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The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2017

Semion Lyandres
Semion Lyandres*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

On Friday, 30 August 1918, the day M. S. Uritskii, chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, was assassinated, Lenin was scheduled to address the Corn Exchange in the Basmannyi district of Moscow at 6:00 P.M. and the Mikhelson Armaments Factory in the Serpukhovskii section later. The first speech passed without incident; at the Mikhelson factory he gave the same fifteen-to-twenty minute speech he had delivered at the Corn Exchange, an attack on the forces of counterrevolution. In both locations he concluded his speech with the words “there is only one issue, victory or death!” As Lenin returned to his car in the factory courtyard, three shots were fired and he fell to the ground with bullet wounds in his left shoulder and the left side of his neck; the third bullet hit a woman standing nearby. The workers accompanying him to his car ran off, crying, “they've killed him, they've killed him!” and the crowded courtyard emptied quickly.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , Fall 1989 , pp. 432 - 448
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1989

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References

1. Pelrogradskaia pravda, 4 September 1918, 1; Pravda, 30 August, 1918, 1.

2. Shub, David, Lenin: A Biography (London: Penguin, 1966), 362 Google Scholar.

3. Pravda, 31 August 1918, 1; “Ot Vserossiiskoi Chrezvychain Komissii” in Pravda; according to Krasnaia gazeta, 31 August 1918, 1, two people were detained. “K istorii pokusheniia na Lenina (neopublikovannye materialy),” compiled by I. Volkovicher, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 6–7 (1923), 277–280; V. Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis’ v serdtse naroda” in Neotvratimoe vozmezdie [Moscow, 1973], 33–4; M. Latsis (Sudbars), Dva goda bor'hy na vnulrennem fronte (Moscow, 1920), 4.

4. I. I. Mints, God 1918-i (Moscow, 1982), 515; Isloriia Velikoi oktiabr’ skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii, ed. P. Sobolev (Moscow; Progress. 1967), 536; Vystrel v serdtse revoiuttsii (Moscow, 1983), 7–8 , 45, 210–220; N. Kostin, “ Vystrel v serdtse revoliutsii,” Don 4 (1968).

5. Schapiro, Leonard, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy. Political Opposition in the Soviet State. First Phase: 1917–1922 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 153–154 Google Scholar. For instances of western acceptance of Socialist Revolutionary culpability, see Payne, Robert, The Life and Death of Lenin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964), 485–495 Google Scholar; Fischer, Louis, The Life of Lenin (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 416–417 Google Scholar; Andics, Hellmut, Der Grosse Terror. Von den Anfängen der russischen Revolution bis zum Tode Statins (Vienna: Molden, 1967), 100–101 Google Scholar.

6. Ulam, Adam, The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual and Political History of the Triumph of Communism in Russia (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 430 Google Scholar.

7. Boris Orlov, “Mif o Fanni Kaplan,” Vrcmia i my 2–3 (Tel Aviv: Vremia i my, 1975). On the other hand, M. Geller and A. Nekrich, in Utopia u vlasti, 2nd ed. (London, 1986). accept the official Soviet version of Kaplan's responsibility for the act and affiliation with the Socialist Revolutionary party.

8. “K istorii pokusheniia na Lenina (neopublikovannye materialy),” comp. I. Volkovicher, Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 6–7 (1923), 275–285 (hereafter cited as PR).

9. For a brief but illuminating discussion of terrorist activity during these turbulent years, see Norman M. Naimark, “Terrorism and the Fall of Imperial Russia,” Boston University lecture pamphlet (14 April 1986), 16–19.

10. There is some evidence supporting the theory that Spiridonova shot the local government official G. Luzhenovskii for personal reasons (see E. Breitbart, “‘Okxasilsia mesiats bagriantsem …’ ili podvig sviatogo terrora.” Konlinenl 28 [1981], 321–342). For instances of mental instability among female terrorists see Knight, Amy, “Female Terrorists in the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party,” Russian Review 38, no. 2 (1979): 152–153 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. For a valuable discussion of female terrorists in the Socialist Revolutionary party battle organization, see Knight, “Female Terrorists,” 131–159. For female Maximalists, see Avrich, Paul, “The Last Maximalist: An Interview with Klara Klebanova,” Russian Review 32, no. 4 (1973): 413–420 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially Klebanova's memoirs in Yiddish: Klara Klebanova-Halperin. “Erinerungen fun a revolutsionerke,” Jewish Daily Forward (New York), March 12–April 17, 1922.

