In addition to the groups already mentioned, there was another tendency present at the Prague Conference, albeit in an ‘unofficial’ capacity. The tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, had succeeded in placing its agents provocateurs at the highest levels of the Party and some of these unbeknownst to the rest of the delegates, two of whom were present at the Bolsheviks’ founding congress. The delegate from Moscow was none other than the notorious agent provocateur Roman Malinovsky, the member of the Bolshevik Duma fraction, accompanied on this occasion by yet another agent, A.S. Romanov, the delegate from the central industrial region. Every speech and resolution was known to the police thanks to their conscientious reports. In an attempt to protect the members of the new Central Committee from the danger of arrest, special conspiratorial methods were used to guard against the police. Each delegate wrote the surname of the candidates and then handed it in to Lenin. The result was not even announced at the Conference. But Roman Malinovsky, a highly skilled provocateur, had already done a very effective job of gaining Lenin’s confidence. Malinovsky had succeeded in getting not only onto the CC but also into the Duma fraction. There were agents provocateurs in all opposition parties in Russia. The Party was hit by a series of police raids in Petersburg in February and March 1912. In a letter dated 28 March, Lenin wrote anxiously that “our affairs are bad there”.
The presence of a spy at such a high level in the Party bears witness to the extraordinary efficiency and tenacity of the Tsar’s secret service. This was no isolated instance. The tactic of provocation and spying had been developed to a fine art by the tsarist regime over a long period. The Bolshevik Party was constantly plagued by police infiltrators, some of whom succeeded in penetrating key positions. Such a man was Zhitomirsky, who even before 1905 occupied an important post in the underground organisation in Berlin, where he collaborated with Piatnitsky in the transportation of Bolshevik literature to Russia. “By all appearances he was one of us,” recalls Bobrovskaya, “a sincere, 100 per cent Bolshevik.” (C. Bobrovskaya, Provocateurs I Have Known, p. 13.) After the December defeat, the Bolshevik centre was once more transferred abroad, Zhitomirsky offered his services to restore the old connections in Europe and organise the transportation of clandestine Bolshevik literature into Russia. The offer was accepted. After a time, he became a member of the all-important technical commission of the Central Committee, in charge of all underground work. As a result, the tsarist authorities were always one step ahead. One after another, Bolshevik groups were discovered and raided by the police. Not until 1911 was he caught red-handed in an act of provocation. Zhitomirsky was spirited away by his masters before he could be called to account, and there were plenty of others to take his place.
There were a number of reasons why the Okhrana was so successful in penetrating the revolutionary movement (not only the Bolsheviks) at this time. As we have already seen, the defeat of the 1905 Revolution had caused widespread demoralisation, especially, but not exclusively, among the intellectuals. Many people lost their bearings. Ideological backsliding, scepticism, cynicism, apostasy, all are the natural by-products of such periods, which are all too common in the history of the movement. A revolutionary without the necessary theoretical understanding or the necessary backbone, isolated in prison, under relentless interrogation by skilled agents, can crack under the pressure. After that, things have their own logic. The apparent ease with which some of these agents rose to the top at that time is also not difficult to understand. In a period of rampant reaction, with the party organisations smashed and the most experienced people in prison or exile, it was inevitable that their place would be taken by new, untested elements. Among these, it was relatively easy for the police to insert its agents. Given the extreme shortage of capable personnel, anyone showing ability would stand a good chance of obtaining a leading position. And the way to their advancement could be eased by the simple expedient of arresting anyone who represented an obstacle.
In this context, it is not hard to explain the rise of Roman Malinovsky. Polish by birth, Malinovsky was personally capable, intelligent, and energetic, although with the traits of an adventurer. Before moving to Moscow, he had been President of the St. Petersburg Metal Workers’ Union. Malinovsky had been arrested and exiled for party work. His credentials were therefore impeccable, and there was nothing remotely to suggest a darker side to the man, although he had in fact become an agent of the tsarist police in 1910. As a matter of fact, the police helped him to get selected as the Bolshevik parliamentary candidate by the usual method of arresting the alternative candidates! The police records show that he was paid a quantity of money for each arrest – 500 roubles, 700 roubles, and so on. But it is likely that a man like Malinovsky did not work just for the money. There is a kind of person with the psychology of an adventurer, a person without any fixed principles who enjoys excitement and even takes a certain pride in acting a part, deceiving people, and so on. In the criminal world, such people can make a good living as confidence tricksters – until they are caught. Malinovsky was the type of demoralised ex-revolutionary in whom cynicism had completely smothered all class instinct and obliterated all conscience. The daredevil element, the excitement of play-acting, of living two lives, the danger which also appeals to real spies, in his case probably served to blunt the sense of betrayal and shut off to his mind the enormity of what he was doing. Either way, he seems to have taken a perverse pride in his ‘work’, which was highly successful for some time.
