate group; after the February revolution he went to the inhabitants) and student student - Sonya Shulga (Bolshevik, most devoted comrade; from the end of 1916 the actual secretary of the Committee; now a member of the RCP).

Almost simultaneously with the receipt of new workers, the organization lost Chernov (the party nickname "Nikolai") for the good of it. The latter, being a Plekhanovite, showed an ever-greater inclination towards the defencists and, finally, openly rebelled against the line of the Committee. Chernov's disorganization-defensive activities ended in his being shamefully expelled from the organization. At the beginning of 1916, the Committee consisted of the following comrades: 1) "Irina", 2) A. L. Popov. 3) Erofeev (pipe factory worker, member of the Isi. Committee of the Vasileostrovsky district), 4) Grigory Petrov (worker of the Baltic Aeronautical Plant; joined our organization in 1915; enjoyed great influence in the region - he attracted several working groups to the organization), 5) Yakov Vubyshkin (from the Moscow region where he worked at that time), 6) Savelyev Ivan (city district).

In the districts, work proceeded at an accelerated pace. In St. Petersburg there were cells at Kirchner, in the State. printing houses, at Langezipen, at the old and new Vulkan, etc. New attempts by the provocateur N. P. Bogdanov to penetrate the regional organization ended in failure this time as well.

A number of circles functioned in the city district and there were separate connections with most of the enterprises of the district. Sonya Shulga and Ivan Savelyev worked actively in the Isai region. Our business also went better in the Moscow region. This circumstance is explained by the fact that Yasha Kubyshkin migrated from the pipe factory to Skorokhod and led party work in the region with all his inherent energy.

Work has also improved in the Porokhov district. The soul of the latter was our old comrade A. M. Novoselov.

The work was especially intensive in the Vasileostrovsky district. A number of strong devotees of the workers' party* came to the fore in it.

* Of these, comrades should be especially noted: 1) Vasily Serov (worked in the Rowing Port; since 1917 in the Russian Communist Party, was at one time the director of the Obukhovsky plant; now the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Vasileostrovsky district); 2) Muravkina (a worker at a pipe factory, since 1917 a member of the Russian Communist Party); 3) Roman Anisimova (nail factory worker); 4) Alexei Petrov (worker of the Baltic shipbuilding plant); 5) Yanevets (compositor) and 6) worker Katya (factory Voronin, Lutch and Chesher).

At the end of March, our illegal printing house collapsed. By this time, the printing house, located on Pushkinskaya (Vperyod was printed in it), was "curtailed" and handed over to the worker of the Baltic Shipbuilding. factory comrade. Sukholetov. Instead, a new printing house was organized and comrade. "Yezhov" was instructed to print a leaflet for the anniversary of the Lena massacre. Whether through the efforts of a provocateur or as a result of an accident, our printing house failed. "Yezhov" was arrested at work. Many manuscripts and large stocks of type were taken from him.

In early April, Grigory Petrov was also arrested. The gendarmes tried to fasten him to the Yezhov case. Both comrades were imprisoned until the February revolution.

Around the same time, the organization made an unsuccessful attempt to establish an illegal printing house in Vologda. Contact with the local party group was obtained by us through comrade. "Irina". This case was directly organized by Alexei Petrov (not to be confused with A. Petrov of Vasilievsky Island), who later turned out to be a provocateur.

After the failure of Comrade "Yezhov" organization very soon established a new printing house. Due to the extreme complexity of this enterprise, attempts to publish an illegal newspaper were abandoned by us. By the summer we managed to organize the publication of leaflets in one of the legal printing houses. This case was arranged for us by a member of the Interdistrict Committee (from the Nevsky District), comrade. Maksimov, who managed to use his relative, co-owner of the above printing house (located on Gorokhovaya). Printing was done for a fee. A thousand copies cost us 50 rubles. The paper was left by the printing house. The latter lasted the whole of 1916 and stopped its work only on March 1, 1917. Our leaflets, unlike those of other organizations (oh patriotism!) were published in most cases on good paper and clearly printed. Relations with Maximov were in charge of Comrade Sonya Shulga.

At the end of January 1916, in the Petrograd Military District Court, they were tried under Article 102, a group of inter-district residents were arrested in February 1915. The "defendants" managed to get off fairly easily. The main witness for the prosecution, the printer Markin, who slandered us all, died in prison from scurvy, and therefore the defense blamed him for all the sins that were attributed to the other accused.

Thanks to Markin's death, we got off too cheaply. Only Andrei Gusev received penal servitude; Bodrov received a link to the settlement, another of my co-processors received a fortress, the rest were acquitted.

After leaving prison, I immediately contacted the Committee. The leading role in the latter at that time was played by Alexander Lvovich Popov. I met him and "Irina" at Comrade. Erofeeva (member of the Vasileostr. District Committee and the Interdistrict Committee). Quickly getting up to speed, I (under the nickname "Ilya") went into work but was forced to limit the scope of my activities to the framework of committee meetings, meetings with district leaders and writing leaflets.

As expected, the secret police set up the most ferocious surveillance of me. "Horse and foot" accompanied me wherever possible. To all my misadventures was added the fact that the prosecutor of the military district court protested such a lenient sentence, and I had to wait from day to day of arrest. To avoid this, I preferred to leave Petrograd and after a three-day quarantine at our headquarters on Kolomenskaya Street. in house number 55 safely departed for Simferopol. But on the first day after arrival, he was arrested. As a "deserter", I was sent to the 36th reserve battalion, from where I escaped a week later. He left for Evpatoria, where he lived, using all the gifts of the beautiful Crimea, for a month and a half.

He returned in August or at the end of July to St. Petersburg, black as a negritos, and with pathetic hints of a beard (a weak attempt to insure himself against "familiar" spies). Arriving, I immediately switched to an illegal position, settling on the passport of student Vitaly Baranovsky. From that time on I went back to work closely.

In the second half of 1916, our organization received new and very significant proletarian reinforcements: the Nevsky and Narva regions. In the Nevsky district, we got an "autonomous" working illegal social-democracy. organization grouped around the so-called. Kornilov school.

