The Reformer. Stephen F. Williams
she was the rare Old Bolshevik to die of natural causes (so far as appears), a little shy of her 80th birthday and just a year before Stalin’s death.
The two also shared a distaste for party partisanship—a distaste different from, but in keeping with their dislike of intra-party discipline. In 1914 a Bolshevik member of the Duma, Roman Malinovskii, was exposed as a double agent. The Bolsheviks were deeply embarrassed, and their Menshevik rivals piled on with criticism. Kollontai, then still a Menshevik, expressed her disgust to Maklakov. “The dirt we try to throw on Malinovskii above all makes us dirty.”45
Consistently with her views on romance, she rather playfully teases Maklakov at his suggestion that she might be jealous. “Have you forgotten that that intolerable, though perhaps interesting feeling, has completely atrophied in me?” Then she teases him further about rumors of the “intimate side” of Maklakov, rumors that there was some pretty Jewish girl that he had had to marry.46 The idea that someone moving in sophisticated Russian circles in the early twentieth century would “have” to marry someone seems a bit outlandish, but perhaps the rumor mills had generated such a story. Despite Kollontai’s amusement at the thought of her possibly being jealous, she sounds a touch possessive. She is plainly eager to see Maklakov whenever their paths might potentially cross, giving details as to how to reach her, and is openly disappointed when he goes through Paris and fails to get in touch with her at a time when he knows she is there. She says she does not want to lose him, and that she has not lost faith in him.47 The correspondence suggests there may be something simplistic in a purported total denial of jealousy: how is the line drawn between that and love’s natural eagerness to be with the loved one (and presumably not in a mob scene)? This may be why Red Love reads more like a tract than a novel.
Kollontai’s letters, especially one of them, devote a good deal of space to an analysis of their relationship. A letter sent in July 1914, on the eve of World War I, suggests she found in him an almost mesmerizing charm coupled with a frustrating remoteness:
When we parted yesterday, . . . it was as if a melody had been interrupted, not allowed to play to the end. And today yesterday does not disappear, thoughts about proof-correcting [she was a busy writer as well as a revolutionary] flee to yesterday, look for something, there’s not regret that the melody was interrupted, not sadness, there remains rather a smile, a small smile at us both. Isn’t it funny that we’re so similar? . . .
Our interest in each other is surprisingly intellectual! It isn’t boring—to the contrary! All the same—nothing in the heart trembles, is on fire. And it’s funny that each of us pushes himself to move to feelings. Together—we’re easy, not bored, but somehow relate as comrades. And we rebel against that. . . . You were far from any emotion, but when we went to the hotel you suddenly felt uneasiness; isn’t that natural? . . . And we both tried to find the right mood. But the question remains a question. Are conditions responsible for the fact that this interest always remains intellectual? . . . all the same, I’ve a right to have a really good relationship with you. I give you what is due and I know your value. Today I even sketched your silhouette in my notebooks. But, you know, there is something unclear, not individual about you—your relationships with women. To characterize you—one needs to find other strings to [the structure of] your soul. You aren’t one of those who would be characterized by your love life. And that’s especially curious in you, in whose life so many kinds of women have always been intertwined. But do you really distinguish between them? . . .
Do you ever hear the effect you have on a woman’s soul? You simply have no ear for that. In this we are not alike. I, unfortunately, hear very well what develops in my partner’s soul, and it horribly complicates relationships. But there is another mark that brings us together [she never seems to say what this is]; but you do not love that, her individuality, nor her love for you, but rather your own experience. You forget the name, face, the specialness of the woman, however fascinating she may have been, but you never forget if you yourself went through something sharp, special. You know this. But what must exasperate them, your future loved ones, is your absolute inability to reflect the image of the loved one. Especially for women who are not too gray, they much more than men love to have a mirror in the face of their partner, in which they can be loved. But you, among the very rarest varieties distinguish only “gender” and “species,” like a naturalist. Those poor women! A question interests me: how is it then that you captivate them?48
Kollontai’s questions, of course, remain unanswered, as do our own more prosaic or bourgeois questions about his failure to find—perhaps ever to seek—what he called the “crown” of worldly blessings, a happy family life.
Into Politics—and Early Signs of Deviance from Party Dogma
AN OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION into the needs of agriculture elevated Maklakov from a distinguished young lawyer to something of a public figure. Russia’s finance minister, Count Sergei Witte, in 1902 urged Tsar Nicholas II to order an inquiry into agrarian matters through a Special Conference, headed by Witte. The conference, in turn, created committees of inquiry at the province and district (uezd) levels of government. One such committee was organized for Zvenigorod, where Maklakov owned land for hunting and fishing.
Maklakov found the committee’s discussion dispiriting. Count P. S. Sheremetyev, the chairman, quite rightly tried to give preference to peasant participants, but they tended to raise very narrow, specific complaints that could not readily be reframed as ideas for remedial legislation. Even when peasants got the idea that the committee was interested in identifying general problems, they gave up easily when they were told that the committee had no authority to adopt solutions—“There’s nothing we can do.” Maklakov did not think the peasant committee members were stupid; rather he thought that they lacked experience in the sort of reasoning required to analyze and address social and political problems. As to offerings from the intelligentsia, he found that, although they often spotted concrete questions and fundamental evils, they offered no solutions.1
Though by his account he had generally viewed agrarian problems with the “indifferent eyes of the city dweller,” Maklakov believed that his rule-of-law ideals might well offer solutions. After seeking the blessing of a mentor, L. V. Liubenkov, he prepared a brief report, which he later disparaged as “rather elementary.” But it drew from a basic premise that agriculture is a form of industry, so that its flourishing depended on social characteristics similar to those required for other industries, primarily freedom of initiative and security of rights. His eight-page memo not only offered a devastating critique of government policy in the countryside, at least as it worked in practice, but also developed the themes that preoccupied him in the Duma: the arbitrariness of government behavior; the absence of impartial, law-governed courts that might protect the peasants; and the solidarity with which officials backed up their subordinates’ abuses. He pointed specifically to the “land captains,” a special type of official created in 1889 that wielded both executive and judicial powers and whose arbitrary behavior even included interference in peasant efforts to vote in zemstvo elections. He deplored the government’s failure to encourage (indeed, its active frustration of) private initiative and the prevailing “police point of view.” All this, he thought, led not only to distrust of government but also to skepticism of the very idea of law. And he assailed the separation of peasants into a separate estate.2
The memo generated controversy. Many members of the local committee regarded it as not germane to the needs of agriculture. When Maklakov was addressing the issue of government responsibility for lawlessness, one of the land captains on the committee said, “Now seriously, V.A., what relation does this have to agriculture?” But then a peasant with a peasant coat (armiak) and a long beard, who had never taken part in the discussions, unexpectedly stood, turned to the chairman, and said, “Your honor, this [referring