PARTISAN REVIEW
19
tionary when conditions for open battle don't yet exist. Further. Rev–
olutionary tactics must be based on a strictly objective evaluation
of the strength of all social classes. Years of disciplined work under–
ground.
TROTSKY: We must keep moving on a broad front. Try out our own
strength.
LENIN : Amateurism. The reputation of our revolutionaries in Russia
is being lost through amateurishness. Sloppy and shaky on theory.
Narrow-minded. Hiding their own deficiencies under talk of the in–
herent strength of the masses. Unable to work to an overall plan. Los–
ing precious time in argument. Each in love with his own ideas.
Vulnerable to the political police. Split wide open in every successive
raid.
(He rises, pressing a hand to his forehead)
Give us an orga–
nization of professional revolutionaries, and we shall tum Russia
upside down.
TROTSKY
also rises.
LENIN
presses both hands to his temples.
TROTSKY: Are you
ill,
Vladimir Ilyich?
LENIN: Come. Let's get on.
7. ZURICH
LENIN
is seated at back on a chair,
TROTSKY
stretched out on the
camp bed.
RADEK, RAKOVSKY, INESSA ARMAND
enter.
INESSA: Parvus is here, Ilyich. Insists on seeing you.
RADEK: Comes among the refugees like God Almighty. To give us alms.
Living in a suite in the Baur au Lac on champagne and fat cigars.
Has a harem of blonde concubines.
LENIN: That opportunist. That German socialistic chauvinist. I won't
see him. What news from Petrograd, Radek?
RADEK: No bread, no coal. But Faberget the court jeweler is doing a
fabulous trade. Countess Vyrubova boasts she has never bought so
many clothes and jewels in a single season as this winter. The night
clubs are stuffed with staff officers, members of parliament, theatrical
managers, ballerinas, generals and other illustrious humbugs. It's a
real orgy, a shower of gold on a plague. The aristocrats drinking to
the muzhiks they've shipped off to fight in Galicia.
PARVUS
comes in, wearing an open fur coat, tophat in hand.
PARVUS: Comrade Lenin, I can help you to mobilize a hundred thou-
sand Russian workers and call out a general strike.
LENIN: We don't work with agents of the German government.
PARVUS: You know I support the Russian revolution.
LENIN:
As
imperi:alists now and again support revolutionaries and na-