It happened in the following way. Back in the summer, Mezhrayonka (represented by Isai) got in touch with the worker of the Obukhov plant, comrade. "Ivan", with the help of which we created a circle of Obukhov workers. This circle met at the apartment of the worker, comrade. “Garina” (his real name is Mikhailov) and once was almost captured by the police, who, fortunately for us, mixed up the apartment number and swooped in instead of comrade. Garin to some doctor who lived on the floor above.

Through Garin, we contacted the aforementioned "autonomous" group. The latter, which had no connection with any citywide party center, included about twenty workers from various factories and factories in the region. Most of the members of this organization were Bolshevik-minded.

Soon the autonomous group*, represented by the vast majority of its members, entered the Mezhrayonka. The committee sent one of the most energetic members of our propaganda group, Com. Isaak Kroshinsky, student of psychoneurology. He, together with comrade Ivan Maksimov, managed to establish contacts with almost all the enterprises of the region and organize illegal cells in the largest of them. Contacts were received with the Nevsky Shipbuilding Plant (cell), with the card factory (personal connections), the Thornton factory (separate connections), the Pal factory (cell), the iron foundry (I don’t remember what it was called - there was a cell), with Maxwell (the cell, the workers of comrades Ivanova and Chernova were actively working).

* I consider it not useless to name the members of this group (unfortunately, I did not manage to find out the names of all the comrades): 1) Bogachov (worker of the Alexander Carriage Works), 2) “Ipatych” (worker, former anarchist), 3) Titov (clerk District Labor Exchange), 4) Goncharov (worker of a porcelain factory), 5) Alexander Arefiev (worker), 6) Maksimov (worker from Obukhov), 7) Andryushko (also an Obukhov member), 8) “Henrietta” (teacher of the Kornilov school), 9) "Ivan" (also mentioned earlier, Obukhov).

At the head of the district work were comrade "Ivan" and Maximov; the latter was a completely convinced Mezhrayontsy, while the former had an internal struggle between sympathy for the Mezhrayontsy and the Central Committee traditions. The permanent representative of the district in the Committee was comrade. Maximov, but in fact most often attended the meetings of "Ivan".

The district launched a wide range of activities. In particular, he conducted a long and successful campaign in connection with the high cost. By the end of the year Comrade Boris (his real name was Livshits, a student at the Psychoneurological Institute) was sent to the region to help Isaak Kroshinsky.

Somewhat later than with the Nevsky district, we received a connection with Narva. We recruited comrade. Panov, a prominent district worker who enjoyed great influence. Panov worked as a secretary of the health insurance fund of the Putilov factory. In addition to him, we managed to find some more old connections from the time of 1914.

On our initiative, I think in November, a district "conference" was convened. It presented: most of the workshops of the Putilov factory; plant "Triangle" (worker Rebrov and worker Natasha); Tillmans factory. About 20 people attended the conference. After the report of the representative of the Mezhrayonka on the current situation and the tasks of party building, the conference unanimously decided to join us. A permanent employee of the Interdistrict Committee in the Narva region was "Nyuta" (her last name was Itkina, a student of the Psychoneurological Institute, now a member of the RCP).

In the City District we had groups of textile workers (the result of the efforts of Comrade Iv. Savelyev); a group of dressmakers organized by comrade. Sonya Shulga; a group of tanners (Payor's factory); a cell at a Franco-Russian plant; at the New Paper Spinning Mill; a group of hairdressers organized by Nyuta.

In the Porokhov region, the organization had two or three working cells in the second half of 1916. Isaak Kroshinsky conducted regular work in the area and from time to time "Boris" and "Anatoly" ran into.

We also managed to contact the Vyborgsky district, the citadel of St. Petersburg. Bolshevik Committee. However, here we did not conduct an active, competing with P.K. work and directed mainly their efforts to disorganize the "Initiative" and the Gvozdevites; we partly succeeded. We had cells in the region at the factories: Baranovsky (15 people), Nobel's had 6-7 people, and at the Aivaz plant - 8-10 people. This area was served by "Boris", "Anatoly", and mainly by the same indomitable Comrade who kept the peace everywhere. Isaak Kroshinsky. Work in the Moscow region was extremely weak. Yasha Kubyshkin was mobilized, and with his departure, the district essentially vegetated.

The Interdistrict Committee considered one of its main tasks to be the establishment of broad active work in the army. We had very strong ties with the latter. We mainly worked in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. There was constant contact with Kronstadt (through Roman Anisimov). There was a connection with several regiments in Oranienbaum.

In Krasnoye Selo (the 175th reserve regiment) we also carried out quite a lot of organizational and propaganda work, six companies of the regiment were involved in our sphere of influence.

We kept in touch with the village of Medved, where at that time our old comrade Yakov Kubyshkin was serving "the king and the fatherland". Leaflets from our organization were widely distributed in the army*. The military "organizer" of the Committee was comrade. "Irina".

* In the autumn of 1916, the St. Petersburg Interdistrict Committee issued a printed appeal to the soldiers, in which, proving the senselessness of the imperialist war, it called on the soldiers to direct their bayonets against the autocracy when the people's revolution broke out. This leaflet is completely reprinted in the book. A. G. Shlyapnikova "Eve of 1917", part II, State Publishing House, M. 1923. Note. ed.

By the autumn of 1910, with great difficulty, we managed to organize the publication of a weekly magazine (or maybe it was - I don’t remember exactly - only a fortnight!) called Rabochyye Vedomosti.

The editorial staff of the magazine consisted of comrades A. L. Popov, "Ilya" and "Isai". We worked "collectively". The main articles were read at the plenum of the editorial board, and, after discussion, they were accepted or went "for repairs".

There was no complete unanimity of opinion in the editorial board. Isai more and more definitely strayed from the internationalist path to defencism; A.L. Popov, being an internationalist and in this sense my like-minded person, was very—I would say too—cautious in formulating his thoughts. Some discord in the editorial board did not in any way correspond to the unanimous revolutionary-internationalist spirit with which our entire organization was permeated from top to bottom. Rabochyye Vedomosti was written in the spirit of militant internationalism.

The technical editorial board of the journal was located in the union of textile workers. Political - was conspiratorial and was located in the apartment of a member of our organization, medical student Mariam Razumova (Petersburg side). The circulation of Rabochiye Vedomosti reached 6,000 copies, which were completely sold out. At the time, which was a pretty solid figure. We sent out the magazine not only to the districts of St. Petersburg, but also to many provincial cities.

