It happened at the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Party in 1903, which began in a flea-ridden hall in Brussels, and after several police arrests moved on to quarters in a London slum, where boys hooted and threw stones at the gesticulating foreigners. At this congress, Lenin's hard-line program won, and his followers became known as the Bolsheviks, or majority; the other faction was called Mensheviks-minority. Led by gentle Julius Martov, the Mensheviks had a Jeffersonian faith in the masses and a passion for democracy. Lenin despised them, and though Martov had been a close personal friend, he denounced him as a liar, coward and traitor.
This set a pattern for his life, and indeed for Communism; though Lenin reversed himself countless times, anyone who disagreed with him was denounced -- not as he admitted, for the sake of persuasion, "but to wipe him off the face of the earth." Lenin was always ready to use any instrument at hand. Once when a comrade protested that a Bolshevik named Victor was an obvious scoundrel, Lenin warmly agreed. He added: "Tell me, frankly, would you live off the wife of a wealthy businessman? No! I wouldn't do it either. I couldn't overcome my disgust. But Victor accomplishes this and helps party finances. He is irreplaceable."
Parisian Redhead. Some of the later Bolsheviks worked with Lenin on the staff of Iskra (Spark), a newspaper printed in London or on the Continent and smuggled into Russia. While living in Paris in 1910, Lenin fell in love, and again with a redhead. Her name was lnessa Armand, a young woman of French-Scottish extraction who had been converted to Bolshevism by Lenin's What Is to Be Done? and had deserted her wealthy husband. Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, was apparently not disturbed by the affair and seemed to be genuinely fond of Inessa and her five children (not Lenin's). Krupskaya was Lenin's nurse, companion and confidante, who saw to it that he ate regularly and had his hair cut; Inessa was gay, impudent and not afraid to oppose Lenin's views with her own. The menage a trots, with interruptions, lasted for ten years, until Inessa died of typhus.
The conspiratorial life had its horrors. The exiles lived in constant fear of betrayal, and were naggingly suspicious even of close comrades. At one time, Lenin's top agent in Russia and his top man in Western Europe were both on the payroll of the czarist po
lice. Prison end: Siberia also left their mark. Lenin suffered blinding headaches and recurrent insomnia. Nostalgia for the vast spaces of Russia plunged some comrades into deep melancholy, drove others to suicide.
What kept them going was a missionary fervor, a quasi-religious intoxication, not with God but with man-and with man not as they knew him, but as he would be after they had forcibly recreated him. Lenin said: "I always think with pride, 'What marvelous things human beings can do!'" He loved music, but hated listening to it because "it makes you want to say stupid, nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. But you mustn't stroke anyone's head-you's get your hand bitten off. You have to hit them on the head, without mercy."
Twilight Zone. By the time of World War I, he had quarreled with most of his followers, was isolated and depressed about the prospects of the revolution. When it finally came, it was not Lenin who made it; but it was Lenin who stole it.