During his period in the Duma, Malinovsky did such good work and was so popular that no one suspected him of being an agent. When the Mensheviks had accused him of being an agent, Lenin indignantly rejected the charge. This was also understandable. The virulence of the factional struggle was such that it spawned all sorts of irresponsible rumours about individuals. Lenin naturally attributed this to the usual factional malice and gossip about a leading member of the Bolshevik Duma fraction spread by its enemies. Bobrovskaya recalls the
atmosphere in party circles in Moscow shortly after the Prague Conference. Her brother had been arrested and their apartment searched by the police shortly after he had handed over addresses and secret meeting places on the frontier to Malinovsky, prior to his departure as a delegate.
When I was allowed my first visit to my brother, he managed to whisper to me: “Someone is spying in Moscow; I was sure of it after my first interrogation by the police. They know absolutely everything”. However, there was no one further from our thoughts in this connection than Malinovsky; anyone but he, our rising star, whose speeches from the Duma tribune later attracted general attention. (Ibid., p. 28.)
Yet all their successes in infiltrating revolutionary organisations, even at a very high level, all the provocations, the spying, the arrests, in the last resort, availed them nothing. There is a general tendency on the part of historically bankrupt regimes to attach excessive importance to the supposed strength of the state, especially the technical side of the apparatus of repression. This is a prejudice that can sometimes rub off on some ‘Marxists’ who can develop a strangely superstitious respect for the power of the state – a peculiar mirror image of the delusions of the ruling class. In fact, all the power of the state can crumble to dust, the moment it is confronted by the organised power of the masses, determined to put an end to their slavery and change society. A more powerful state (apparently) than Russian tsarism it would be difficult to imagine, with its mighty army, numerous police force, Cossack auxiliaries and vast bureaucracy. One arm of that state – as of any other – was the secret police. Here the art of provocation was developed to heights hitherto unimagined. But in the moment of truth, what did it all matter? The working class, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, just swept it all aside with a brush of its hand.
A revolutionary organisation will, of course, take all possible measures to combat and hinder the attempts of the capitalist state to spy and infiltrate its ranks (this is a fact of life, even in the most ‘democratic’ states), but, in the final analysis, such activities cannot be decisive, and can even be counterproductive. Paradoxically, agents like Malinovsky, precisely in order to escape suspicion, are themselves compelled to do the work of the revolution. Years later, after the Bolsheviks had assumed power, Lenin was philosophical when he looked back on the Malinovsky case. Certainly, Malinovsky had betrayed dozens of comrades to arrest, hard labour, and death. Yet while he was there he was obliged to help the party set up a legal daily, Pravda. With one hand he sent comrades to prison, with the other, in order to escape detection, he helped the building of the revolutionary party. Such are the ironies of life! And ironies accompanied Malinovsky to his death. When, shortly before the First World War, he suddenly disappeared, and the Mensheviks redoubled their attacks, Lenin still refused to believe it, although the incident served as an unpleasant distraction. When Malinovsky was finally expelled, it was on a charge of a breach of discipline, for abandoning his post without permission!
Only after the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks finally opened the police files, did they learn the stupefying truth about Malinovsky’s real role. What happened next constitutes a mystery suitable for a fictional spy story. At the time when the archives of the Okhrana were giving up their secrets, Malinovsky was working in Germany as a Soviet diplomat. When he received the fateful summons to Moscow, he must have realised immediately that he had been discovered. Although it would have been easy for him to slip away, he returned to Russia. Why did he go back? Was he so demoralised that he no longer cared what happened to him? Or, as seems more likely, did he entertain the idea of throwing himself on the mercy of the Party, professing loyalty to the revolution? If so, it turned out badly for him. Malinovsky paid for his crimes with his life.