However, the days of our journal were numbered. The watchful eye of the Okhrana soon saw "the whole truth" about the magazine and liquidated it with all determination. After the third issue was published, the magazine was closed. The door to the editorial room was firmly boarded up.

The main organizer of the magazine and its distributor was a member of the Interdistrict Committee, Secretary of the St. Petersburg Union of Textile Workers, comrade Ivan Saveliev.

In 1916, the Interdistrict Committee, striving to become an all-Russian organization, strained its efforts to contact the provincial party-internationalist organizations. By this time, connections with the Dvina Committee had been lost, but we managed to get new connections with Vologda and Tver. Irina connected us with the Vologda party organization. Our connection with Tver was stronger. By the autumn of 1916, there were two social-democrats in it. groups. One was associated with the St. Petersburg and Moscow Committees of the Bolsheviks; another, numbering, according to Comrade. Ivan Trofimov—about 120 people. - with us. We got in touch with this group through a member of the Mezhrayonka, comrade. Kulikov, a worker at a metal plant. (In 1918 he committed suicide.) Comrade came to Tver quite often. Isaac Kroshinsky,

Of course, these connections could not "turn our heads" for us, and we stubbornly sought ways to organize the All-Russian Conference of the Social-Democrats. organizations (making general party decisions until 1910 inclusive). In an October leaflet addressed to the workers* we said: “We also call for unity, but (as opposed to the Gvozdevites. I. Yu.) for the unity of the workers, the unity of the revolutionary elements of the Social-Democrats. We call on you, comrades, to fight for the unity of the Party. Before the Russian S.-D. great tasks are ahead, but there is no united will of the Social-Democrats; there are no common decisions, no authoritative Central Committee, but there is miserable sectarianism, a desire to replace the party with our own circles... We, the united Social-Democrats. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, on the order of the day we put the question of convening an All-Russian Conference,in which all revolutionary Social-Democrats must take part... Long live the Third International!.. Long live the United Russian Social-Democrats. Labor Party!..”

* This leaflet of the Mezhrayonka is completely reprinted in the book by A. G. Shlyapnikov "The Eve of the Seventeenth Year", Part II, Istpart, Gosizdat, M. 1923. Note, ed.

In accordance with the line indicated above, the Interdistrict Committee negotiated with the “Initiative”, which told us of its desire to discuss the issue of creating a single R.S.-D.R.P. From our organization, I was authorized to negotiate; from Initiative - my friend, an old party worker "Vladimirov" (his real name is Sokolovsky; in party circles he is better known under the nickname "Tomash", now a member of the RCP).

We met with him two or three times; they talked about the All-Russian Conference of Internationalists; there seemed to be almost no obstacles to this. "Initiative" revealed some kind of "left". However, these conversations did not yield practical results. The events of the beginning of 1917 overwhelmed us, and the question of the Conference was postponed.

The secret goal of the "Initiative", as I managed to find out, was to attract Mezhrayonka to their camp; of course, there was no question of a "one-sided" alliance with the Mensheviks. Our organization, consisting of 80% of the Bolsheviks, did not think of uniting with anyone without the Leninists and against them. Our plans were to find a bridge for uniting, with our participation, the Menshevik-Internationalists and the Bolsheviks.

In the autumn of 1916, our organization received large intellectual reinforcements. The upsurge of the labor movement, the growth of general dissatisfaction with the tsarist regime, naturally reflected on the student youth. The student body, by and large deeply indifferent to the revolutionary struggle in the period from 1908 to 1914 and 1915, revived, and its best representatives were drawn to illegal party organizations. Through t.t. "Irina" and Lina Leontievna, we contacted a large group of students from the Psychoneurological Institute. The vast majority of them were very nice young men and women with great revolutionary enthusiasm, with a naive adoration of the working class and with very little theoretical knowledge in the field of Marxism.

The thirst for knowledge among these young people was enormous. She willingly went to our illegal circles. The newly acquired students and female students were divided into several categories. The most trained of them made up the highest circle of the propaganda type, which at the same time was also a propaganda group. This circle included Isaak Kroshinsky, Ratner, Boris Livshits, Anatoly Slutsky, Glezarov and others.

In the circle, the topics of speeches of our speakers at workers' circles and at extras were usually discussed. Young propagandists were given "outfits" for the performance. These young people worked with extraordinary enthusiasm and devotion. They enthusiastically devoted all their young, unspent energy to Party activities. In terms of factional composition, this top group of students was rather motley. I. Kroshinsky was a Menshevik*. The Mensheviks were Boris Livshits and Anatoly Slutsky. In essence, only the latter was close to Menshevism.

* Kroshinsky's Menshevism was of such a nature that few Bolsheviks could equal him in devotion to the labor movement and underground organization. He was a wonderful, intelligent, knowledgeable and very capable comrade, the de facto leader of all our student groups. He would undoubtedly have made a major Party leader. Impulsiveness, "gambling" interfered with him somewhat, but this would smooth out over time. Tov. Kroshinsky worked in our organization at the beginning as an ordinary propagandist, then as a leader of work in a number of party districts; from the end of 1916 or from the beginning of 1917 he became a permanent member of St. Petersburg. Interdistrict Committee. He was one of the extremely few intellectuals who were part of the K-ta, which consisted of workers - representatives of the districts.

When the intervention and the White Guard actions in the Urals and the Volga took on a dangerous character, comrade. Kroshinsky, already then, a member of the R.K., P., went into military work. He was on the Eastern Front, worked in the political departments, and eventually went into the thick of the army, as a commissar of one of the regiments. There he ended his young life, being very short-sighted, he somehow, going out on reconnaissance, lost his way, met with a Cossack patrol and was hacked to death by them.

In addition to the higher student circle, a number of circles of a lower type functioned under our committee. Of the participants in these circles, comrades Roza Kovnator, Nyuta Itkina and Berta Ratner, who are now actively working in our party, should be noted. These young people have brought enormous benefits to the organization. We immediately received a large number of irreplaceably dedicated technical workers, as well as propagandists. We sent them to the districts. There they learned illegal work, went through its school, got along with the workers and gave us strong cadres of the Party intelligentsia.

