isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

44 THE PROPHET ARMED
deported there to build roads-and it now had a large colony
of deportees and good postal connexions with Irkutsk, the most
important town in this part of Siberia. Here Bronstein had a
fair opportunity to continue his studies and develop his ideas,
to establish useful contacts and to make himself known in more
ways than one. Soon he was up to his ears in the disputes which
were going on in the exiles' colonies and he wielded a growing
influence. He lectured, argued, and wrote, pleading for socialism
against anarchism, for mass struggle against terrorism, and
for Marxism against the subjectivist philosophy. In the preceding
years he had accepted the main lines of the Marxist philosophy:
now, in Siberia, he finally and firmly identified himself
with the social-democratic trend. A Social Democratic Siberian
Union was just then growing up, recruiting members among
deportees and among workers employed in the building of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The Union approached Bronstein and
asked him to write leaflets. He readily agreed, and soon the
organization came to regard him as their leader and mouthpiece.
Two years later he was to represent this Siberian Union
in Brussels and London at the momentous Congress during
which the party split into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
The spring of 1901 brought one of those sudden commotions
which marked the flux and reflux of public opinion in the Tsarist
Empire. There were again stormy demonstrations in the
universities and strikes in the factories. Thousands of students
were arrested; many were conscripted into the army-this was
a new punishment decreed in 1899--and many were deported.
The Holy Synod excommunicated Leo Tolstoy. In February
1901 an undergraduate named Karpovich shot the Minister
of Education, Bogolcpov. The Writers' Association protested
against brutal police control over academic life. The Socialist
International denounced the Tsar in a solemn manifesto.
The clandestine groups got fresh blood, and new deportees
brought a fresh breeze into the Siberian colonies. From the newcomers'
talcs Bronstein tried to gauge the strength of the anti­
Tsarist opposition. He reached the conclusion that the political
ferment, intense though it was, was about to fizzle out largely
because the clandestine groups did not know what use to make
of it or how to direct it against autocracy. The mushrooming
underground organizations led a disjointed existence, each being