In 1912 we started to lead a new life. At the January conference of that year the Bolsheviki reunited their ranks which had been broken up by the counter revolution. At the request of the new Central Executive Committee Lenin and myself went to Krakov (Cracow, in Galicia). There comrades began to come to us from Petrograd, Moscow, and elsewhere. I recall the first large general meeting of the Petrograd metal workers, in 1913. Two hours after our candidates had been elected to the executive committee Lenin received a wire from the metal workers, congratulating him upon the victory. He lived a thousand versts away from Petrograd, yet he was the very soul of the workers of Petrograd. It was a repetition of what took place in 1906–7 when Lenin lived in Finland, and we used to visit him every week to receive counsel from him. From the little village of Kuokalla, in Finland, he steered the labor movement of Petrograd.

In 1915–17 Lenin was leading a very peculiar life in Switzerland. The war and the collapse of the International had a very marked effect on him. Many of his comrades who knew him well were surprised at the changes wrought in him by the war.

He never felt very tenderly toward the bourgeoisie, but with the beginning of the war he began to nurture a concentrated, keen, intense hatred for them. It seemed that his very countenance had changed.

In Zurich he resided in the poorest quarter, in the flat of a shoemaker. He appeared to be after every single proletarian, trying as it were to get hold of him and explain that the war was an imperialistic slaughter.... Lenin has always understood what enormous difficulties would arise before the working class after it had seized all power. From the first days of his arrival in Petrograd he carefully observed the economic disruption. He valued his acquaintance with every bank employee, striving to penetrate into all the details of the banking business. He was well aware of the provisioning problem, and of other difficulties. In one of his most remarkable books he dwells at length on these difficulties. On the question of the nationalization of banks, in the domain of the provisioning policy and on the war question Lenin has said the decisive word. He worked out concretely the plan of practical measures to be adopted in all domains of national life, long before October 25, (November 7), 1917. The plan is clear, concrete, distinct, like all his works....

ZINOVIEFF
President of the Petrograd Soviet

CHAPTER VII
PETROGRAD

I arrived at the Nicolai station in Petrograd on the 24th of September, from Moscow, and went at once to the Astoria hotel on St. Isaac’s Square at the farther end of Nevsky Prospekt. As we drove along the thoroughfare I noticed workmen tearing out the wooden paving-blocks which covered that famous street, and recalled having read in New York papers that whole streets in Petrograd had been torn up and used for fuel. This seemed credible enough, even desirable, I thought, as I recalled the shivering nights I had spent in Russia. When my droshky came nearer to the crew of workers I saw worn and broken blocks piled to one side; in their places new blocks had been put in. Two days later I walked along this same thoroughfare from one end to the other, still looking for unmended gaps in the paving. My search was vain. And the pavements of the side streets, on which I walked miles during my stay in Petrograd, were in good condition.

Many of the shops along Nevsky Prospekt were closed and boarded up, and those that remained open had but few wares on their shelves. The large stores, however, now converted into Soviet stores, were all open and contained a goodly supply of various commodities, but the bright-colored toys that used to fill the shop windows of Petrograd had entirely disappeared. Apparently the peasants of Russia, busy with weightier matters, had found no time to carve grotesque wooden figures and charming dolls and the other gayly-colored toys they know so well how to make. The Russian child who does not have these toys left over from the old days has to do without.