From the autumn of 1916 until the beginning of 1917, the Interdistrict Committee consisted of the following workers: 1) Roman Anisimov (from the Vasileostrovsky district); 2) Ivan Alexandrovich "Nevsky" (aka Trofimov, aka "Ivan", whom I mentioned above, a worker at the Obukh. plant, now a member of the Russian Communist Party); he represented the Nevsky district; 3) Maksimov, worker of the Nevsky Shipyard. factory; 4) Ivan Savelyev, representative of the Gor. district; 6) Panov, a representative of the Narva region (now a member of the RCP, during the purge of the party he was chairman of the Pskov Gubernia Commission); 6) “Irina”, de facto secretary, and treasurer of the Committee; 7) Lina Leontievna; 8) Isaiah; 9) "Ilya" Yurenev - before his arrest in 1915, he worked under the nickname "Andrey". Sonya Shulga sometimes attended Committee meetings. Meetings most often took place on Kolomenskaya Street. in Isai's house number 55, and sometimes in Sonya Shulga's apartment.

By this time, many of its old workers* were no longer in the ranks of Mezhrayonka. Entering 1917, the organization was comparatively few in number, but strong in internal cohesion and disposed of very significant workers and intellectuals. The emerging Menshevik deviations among some of our workers (A.L. Popov and Isai) led to the fact that, under the pressure of "public opinion" of our organization, Popov stabilized as an internationalist, and I. Kroshinsky left the organization and joined the "Petersburg Initiative Group" . Entering our organization, Isai leaned more and more towards Menshevism, and it got to the point that at a committee meeting he made an official proposal to join the Initiative Group. This proposal of his coincided with a rather difficult moment in the life of our organization, but, nevertheless, it had no success. Isaiah was isolated; such conditions were created for him that he had to leave the organization. He left alone: ​​not a single worker, not a single intellectual followed him. Isai soon became disillusioned with the "Initiative Group".

* "Mara" was arrested and exiled for three years to the Astrakhan province; Karakhan was arrested in 1915 and exiled to Siberia; I. P. Flerovsky actually retired from work, as did A. L. Popov somewhat later. From among the old inter-district workers, Yakov Kubyshkin and Vasily Shunyakov were mobilized; Grigory Petrov and Pavlov from the Moscow region were arrested.

1917 (before the February revolution).

Until the February Revolution, the organizational state of the Interdistrict Committee was by and large the same as at the end of 1916. However, the political work of the organization assumed an incomparably broader scope. At that time, the air already smelled of a thunderstorm. In the working-class districts of St. Petersburg, the revolutionary mood grew every day.

The severe food crisis was an excellent agitator against tsarism and the war it had engendered. Our work yielded more and more positive results every day.

The traditional strike on January 9 went quite well. About 125,000 people were on strike in St. Petersburg and its immediate environs. The leaflet published by us to this day will receive the widest circulation and has been a great success with the workers. Written ardently and convincingly (I. Kroshinsky was the author of the leaflet), it skillfully got into the most painful places of tsarism and touched the most sensitive strings of workers' moods.

In a number of districts, we organized and held large meetings at factories and plants*. The revolutionary underground went out into the streets, secretly exercising freedom of assembly.

* As far as I remember, to St. Petersburg. Boris spoke on the side; behind the Nevskaya Zastava (at the Obukh. Plant) - A. L. Popov.

The workers of the Alexander workshops staged a kind of demonstration, walking a couple of blocks on the Petersburg Highway, singing "You fell a victim." This impromptu demonstration was dispersed by the Cossacks and mounted policemen. The attempt of the Obukhovites to follow the example of the workers of the Alexander workshops ended in dispersal and beatings of the demonstrators.

At the end of January, factories and factories in St. Petersburg appeared, in rather limited quantities, leaflets printed on a hectograph, in which unknown authors (the leaflet was not signed) called on the workers to a general strike on the opening day of the session of the IV State. Duma.

The leaflets put forward the slogan of support for the progressive bloc of the State. Duma. These leaflets came from the "working group at the Central Military-Industrial Committee."

The attitude of illegal Social-Democrats organizations of St. Petersburg (Mezhrayonki, St. Petersburg. Committee of the Bolsheviks, as well as the Initiative Group of the Mensheviks) to this venture was negative. However, this was only on the formal side and for the time being. This united front against the Gvozdev methods of struggle of the working class was frustrated by the Initiative Group of the Mensheviks.

The latter was a typical representative of the "internationalists" balancing between the defencists and the consistently revolutionary Social-Democrats. organizations.

Shortly after the leaflets of the working group appeared, the Initiative published its own leaflet, the essence of which boiled down to the following: “We must not believe,” it said, “any anonymous leaflets calling us to action. We will not follow these irresponsible and politically unscrupulous groups who brand our glorious mass struggle to end the war in October as a provocation, and in January call us to a mass action ... We cannot turn the proletariat into a blind instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

This leaflet was not distributed to the districts. It was only "privately" shown to the most responsible workers of the Social-Democrats. organizations. Thus, the Initiative also observed internationalist innocence and did not prevent the Gvozdevites from corrupting the working classes.

It must be done justice to the defencists that, in calling on the workers of St. Petersburg to a general strike, they took good account of the revolutionary mood of the workers, who readily respond to every protest against tsarism. They tried to speculate on the insufficient consciousness of the working masses, more than compensated for by spontaneous revolutionary spirit.

We and the Bolsheviks understood that the Gvozdevites had a chance of external success, which they used in order to deepen the defencist sentiments among the working masses. Understanding this, we decided, together with the St. Petersburg Committee (at its suggestion), to disrupt the strike planned by the Gvozdevites on February 14th. In opposition to their calls, we called on the workers of St. Petersburg to a general strike on the day of the anniversary of the trial of the Social-Democrats. by the workers' faction of the IV G. Duma - February 13.

We expected that if our strike succeeded, the chances of the Gvozdevites for the success of their strike would be significantly reduced. True, Mezhrayonka was somewhat skeptical about Pet's project. Committee, but, wanting to emphasize the solidarity of the revolutionary internationalists, joined him. P. K-tom published a special leaflet in which the most ferocious and well-deserved beatings were made to the defensists, and the working masses were called to strike on February 13, and not on February 14.

