One must note that one of the reasons for the extraordinary proportions which the catastrophe before Warsaw assumed was the conduct of the command of the southern group of the Soviet armies, operating in the direction of Lvov (Lemberg). The chief political figure in the Revolutionary Military Council of this group was Stalin. Stalin wanted, at whatever cost, to enter Lvov at the same time that Smilga and Tukhachevsky entered Warsaw. Some people are capable of having even such ambitions. When the danger to the armies under Tukhachevsky was fully revealed, and the high command ordered the southwestern armies to change the direction of their advance so as to strike at the flank of the Polish armies before Warsaw, the southwestern command, encouraged by Stalin, continued advancing due west; for was it not more important that they should themselves capture Lvov than that they should help others鈥� to take Warsaw? Only after repeated orders and threats did the southwestern command change the direction of its advance. But the few days of delay had already had their fatal effect.

Admirer?鈥� I echoed in astonishment. It seemed that the compliment referred to my political pamphlets that had been written in prison. My interlocutor was Maxim Gorky, and this was the first time I ever saw him. I hope it is not necessary for me to say that I am your admirer,鈥� I said, answering the compliment with another. In that period, Gorky was close to the Bolsheviks. With him was the well-known actress Andreyeva. We went about London together.

My father was undoubtedly superior to my mother, both in intellect and character. He was deeper, more reserved, and more tactful He had an unusually good eye both for things and people. My father and mother bought very little, especially during our early years; they both knew how to save every penny. My father never made a mistake in what he bought: cloth, hats, shoes, horses or machinery, he always got his money鈥檚 worth. I don鈥檛 like money,鈥� he once said to me later, as if apologizing for being so mean, but I like it less when there is none of it. It is bad to need money and not have any.鈥� He spoke a broken mixture of the Russian and Ukrainian tongues, with a preponderance of the Ukrainian. He judged people by their manners, their faces and their habits, and he always judged them correctly.

Chapter 9 My First Exile

The episode of the August bloc has been included in all the anti-Trotsky鈥� text-books of the epigone period. For the benefit of the novices and the ignorant, the past is there presented in such a way as to suggest that Bolshevism came out of the laboratory of history fully armed whereas the history of the struggle of the Bolsheviks against the Mensheviks is also a history of ceaseless efforts toward unity. After his return to Russia in 1917, Lenin made the last effort to come to terms with the Mensheviks-Internationalists. When I arrived from America in May of the same year, the majority of the Social Democratic organisations in the provinces consisted of united Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. At the party conference in March, 1917, a few days before Lenin鈥檚 arrival, Stalin was preaching union with the party of Tzereteli. Even after the October revolution, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Lunacharsky and dozens of others were fighting madly for a coalition with the Social Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. And these are the men who are now trying to sustain their ideological existence by hair-raising stories about the Vienna unity conference of 1912!

Despite their slight savor of ecclesiastical eloquence, those are fine words. I subscribe to them.