Lev Kamenev - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Kamenev was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker and a Russian Orthodox mother. The wealth that his father had acquired in the building of the Baku-Batumi railway was used to fund a good education for Lev. He went to the boy's Gymnasium in Tiflis, Georgia (now Tbilisi) and attended Moscow University, but his education was interrupted by an arrest in 1902. From that point on, he was a professional revolutionary, working in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Tiflis. Kamenev married a fellow Marxist (and Leon Trotsky's sister), Olga Kameneva, in the early 1900s and the couple had two sons.

He joined the Communists in 1901 and supported Lenin. A brief trip abroad in 1902 introduced Kamenev to Russian social democratic leaders living in exile, including Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became. He also visited Paris and met the Iskra group. After attending the 3rd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in London in March 1905, Kamenev went back to Russia to participate in the Russian Revolution of 1905 in St. Petersburg in October–December. He went back to London to attend the 5th RSDLP Party Congress, where he was elected to the party's Central Committee and the Bolshevik Center, in May 1907, but was arrested upon his return to Russia. Kamenev was released from prison in 1908 and the Kamenevs went abroad later in the year to help Lenin edit Bolshevik magazine Proletariy. After Lenin's split with another senior Bolshevik leader, Alexander Bogdanov, in mid-1908, Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev became Lenin's main assistants abroad. They helped him expel Bogdanov and his Otzovist (Recallist) followers from the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP in mid-1909.

In January 1910 Leninists, followers of Bogdanov and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the party's Central Committee in Paris and tried to re-unite the party. Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea, but were willing to give it a try under pressure from "conciliator" Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin. Lenin was adamantly opposed to any re-unification, but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership. The meeting reached a tentative agreement and one of its provisions made Trotsky's Vienna-based Pravda a party-financed 'central organ'. Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law, was added to the editorial board from the Bolsheviks, but the unification attempts failed in August 1910 when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations.

After the failure of the reunification attempt, Kamenev continued working in Proletariy and taught at the Bolshevik party school at Longjumeau near Paris that was created as a Leninist alternative to Bogdanov's Capri-based party school. In January 1912, Kamenev helped Lenin and Zinoviev to convince the Prague Conference of Bolshevik delegates to split from the Mensheviks and Otzovists. In January 1914, he was sent to St. Petersburg to direct the work of the Bolshevik version of Pravda and the Bolshevik faction of the Duma. Kamenev was arrested after the outbreak of World War I and put on trial, where he distanced himself from Lenin's anti-war stance. Kamenev was exiled to Siberia in early 1915 and spent two years there until he was freed by the February Revolution of 1917.

Before leaving Siberia, Kamenev actually proposed sending a telegraph thanking the Tsar's brother Mikhail for refusing the throne. He was so embarrassed he denied ever sending it.

On March 25, 1917 Kamenev returned to St. Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in 1914) from Siberian exile. Kamenev and Central Committee members Joseph Stalin and Matvei Muranov took control of the revived Bolshevik Pravda and moved it to the Right, with Kamenev formulating a policy of conditional support of the newly formed Russian Provisional Government and a reconciliation with the Mensheviks. After Lenin's return to Russia on 3 April 1917, Kamenev briefly resisted Lenin's anti-government April Theses, but soon fell in line and supported Lenin until September.

Kamenev and Zinoviev had a falling out with Lenin over their opposition to Soviet seizure of power in October 1917 On 10 October 1917 (Old Style), Kamenev and Zinoviev were the only two Central Committee members to vote against an armed revolt. Their publication of an open letter opposed to the use of force enraged Lenin, who demanded their expulsion from the party. However, when the Bolshevik-led Military Revolutionary Committee headed by Adolph Joffe and the Petrograd Soviet, led by Trotsky, staged an uprising, Kamenev and Zinoviev went along. At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets Kamenev was elected Congress Chairman and Chairman of the permanent All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The latter position was equivalent to the head of state under the Soviet system.

On November 10, 1917, three days after the Soviet seizure of power during the October Revolution, the executive committee of the national railroad labor union, Vikzhel, threatened a national strike unless the Bolsheviks shared power with other socialist parties and dropped the uprising's leaders, Lenin and Trotsky, from the government. Zinoviev, Kamenev and their allies in the Bolshevik Central Committee argued that the Bolsheviks had no choice but to start negotiations since a railroad strike would cripple their government's ability to fight the forces that were still loyal to the overthrown Provisional Government. Although Zinoviev and Kamenev briefly had the support of a Central Committee majority and negotiations were started, a quick collapse of the anti-Bolshevik forces outside Petrograd allowed Lenin and Trotsky to convince the Central Committee to abandon the negotiating process. In response, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Vladimir Milyutin and Victor Nogin resigned from the Central Committee on 4 November 1917 (Old Style) and Kamenev resigned from his Central Executive Committee post. The following day Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Zinoviev and Kamenev "deserters" and never forgot their behavior, eventually making an ambiguous reference to their "October episode" in his Testament.