CZECHO-SLOVAKIA, by Act of 28 October, 1918, recognized the validity of the Austrian law. *These States were the original signatories and were bound by Article 4 to ratify the convention by December 31, 1908. The convention came into force three years later. INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION Published monthly by the American Association for International Conciliation. AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION NEW YORK CITY SOME BOLSHEVIST PORTRAITS1 [Many inquiries have been received regarding the personal history and characteristics of those persons who have become most prominent in the Bolshevist régime in Russia. The following sketches were prepared for the London Times by a correspondent of that journal, especially well informed as to Russian affairs. These have been submitted to a leading American authority on Russia and are pronounced by him to be adequate and accurate. -The Editors.] I. LENIN Of articles on Bolshevism there is now no end, but in the labyrinth of conflicting rumors and reports with which he is confronted the impartial reader frequently finds it hard to pick his way. Difficult as it is for him to conjure up before his eyes even the vaguest picture of Bolshevism as a political philosophy, he is completely nonplussed when he attempts to form an estimate of the character and personality of the man who is its creator and its chief exponent. The truth of the matter is that Lenin is by no means an easy man to know. For years he has enveloped himself in a veil of mystery—a policy dictated as much by personal inclination as by political motives, and outside his own small circle of disciples and admirers there are not only very few Russians who may be said to know him intimately, but even comparatively few who have ever seen him. If, therefore, he appears to the average Englishman as a red-shirted, highbooted pirate chief, the fault is chiefly of his own making. His all-absorbing passion is the gospel of world revolution. Born at Simbirsk on April 10, 1870, Vladimir Ilitch Ulianoff, alias "Lenin," "Ilitch," "Ilin," "Tylin," is a hereditary noble, and the son of a State Councillor. His mother had a small estate in the Kazan Government, and after her hus1Reprinted from the London Times, March 25, 26, 29, and April 7, 1919. band's death was in receipt of a state pension. Lenin's two sisters and his brother Dmitri were at one time all under police supervision, while his brother Alexander was executed in 1887 for complicity in a terrorist plot against the life of Alexander III. Brought up in the Orthodox faith, Lenin is one of the few genuine Russians to be found among the Bolshevist leaders. After completing his course at the Simbirsk Gymnasium, in 1887 he entered the Kazan University, only to be expelled and banished from Kazan a few months later for participating in an anti-government students' riot. In 1891, however, we find him attending the University of Petrograd, where he studied law and economics. In 1895 he made his first journey abroad to Germany, returning in the same year to Petrograd, where he was again arrested on account of his Socialist activities. On this occasion he was exiled for three years to the village of Sushenskoe, in Eastern Siberia, being forbidden on the expiration of his sentence to reside in any of the big cities, factory centers, or university towns of Russia. After his release in 1900 he again went abroad. From this period begins his real career as a Socialist leader, and the next seventeen years are a long cycle of Socialist Congresses abroad, culminating in the Zimmerwald Conferences of 1915 and his dramatic return to Russia in the notorious "sealed" wagon. During this period he visited many countries, including England, and made the acquaintance of all the revolutionary elements in Europe. His favorite residence, however, was at Poronin, in Galicia, from which point of vantage he was able to maintain a close contact with the revolutionary movement in Russia. Is Lenin a genius? Many Russians have denied it, and certainly there is nothing in his personal appearance to suggest even faintly a resemblance to the superman. Short of stature, rather plump, with short, thick neck, broad shoulders, round, red face, high, intellectual forehead, bald head, nose slightly turned up, brownish mustache, and short, stubby beard, he looks at the first glance more like a provincial grocer than a leader of men. And yet, on second thoughts, there is something in those steely gray eyes that arrests the attention; something in that quizzing, half-contemptuous, half-smiling look which speaks of boundless self-confidence and conscious superiority. His knowledge of languages is above the average. He is a proficient German scholar, while he writes and speaks English with tolerable accuracy. He is certainly by far the greatest intellectual force which the Russian Revolution has yet brought to light. |