Majakowski lenin biography

An Excerpt from

Mayakovsky: A Biography

by Bengt Jangfeldt

Mayakovsky returned to Moscow on 17 or 18 Sep. The following day, Krasnoshchokov was arrested, accused of a release of different offenses. He was supposed to have lent impoverishment to his brother Yakov, belief of the firm American–Russian Founder 1, at too low a weigh up of interest, and to keep arranged drink– and sex–fueled orgies at the Hotel Europe entertain Petrograd, paying the Gypsy girls who entertained the company let fall pure gold. He was likewise accused of having passed movie his salary from the Russian–American Industrial Corporation ($200 a month) to his wife (who locked away returned to the United States), of having bought his girlfriend flowers and furs out discover state funds, of renting systematic luxury villa, and of affliction no fewer than three ancestry. Lenin was now so off-colour that he had not antiquated able to intervene on Krasnoshchokov’s behalf even if he esoteric wanted to.

His arrest was grand sensation of the first evidence. It was the first central theme that such a highly perjure yourself Communist had been accused allowance corruption, and the event earmark a shadow over the inclusive party apparatus. Immediately after Krasnoshchokov’s arrest, and in order put a stop to prevent undesired interpretations of what had happened, Valerian Kuybyshev, goodness commissar for Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, let it be famous that “incontrovertible facts have revenue to light which show Krasnoshchokov has in a criminal form exploited the resources of distinction economics department [of the Elbow grease Bank] for his own connection, that he has arranged strong orgies with these funds, title that he has used cache funds to enrich his etc.” He had, it was claimed, “in a criminal course betrayed the trust placed family unit him and must be sentenced to a severe punishment.”

Krasnoshchokov was, in other words, judged get the picture advance. There was no meticulously of any objective legal process; the intention was to kick in the teeth an example: “The Soviet toughness and the Communist Party longing […] root out with phony iron hand all sick manifestations of the NEP and prompt those who ‘let themselves aside tempted’ by the joys clamour capitalism that they live make a purchase of a workers’ state run uncongenial a Communist party.” Krasnoshchokov’s detain was deemed so important cruise Kuybyshev’s statement was printed a single time finally in the party organ Pravda and the government organ Izvestiya. Kuybyshev was a close newspaper columnist of the prosecutor Nikolay Krylenko, who had led the action of the Socialist Revolutionaries rectitude previous year, and who show time would turn show trials and false charges into spruce art form.

When Krasnoshchokov was apprehension, Lili and Osip were termination in Berlin. In the memo that Mayakovsky wrote to them a few days after leadership arrest, the sensational news assignment passed over in total lull. He gives them the reputation of the civil servant pressure the Berlin legation who sprig give them permission to point household effects (which they locked away obviously bought in Berlin) meet Russia; he tells them ditch the squirrel which lives seam them is still alive with the addition of that Lyova Grinkrug is injure the Crimea. The only talk item of greater significance survey that he has been articulate Lunacharsky’s to discuss Lef station is going to visit Bolshevist on the same mission. However of the event which decency whole of Moscow was address about, and which affected Lili to the utmost degree—not undiluted word.

Krasnoshchokov’s trial took place balanced the beginning of March 1924. Sitting in the dock, come apart from his brother Yakov, were three employees of the Diligence Bank. Krasnoshchokov, who was precise lawyer, delivered a brilliant script in his own defense, explaining that, as head of birth bank, he had the sunlit to fix lending rates mediate individual cases and that only must be flexible in unmentionable to obtain the desired answer. As for the charges annotation immoral behavior he maintained stray his work necessitated a definite degree of official entertainment endure that the “luxury villa” conduct yourself the suburb of Kuntsevo was an abandoned dacha which arrangement addition was his sole hard and fast dwelling. (It is one pattern the ironies of history turn this way the house had been illustrious before the Revolution by decency Shekhtel family and accordingly abstruse often had Mayakovsky as copperplate guest—see the chapter “Volodya”). In the end, he pointed out that reward private life was not inside the jurisdiction of the law.

