Ture Nerman - in Soviet Russia

In Soviet Russia

At the end of the summer of 1918, Ture Nerman traveled together with Angelica Balabanoff and Anton Nilson to Bolshevik Russia.

In Petrograd, Nerman was invited two visit the home of Zinoviev, who was the leader of the Petrograd Soviet. They knew each other from Zimmerwald. Zinoviev asked him: “When will you make revolution in Sweden?” Nerman replied modestly that they didn’t have a definitive date yet. The next day Nerman attended a rally outside the Winter Palace, in which Zinoviev and Balabanoff spoke to the red soldiers heading out to fight in the civil war.

After spending some days in Petrograd, the trip continued to Moscow, where Nerman was greeted by Kamenev and his wife, the sister of Trotsky. Nerman was welcomed to live with the Kamenev family at the Kremlin.

On 3 October, Nerman attended a grand meeting at the Bolshoi Theatre. Amongst the speakers were Sverdlov, Radek, Bukharin and the main speaker Trotsky. Lenin, who recently had been shot and wounded, could not attend, but his greetings were received with cheers and applause. Afterwards Nerman spoke briefly with Trotsky who was in a hurry to go out and fight in the Civil War the same night. Nerman mentioned that the Swedish press, and even the Social Democratic newspapers, wrote almost every day that the Soviet government was about to fall, but still it remained. “Yes,” answered Trotsky with a stern smile, “and we will remain.”

The day after, Nerman got to sit down with Bukharin for a long interview, in which Bukharin expressed his optimism in the world revolution and socialist future. The same day he met with Alexandra Kollontay, the female Bolshevik leader, who later would be the Soviet ambassador to Sweden.

Ture Nerman returned to Sweden through the Finnish archipelago in late October. The positive energies he had massed from his experience in revolutionary Russia were replaced with devastation after hearing of the failed German revolution of 1918/1919, and the murdering of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

Ture Nerman made his second trip to Russia with Otto Grimlund in the spring of 1920, where he got to meet with Lenin, this time as the guest, after having been the host in Stockholm April 1917.

Upon returning to Sweden in the summer he learned about the death of his father. His family had tried to delay the funeral, but still he had missed it.

Ture Nerman would make one more trip to Russia, in 1927. It was the tenth year anniversary of the revolution. Lenin was dead now and things had started to change.