12. Many different dates of birth are given for Kaplan. She contributed substantially to the confusion during her Cheka interrogation in 1918 when she claimed to be twenty-eight years old (PR, 282). Later Soviet sources provide various dates, but the most reliable, it seems, is Khomchenko, who was an official in the Soviet Ministry of the Interior with access to Kaplan's file. He states that Kaplan was executed by the Cheka when she was thirty-one (Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33). Two early sources confirm his assertion, the Ukrainian language newspaper Rada, 24 December 1906, and the anarcho-communist Burevestnik (Paris) 10–11 (March–April 1908), 24; both claim that Kaplan was nineteen in December 1906.

13. PR, 283, 284; Russkie vedomosti, 24 December 1906, 4; Rech', 24 December 1906, 4; Burevestnik, 23–24.

14. Rada, 24 December 1906, 3; Russkie vedomosti, 24 December 1906, 4; Sputnik po Kievu, 4th ed. (Kiev, 1910); Faleev, N., “Shest’ mesiatsev voenno-polevoi iustitsii,” Byloe 2 (1907), 66 Google Scholar.

15. Tovarishch, 31 December 1906, 3; Rech', 24 December 1906, 4.

16. Rada, 31 December 1906, 3, and 1 January 1907, 3; PR, 284; Faleev, “Shest’ mesiatsov voennopolevoi iustitsii,” 66; Russkie vedomosti, 31 December 1906, 4; Burevestnik, 24.

17. Kaplan may have already been in katorga by December 1907; see Pis'ma Egora Sazonova k rodnym, 1895–1910 (Moscow, 1925), 158.

18. The mystery associated with her name derives largely from misunderstandings and inaccurate information provided by such well-known Socialist Revolutionaries as Zenzinov and Steinberg after Kaplan became famous in 1918. That they did not know Kaplan personally did not prevent them from misrepresenting the available data. The first Soviet commissar of justice, the prominent Left Socialist Revolutionary I. Steinberg, in his book Spiridonova;Revolutionary Terrorist (London: Metheun, 1935), refers to heron three occasions (100, 232, 236) as “Dora Kaplan,” once quoting Sergei D. Sazonov's letter to his father, in which Sazonov does not mention Kaplan's first name at all (see Pis'ma Egora Sazonova, 158). Steinberg also quoted Spiridonova's letter to the Bolshevik Central Committee in 1918, in which she also omits Kaplan's first name (see Otkrytoe pis'mo M. Spiridonovoi Tsentral'nomu komitetu partii bol'shevikov” [Petrograd, 1918], 11). The same is true for V. Zenzinov's Gosudarstvennyi perevorot admirala Kolchaka v Omske 18 noiabria 1918 g., Sbornik dokumenlov (Paris, 1919), 152. Zenzinov, like Steinberg, refers to “Dora” Kaplan using hearsay information. Western historians, relying heavily on these secondary sources, have only deepened the confusion surrounding Kaplan's name and party affiliation. See, for example, Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 153.

19. In 1908 her party's official press organ, Burevestnik, still referred to her as Roitman. Her husband may have been the future Bolshevik Max Kaplan, who in 1918 was working in the Bolshevik underground in the German-occupied Crimean city of Simferopol (V. Baranchenko, Gaven [Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1967), 97, 100). Women under police surveillance often concealed their identities through marriage; see, for example, Alekseev, I. V., Provokalor Anna Serebriukova (Moscow, 1932), 19 Google Scholar.

20. Pirogova, A., “Na zhenskoi katorge,” Katorga i ssylka 59 (1929): 151, 154Google Scholar (hereafter cited as KS); F. Radzilovskaia and L. Orestova, “Mal'tsevskaia zhenskaia katorga, 1907–1911 gg.,” KS 59 (1929): 116–117, 129, 120–122; N. N. Shcherbakov, “Chislennost’ i sostav politicheskikh ssyl'nykh Sibiri (1907–1917 gg.),” Ssyl'nye revoliutsionery v Sibiri (XIX v.–fewal’ 1917 g.), vyp. I (Irkutsk, 1973), 232–233; A. Bitsenko, KS 7 (1923): 193.

21. PR, 285; Radzilovskaia, KS. 124–125; Pirogova, KS, 152.

22. Pirogova, KS, 151–152. During an inspection of Maltsevskaia Prison in 1908, a Petersburg police deputy pointed out that all the “dirty work” was assigned to the criminals, while the political prisoners did not work at all and spent their time exclusively for themselves (“Za zavesoi proshlogo [dokumenty iz ‘okhranki’],” KS 2 [1921]: 85). The prison administration was contacted through A. A. Bitsenko, the political elder for Kaplan's group.