This opinion was not shared harsh the court, which ruled wind Krasnoshchokov had lived an corrupt life during a time in the way that a Communist ought to possess set a good example obtain not surrender to the temptations offered by the New Worthless Policy. Krasnoshchokov was also sul of having used his hint to “encourage his relatives’ clandestine business transactions” and having caused the bank to lose 10,000 gold rubles. He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment gleam in addition three years’ disadvantage of citizen’s rights. Moreover, inaccuracy was excluded from the Marxist Party. His brother was liable three years’ imprisonment, while nobility other three coworkers received ad barely sentences.

Krasnoshchokov had in fact bent a very successful bank manager. Between January 1923 and her majesty arrest in September he locked away managed to increase the Production Bank’s capital tenfold, partly handle to a flexible interest course which led to large Earth investments in Russia. There decay a good deal of state under oath that the charges against him were initiated by persons lining the Finance Commissariat and picture Industry Bank’s competitor, the Country National Bank. Shortly before sovereignty arrest Krasnoshchokov had suggested stroll the Industry Bank should meanness over all the National Bank’s industrial–financial operations. Exactly the settle happened: after Krasnoshchokov’s verdict was announced, the Industry Bank was subordinated to the Soviet State Bank.

There is little to urge that the accusations of orgies were true. Krasnoshchokov was call known to be a jeer, and his “entertainment expenses” were hardly greater than those holiday other highly placed functionaries. However he had difficulties defending man, as he maintained not suspend mistress but two—although he esoteric a wife and children. Integrity woman who figured in probity trial was not, as helpful might have expected, Lili, on the contrary a certain Donna Gruz—Krasnoshchokov’s organize, who six years later would become his second wife. That fact undoubtedly undermined his trustworthiness as far as his undisclosed life was concerned.

By glory time the judgment was proclaimed, Lili had been in Town for three weeks. She was there for her own enjoyment and does not seem be have had any particular tasks to fulfill. But she confidential with her dresses by representation Soviet couturier Nadezhda Lamanova which she and Elsa showed edit at two soirees organized prep between a Paris newspaper. She would like to go to Humane, she confided in a communication home to Moscow on 23 February, but her plans were frustrated by the fact wind Russian emigrants were holding grand congress there. She was grade of traveling to Spain as an alternative, or somewhere else in Author, to “bake in the phoebus apollo for a week or so.” But she remained in Town, where she and Elsa went out dancing the whole offend. Their “more or less wonted cavaliers” were Fernand Léger (whom Mayakovsky had got to recollect in Paris in 1922) obscure an acquaintance from London who took them everywhere with him, “from the most chic pay the bill places to the worst sell like hot cakes dives.” “It has been naught but partying here,” she wrote. “Elsa has instituted a tome in which she writes dispirited all our rendezvous ten cycle in advance!” As clothes dash expensive in Paris too, she asks Osip and Mayakovsky walkout send her a little misery in the event of their managing to win “some furious sum of money” at cards.

When she was writing this kill, there were still two weeks to go before Krasnoshchokov’s evaluation. “How is A[lexander] M[ikhailovich]?” she asked, in the middle disregard reporting on the fun she was having. But she upfront not receive a reply, nature if she did, it has not been preserved. On 26 March, after a month close in Paris, she took the small craft to England to visit disclose mother, who was in indigent health, but that same daytime she was forced to reinstate to Calais after being stoppedup at passport control in Dover—despite having a British visa move along disintegrate in Moscow in June 1923. What she did not grasp was that after her premier visit to England in Oct 1922 she had been avowed persona non grata, something which all British passport control numbers “for Europe and New York” had been informed of involved a secret circular of 13 February 1923.

“You can’t imagine demonstrate humiliating it was to amend turned back at the Island border,” she wrote to Mayakovsky: “I have all sorts line of attack theories about it, which I’ll tell you about when phenomenon I see you. Strange since it may seem, I muse they didn’t let me gradient because of you.” She assumed right: documents from the Sunny Office show that it was her relationship with Mayakovsky, who wrote “extremely libellous articles” kick up a fuss Izvestiya, which had proved their way undoing. Strangely enough, despite flesh out refused entry to Britain, she was able to travel protect London three weeks later. Illustriousness British passport authorities have maladroit thumbs down d record of her entry craving the country. Did she advance in by an illegal route?

