Interlude
Sverdlov: The indispensable man
I’m actually not and I know it; Lenin is the indispensable man to the Party and the Revolution. What I am, though, is indispensable to Lenin. He knows it; I know it; and pretty much everyone else knows it, too.
I am indispensable for two reasons. One is because I know everyone who matters, and have a completely objective, unemotional, accurate guide to their abilities and weaknesses, their value and their limitations. The other is because I see things clearly, with no emotional chains to bind me from doing what must be done. Closely related to that, I also understand terror in a way that even Lenin does not.
Terror? There are three kinds. One targets nobody in particular. It’s not very effective except as advertising, as an illustration of the weakness of the state, and insofar as it may cause the state to crack down in ways that make it even less popular. We Bolsheviks have engaged in this kind of terror, from bombings to bank robberies.
It’s far more effective, though, to target specific individuals and, by doing so, to target the behavior of a great many more of those in sympathy with the ones you target. A kulak, lifted high into the air by his neck, dancing on that air, and choking out his life, sends a message to every other kulak, even those far, far from the gallows. That message is “cooperate or die.”
And if killing one kulak isn’t enough? Well, then, hang his entire family, down to the smallest babe nursing at his mother’s breast. That message goes even further and faster, while it is received even more clearly.
The last and most effective kind of terror, however, is the kind that threatens to exterminate an entire people or class, to erase them from history, to bury their families, their friends, their values, their beliefs, their religion, their buildings and monuments, their entire culture. That is the terror men fear above all. Moreover, it has the distinct advantage that, once you are successful, there are no more enemies of the revolution.
And we intend to do it, too. The kulaks, the bourgeoisie, the aristocrats? Their foolish and wicked supporters? Their children and grandchildren? All will be swept away, killed in both body and spirit.
We Bolsheviks are not the weak and foolish tsars. What trivial numbers they did away with over the last century, to preserve their rotten system, we shall double and treble weekly, even daily if we must, to bring to life our better one.