Excerpt­ed from “Lenin as Plague Bacil­lus, Churchill as Muni­tions Min­is­ter,” writ­ten for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. For the orig­i­nal arti­cle with end­notes and a map of Lenin’s “bacil­lus jour­ney,” click here. To sub­scribe to free week­ly arti­cles from Hills­dale-Churchill, click here and scroll to bot­tom. Enter your email in the box “Stay in touch with us.” We nev­er spam you and your iden­ti­ty remains a rid­dle wrapped in a mys­tery inside an enigma.

Q: Smuggling Lenin

I lis­tened to Lar­ry Arnn and Hugh Hewitt in the Hills­dale Dia­logue on Churchill’s The World Cri­sis, Part 25. I was shocked to hear that Ger­many insti­gat­ed or engi­neered the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion by send­ing Vladimir Ilyich Lenin like a plague virus into Rus­sia. Did I hear this cor­rect­ly? What read­ing do you rec­om­mend on the sub­ject? —J.P., Arkansas

A: A “mad, wild-eyed scheme”

Dr. Arnn is quite right: The Impe­r­i­al Ger­man gov­ern­ment pur­pose­ly allowed Lenin to pass through occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry to Fin­land, en route to Rus­sia Mitch Williamson, in Weapons and War­fare, pro­vid­ed a good summary:

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had found a safe refuge in Switzer­land, where he con­tin­ued to coor­di­nate the under­ground activ­i­ties of his small Bol­she­vik Par­ty…. Con­tact was reduced to occa­sion­al couri­er mes­sages and cod­ed telegrams. So he was stuck, seething with frus­tra­tion as the hat­ed Czarist gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in March 1917….

Final­ly, he struck on a plan that had a cer­tain sur­re­al qual­i­ty to it…. Meet­ing with the Ger­man min­is­ter in Bern, Lenin laid out his proposal…that Ger­many would pro­vide trans­port across their coun­try and help to smug­gle him into Fin­land. From there he would go into Rus­sia, raise a rev­o­lu­tion, seize con­trol of the gov­ern­ment, and pull Rus­sia out of the war, free­ing Ger­many to turn its full pow­er to the West­ern Front.

The Ger­man min­is­ter in Bern, along with his intel­li­gence advi­sors, must have had a dif­fi­cult time con­ceal­ing his grin of amuse­ment over this mad, wild-eyed scheme…. Nev­er­the­less the deci­sion was made to approve it. At the very least it would pro­vide a bit of con­ster­na­tion for the West­ern Allies, who were ter­ri­fied that Rus­sia might bail out of the war and it might even help to trig­ger fur­ther revolts in the Russ­ian army, which was already dis­in­te­grat­ing in the con­fu­sion result­ing from the over­throw of the Czar.

For ref­er­ence I rec­om­mend Mar­tin Gilbert’s Offi­cial Biog­ra­phy, vol­ume 4, World in Tor­ment 1916-1922 (Hills­dale Col­lege Press, 2008). Also, Sir Martin’s one-vol­ume work, Churchill: A Life (1991, just reis­sued), adds details not in his bio­graph­ic volumes.

“A culture of typhoid”

The plan was autho­rized by Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Theobald von Beth­mann Holl­weg. In a sealed rail­way car, Lenin and eigh­teen cohorts trav­eled over Ger­man-occu­pied or neu­tral ter­ri­to­ry to Helsin­ki. From Vyborg, then on the Finnish side of the bor­der, they entered Rus­sia. Lenin arrived in Pet­ro­grad on 16 April 1917. Churchill com­pletes the story:

Lenin was sent into Rus­sia by the Ger­mans in the same way that you might send a phial con­tain­ing a cul­ture of typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water sup­ply of a great city, and it worked with amaz­ing accuracy.

No soon­er did Lenin arrive than he began beck­on­ing a fin­ger here and a fin­ger there to obscure per­sons in shel­tered retreats in New York, in Glas­gow, in Bern, and oth­er coun­tries, and he gath­ered togeth­er the lead­ing spir­its of a for­mi­da­ble sect, the most for­mi­da­ble sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief.

With these spir­its around him he set to work with demo­ni­a­cal abil­i­ty to tear to pieces every insti­tu­tion on which the Russ­ian State and nation depend­ed. Rus­sia was laid low. Rus­sia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.

Ten years lat­er in The After­math, Churchill sharp­ened his analogy:

Full allowance must be made for the des­per­ate stakes to which the Ger­man war lead­ers were already com­mit­ted…. Nev­er­the­less it was with a sense of awe that they turned upon Rus­sia the most gris­ly of all weapons. They trans­port­ed Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacil­lus from Switzer­land into Russia.

Poet of Marxism

No less a word­smith than Churchill could bet­ter describe what hap­pened. In a few short months, the obscure dis­si­dent became mas­ter of the new Sovi­et state:

Lenin was to Karl Marx what Omar was to Mahomet. He trans­lat­ed faith into acts. He devised the prac­ti­cal meth­ods by which the Marx­i­an the­o­ries could be applied in his own time…invented the Com­mu­nist plan of campaign…gave the sig­nal and he led the attack.

Implaca­ble vengeance, ris­ing from a frozen pity in a tran­quil, sen­si­ble, mat­ter-of-fact, good-humoured integu­ment! His weapon log­ic; his mood oppor­tunist; his sym­pa­thies cold and wide as the Arc­tic Ocean; his hatreds tight as the hangman’s noose. His pur­pose to save the world: his method to blow it up. Absolute prin­ci­ples, but readi­ness to change them.