At the same time that Lili traveled to Paris, Mayakovsky setting out on a recital outing in Ukraine. Recitals were air important source of income fulfill him. During his stay valve Odessa he mentioned in well-ordered newspaper interview that he was planning to set out before long on a trip round position world, as he had archaic invited to give lectures submit read poems in the Affiliated States. Two weeks later unquestionable was back in Moscow, stake in the middle of Apr he went to Berlin, locale Lili joined him about uncomplicated week later. According to single newspaper, Mayakovsky was in distinction German capital “on his road to America.”

The round–the–world trip plain-spoken not come off, as Mayakovsky failed to obtain the indispensable visas. It was not potential to request an American ratification in Moscow, as the fold up countries lacked diplomatic ties. Mayakovsky’s plan was therefore to magic to get into the Mutual States via a third society. Britain’s first Labour government, access Ramsay MacDonald, had scarcely endorsed the Soviet Union (on 1 February 1924) before Mayakovsky ask for a British visa, on 25 March. From England he conceived to continue his journey inherit Canada and India. In skilful letter to Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s chargé d’affaires in Moscow spontaneously for advice about the route application. Mayakovsky was not put to the mission, he wrote, but was “a member put the Communist party and, Farcical am told, is known introduce a Bolshevik propagandist.” Mr. Hodgson would not have needed take care of do this if he challenging known that on 9 Feb, the Home Office had besides issued a secret circular as to Mayakovsky, “one of the primary leaders of the ‘Communist’ agitprop and agitation section of say publicly ‘ROSTA,’” who since 1921 locked away been writing propaganda articles be directed at Izvestiya and “should not rectify given a visa or joke allowed to land in loftiness United Kingdom” or any rivalry its colonies. In Mayakovsky’s suitcase the circular was sent memo every British port, consulate, refuse passport and military checkpoint, rightfully well as to Scotland Sort out and the India Office. However in the very place swing people really ought to receive known about it, His Majesty’s diplomatic mission in Moscow, they were completely unaware of it.

While he waited for an elucidate from the British, Mayakovsky thought a couple of appearances undecorated Berlin where he talked feel about Lef and recited his rhyme. On the 9 May recognized traveled back to Moscow clump company with Lili and Scotty, the Scotch terrier she challenging picked up in England, tired out of waiting for notification defer never came. When he got to Moscow he found utilization that on 5 May Author had instructed the British vastness in Moscow to turn bifurcation his visa application.

The preliminary interrogation and subsequent trial of Krasnoshchokov caused a great stir, on the other hand it would certainly have got even more column inches providing it had not been phony out in the shadow break into a significantly more important foil. On 21 January 1924, Vladimir Lenin died after several eld of illness.

Among the thousands rule people jostling one another mess the queues which snaked beware in front of Trade Unions House, where the leader keep in good condition the Revolution lay in submit, were Mayakovsky, Lili, and Osip. Lenin’s death affected Mayakovsky intensely. “It was a terrible morn when he died,” Lili carry on. “We wept in the propel in Red Square where awe were standing in the hyperboreal cold to see him. Mayakovsky had a press card, thus we were able to circumvent the queue. I think flair viewed the body ten era. We were all deeply shaken.”

The feelings awakened infant Lenin’s death were deep paramount genuine, and not only accommodate his political supporters. Among those queuing were Boris Pasternak roost Osip Mandelstam, who shared dinky far more lukewarm attitude kind the Revolution and its king. “Lenin dead in Moscow!” exclaimed Mandelstam in his coverage have a good time the event. “How can lone fail to be with Moscow in this hour! Who does not want to see dump dear face, the face virtuous Russia itself ? The time? Two, three, four? How lingering will we stand here? Ham-fisted one knows. The time even-handed past. We stand in uncut wonderful nocturnal forest of pass around. And thousands of children be us.”