23. In recalling the incident twenty-four years later, some of Kaplan's friends from Siberian prison offered reasons for believing her blindness to be a direct result of the 1906 explosion (Radzilovskaia, KS, 122–123). Other contemporary accounts indicate that the doctors did not actually know the cause of her affliction (see “Protokol doprosa Very Mikhailovny Tarasovoi” in PR, 281).

24. In PR, 281, her friend Tarasova mentions a different date for the onset of her blindness—January 1909. Radzilovskaia and Orestova, KS, 121–123; Pirogova, KS, 162–163.

25. Radzilovskaia and Orestova, KS, 121–123; Pirogova, 162–163; I. Kakhovskaia, “Iz vospominanii o zhenskoi katorge,” KS 22 (1926), 184.

26. PR, 281; Radzilovskaia and Orestova, KS, 123. About the prison's doctor, N. V. Rogalcv, see Pleskov, V., “Sredi sopok Zabaikalia (iz lichnykh vospominanii).” KS, 3 (1922); 51–52 Google Scholar.

27. Radzilovskaia, KS, 123. Another sources suggests that Kaplan was blind in Akatui for five years and then partially regained her sight. Pankratov, A., “S katorgi,” Russkoe slovo 1, no. 14 (April 1917): 4 Google Scholar.

28. I. Zhukovskii-Zhuk, KS, 15 (1925); 63–65.

29. Kaplan's family apparently emigrated to the United States during her term in prison. Kaplan's friend Pigit had been involved in the 1906 attack on Stolypin's dacha on Aptekarskii Island. The Moscow apartment where Pigit and Kaplan stayed was actually that of Pigit's brother, David Savel'evich Pigit, who at the time was employed as secretary to the people's commissar of education, A. V. Lunacharskii. Three former Maltsev inmates, Pigit, Bitsenko, and Tarasova-Bobrova lived together there for many years after 1918 (PR, 281–284). On Anna Pigit, see Spridovich, A., Partiia Sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov i ee preshestvenniki 1886–1916. 2nd ed. (Petrograd, 1918). 367–369 Google Scholar; Istoriko-revoliutsiannyi biuleten’ 1 (Moscow, 1922), 37–43; Vsia Moskva (1918–1927).

30. PR, 283–284; Khronika sobytii v Krymu, 1917–1920 gg. (Simferopol, 1969), 54; V bor'be za Sovelskii Krym. Vospominaniia starykh bol'shevikov (Simferopol, 1958), 10. Stavskaia, whose real name was Rulina Efremovna Stavitskaia, was well known among prominent Bolsheviks as an anarcho-communist activist. She was brought to Moscow from Simferopol as a defendant during the 1922 trial, and, in return for admission to the Bolshevik party, was used by the Cheka as a provocateur. She provided the prosecution falsified information on Kaplan and D. Donskoi, a Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee member. ( Medvedev, Roy A., Lei History Judge. The Origin and Consequences of Stalinism [New York: Knopf, 1971], 382–383)Google Scholar. Baranchenko, Gaven, 97, 113; Pravda, 22 July 1922, 3; B. A. Babina, “Fevral’ 1922,” Minuvshee 2 [Paris, 1986], 25, 78.

31. Khronika sobytii v Krymu, 65, 73.

32. PR, 281–285; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 35–36; Babina, “Fevral’ 1922,” 25–26; Pravda, 22 July 1922, 3. Kaplan may have visited the Kremlin with the assistance of either Bitsenko or Pigit's brother.

33. For the text of Lenin's speech, see Petrogradskaia pravda, 4 September 1918, 1; and E. Iampol'skaia, “V te dalekie gody,” O Vladimire ll'iche Lenine. Vospominaniia 1900–1922 gody (Moscow, 1963), 378–379; A. Kozhukhov, “Na zavode Mikhelsona,” in O Lenine, 428; Imeni Vladimirova Il'icha (Moscow, 1962), 129. In his biography of Lenin, David Snub confirms that Lenin arrived at Mikhelson on schedule and spoke for only a few minutes (Shub, Lenin, 321); see also Pravda, 31 August 1918, 1, 2). P. Posvianskii, comp., Pokushenie na Lenina 30 avgusla 1918 g. Dokumenty, protsessa TsK Partii Sotsialistov- revoliutsionerov, protokoly doprosa Kaplan i dr., 2nd rev. ed. (Moscow, 1925), 22, 35, 55.

