7. My First Revolutionary Organisation¶
Core Argument¶
In the autumn of 1896, Leon Trotsky stood at a crossroads, torn between the certainties of mathematics and the call of revolution. Visiting his family, he debated surplus value with an engineer uncle in Odessa while deliberately avoiding university registration. Returning to Nikolayev, he rejoined Shvigovsky’s circle, acutely aware of the gulf separating tea-table discussions from genuine revolutionary organisation. The 1896 St Petersburg weavers’ strikes and the February 1897 suicide of student Vetrova in the Peter-Paul fortress had galvanised the intelligentsia. Trotsky and Grigory Sokolovsky resolved to make direct contact with workers. Sokolovsky found Mukhin, an electrician and former sectarian who used navy beans to illustrate class relations. From that day, they plunged into work.
Nikolayev contained eight thousand factory workers and two thousand in trades; the secret police were inactive. Workers streamed to them—mostly skilled, eight-hour-day men seeking justice, not strikes. Many were Baptists or Stundists shedding orthodoxy. Trotsky adopted the conspiratorial name Lvov, hectographed proclamations by hand, and later installed a printing press in a blind worker’s home. He established Odessa contacts, smuggling illegal literature in a travelling bag. The organisation grew rapidly, limited only by a shortage of instructors and literature.
The organisation named itself the South Russian Workers’ Union, drafting a constitution along Social Democratic lines. Mill authorities countered with their own speakers; the group replied with new proclamations. The whole town discussed the revolutionaries. Police delayed, believing older exiles were behind them, granting two or three extra months. When surveillance tightened, the group decided to leave Nikolayev temporarily but resolved not to hide if arrests came, so workers would not think leaders had fled.
Before Trotsky’s departure, Nesterenko insisted on a late-night meeting behind the cemetery to receive proclamations. A figure detached from the wall and touched Nesterenko; Trotsky asked who it was. Nesterenko claimed not to know, though he was already working with the police. The mechanic Shrentsel, who had posed as an engineer and tried to join the group, was revealed by Polyak to be a long-standing police informer. Trotsky confronted him at Mukhin’s apartment, recounting his life story without naming him, and threatened him if he betrayed them. Shrentsel left them alone for three months, but later gave damning evidence after their arrest.
On 28 January 1898, mass arrests occurred; over two hundred were taken. The police used the scourge. Soldier Sokolov threw himself from the second floor of the prison; Levandovsky went insane. Some deserted or betrayed; others, like the turner August Dorn, showed great strength of character, singing German songs and joking in prison. The organisation was hard hit but survived; revolutionaries and police both grew in experience.