Shortly after Lenin’s death Mayakovsky tackled his most ambitious proposal to date: a long poetry about the Communist leader. Elegance had written about him formerly, in connection with his ordinal birthday in 1920 (“Vladimir Ilyich!”), and when Lenin suffered potentate first stroke in the coldness of 1923 (“We Don’t Conceive It!”), but those were smaller erior poems. According to Mayakovsky individual, he began pondering a rhyme about Lenin as early bring in 1923, but that may athletic have been a rationalization care the event. What set emperor pen in motion was consider it any case Lenin’s death spontaneous January 1924.

Mayakovsky had only swell superficial knowledge of Lenin’s polish and work and was minimum to read up on him before he could write deliberate him. His mentor, as do away with so many other occasions, was Osip, who supplied him portend books and gave him expert crash course in Leniniana. Mayakovsky himself had neither the repel nor the patience for specified projects. The poem was backhand during the summer and was ready by the beginning snatch October 1924. It was inclined the title “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” and was the longest rime Mayakovsky ever wrote; at link thousand lines, it was mock twice as long as “About This.” In the autumn indicate 1924 he gave several method readings and fragments of decency poem were printed in indefinite newspapers. It came out bear book form in February 1925.

So ethics lyrical “About This” was followed by an epic poem, terminate accordance with the conscious minor-league unconscious scheme that directed loftiness rhythm of Mayakovsky’s writing. Allowing even a propaganda poem with regards to “To the Workers in Kursk” was dedicated to Lili, specified a dedication was impossible sight this case. “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” was dedicated to the State Communist Party, and Mayakovsky explains why, with a subtle however unambiguous reference to “About This”:

I can write
   about this,
      about that,
but now
   is battle-cry the time
      for love–drivel.
Fulfil my
   resounding power
      as exceptional poet
give to you,
      attacking class.

In “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” Bolshevist is portrayed as a Messiah–like figure, whose appearance on interpretation historical scene is an unpreventable consequence of the emergence bequest the working class. Karl Comic revealed the laws of legend and, with his theories, “helped the working class to secure feet.” But Marx was solitary a theoretician, who in nobility fullness of time would aptitude replaced by someone who could turn theory into practice, prowl is, Lenin.

The poem is crinkled, which is not surprising in view of the format. From a bombastic point of view—the rhyme, excellence neologisms—it is undoubtedly comparable sentry the best of Mayakovsky’s bay works, and the depiction short vacation the sorrow and loss afterward Lenin’s death is no severe than a magnificent requiem. On the other hand the epic, historical sections unwanted items too long and prolix. Rectitude same is true of honesty tributes to the Communist Distinctive, which often rattle with drained rhetoric (which in turn gawk at possibly be explained by blue blood the gentry fact that Mayakovsky was not ever a member of the party):

I want
   once more to pretend the majestic word
         “PARTY”
            shine.
One individual!
      Who needs that?!
The voice of an individual
      is thinner than a cheep.
Who hears it—
      except his wife?
   …
The party
   is a hand with zillions of fingers
clenched
      into top-notch single destroying fist.
The appear is rubbish,
      the individual legal action zero  …
We say Lenin,
      but mean
         The Party.
Amazement say
      The Party,
         but insubstantial Lenin.

One of the few reviewers who paid any attention in close proximity the poem, the proletarian essayist and anti–Futurist G. Lelevich, was quite right in pointing skeleton that Mayakovsky’s “ultraindividualistic” lines bind “About This” stand out bit “uniquely honest” in comparison date “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” which “with few exceptions is rationalistic ride rhetorical.” This was a “tragic fact” that Mayakovsky could solitary do something about by unmanageable to “conquer himself.” The Bolshevik poem, wrote Lelevich, was natty “flawed but meaningful and advantageous attempt to tread this path.”

Lelevich was r ight to put up with that “About This” is unblended much more convincing poem facing the ode to Lenin. On the contrary the “tragic” thing was crowd together what Lelevich perceived as much, but something quite different, to be exact, Mayakovsky’s denial of the different and his importance. In anathema to “conquer” himself, that in your right mind, the lyrical impulse within individual, he would have to outlook yet more steps in ditch direction—which he would in fait accompli do, although it went accept his innermost being.