34. PR, dopros 2, 282; dopros 4. 283.

35. PR. 282, 283.

36. For the initial testimony of Ivanov, see Pravda, 3 September 1918, 4; PR, 278. For the second testimony see Petrogradskaia pravda, 4 September 1918, 1. Ivanov also mentions on various occasions that Kaplan was extremely nervous and smoked a lot and that she was wearing a head scarf. She did not smoke, and on that rainy night she was wearing a wide-brimmed white hat (Nash ll'ich. Moskvichi o Lenine: Vospominaniia, pis'ma, privetstviia, [Moscow, Moskovskii rabochi, 1969|, 114- 116; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33; Pirogova, KS, 161- 162). A certain “eyewitness worker” provided even more confusing information, indicating that after the shots he saw two women running away, apparently referring to Kaplan and the wounded Popova (Posvianskii, Pokushenie na Lenina, 16–17). Sec also Glazunov, M. M. and Mitrofanov, B. A., “Sledovatel’ po vazhneishim delam (k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia V. E. Kingiseppa),” Sovelskoe gosudarstvo i pravo. no. 8 (1988): 102–103 Google Scholar.

37. Pravda, 1 September 1918, 1; PR, 277–278; Izvestiia, 30 August 1923, 1. The changes clearly reflect the official poinl of view of the prosecution presented at the 1922 trial. The man wearing a seaman's uniform was identified as Novikov, who was said to have deliberately blocked the factory exit to allow Kaplan an unobstructed shot at Lenin. After 1923 no evidence contradicting Ivanov's final version was published.

38. Izvestiia VTsIK, 6 September 1918, 5; Gil’ also stated that the woman who asked him in the factory courtyard whether the speaker had yet arrived was blond; Kaplan had very black hair (PR, 277–278). For the various versions of his testimony, sec S. Gil', Shest’ let s Leninym (Moscow, 1947), 36–40. For a revised and supplemented version of his testimony, which has been widely popularized in the Soviet Union, see Bonch-Bruevich, V. D., Tri pokusheniia nu Lenina (Moscow, 1930), 32–33 Google Scholar.

39. PR, 278; Gil'. Shest’ let, 40.

40. Imeni Vladimira Il'icha, 131, O Vladimire Il'iche Lenine, 429; Pravda, 21 January 1926, 1.

41. Rabochaia Moskva, 22 June 1922; Pravda and Izvestiia, 30 August 1923, 2 and 1; Nash ll'ich, 114–116. During the 1922 trial the prosecution used Ivanov's story of Kaplan's arrest, in spite of its obviously contrived nature.

42. His testimony was published in Proletarskaia revoliutsiia along with Kaplan's interrogations and provided two slightly different accounts, one dated 30 August 1918, and the other 5 September, after Kaplan's execution. Since Ivanov was recognized at the trial as the person who officially arrested Kaplan, the portions of Batulin's testimony published in Petrogradskaia pravda appeared as the statements of “one witness” (I. Volkovicher, “Ochevidtsy o pokushenii,” Petrogradskaia pravda, 30 August 30 1923, 2). A Bolshevik worker, N. V. Strelkov, claimed in 1935 to have been a witness of the attempted assassination. His account of the event, however, has never been made public ( Strelkov, N. V., Avtobiograficheskii ocherk Bol' shevika-podpol shchika zavoda im. VI. Il'icha [Moscow, 1935], 49)Google Scholar.

43. PR, 279. In his testimony Batulin dismissed the story of Kaplan's high school student or seaman accomplice deliberately blocking the exit. He explained the obstructed exit in the most natural way: too many people trying to get out of the building at the same time. Another witness provides support for Batulin's explanation, saying that the entrance was blocked when the shots rang out (Posvianskii, Pokushenie na Lenina, 20, 24). Batulin changed his first short testimony of 30 August six days later, after Kaplan had already been executed, making corrections and additions that brought his testimony closer to conformity with the official 1918 pronouncement of her guilt. For both testimonies, see PR, 279–280. Krasnaia gazeta (Petrograd), 1 September 1918. 1. Petrogradskaia pravda, 30 August 1923, 2.

44. Batulin states further, however, that, after Kaplan's arrest, “someone” from the crowd recognized her as the person who had fired the shot at Lenin, but no name or evidence or testimony of this “someone” was ever produced (PR, 280, 282). Unnamed witnesses testified that several other people who were not from the factory approached Lenin immediately after his speech (Glazunov and Mitrofanov, “Sledovatel’ po vazhneishim delam,” 102).

45. Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33–34; Ia. Kh. Peters, “Vospominaniia o rabote v VChK v pervyi god revoliutsii,” Byloe (new series) 2 (Paris, 1933), 121; Babina, “Fevral', 1922,” 25.

46. PR, 280, 282; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33–34; Peters, “Vospominaniia o rabote,” 129. Kaplan's blindness and other physical defects would seem to make her a less-than-ideal assassin. In addition, her nervous condition, remarked upon by all contemporary sources, and her clearly documented history of emotional instability, in combination with her lifelong devotion to the tradition of the Russian revolutionary movement, could perhaps partially account for her “confession.” M. Iu. Kozlovskii, a senior member of the Commissariat of Justice who took an active role in the investigation, stated that Kaplan impressed him as “a nervously agitated person. She behaves distractedly, speaks disconnectedly and is in a state of depression” (quoted in Bonch-Bruevich, V. D., Vospominaniia o Lenine 1917–1924 [Moscow, 1963], 283)Google Scholar. When Peters began his interrogation at Lubianka during the night of 30–31 August, Kaplan behaved irrationally as if on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She suddenly burst out sobbing and cried to him, “Go away!” (Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 35; Peters, “Vospomineniia o rabote,” 121–122). Her answers during the interrogations, as revealed by the records, were unsure: She forgot the district where she was born and was able to supply only the province and to say that she was twenty-eight years old, although she was in fact at the time thirty-one. Oddly enough, while strongly denying that someone else had taken part in the alleged conspiracy, she readily provided information about where she had been living in Moscow, which enabled the Cheka to find her comrades from katorga.

47. V. Mikhel's. “5-ia godovshchina pokusheniia na t. Lenina. Vospominaniia byv. zam. predsedatelia VChK tov. la. Petersa.” Izvestiia, 30 August 1923, 1.

48. Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 36; PR, 278; Izvestiia VTsIK, 1 September 1918, 3.

49. This glaring gap in the case was not closed until the Moscow trial four years later, when the provocateur Semcnov testified that he had given the pistol to Kaplan, along with some poisoned bullets (N. Krylenko, Za pial’ let 1918–1922 [Moscow-Petrograd, 1923], 293). The protocols of the Cheka investigation stated that a Mikhelson factory worker, A. V. Kuznctsov, brought the pistol and the bullets to the Lubianka on 2 September. According to his testimony, he picked it up immediately after Kaplan “dropped it” (Glazunov and Mitrofanov, “Sledovatel’ po vazhneishim delam,” 102).

50. Kaplan may have been shot by the Cheka on 31 August 1918, rather than on 3 September as officially announced ( Vladimirova, V., God sluzhby sotsialistov kapitalistam [Moscow-Leningrad, 1927], 303)Google Scholar.

51. “U rannenogo Il'icha. Po vospominaniiam vrachei-kommunistov Obukha i Veisbroda” in Pravda, 30 August 1923, 1. V. S. Veisbrod, “Zhivoi Il'ich,” in Vospominaniia o Vladmimire Il'iche Lenine, (Moscow, 1957) 2: 402.

52. Bednota, 1 September 1918, 1.

53. Gil', Shest'let, 41; O Vladimire Il'iche Lenine, 24.

54. “Razgovor po priamomu provodu tov. Sverdlova s tov. Zinovevym,” in the evening edition of Krasnaia gazela, 1 September 1918, 1. The appeal for information published on 3 September and signed by Bonch-Brucvich on behalf of the Sovnarkom may have been an attempt by Lenin to bypass the official investigation and get information about the shooting directly from the public, rather than through the Cheka or VTsIK (Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 September 1918, 4). A week or two later, Maksim Gor'kii visited Lenin and expressed his indignation at the attempted assassination. Later he recalled that Lenin replied in the tones of a man dismissing a fact that no longer interested him: “A brawl. Nothing to be done. Everyone acts in his own way” (M. Gor'kii, “V. I. Lenin,” Vospominaniia o Lenine [Moscow, 1969] 2: 255). This reaction could probably explain why the Cheka succeeded in convincing Lenin, if they did, that Kaplan had been his assailant. At the time pressing matters of state kept him from concentrating on tracing the sources behind the attempt on his life, especially since a perpetrator had apparently been found and shot. Lenin allowed the matter to drop.

