398
PARTISAN REVIEW
are
all
related symptoms of the deep crisis that had set in within the
Social Democr.atic Party.
At the home of Maxim Gorky on the island of Capri some of
the Bolsheviks opposed to Lenin foregathered to set up a training
school for Russian worker.s. It was by Lenin's choice, not their.s, that
Gorky's home became an "opposition school" for "ultra-leftist" Bol–
sheviks. Repeatedly they urged him to become one of its teacher.s,
but he stayed away from Capri for reasons which will appear in the
course of this account. The school did not limit itself, as Vladimir
Ilyich would have liked, to politics and economics. It dealt with
philosophy and natural science, the history of art, the theory of prole–
tarian culture and proletarian "ideological organization," the history
of Russian literature, of the Russian State and Church, problems of
revolutionary ethics, and, of cour.se, the "leftist tactics" on the Duma
boycott and other matter.s that were being pursued by the bloc built
around Bogdanov. Almost insensibly Bogdanov had become a rival
to Lenin for the tactical, i.e. the practical political, leader.ship of the
Bolshevik faction. Even if Lenin had not been fighting for his very
position as head of his group, still his intense concentration on politics,
and on theory only insofar as it had bearing upon immediate problems
of practice, would have made
him
regard this predominantly cultural
school with misgiving. To under.stand the peculiar ambivalence of his
attitude toward the values of culture, we need only ponder this
revealing anecdote from Gorky's
Days with Lenin:
One evening Lenin was listening to a sonata by Beethoven . ..
and said: "I know nothing greater than the Appassionata . . . I
always think with pride: what marvelous things human beings can
do! But I can't liste.n to music too often. It affects your nerves,
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.
And you mustn't stroke anyone's head- you might get your hand
bitten off. You have to hit them over the head, without any mercy,
although our ideal is not to use force against anyone. Hm,
hm,
our
duty is infernally hard...."
Bogdanov had come to Lenin in 1904 at a time when the latter's
political fortunes were at their lowest ebb. Lenin had formed his
Bolshevik faction only a year earlier (1903) with Plekhanov as its
ostensible ideological leader, himself as group organizer, and Krassin
as chief lieutenant inside Russia. But by 1904 Vladimir Ilyich had
lost Plekhanov to the Mensheviks, had lost control of
Iskra,
and even
of the Central Committee. This last, under Krassin's leadership, had
