Nikolai
Sukhanov was born in Moscow in 1882. At high school he joined
a socialist group and later joined the Socialist
Revolutionary Party. He was arrested in 1904 after being caught
in possession of illegal literature. This resulted in a one-year spell
in the Taganka Prison.
Sukhanov
participated in the 1905 Revolution and
published a series of academic books on agricultural economics. He
also contributed to Russkoe Bogatstvo
(Russian Wealth).
In
1910 he was arrested again and exiled to Archangel. Released in 1913
he returned to St. Petersburg and became editor of the radical journal
Sovremennik
(Contemporary) and Letopis
(Chronicle).
During
the February Revolution Sukhanov became
a member of the Petrograd Soviet and helped
to negotiate the formation of the Provisional
Government. An advocate of peace negotiations, Sukhanov opposed
the aggressive war policies of Alexander
Kerensky.
After
the October Revolution Sukhanov
became
a strong critic of the Bolshevik government,
especially its decision to ban political parties and its censorship
of the press.
Sukhanov
published his Russian Revolution
in 1922. He worked at the Agrarian Institute of the Communist Academy
until his dismissal in 1930. The following year he was arrested and
charged and convicted of being a member of a "counter-revolutionary
organization of the Menshevik-Interventionists. Sukhanov was shot
on the orders of Joseph Stalin on 27th
August, 1939.
(1) Nikolai
Sukhanov, was a leading member of the Petrograd
Soviet. In his book The Russian Revolution 1917, he recalled
George Plekhanov visiting the Executive
Committee during the Russian Revolution.
The next
morning, in my absence, Plekhanov paid a visit to the Executive Committee.
This was apparently the first and last visit to leading Soviet circles.
Against my expectations, illness prevented him from assuming a worthy
place in the Soviet and the revolution. Perhaps it was not illness
alone that hindered him: there was such a sharp dividing line between
Plekhanov's position and that of the Soviet that Plekhanov may have
thought he had to keep away from this alien institution.
Plekhanov's
part in the events of 1917 was limited to his writings in the tiny,
little-read and completely un-influential paper Yedinstvo (Unity).
His adherents constituted a small group, not represented in the Soviet
precisely because of their complete negligibility.
(2)
In his book The Russian Revolution 1917, Nikolai Sukhanov recalled
his impression of Jules Martov.
I had seen
Martov for the first in Paris in 1903. He was then 29 years old. At
that time he, with Lenin and Plekhanov, made up the editorial board
of Iskra, and he gave propaganda lectures to the Russian colonies
abroad, waged a bitter battle with the SRs, who were increasing in
strength.
Although
I was not convinced by his arguments at that time, I remember very
well the enormous impression made on me by his erudition and his intellectual
and dialectical power. I was, to be sure, an absolute fledgeling,
but I felt Martov's speeches filled my head with new ideas. Trotsky,
in spite of his showiness, did not produce a tenth of the effect and
seemed no more than his echo.
In those
days Martov also revealed his qualities as an orator. He has not a
single external oratorical gift. A completely unimpressive, puny little
body, standing if possible half-turned away from the audience, with
stiff monotonous gestures; indistinct diction, a weak and muffled
voice; his speech in general far from smooth, with clipped words and
full of pauses; finally, an abstractness in exposition exhausting
to a mass audience.
But all
this doesn't prevent him from being a remarkable orator. for a man's
qualities should be judged not by what he does but by what he may
do, and Martov the orator is, of course, capable of making you forget
all his oratorical faults. At some moments he rises to an extraordinary,
breath-taking height. These are either critical moments, or occasions
of special excitement, among a lively, heckling crowd actively "participating
in the debate". When Martov's speech turns into a dazzling firework
display of images, epithets, and similes; his blows acquire enormous
power, his sarcasm's extraordinary sharpness, his improvisations the
quality of a magnificently staged artistic production.
(3)
In his book The Russian Revolution 1917, Nikolai Sukhanov recalled
his impression of Victor Chernov.
In the
creation of the SR Party Chernov had played an absolutely exceptional
role. Chernov was the only substantial theoretician of any kind it
had - and a universal one at that. If Chernov's writings were removed
from the SR party literature almost nothing would be left.
Without
Chernov the SR Party would not have existed, any more than the Bolshevik
Party without Lenin - inasmuch as no serious political organization
can take shape round an intellectual vacuum.
But Chernov
- unlike Lenin - only performed half the work in the SR Party. During
the period of pre-Revolutionary conspiracy he was not the party organizing
centre, and in the broad area of the revolution, in spite of his vast
authority amongst the SRs, Chernov proved bankrupt as a political
leader.
Chernov
never showed the slightest stability, striking power, or fighting
ability - qualities vital for a political leader in a revolutionary
situation. He proved inwardly feeble and outwardly unattractive, disagreeable
and ridiculous.
(4)
Nikolai Sukhanov, The Russian Revolution of 1917 (1922)
Antonov-Ovseenko's plan was accepted. It consisted in
occupying first of all those parts of the city adjoining the Finland
Station: the Vyborg Side, the outskirts of the Petersburg Side, etc.
Together with the units arriving from Finland it would then be possible
to launch an offensive against the centre of the capital.
Beginning
at 2 in the morning the stations, bridges, lighting installations,
telegraphs, and telegraphic agency were gradually occupied by small
forces brought from the barracks. The little groups of cadets could
not resist and didn't think of it. In general the military operations
in the politically important centres of the city rather resembled
a changing of the guard. The weaker defence force, of cadets retired;
and a strengthened defence force, of Red Guards, took its place.
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