55. Perhaps the members of VTsIK were not kept up to date because representatives of leftist socialist groups were still members of VTsIK. They probably would have demanded detailed information on the evidence produced by the investigation and would also have protested against the death penalty for Kaplan, a demented former revolutionary. Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 37; P. Mal'kov, “Zapiski Komendanta Kremlia,” Moskva 11 (1958), 136–137; Piatyi sozyv VTsIK. Stenograficheskii otehet. Moskva, 1918, 10–12, 87–88.

56. Izvestiia VTsIK, 4 September 1918, 5; in Ezhenedel'nik chrezvychainykh kommissii po bor'be s kontrrevoliutsiei i agitatsiei, no. 6 (27 October 1918), 27. Kaplan's name was thirty-third on the list of those executed in connection with the affair.

57. Mal'kov, “Zapiski,” 137. Mal'kov's memoirs were published in four editions, and were substantially revised each time. The revisions in connection with Sverdlov's participation in the execution of Kaplan are especially marked. For example, the fact that Kaplan was placed under Sverdlov's quarters in the Kremlin is mentioned by Mal'kov only in the first edition. See Mal'kov, Zapiski, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1959), 159–161 (the first edition of the memoirs came out in the form of an article, as cited above); 3rd. cd. (Moscow, 1961), 160–162; 4th ed. (Moscow, 1987), 201–203. Mal'kov remarks that Sverdlov moved into Lenin's office on the very night Lenin was shot (Mal'kov, Zapiski, 2nd ed., 160–161). According to Bonch-Bruevich, during Lenin's recovery, Sverdlov once said, “You see, Vladimir D'mitrievich, we can manage without Lenin,” which greatly surprised the far-from-naive Bonch-Bruevich (Bonch-Bruevich, Vospominaniia, 293). Sverdlov also found various pretexts to delay Lenin's return to full power following his injury (see Mal'kov, “Zapiski,” 138–139).

58. Solzhenitsyn, A., The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956. An Experiment in Literary Investigation, pts. III–IV (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 525 Google Scholar. See also Balabanoff, Angelica, Impressions of Lenin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 12–13 Google Scholar; Balabanoff, A., My Life as a Rebel (New York: Greenwood, 1968), 187 Google Scholar and Serge, Victor, From Lenin to Stalin (New York: Pioneer, 1937)Google Scholar. Similar rumors continue to surface. One recent Soviet émigré reports that during his 1956 turn in the Soviet army, residents of Poduzhem'e, a remote Karelian village on the Kern’ River near the White Sea, showed him the house in which they asserted that Fania Kaplan had lived for twenty years and where she had died only three years, earlier, in 1953 (interview with I. Garelick, conducted by this writer in New York City, 23 November 1986).

59. Pravda, 31 August 1918, 1; Pravda, 5 September 1918, 3; Golinkov, D. L., Krushenie amisovetskogo podpol'ia v SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1980) 2: 222 Google Scholar.

60. Pravda, 6 September 1918, 2. PR, 282–285; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33–38; Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 153n; Golinkov, Krushenie antisovetskogo podpol'ia 2: 218–219.

61. PR. 283–284; Pravda and Izvestiia VTsIK, 31 August–4 September 1918; Piatyi sozyv, VTsIK. Stenograficheskii otchet. Moskva, 1918 (Moscow, 1919), 10; M. Latsis (Sudbars), Dva goda bor'by, 24.

62. Dvenadtsat’ smertnikov. Sud nad Sotsialistami-revoliutsionerami v Moskva (Berlin, 1922), 66; N. Krylenko, Zapiat’ let 1918–1922 (Moscow-Pctrograd, 1923). 288.

63. G. I. Semenov and L. V. Konopleva were the most notorious of these provocateurs. Both had worked for the political police since about 1918. See the testimony that M. A. Teslenko, an acquaintance of Semenov in 1918, gave to the Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee in Iierlin on 18 March 1920. (“Pokazaniia M. A. Teslenko” in Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution Archives, Nikolaevskii Collection, Partiia Sotsialistov-Revoliutsionnerov, #7 Box 1 Folder 19.) The most complete discussion of the trial is presented by Marc Jansen in A Show Trial Under Lenin. The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow, 1922 (The Hague, 1982), 24–26. 144–146, 86–90, 183; see also Sokolov, B., “Zashchita Uchreditel'nogo sobraniia,” Arkhiv russkoi revoliutsii (Berlin, 1924) 13: 44–46 Google Scholar; Dvinov, B., From Legality to the Underground (1921–1922) (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1968), 114, 138Google Scholar. See records of the ninth day of the trial in Pravda, 18 June 1922, 3; L. Konopleva, “Pokazaniia Lidii Konoplevoi,” Pravda, 28 February 1922, 1; G. Semenov (Vasil'ev), Voennaia i boevaia rabota Partii Solsialistov-revoliutsionnerov za 1917–18 gg. (Berlin, 1922), 37–40. Pravda, 18 June 1922, 3. Vandervelde stated, “it is absolutely clear that all these charges were fabricated later by Semenov in collaboration with his defenders,” the GPU (Dvenadtsat' smertnikov, 35). Semenov played a similar role during N. 1. Bukharin's trial in 1938 (Jansen, Show Trial under Lenin, 183).