Apt at once to kill or learn: dooms and after­thoughts: ruf­fi­an­ism and phil­an­thropy. But a good hus­band; a gen­tle guest; hap­py, his biog­ra­phers assure us, to wash up the dish­es or dan­dle the baby; as mild­ly amused to stalk a caper­cailzie as to butch­er an Emperor.

“The Grand Repudiator”

His old col­league Sir Col­in Coote thought Churchill pri­vate­ly respect­ed Lenin, believ­ing that had he lived, Russia’s fate might have been dif­fer­ent. This indeed was sug­gest­ed in The After­math. Lenin, WSC writes,

repu­di­at­ed God, King, Coun­try, morals, treaties, debts, rents, inter­est, the laws and cus­toms of cen­turies, all con­tracts writ­ten or implied, the whole structure—such as it is—of human soci­ety. In the end he repu­di­at­ed himself.

He repu­di­at­ed the Com­mu­nist sys­tem…. pro­claimed the New Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy and rec­og­nized pri­vate trade. He repu­di­at­ed what he had slaugh­tered so many for not believing…and how great is the man who acknowl­edges his mis­take! Back again to wash the dish­es and give the child a sweet­meat. Thence once more to the res­cue of mankind….

When the sub­tle acids he had secret­ed ate through the phys­i­cal tex­ture of his brain, Lenin mowed the ground…. His body lin­gered for a space to mock the van­ished soul. It is still pre­served in pick­le for the curios­i­ty of the Moscow pub­lic and for the con­so­la­tion of the faithful.

Lenin’s intel­lect failed at the moment when its destruc­tive force was exhaust­ed, and when sov­er­eign reme­di­al func­tions were its quest. He alone could have led Rus­sia into the enchant­ed quag­mire; he alone could have found the way back to the cause­way. He saw; he turned; he per­ished. The strong illu­mi­nant that guid­ed him was cut off at the moment when he had turned res­olute­ly for home. The Russ­ian peo­ple were left floun­der­ing in the bog. Their worst mis­for­tune was his birth: their next worst—his death.

Was Churchill right?

“Plague bacil­lus” is a chill­ing descrip­tion, and Churchill’s view has been con­test­ed by his­to­ri­ans. John Charm­ley quot­ed Lloyd George’s remark that Churchill’s “ducal blood revolt­ed at the whole­sale slaugh­ter of Grand Dukes” in Rus­sia. But Charm­ley also thought that

Churchill’s instincts were per­haps sounder than the legions of the good and the great who imag­ined that there was nec­es­sar­i­ly some rela­tion­ship between Com­mu­nist rhetoric and practice….

Churchill’s descrip­tion of [Lenin] is cer­tain­ly a tri­fle overblown: “His mind was a remark­able instru­ment. When its light shone it revealed the whole world, its his­to­ry, its sor­rows, its stu­pidi­ties, its shams, and above all its wrongs.” But it is hard to quar­rel with [Churchill’s] com­ment that “in the cut­ting off of the lives of men and women, no Asi­at­ic con­queror, not Tamer­lane, not Jen­giz Khan, can match his fame.”

The rev­o­lu­tion stirred some of Churchill’s deep­est instincts: his sense of his­to­ry was touched by the fall of an ancient empire; the repu­di­a­tion of treaties by the Bol­she­viks and their with­draw­al from the war aroused his indig­na­tion at treach­ery, whilst the over­throw of estab­lished author­i­ty affront­ed his deeply con­ser­v­a­tive sense of social order.

Second thoughts

Dr. Charm­ley offers a fair assess­ment, but there is one adjunct worth adding. It illus­trates a life­time Churchillian char­ac­ter­is­tic: magnanimity.

In March 1918, to Allied con­ster­na­tion, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, tak­ing Rus­sia out of the war. A month lat­er, Churchill and Lloyd George were in France, pon­der­ing with the French how to bring Rus­sia back in. In 1991 Mar­tin Gilbert revealed WSC’s astound­ing proposal:

Churchill felt that if the for­mer Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent, Theodore Roo­sevelt, who was then in Paris, or the for­mer French Min­is­ter of War, Albert Thomas, “were with [Sovi­et Mil­i­tary Com­mis­sar Leon] Trot­sky at the inevitable moment when war is again declared between Ger­many and Rus­sia, a ral­ly­ing point might be cre­at­ed suf­fi­cient­ly promi­nent for all Rus­sians to fix their gaze upon.

“Some gen­er­al for­mu­la, such as ‘safe­guard­ing the per­ma­nent fruits of the Rev­o­lu­tion,’ might be devised which would ren­der com­mon action pos­si­ble hav­ing regard to the cru­el and increas­ing pres­sure of the Ger­mans.” The Entente rep­re­sen­ta­tive might become “an inte­gral part of the Russ­ian Government.”

Sir Mar­tin learned of Churchill’s sur­prise sug­ges­tion after writ­ing the Offi­cial Biog­ra­phy. Though WSC made it long before he learned of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s lat­er depre­da­tions, it was still remark­able. Yet it was not atyp­i­cal of Churchill’s attitude.

“I first revealed this in the late 1980s, to a room­ful of Sovi­et dig­ni­taries at a Moscow lec­ture,” Sir Mar­tin told me. “You could have heard a pin drop.”

Related reading

“The Zinoviev Let­ter and the Red Scare, 1924: Was Churchill Involved?” 2024.

“Zion­ism, Bol­she­vism, and Ene­mies of Civ­i­liza­tion: What Churchill Said,” 2021.

“Churchill, Hen­ry Ford and Sid­ney Reil­ly: Anti-Bol­she­vik Col­lab­o­ra­tors?” 2022.

“Churchill and the White Rus­sians: The Russ­ian Civ­il War, 1919,” 2019.