Our organization did not have time to publish the leaflet. This was prevented by some technical difficulties with the typography. However, a leaflet against the idea of ​​a "working group" was nevertheless issued by our organization. The leaflet was printed on a shapirograph (the printing house on Gorokhovaya could not be used by us). It was printed at the apartment of comrade. Boris Livshits and was widely distributed throughout all regions. I consider it useful to give here rather lengthy excerpts from it. The leaflet said:

“Two years ago, the tsarist autocracy carried out trial and reprisals against our deputies. Those who found the courage to raise their voices of protest against the international war, against the adventures of the irresponsible bourgeoisie, against the age-old enemy of the people, the tsarist autocracy, were put in the dock. Our chosen ones were judged by those who have long been condemned by history, those who are waiting for the merciless judgment of the people. Tried and condemned. Tsarist justice has been done: representatives of the working class are languishing in the cold boundless tundra of Siberia. Who came to the defense? Who supported them in this difficult moment? It hurts to tell the truth, but it would be criminal to hide it. The workers did not support their representatives, they left them to the mercy of the tsarist autocracy, they lost heart, lowering their mighty hands. But maybe our representatives were supported by the State Duma, of which they were members. Perhaps the "parliament" protested against violence against the Social Democratic faction of the State Duma? Oh no, the pitiful counterfeit of democracy, the State Duma, has renounced those who tore off the guise of popular representation from it, who sharply and mercilessly castigated the bourgeoisie and the tsarist autocracy. It is with a feeling of deep indignation, with a feeling of boundless disgust, that we read the miserable pages of unknown faces calling us, comrade workers, to support the servile "opposition" Duma at all costs. Leaflets are being distributed to factories and plants in which you are invited to strike and demonstrate on the opening day of the State Duma. The State Duma renounced those who tore off the guise of popular representation from it, who sharply and mercilessly castigated the bourgeoisie and the tsarist autocracy. It is with a feeling of deep indignation, with a feeling of boundless disgust, that we read the miserable pages of unknown faces calling us, comrade workers, to support the servile "opposition" Duma at all costs. Leaflets are being distributed to factories and plants in which you are invited to strike and demonstrate on the opening day of the State Duma. The State Duma renounced those who tore off the guise of popular representation from it, who sharply and mercilessly castigated the bourgeoisie and the tsarist autocracy. It is with a feeling of deep indignation, with a feeling of boundless disgust, that we read the miserable pages of unknown faces calling us, comrade workers, to support the servile "opposition" Duma at all costs. Leaflets are being distributed to factories and plants in which you are invited to strike and demonstrate on the opening day of the State Duma.

And then they said:

“Comrades, the nameless leaflets are the work of a handful of renegades of the working class who are trying to subjugate the labor movement to the bourgeoisie, and you must regard them with the distrust of staunch fighters for the people's cause.

“Comrades, it is not to support the Fourth State Duma that we should strive; it is not to support the bourgeoisie that is quarreling with the autocracy that our forces should be directed. Only the peasantry and the suffering army will be our allies in the struggle for a democratic republic.

“Only relying on them, the proletariat will prepare for the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy, and the powerful organized proletariat will not be afraid of it. We, the united Social-Democrats Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, we call you to an independent revolutionary struggle, we call you, comrades, to gather your forces for the last and decisive battle against autocratic arbitrariness. The working class needs to strengthen its illegal organizations; it needs to unite all its forces in a single Social-Democratic Labor Party. We need to use our labor kopecks to create a free illegal press ... Comrades, February 14 is not the day of the working class, but the day of its enemies; on this day we will not go out into the streets; we will not organize demonstrations. Long live the revolution, down with the autocracy, down with the war, long live the international solidarity of the proletariat, long live the Provisional Revolutionary Government, long live the Constituent Assembly, long live the Democratic Republic!

It must be admitted that the leaflet quoted above, which called on the workers to maintain the strike on February 13, as well as the leaflet from St. Petersburg. Committee calling for a protest strike against the condemnation of the Social-Democrats. deputies were not successful.

Our attempt to negotiate with the Initiative Group and with St. Petersburg Committee on issuing an anti-defense leaflet signed by all three organizations was unsuccessful. Petersburg. The committee agreed to the establishment of a united front against the Gvozdevites, but the Initiative, being in doubt, refused to join us and Petersburg Committee.

The leaflet of the Initiative quoted by me above, directed against the working group, was annulled by the Initiative two days before February 14th. Instead, the most miserable "resolution" printed on a hectograph was born. The resolution, unlike the leaflet circulated in the districts, said that February 14 was "the day of our mass action." It was a pathetic attempt to cling to the upcoming "victories of the Gvozdevites" and thereby strengthen their very precarious position among the working masses.

The shameful capitulation of the internationalists from Pet. Init group had as its consequence a sharp aggravation of relations between it and the Interdistrict Committee. Irreconcilable tone Petersburg Committee in relation to it received its visual political justification. Impressionistic balancing act of the Initiative greatly slowed down the work on consolidating the forces of St. Petersburg internationalists.

The strike organized by the working group on February 14 was very successful. Factory workers responded to her call. So, for example, in the Nevsky district on February 14, about 95% of factory workers went on strike. This, of course, did not mean that the working masses were at one with the defencists and were in favor of the progressive bloc of the Fourth City Duma.

The strike of February 13 had very little success, and if I am not mistaken, only about 20,000 workers went on strike that day.

As soon as the fierce political struggle around February 14 ended, our organization faced a new task: holding a “women's day” (February 28). It must be said that we began to prepare for this day at the end of 1916. On our initiative, in mid-December, an inter-party commission was convened to prepare and conduct the day. The commission included: from the Mensheviks, two working women unknown to me by name; from the Bolsheviks - t.t. Shelaginova (intellectual) and Elena Sakharova (worker); from Mezhrayonka - Nyuta Itkin. This commission worked quite intensively, had a number of meetings (at the apartment of the Mensheviks). Especially great debates within the commission arose on the issue of "slogans". In the end, the slogans agreed; however, the leaflets were decided to be published by each organization separately.

From the rally speeches of our comrades that day, I have preserved in my memory the speech of Nyuta Itkina in the People's House of Countess Panina, where about four hundred workers were present, and the rally at the Aivaz factory.

