Lenin Meets the Bandits April 9, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
19 January 1919, a wonderful moment where Lenin almost got offed by the forces he had created. On this day, Lenin, Chabanov, his bodyguard, and Maria, Lenin’s sister were driving with bourgeos ostentation on the outskirts of Moscow. At a railway bridge they were stopped, however, by three armed men, that Lenin and Chabanov assumed were a security check: something absolutely routine in the state that Lenin had put together. However, nothing of the sort… They were bandits! Lenin had a gun pressed to his temple – oh, what Beach would have paid to have seen that – and had his pockets emptied. The car, some personal possessions and Lenin’s revolver were all redistributed by the criminal three, who perhaps took communism more seriously than Vladmir Ilyich. The sister was the most vocal victim. ‘What are you doing? This is comrade Lenin! Who are you? Show us your permits!’ But to this little verbal flurry all she got was a pointed sentence to the effect that criminals didn’t need permits and the three drove off with the car. If Maria really told them that they had Lenin in front of them, and they seem to have taken Lenin’s pass, then the only sensible thing would have been to deal out some revolutionary justice and shoot the victims on the spot and get rid of their bodies and the car as quickly as possible. But the thieves believed that they could get away this… Moscow was essentially closed down once the crime had been reported and within days the criminal investigator in charge, K.G. Rozenthal handed in the following report to Lenin.
With the aim of investigating the bandit attack on you during your journey along the Sokolniki highway, and also in the interests of ending banditry, I ordered a door-to-door investigation of all private furnished rooms and apartments which might be used as a hiding place for the criminal element in Moscow. All those suspected of being implicated in the assault have been arrested… We have succeeded in apprehending and arresting up to two hundred people, sixty five of them wanted for many other crimes… Your attackers were the bandits Yashka Koshelkov, Zayats the Driver and Lenka the Bootmaker [sounds like good proletariat folk!]. A flat where the bandits had their meeting-place was discovered and the landlord has since committed suicide.
Dmitri Volkogonov, whose translation this is, notes that ‘Bolshkevik flair had been at work once again: two hundred arrested for the work of three.’
For which Beach is tempted to add something about the poor landlord pushed out of the window by the Cheka. Note that there is also an excellent Stalin and car story…
Other wish you’d been there moments from history: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
