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

58 THE PROPHET ARMED
newcomer.'' The visitor was to remember the 'kindly expression
on Lenin's face ... tinged with a justifiable amazement'.
Breathlessly the visitor made his report on the political
trends and moods among the Siberian exiles; on the impressions
he had formed from his recent trip to Kiev, Kharkov, and
Poltava; on the reluctance of local groups there to consider
themselves as parts of an integrated national movement; on the
work at Samara headquarters; on the degree of reliability of
the clandestine channels of communication; on defects in the
arrangements for illegal frontier crossings; and on much more.
Lenin, who had recently been exasperated by the unbusinesslike
and muddled communications that had been reaching him
from the underground in Russia, was delighted to obtain from
the young man an unusual amount of precise and definite
information, to listen to his 'lucid and incisive' remarks and to
find in him a convinced adherent of the idea of a centralized
party. 2
Anxious to examine him more closely, Lenin took him for
long walks and talks, in the course of which he showed him
London's historical and architectural landmarks. But Trotskyso
he began to be called-was so full of the clandestine struggle
in Russia that his mind was closed to anything that had no
direct bearing on it. He noticed the peculiar mannerism Lenin
used in trying to acquaint him with some of the landmarks:
'This is their Westminster' or 'This is their British Museum', he
would say, conveying by the inflection of his voice and by
implication both his admiration for the genius embodied in the
grand buildings and his antagonism to the ruling classes, to
whose spirit and power those buildings were a monument.
Trotsky was eager to return from these digressions to topics
nearer to his heart: In what way did the Iskra men propose to
weld the disconnected groups into a centralized party? How
were they faring in the campaign against the Economists, who
were trying to keep the movement within the bounds of nonpolitical
trade unionism? How would they counter the attempts
just begun by others to revive a Narod11ik-likc terrorist party?
What were they going to do to combat Peter Struvc's 'legal
I N. K. Krupskaya, Mrmories of unin, p. 6o.
2
Lenin, Sochiru:nya, vol. xxxiv, pp.1l9-92; Krupskaya, loc. cit.; L. Trotsky, JI.Joya
,Zhi{n, vol. i, chapter xi.