A large rally was also held at the Psychoneurological Institute. Isaak Kroshinsky and Berta Ratner spoke for us there. On the same day, a large meeting of workers took place in Lesnoy, at which Anatoly Slutsky spoke. This meeting, by the way, was organized by us jointly with the Petersburg Committee.

The work of our organization in the districts proceeded at an accelerated pace. A large group of very active and influential workers came to the fore in the Narva region. Of these, I remember (except for the already mentioned comrade Panov) - Comrades, Kornev, Vasily Alekseev-Levin. All these are Putilov workers. By this time, the area was well organized. Functioned District Committee. The work of the district was still led by Comrade. I. Kroshinsky.

In the Nevsky district (apart from the working groups that I mentioned in the review for 1916), student circles functioned, which had as their task the training of party propagandists and agitators. The basis of this work was at comrade. "Zarya" (her real name was Blum, a neuropsychiatric student who is now a member and a very active worker of the Russian Communist Party).

Work in the Vasileostrovsky district became even stronger. The organization had the closest connection with the regional cooperative "Association" and used this legal opportunity for its own illegal purposes. So, on the day of January 9, a rather crowded working meeting was held in the premises of the "0union" at which Comrade S. Roman Anisimov.

In addition to our cells already mentioned at one time, new ones were created in the Vasileostrovsky district: at Siemens-Schuckert, at the Gvozdilny plant, at Reichel. An active role in the work of the district, and especially at the Reichel plant, was played by comrade. Solovyov and his wife.

At that time, the Interdistrict Committee had a formalized agitation and propaganda group, the leaders of which was "Ilya". It included almost all the members of the former student circle in the winter of 1916. The group gathered at Comrade's apartment. "Irina" (Petersburg side) or Comrade. Boris Livshits (on the Sands). At the meetings, the topics of the reports of the propagandists were outlined, the abstracts of the speeches were adopted, and immediately, together with the organizer present, the propagandists were distributed among the districts and circles. The propaganda group sent a representative to the Interdistrict Committee. As such, it included comrade. I. Kroshinsky.

In addition to the propaganda group, which carried out tremendous feverish work under the Interdistrict Committee, there was also an organizing group. However, it should be more correctly called technical-financial. Sonya Shulga was the most active member of the group and its leader. The group consisted mainly of young students. I. Kroshinsky visited the Group from time to time for the purpose of "inspection".

By the time the February revolution began, the Interdistrict Committee consisted of the following comrades: 1) Roman Anisimov, 2) Muravkin (both from the Vasileostrovsky district), 3) Pavlov (Moskovsky district), 4) Maksimov (Nevsky district), 5) A. M. Novoselov (Porohovsky district), 6) Panov (Narvsky district), 7) Ivan Savelyev (Gorodskoy district), 8) a representative of the Petersburg district - I don’t remember his last name - I think Comrade. Laubman, 9) "Ilya", (I), 10) I. Kroshinsky (representative of the agitation and propaganda group), 11 "Irina". In addition, Cde. Sonya Shulga.

The publishing activity of the Committee was quite significant. In addition to the January and February ones mentioned above (printed on a hectograph and in a printing house), a special “economic” leaflet was also issued. The latter was printed on a hectograph, partly outside the Neva Zastava, in the apartment of one of our best party workers, Olga Drabovich (a female student at the Psychoneurological Institute), partly at the home of a student, Comrade Anna Gening, on you. island. In total, 600-800 copies were printed on the hectograph, and about one and a half thousand copies. of the same sheet was printed in a manual printing house.

February Revolution

The growth of the spontaneous working-class movement, which had as its main root the food crisis and the steady growth of high prices, unheard of strengthened the position of organizations that undoubtedly lagged behind the rapid pace of the impending avalanche of revolution. The labor movement was ahead of the party organizations. The latter most often stated and took into account the fait accompli of the greatest political importance. But if the illegal organizations that worked in the midst of the proletarian masses did not feel too acutely their separation from rapidly developing events, then the socialists from the IV State. Duma and "left" public figures (lawyers, doctors, writers). They felt that events were approaching and for the first time, perhaps, acutely and painfully realized their tragic separation from the working masses.

Feeling an imperative need to contact them, if only in order not to be groundless opposition, and also undoubtedly pursuing the goals of directing events that definitely go past the State. The Dumas, past the progressive bloc and other legal centers and opportunities, significant groups of the socialist intelligentsia have discovered a desire for mutual unification and even, which has not happened before, direct connection with the revolutionary underground. The role of the latter is equally underestimated and exaggerated, depending on who depicts the revolutionary events of the pre-February period.

Now I don’t remember exactly through whom exactly (I think through Lina Leontievna) the Interdistrict Committee received a proposal to delegate its representative to the upcoming “conference of public figures” scheduled at Maxim Gorky’s apartment. Our committee accepted this proposal and instructed me to go to the above meeting. As far as I remember, it was attended by: Skobelev. Chkheidze, Kerensky, Peshekhonov and Gorky, as the host. The revolutionary underground was represented quite fully. From Init. a group of Mensheviks was Grinevich (later a member of the Executive Committee of the Petr. Council of Workers and Soldiers Dep.); from Petersburg. Committee of the Bolsheviks - barrister Jozhello (party cry "Vladimir"; now stands outside the party. Works in Lithuania and as a member of the Lithuanian Seimas).

In Gorky's cozy dining room, over glasses of tea, the question of the political situation in Russia, and in particular in St. Petersburg, was very animatedly discussed. Our conversations were of an extremely general nature. It was pure "literature". There were two real proposals: 1) the proposal of M. Gorky, who designed the publication of an illegal information sheet that would quite objectively photograph political events, especially from the area of ​​​​the shameful activities of the Court and its camarilla. I remember that Gorky argued in sufficient detail that such a leaflet was necessary, assured that it would make a colossal impression on social and working circles; funds for the publication of this leaflet - according to Gorky - had to be found. The technical edition of the leaflet would fall to the lot of illegal organizations. For us, representatives of the revolutionary underground, Gorky’s proposal did not arouse any “enthusiasm”, we regarded it as a revolutionary-liberal undertaking and put forward a proposal to give revolutionary organizations money for the publication of revolutionary party literature.