64. For the replies of Ratner, Morozov, and Timofeev, see Pravda, 22 July 1922, 3.

65. See the report entitled, “Pokazaniia Stavskoi” in Pravda, 22 July 1922, 2. During the civil war Stavskaia and her Bolshevik husband, V. Baranchenko, played an active role in the Bolshevik underground in the Crimea when the region was controlled by various anti-Bolshevik forces. Like all of the other provocateurs who were witnesses for the prosecution in the 1922 trial, Stavskaia was released after the trial with no punishment. She returned to Simferopol. After 1924 she and her husband moved to an apartment in one of the prestigious Moscow buildings reserved for privileged employees of the All-Russian Council for the People's Economy (VSNKh). She was soon permitted to join the Communist party, which did not, however, prevent her from being shot in 1937 by her former protectors, the NKVU (Minuvshee, 26, 78; Baranchenko, Gaven, 7, 113; “Rech’ zashchitnika Kona,” Pravda, 5 August 1922). Stavskaia probably knew Kaplan not from Siberian prison, as she testified at the trial, but from Simferopol in 1918, before Kaplan returned to Moscow. Another possibility was that Stavskaia met Kaplan before she was sentenced to kartorga in early 1907 (Z Pola Walki 4, no. 40 [1967], 176). Both women belonged at that time to the anarcho-communist movement in southern Russia. Neither of these theories, however, is confirmed by any source. There is not enough evidence to establish that Stavskaia ever knew Kaplan. None of Kaplan's friends from katorga even mention Stavskaia in their numerous memoirs published in Kutorga i ssylka. On the other hand, among the numerous trial participants, one person certainly knew Kaplan quite well—A. Bitsenko, her old friend from katorga and Moscow. Bitsenko served at the trial as the attorney for one of the provocateurs, Fedorov-Kozlov; she was, however, never asked by the prosecution to provide any information about Kaplan despite the fact that the Cheka was aware of the 1918 relationship between Bitsenko and Kaplan (PR, 283; Pravda, 5 August 1922; “Rech’ zashchitnika Bitsenko”).

66. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 38. Three memoir sources confirm that Kaplan saw Donskoi and probably other Socialist Revolutionary leaders, such as Liberov (who, however, did not testify at the trial about his meeting with Kaplan), on only one occasion when she returned to Moscow in the spring of 1918: Zenzinov, Gosudarstvennvi perevorot, 152–153; Olitskaia, E., Moi vospominaniia (Frankfurt: Posev, 1971) 2: 143 Google Scholar; Babina, “Fevral', 1922,” 25.

67. Babina, “Fevral', 1922,” 25–26. Babina, who was also present at the trial in 1922, accepted the prosecution's story regarding the guilt of the Socialist Revolutionary party; only later when she shared a prison cell with other party comrades at Butyrki did she lind out about Kaplan's story from Donskoi. The pressure upon the accused members of the Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee during the trial was so great that such long-time revolutionaries as Liberov (who was in charge of Socialist Revolutionary military operations in Moscow in 1918 and maintained a safe house for Socialist Revolutionaries returning from the provinces) were convinced by the prosecution's evidence. Liberov told Olitskaia in 1932 that the party did not do enough to prevent Kaplan from attempting to kill Lenin, although he never eonlirmed that Kaplan had been afliliated with the Socialist Revolutionary party (Olitskaia, Moi vospominaniia, 143).