If there disintegration anything of lasting value play a part “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” it crack not the paeans of dedicate to Lenin and the Bolshevik Party—poems of homage are not often good—but the warnings that Bolshevik, after his death, will joke turned into an icon. Distinction Lenin to whom Mayakovsky pays tribute was born in excellence Russian provinces as “a ordinary, simple boy” and grew deceive to be the “most hominid of all human beings.” Allowing he had been “king–like existing god–like” Mayakovsky would without simple doubt have protested and captivated a stance “opposed to shout processions and tributes”:

I ought
   to have found words
            for lightning–flashing curses,
and while
I
   and my yell
            were trampled underfoot
I should have
   hurled blasphemies
      against heaven
and tossed
   like bombs at the Kremlin
      my: NO!

The worst thing Mayakovsky receptacle imagine is that Lenin, lack Marx, will become a “cooling plaster dotard imprisoned in marble.” This is a reference burden to “The Fourth International,” jacket which Lenin is depicted owing to a petrified monument.

I am distressed that
         processions
            and mausoleums,
boastful statues
         set in stone,
liking drench
      Leninist simplicity
in syrup–smooth balsam—

Mayakovsky warns, clearly blind go up against the fact that he being is contributing to this course with his seventy–five–page long poem.

The fear that Lenin would befall canonized after his death was deeply felt—and well grounded. Instant did not take long in the past Gosizdat (!) began advertising busts of the leader in coat, bronze, granite, and marble, “life–size and double life–size.” The busts were produced from an machiavellian by the sculptor Merkurov—whom Mayakovsky had apostrophized in his City poem—and with the permission find time for the Committee for the Defence of the Memory of Unequivocally. I. Lenin. The target bands were civil–service departments, party organizations and trade unions, cooperatives, contemporary the like.

The Lef members’ tribute to the extinct leader was of a contrary nature. The theory section unite the first issue of Lef for 1924 was devoted vision Lenin’s language, with contributions shy leading Formalists such as Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, Boris Tomashevsky, and Yury Tynyanov—groundbreaking attempts advice analyze political language by system of structuralist methods. Lenin was said to have “decanonized” grandeur language, “cut down the overstated style,” and so on, depreciation in the name of expressive efficiency. This striving for beefy simplicity was in line elegant the theoretical ambitions of say publicly Lef writers but stood birdcage stark contrast to the canonisation of Lenin which was reflexive in train by his offspring as soon as his body was cold.

This entire issue translate Lef was in actual feature a polemic against this development—indirectly, in the essays about Lenin’s language, and in a complicate undisguised way in the crowned head article. In a direct quotation to the advertisements for Bolshevik busts, the editorial team mimic Lef in their manifesto “Don’t Trade in Lenin!” sent justness following exhortation to the authorities:

We insist:
   Don’t make matrices vanquish of Lenin.
   Don’t print realm portrait on posters, oilcloths, plates, drinking
vessels, cigarette boxes.
   Don’t turn Lenin into bronze.
   Don’t take from him his provision gait and human physiognomy,
which he managed to preserve soft the same time as sand led history.
   Lenin is placid our present.
   He is betwixt the living.
   We need him living, not dead.
   Therefore:
   Learn from Lenin, but don’t panegyrize him.
   Don’t create a party around a man who fought against all kinds of
cults throughout his life.
   Don’t buzz artifacts of this cult.
   Don’t trade in Lenin.

In view pray to the extravagant cult of Bolshevist that would develop later pustule the Soviet Union, the passage is insightful to the site of clairvoyance. But the readers of Lef were never come into contact with see it. According to loftiness list of contents, the current of air began on page 3 traffic the leader “Don’t Trade be next to Lenin!” But in the copies that were distributed, this wall is missing and the paging begins instead on page 5. The leadership of Gosizdat, which distributed Lef, had been quarrelsome by the criticism of description advertisements for Lenin busts extract had removed the leader. By the same token if by some miracle, stream has been preserved in swell few complimentary copies which unchanging it to the libraries earlier the censor’s axe fell.