In my speech, in particular, I pointed out the need to set up the cause of printed propaganda and agitation among the army. Our deviation was received very coldly by the representatives of the socialist and liberal elements of Petersburg society.

The second specific proposal (I don't remember who made it) boiled down to the fact that the present meeting should recognize the need for periodic meetings of public and revolutionary leaders. This proposal was accepted.

At a meeting of the Interdistrict Committee, after my report on what I saw and heard at the meeting, it was decided to keep in touch with public figures solely in order to obtain information about what was happening behind the scenes of the "parliament", the Court and the government. "Positive work" in this meeting of public figures, in our opinion, did not make any sense.

As far as I remember, there were several such conferences before the February revolution. Kerensky had a particularly numerous conferences, I think, on February 26th. It was then attended by Chkheidze, the Bundist G. Erlich, and all the participants in the first meeting at Gorky's. Instead of Grinevich, Vladimirov (Sokolovsky) came from the Initiative Group.

The last meeting was extremely chaotic. It was a continuous discussion, arguing in the corners. Ehrlich and I, who were extremely defencist in mood, especially clashed. Present at the meeting, besides the above-mentioned persons, was also N. D. Sokolov, a barrister, at that time a Bolshevik. Sokolov was a noteworthy "informant" and the bearer of the latest news. He told us about the shelling by the Cossacks of a patrol of mounted policemen. The meeting, as before, did not end with anything.

Given the urgent need to coordinate the activities of illegal organizations in St. Petersburg, the Interdistrict Committee suggested St. Petersburg. Committee, Petersburg Init group and the St. Petersburg Social Revolutionaries to organize an information and contact inter-party Bureau. After long conversations on this topic with the above organizations, we managed to get their agreement with our project. A Bureau was established in which all the above organizations were represented. From Petersburg. Committee in the Bureau included "Vladimir" - Pozhello; from the Interdistrict Committee "Ilya" (I), from the Initiative Group - Vladimirov-"Sokolovsky" and from the Socialist-Revolutionaries - the late P. Alexandrovich. The latter represented - on the authority of the foreign Central Committee P.S.-R. - the entire party in Russia, and in particular the Petersburg organization. Here it must be said that at that time the Socialist-Revolutionaries did not have any sort of coherent city-wide organization. They were quite active in the Nevsky district, in Moscow and much weaker in Vasileostrovsky. Our Bureau met three or four times; It should be noted that the representative of St. Petersburg. The committee was there only once. In fact, therefore, the Bureau united only Mezhrayontsy, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.

One of the most important questions discussed in the Bureau was the question of what practical fighting slogan we should throw out. The initiative insisted on the slogan Uchr. At Meetings: the Bolsheviks put forward the slogan of the Soviet Workers' Deputies, following the example of 1905. We, converging in principle with St. Petersburg Committee suggested not to force the promotion of this slogan and wait for the development of events. We have pointed out that the organization of Soviets is conceivable only at the moment of the highest revolutionary tension. movement: that otherwise the Soviets would be crushed, and the movement would suffer a blow from which it would not soon be able to recover. In the end, the question boiled down to whether the developing revolutionary events represented only one of the episodes of the revolutionary movement, or whether this was the last wave, disastrous for tsarism.

In essence, the slogan of the Soviets, put forward by St. Petersburg. The Committee remained on paper and there were no concrete actions in the sense of organizing the Soviets as centers of the revolutionary movement and starting positions for an attack on tsarism. The construction of the Soviets began only on February 27, when all organizations adopted this slogan.

On February 23, we published (in a legal printing house on Gorokhovaya) an agitational leaflet of a general political nature, calling on the workers and soldiers to fight against tsarism.

Events moved at an unheard-of rapid pace. On the 23rd, Nevsky, Basseinaya, Liteiny Prospekt and Znamenskaya Square were flooded with a continuous wave of demonstrating workers. It was the grandest spontaneous demonstration. There was a tram. However, the movement was, despite all its grandeur, a very peaceful character. I remember such an episode. A bourgeois car crashed into a crowd of workers. Some demonstrators wanted to throw riders out of the car, but the crowd did not allow them to do so. Protesting voices were heard: "Don't touch them, guys, leave them," and our frightened bourgeois were released in peace.

The Cossack patrols, cutting through the solid black human mass, seemed to be some kind of pitiful and ridiculous islands above the overflowing sea of ​​\u200b\u200bpeople. The townsfolk have disappeared. The crowd and the Cossacks did not feel any bitterness towards each other. There were jokes and laughter. It was felt that the dam of alienation, which had separated the people from the army for centuries, was breaking through more and more every day.

However, none of the active participants in the events of that time foresaw all their imminent grandiosity and the complete catastrophe of tsarism. Now in the memory of some of the comrades, the boundaries between the pre-February and post-February moods have been erased. Now it seems to them that the February revolution was the work of one committee or another or another.

The February Revolution was carried out by the same masses of soldiers and workers (to a lesser extent) who in the first months of the war followed the defencists in all the most important political questions. The proletariat, by its uninterrupted actions, created a revolutionary atmosphere in St. Petersburg, in which the reserve regiments of the tsarist guard finally "decayed".

On the night of 24/25, our Committee decided to call on the St. Petersburg workers to a three-day protest strike against the arrests and executions of workers at the Putilov factory. However, the revolutionary mood of the masses was such that they could no longer confine themselves to strikes alone. The grandiose demonstrations of the workers were repeated again. Our organization sent its agitators who spoke at the rally on Znamenskaya Square, near the Kazan Cathedral and in other places. Comrades V. Livshits and I. Kroshinsky worked especially vigorously.

At the enlarged meeting of our Committee on the night of February 25-26, the question of how to respond to the famous Khabalov order to the workers "to return to work on February 28" was subjected to a lengthy discussion. It was clear that the workers would not listen to Khabalov and the strike would continue. Therefore, considering that the revolutionary working-class movement has not yet entered a decisive phase, and at the same time not wanting to be aloof from it, and most importantly, fearing that it will not finally turn into a spontaneous impulse of the unorganized masses, and thereby, in the end would not have been defeated, we issued a leaflet to the working masses with an appeal to ignore the Khabalovsky order and continue the strike.