68. Semenov, Voennaia i boevaia rabota, 37–38.

69. See, for instance, the testimony of Pelevin in Pravda, 21 July 1922, 3; of Zubkov and Kozlov in the same issue of Pravda; of Konopleva in the same issue as well as in the issue of 28 February 1922, 1. To compare descriptions of Kaplan given by people actually acquainted with her, see Radzilovskaia, Orestova, and Pirogova in KS; PR, 280; Peters, Vystrel v serdtse revoliutsii, 100; Pruvda and Izvestiia VTsIK, 31 August–3 September 1918. Konopleva, for example, claimed that she had lived with Kaplan in August 1918 and that they had prepared for the attempt on Lenin together. This conflicts with the official 1918 investigation report, which states that Kaplan had lived at the time in Pigit's apartment in a completely different section of the city. The official 1918 investigation report does not mention Konopleva at all (Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 35; Pravda. 28 February 1922, 1).

70. PR, 281–285. Historians who have relied on this publication as their sole source in describing the assassination attempt include Adam Ulam, The Bolsheviks, 430; Schapiro, Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 151–153; Payne, Life and Death of Lenin, 485–498; Orlov, “Mif oFanni Kaplan.”

71. Evidence that some of the provocateurs relied on this source in preparing their testimonies may be found in “Poslednie slova podsudimogo Zubkova” in Pravda, 6 August 1922, 2. For a discussion of other instances of such “editing,” see Keep, John and Brisby, Liliana, eds., Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), 134–136 and passimGoogle Scholar.

72. Izvestiia VTsIK. 3 September 1918, 4; PR, 282.

73. la. Kh. Peters, “Vospominaniia o rabote,” 121; Pravda and Izvestiia VTsIK for 31 August–1 September 1918; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 33, 35; PR, 285, 282.

74. Tarasova-Bobrova was later driven to suicide by pressure from the Soviet authorities; Ia. Garelin, “Figner i obshchestvo politkatorzhan,” Pamiat’ 3 (1980): 395, 399; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis'.” 35–37; PR, 281, 283. 285; Radzilovskaia, Orestova, and Pirogova, KS: Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 and 4 September 1918, 4 and 5.

75. PR, 277, 282; Pravda, 30 and 31 August 1918, 1 and 3; Izvestiia VTsIK, 1 September 1918, 1; Vladimir Il'ich Lenin. Biograficheskaia khronika (Moscow, 1975) 6: 113–114. A story in PR concerning a ticket to Tomilino Station may have been the basis for the story, fabricated during the 1922 trial, of a safe house for Kaplan's group, where she was supposed to have gone after the assassination of Lenin. Neither the denials of the accused members of the Socialist Revolutionary Central Committee that such an apartment existed nor the fact that the provocateurs’ stories were contradictory were obstacles for the compilers of the interrogations in PR (PR, 285; “Poslednie slova obviniaemogo Zubkova,” Pravda, 6 August 1922, 2; “Repliki Ivanovoi,” Pravda, 21 July 1922, 3; “Replika obviniaemogo Gendel'mana,” Pravda, 5 August 1922, 2; Khomchenko, “Oni tselilis',” 36; Peters, “Vospominaniia o rabote,” 121.

76. This hypothesis might be consistent with the Solzhenitsyn's version of the assassination in Gulag. According to Berta Gandal', whom Solzhenitsyn interviewed for his work, her two brothers waited for Kaplan in an automobile outside the factory on the night of the attempt. (An automobile was a rare item in 1918 Moscow; all had been confiscated and were reserved for the use of high-ranking government officials.) The brothers were shot by the Cheka in connection with the incident, and when Gandal’ arrived unsuspecting in Moscow from Riga on the night of the assassination attempt, she was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment, “for her brothers.” The three of them, Kaplan and the Gandal’ brothers, may have been part of some conspiracy to kill Lenin, but this version is not confirmed by any other sources. The brothers could very well have been shot in connection with the incident, but not necessarily because they were involved in it, since those executed at the same time numbered in the hundreds (Solzhenitsyn, Gulag, 525.) The story Berta Gandal’ recounted fifty years after the fact may well have been influenced by the official version of the incident, as well as other informal sources accumulated over the years; she did not, after all, learn the story directly from her brothers.

77. Zenzinov, Vladimir, Perezhitoe (New York: Izdatel'stvo Chckhova, 1953), 311–312 Google Scholar. The Cheka apparently understood that Kaplan probably had not committed the act itself and, for this reason, held her in isolation in order to prevent her from communicating her innocence to fellow prisoners (who would have included the Left Socialist Revolutionary leader Spiridonova and A. Izmailovich, both imprisoned in the Kremlin prison at the same time as Kaplan) (Kreml’ za reshetkoi [Podpol'naia Rossiia] [Berlin, 1922], 7–14).