Malinovsky: the Agent on Lenin's Central Committee

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Ernie Stubbins reviews 'Roman Malinovsky: A Life Without A Cause" by Ralph Carter Elwood, published by Oriental Research Partners, 1977 and Mass demonstration in Petrograd two weeks before 1917 revolution cumventing the Chairman's gence was the arrest of Nogin the police. tors, which effectively blocked he resigned from the Duma, Russia. neamnilu loft C+ Dotarchiren Mass meeting in the Putilor Works in July 1917 £2.50 may seem a high price for a volume of only 107 pages, the more so when 37 of those pages are devoted to footnotes and bibliography.

However, Professor Elwood's study is an important contribution to an area of history of the Russian Revolution which has long been the subject of controversy.

It is an area where systematic scholarship is needed to cut through the confusion, much of it deliberately sown by the enemies of Bolshevism.

Most accounts of Malinovsky's remarkable career derive from Bertram Wolfe's Three Who Made A Revolution or from Badayev's The Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma.

Research

Professor Elwood has taken the trouble to research extensively among the primary sources-contemporary political and trade union newspapers and journals, and the collected writings (almost all still untranslated from Russian) of many of the participants in the events.

From the outset he sets himself the task of answering a series of questions on which earlier studies have remained indecisive:

What was Malinovsky's background?

How and when did become a police agent?

Why did Lenin trust him confidently, even as late 1914?

their why did he costa sack inside the Bolshevik Party in 1914?

to Russia in 1918 to take certain execution?

Did Lenin know all along of Malinovsky's role and employ him as a double agent?

Apprentice

Since Professor Elwood's is the most detailed currently available account of Malinovsky, we shall summarise it here for the benefit of Socialist Press readers unfamiliar with the story.

Malinovsky was born in Gladova, Poland in 1876 into a peasant family. Orphaned at an early age he spent his youth wandering mainly in Germany, returning to Poland to become a tailor's apprentice.

During this period he recently imported into Britain. resorted to theft and may also have been found guilty of rape. After a 3 year prison sentence he joined the army and served in the Russo-Japanese war.

In 1906 he arrived in St. Petersburg and energetically took part in the unionisation of the steelworkers, only recently legalised by the Tsar.

He rose upwards through the organisation of the Metalworkers Union at a rapid rate. Although his success was partly a result of the newness of the organisation, his organisational and oratorical powers were widely recognised at this period.

Setbacks

By 1909 he was an acknowledged trade union leader.

Towards the end of 1909 however his career as a union leader began to receive setbacks. Union rights were curtailed by the State and his relationships with his colleagues in the Metalworkers Union were deteriorating in November 1909 he was arrested and held in jail for two months. On his release he was banished from St. Petersburg.

He travelled to Moscow and after a period of unemployment became a local secretary for the RSDLP.

At this time he appears to have been, like many trade union activists, uncommitted to either of the major factions in the party.

Nonetheless he made a forceful impression among the Moscow party members, particularly on V.P. Nogin, a Central Committee member and leader of the conciliationist tendency, who proposed that Malinovsky be co-opted onto the Russian Bureau.

Before this could happen Malinovsky was arrested, in May 1910. It was on this occasion that he was recruited as an agent of the Okhrana.

Police reports say that he asked to see Zavarin, head of the Moscow Okhrana section, which has been interpreted as uvidence that he had worked for the Okhrana previously.

The available evidence does not allow the question to be settled. What is. _certain is that while under arrest Malinovsky was recruited to the service of the Okhrana as a full time agent on a salary of 100 roubles a month (four times his salary as a party secretary).

By January 1912 he attended, although without proper credentials, the All Russian Conference of the RSDLP held in Prague.

Although the Russian delegates disliked him, Lenin was greatly impressed, particularly with Malinovsky's recently announced conversion to Bolshevism, and was soon demanding that Malinovsky be elected onto the Central Committee.

The proposal was unpopular, and strongly opposed by Piatnitsky and other delegates on the grounds that Malinovsky was untested in party work and should not even have been at the conference. In the end however, Lenin's view was to prevail. Lenin delighted, Lenin went on to propose Malinovsky as the Party's Moscow District candidate for the elections to the Fourth Duma, due to take place in the autumn.

With the backing of the Mensheviks he won the workers' nomination in September and the election in October. Lenin was delighted that a genuine proletarian leader had emerged.

Once inside the Duma, Malinovsky rapidly emerged as the leader of the Bolsheviks.

A gifted orator, he quickiy mastered the techniques of cirpowers of censorship.