In addition, realizing that the decisive moment in the struggle between tsarism and the people—I would say, the physical moment in the struggle of the people against tsarism—would be the army, we, at the same time as addressing the workers, decided to issue a leaflet to the soldiers. In this leaflet, as well as in the leaflet to the workers, the uncertainty that a real battle is decisive found its expression, and the call to the soldiers was half-hearted in its own way. In it, we did not call the soldiers to a direct uprising. But the overture of the uprising was already sounding in calls to the soldiers "to follow the example of the Cossacks at the Sign and the Pavlovtsy at the Church of the Resurrection." That example of the Cossacks, which was mentioned in the leaflet, consisted in arming their attacks on policemen. Thus, in a semi-disguised form, our leaflet contained a call for an armed uprising, for support for workers' demonstrations. Both of these sheets were printed in a large number of copies. Technically, they were published excellently, distributed the next day in the morning throughout all regions.

However, the pace of revolutionary events was such that our slogans were already lagging behind it. By the time the sheets had penetrated the thick of the soldiers, the latter had made her speech. I will never forget the morning of February 27th. It was sunny and frosty. Patrols of the Guards regiments of the Petrograd garrison, armed with rifles, walked peacefully through the streets. The famous Khabalov appeals flaunted on the corners of the houses. The huge city seemed to calm down. But it only seemed.

Arriving at our safe house on Kolomenskaya Street, I already found "Irina", Sonya Shulga, Isaac Kroshinsky and other agitators and organizers of our committee in it.

In the room next to ours, a gathering of communist anarchists took place. They were mostly young, declassed people. They enthusiastically prepared for battle, counting hand grenades, distributing revolvers among themselves. Events, however, turned out in such a way that these boys did not need either hand grenades or pistols. The soldier-peasant element overthrew tsarism and made all isolated terrorist acts superfluous.

By 10 o'clock in the morning we received the news. that the Volynsky regiment came forward. I remember we were all electrified by this message; it became clear that events were entering a decisive stage. It was immediately given to know in the districts that a meeting of the Committee would take place at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. At this meeting (it was held at Comrade Glezarov's) it was unanimously decided to call on the workers and soldiers for a general uprising and for elections to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

The leaflet, which concluded the call for an uprising, said that the die was cast, there was no retreat, and there was nowhere to go, that in the event of the defeat of the rebels, merciless reprisal from the tsarist autocracy awaited. Immediately at the meeting of the Committee, agitators were distributed and sent to the districts. Beautiful comrades Boris Livshits and Nyuta Itkina rushed to the Narva region with all their ardor, thirsting for the heroic deeds of youth; in Vyborgsky - Anatoly Slutsky and Olya, in Vasileostrovsky - Ksenia Orlik. Our agitators were given the task of rousing the workers and leading them to unite with the soldiers. I. Kroshinsky and Glezarov went to the Volyn regiment. The next meeting of the Committee was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. vech. the same day at Comrade. Glezarov. I personally had to be an eyewitness to the events at the barracks of the Volyn regiment.

I remember how the Volhynians, in a discordant crowd, many without rifles, tried to pass along Liteiny Prospekt to Nevsky, they were blocked by chains of government troops lying on the pavement and along the sidewalks. In Artilleriysky Lane there was a squadron of Novgorod mounted gendarmes.

Both sides were extremely insecure. Government troops took a wait-and-see position, which in those conditions meant sooner or later their complete decomposition. The Volhynians scattered in different directions at the first words of the government officers who commanded the chains to “aim”. It seemed that some funny game of hide-and-seek was going on. After the government troops took their guns to their feet, the Volhynians, who had dived around the corner of the barracks, again crawled out in a disorderly crowd onto the sidewalks and into the street. Philistine sentiments were entirely on the side of the Volyns. Citizens gathered in groups entered into disputes with soldiers and officers, urging them not to shed people's blood.

The government machine-gunners were absurdly confused along the sidewalks, dragging their machine guns, no longer scary to anyone and good-naturedly gleaming in the sun. This game went on for a long time. It ended with the fact that the government troops did not have enough endurance. The chains unraveled, joined with the rebels, and together with them went to the sounds of regimental bands to the State Duma.

I agree with those who assert that one or two completely reliable combat-ready battalions were enough to suppress the February uprising in St. Petersburg. But that is precisely the strength of the revolution and the weakness of the overthrown regime, that in Petersburg, with its colossal garrison, these two "reliable battalions" were never found.

At the appointed hour, our Committee met. There were a lot of people at the meeting. Everyone's nerves were on fire. There was no time to talk much, but in essence there was no longer any need. Decisions were made to appeal to the working and soldier masses with a new call to fight to the bitter end.

In addition, we decided to call on the workers and soldiers to elect deputies to the Petrograd Soviet. One of the leaflets was written by me, the other, devoted to the question of the elections, I think by Comrade Glezarov.

Printing leaflets was entrusted to the latter. He received a directive from the Committee to seize the printing house of the Novoye Vremya newspaper for this purpose. I must say that this is the task of Comrade. Glezarov performed brilliantly. Together with a group of our inveterate youth, he occupied Novoe Vremya and, having mobilized our party printers, by 10 o'clock in the evening had already printed both sheets. In total, about 300,000 copies were printed. Immediately after printing, the leaflets were loaded into vehicles specially requisitioned for this occasion and transported to all districts and barracks. We distributed about 200,000 copies that evening and night. The rest were taken the next morning to the Tauride Palace, where they were distributed by our representatives to the incoming delegations of workers and soldiers.

Our leaflets were the first of those published on February 27th. In the same printing house where they were printed, the first issue of Izvestia of the Petrograd Soviet was also printed.

I. Yurenev.

“After the revolution, he was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Later - a member of the CEC. From September, on behalf of the Executive Committee, he worked on the organization of the Red Guard. He was the chairman of its General Staff”

On March 30, at the second meeting of the congress, Yurenev, without naming Trotsky, spoke out against his policy of limiting the rights of political workers in the army. “The other day,” he said, “the displacement of political workers caused confusion at the fronts and, according to the statement of one authoritative comrade, created an unstable situation among the commissar apparatus, which, seeing that this apparatus was being defame, as if recognized as unusable, became confused, and the specialists say : "Your song is sung," and it is natural that the commissars felt insecure - the vacillation was great ."