What is the world’s most effective weapon? During the First World War, gas killed about 90,000 people. During the Second World War, it was used to kill 6,000,000 Jews. Directly and indirectly, the two atomic bombs killed about 200,000 Japanese; the Japanese used anthrax, cholera and the bubonic plague to kill about 400,000 Chinese. The bubonic plague killed about 50 million Europeans in the 14th century, but that was an act of god, so to speak. I’m just using it to establish scale: a hundred years ago, in 1917, the Germans took the exiled Lenin, put him on a sealed train, and sent him to Russia. They believed that he would destabilize the new Russian Republic and deliver Germany a swift victory on the Eastern Front. They were right; directly and indirectly, by dropping Lenin on Petrograd, the Germans killed about 100 million people. And that number is still climbing.
The 100th anniversary of Lenin’s sealed train-trip has just passed. In late February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was at the Eastern Front, leading the Russian war on the Central Powers. At home, his Tsarina Alexandra ruled, with spectacular incompetence. Under the Tsarina’s rule, the Russian government burned through four prime ministers, three foreign minsters, three war ministers and five ministers of the interior. As the political turmoil worsened, protests in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg, later Leningrad, now St. Petersburg again) gained momentum. On March 10, the Tsar ordered the Petrograd garrison to disperse the crowds of protestors with rifle fire. On March 11, some of the Petrograd garrison joined the protestors, and exchanged fire with soldiers loyal to the Tsar. The Tsar suspended the Duma.
On March 12, the Chairman of the Duma Mikhail Rodzianko wired a message to the Tsar: “The situation is serious. The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralyzed. Transport service and the supply of food and fuel have become completely disrupted. General discontent is growing. Disorderly firing is going on in the streets. Some troops are firing at each other. It is urgently necessary to entrust a man enjoying the confidence of the country with the formation of a new government. Delay is impossible. Any delay is fatal.”
The Tsar’s response—not to Rodzianko—was to say, “again this fat Rodzianko has written me lots of nonsense, to which I shall not even deign to reply.”
The Duma formed an emergency “Provisional Committee,” which attempted to restore order. A letter demanding constitutional government was drafted; in the absence of the Tsar, the Tsarina refused to accept it. The remaining Tsarist soldiers changed sides, fled or were murdered. On March 13th, the Tsar attempted to return to Petrograd, but his train wasn’t permitted to pass through stations controlled by revolutionaries. He ended up in Pskov, near Estonia, where the chief of the army and representatives of the Duma advised him to abdicate, which he did.
The Russian Empire ended and the Russian Republic began. The provisional Republican government began to plan for democracy; they did not, however, pull Russia out of the war. Amidst Petrograd’s political uncertainty, the Germans saw an opportunity.
In Zurich, Lenin was anxious to return to Russia, to prevent democracy from taking hold, but the eastern front was in his way. Obligingly, the Germans arranged a private train, to convey him—locked inside—to Petrograd. It was equipped with German soldiers to see that Lenin didn’t try to get out anywhere along the way.
Churchill summed up the Germans’ plan by saying that “full allowance must be made for the desperate tasks 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 weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus.” [Sic.]
Lenin’s train was a cluster bomb designed to explode and scatter Communism on Germany’s enemies. Scholarly estimates, collected by historian Stephane Courtois and published by the Harvard University Press in The Black Book of Communism give the following totals for the Lenin-bomb’s casualties (through 1997): 20 million murdered in the Soviet Union, 65 million in Communist China, 2 million in Cambodia, 2 million in North Korea, 1.7 million in Ethiopia, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in the Eastern European Communist states, 150,000 in Cuba and Latin America, and 10,000 from international Communist terrorism. Or, about 94 million murdered in total. Nearly twice the bubonic plague.
The US spent $1.5 trillion developing our newest jet, the F-35. A one-way ticket on a connecting flight from Berkeley to Tehran would only cost about 800 dollars. It makes you think.
