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Because of his violent death while motivating workers to take part in the quickly growing revolt he became a martyr figure the Bolshevik wing that broke off and became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Many buildings, streets, and parks were named after Bauman, and some still bear his name in the post Soviet period. There was even a film made in 1967.
He was also the reason I began to have serious doubts about Lenin and his outlook on revolution and humanity.
Bauman's death was the second time he became extremely famous, the first was in a much more negative light and has become known as the `Bauman Affair`. In 1899 while working for Russian social democrats in the revolutionary underground Bauman seduced another party members wife and during the affair she became pregnant. When Bauman found out he decided to mock her publicly, going so far as to make and circulate a cartoon mocking her and her pregnancy. The harassment was so severe that she hanged herself. Her suicide note contained observations that a party that wished to transform society should strive to have high standards of behaviour within its membership.
This event became quite well known within the party and the wider circles of the Russian underground, not surprising given Bauman went out of his way to make it well known. In 1902 the Bauman situation became so well known that the leadership of the social democratic newspaper Iskra found themselves bitterly divided over his fate. Some like Julius Martov wanted Bauman expelled, but Lenin disagreed and defended him. Eventually Lenin carried the day and Bauman remained in the party until his death in a fight with a monarchist in 1905.
This event is seen by some historians as an early sign that the Russian social democrats were on their way to fracturing.
Lenin's defence of a character like Bauman was somewhat alarming to me, but what really worried me at the time was the specific defence Lenin used in arguing the case for Bauman. In essence he framed the argument as a moral one and so was irrelevant compared to how useful Bauman was in doing revolutionary work.
Lenin refused to countenance the party's right toLenin a political life Volume 2, By Robert Service
interfere and certainly not to discipline Bauman for bringing
disfavour upon Russian Marxists.94 He argued that the party's task
was to make revolution against the Romanov monarchy and to vet
the morality of comrades only when and in so far as their actions
affected the implementation of the task. He welcomed Bauman
enthusiastically as a future Bolshevik, using his services as a
troublemaker from the floor at the Second Party Congress.
This is alarming. In essence as far as Lenin was concerned any act was justifiable if it could be argued that it served the higher cause. The later atrocities during the Russian revolution of 1917 would also be justified as such.
For example in Nzhni where the poor military situation was enough for Lenin to order the mass executions of sex workers, the mass deportations of Mensheviks, and a mass terror.
August 9, 1918
Comrade Fyodorov,
It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men with dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like.
Not a minute of delay.
I can’t understand how Romanov could leave at a time like this!
I do not know the bearer. His name is Alexei Nikolayevich Bobrov. He says he worked in Vyborgskaya Storona District in Petrograd (from 1916).... Previously worked in Nizhni in 1905.
Judging by his credentials, he can be trusted. Check up on this and set him to work.
Peters, Chairman of the Extraordinary Commission, says that they also have reliable people in Nizhni.
You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms. Mass deportation of Mensheviks and unreliables. Change the guards at warehouses, put in reliable people.
They say Raskolnikov and Danishevsky are on their way to see you from Kazan.
Read this letter to the friends and reply by telegraph or telephone.
Yours,
Lenin
Lenin
Another cause for alarm for me at the time was the unique definition Lenin had of being effective at revolutionary action. Morality aside, Bauman by having an affair with the partner of another party member was consciously provoking distrust and tensions within the organisation. And by openly harassing the woman he impregnated he further stoked those tensions and brought the party into disrepute by association. That senior party members were pushing for his expulsion over his behaviour and that Lenin had to defend Bauman in a dispute with the other leaders of the Iskra group should be conclusive proof that Bauman's presence and activities were impeding the work of "making revolution against the Romanov monarchy".
Aside from internal intrigues and fights within the party Bauman's main contribution to the struggle against the Romanovs was to get into a fight with a monarchist and die. Allowing his former party colleagues to eulogise him as a martyr figure.
May the memory of this fighter in the ranks of the Russian Social-Democratic proletariat never die! May the memory of this revolutionary, who has fallen in the first days of the victorious revolution, live for ever! May the honours paid to his remains by the people who have risen in revolt be a pledge of the complete victory of the uprising and the complete destruction of accursed tsarism!
Unless Lenin somehow knew Bauman would get himself killed in a street fight the only explanation for Lenin's indulgent attitude that makes sense was that he was well aware of Bauman's disruptive attitude and wished to make use of it in his struggles for leadership of the wider revolutionary movement.
I found this quite chilling as an early example of the opportunism of Lenin and many of his closest associates.
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