Commission

The other Bolshevik deputies, Badayev, Muranov, Shagov and Samoilov were never as successful in any of these respects.

In his privileged position as a deputy, Malinovsky was able to visit Lenin in Galicia much more frequently than before, and travelled extensively with Lenin on party business.

Ironically, Malinovsky was included in a special commission on the problem of provo: cateurs in the party.

In the course of this work he came into contact with Burtsev, the socialist movement's leading counter espionage expert.

Burtsev was apparently convinced by Malinovsky, and refused to accept the charges against him even after his resignation from the Duma.

All this time Malinovsky was filing regular reports to the Okhrana on all aspects of party activity which were producing a series of important arrests, including Bukharin and his immediate circle in 1910, Stalin and Sverdlov in 1913.

Among the most significant interventions by the police based upon Malinovsky's intelliBottu and the other leading conciliainterfactional discussions inside It has several times been pointed out that in driving towards a definitive split with the Mensheviks, Lenin's interests coincided with the strategy of the Okhrana.

Certainly this is true, and certainly both Lenin and the Okhrana supported Malinovsky in splitting the Duma fraction in 1913.

There is no evidence that Lenin was knowingly employing a double agent. On the contrary there is no indication that the Bolsheviks gained anything from Malinovsky's involvement with the Okhrana.

Backfired

By the end of 1913 the strain of his double life was beginning to show. He was drinking heavily and was frequently abusive to party comrades. • Burtsev's penetration into the Okhrana was improving and even Dzhunkovsky, the new Deputy Minister of the Interior was worried at the scale of scandal which would result from exposure of their undermining of the 'democracy" of the Duma At the same time, despite the arrests and the sabotage, the Bolsheviks were growing daily more powerful among the workers.

The strategy of forcing the factional split had backfired against the Okhrana and a new plan was needed.

Making a virtue of necessity Dzhunkovsky decided that Malinovsky should resign from the Duma causing the maximum confusion and demoralisation to the Bolsheviks.

Confusion

During his last days Duma, Malinovsky was in of great confusion.

Among several deputies he had been suspended from the Duma after disrupting the Budget speech of Goremykin.

He began to propose among the Party a withdrawal from the Duma and the start of mass revolutionary action.

When this was dismissed he made a final speech in which he unsuccessfully attempted to provoke Rodzianko into expelling him. He was however removed from the chamber by The next day, 8 May 1914, without warning the Party, and prompuy it oi, relersuury.

Rumours and accusations began to fly, and Malinovsky's letters from abroad did nothing to explain his departure.

He visited Lenin in Galicia and found him unwilling to believe the charges of provocation.

Called up

Lenin and Zinoviev together with the Polish Social Democrat Haniecki formed a tribunal of enquiry and rejected the charges, despite openly voiced suspicions of leaders such as Bukharin.

The Bolsheviks strove to defend this line against a growing campaign by the Mensheviks.

When war broke out, Malinovsky returned to Warsaw and was soon called up for military service. He was wrongly reported killed and an obituary by Lenin was published, clearly intended to rehabilitate him.

In fact he survived and was captured by German forces. Among the Russian prisoners he began a programme of Bolshevik propaganda.

By 1916 Burtsev's contacts among the police had provided him with reason to believe the provocation charges but Lenin persisted in refusing to believe any of it, even as late as 1917.

Proof of guilt

When the revolutionary forces sacked the Okhrana headquarters the proof of Malinovsky's guilt caused the Bolsheviks, and Lenin in particular, acute embarassment.

Forced to admit the validity of the case, Lenin vigorously defended Malinovsky's record as an agitator. The Mensheviks furiously continued to demand more extensive investigations.

On his release from prisoner of war camp Malinovsky returned to Petrograd and surrendered himself to the Party Committee. After interrogation by the CHEKA he was tried by the Party, found guilty and shot.

This is, in summary, Profes. sor Elwood's account of Malinovsky and his career. The now evidence he brings in is interesting, but how far does it go in answering Elwood's own questions?

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The profound political crisis of the largest organisation claiming adherence to Trotskyism, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, expresses A recent article in El Socialista by Ricardo Ramirez (reprinted in Intercontinental Press/Inprecor September 17, 1979) correctly observes:

"The revolution destroyed the basic pillar of the bourgeois state: the old Somozist National Guard.

"From here on there are two roads: either proceeding to the general arming of the workers, peasants and inhabitants of the poor neighbourhoods, organising them into militias; or their disarming and the organising of a standing army and police.

"The first road points towards the socialist revolution; the second, toward the reconstruction of the bourgeois state.