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What if the Germans demand that Lenin hand over Dzerzhinsky for trial after Mirbach's assassination? They say, "We are perfectly willing to accept that *you* had nothing to do with the assassination, but do you really expect us to believe that Dzerzhinsky was acting in good faith when he assigned Left SRs (!) to 'guard' Count Mirbach?"

You may of course say that while Lenin was willing to make all sorts of economic and territorial concessions to the Germans to save the Bolshevik regime, he would never sacrifice a leading Bolshevik comrade in this way. But what if the only alternative is Germany seizing Petrograd and even Moscow with minimal trouble? (The Bolsheviks are very weak militarily at this time, as is shown by the ease with which the Czechs were able to overthrow them in vast areas of Siberia. Yes, the Germans have their hands full in the West, but it's not as though it will take that many troops to defeat the Bolsheviks.) To buy time for the Soviet power, perhaps even greater sacrifices than Brest-Litovsk must be made.... (I'll admit that he'll have a hard time selling this to the Central Committee, though--members may wonder "will I be next?"... )

I'm not saying that Dzerzhinsky and the Bolsheviks were behind the murder, only that suspicious-minded Germans might well think so, because

(1) Mirbach, who had at first shared the German government's official line that the survival of Lenin's government was in the interest of Germany, later changed his mind, and reported to Berlin that Bolshevism would soon fall, and that a military attack that would speed up the Bolsheviks' collapse would be in the Germans' interest. That these reports became known to the Bolshevik leaders is indicated by Lenin's statement (quoted by Trotsky) that "Mirbach has continually reported that we are weak and a single blow would suffice." https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1925/lenin/07.htm

(2) On July 4 at the opening of the Congress of Soviets, Lenin was subjected to violent attacks by the Left SR's. He replied in kind, and made pointed references to the Left SRs' attempts to provoke a resumption of Russian-German fighting. The Left SR's then conducted a violent and threatening demonstration against Mirbach, who was listening to the proceedings in his diplomatic box.

Under those circumstances, as Adam Ulam writes, "It is all the more remarkable that no additional precautions were taken to protect the German ambassador and suspicion must remain that at least some Communist dignitaries knew of the (Left) Socialist Revolutionaries' resolve and that they did nothing about it. On July 6 Jacob Blyumkin and another conspirator, both Left Socialist Revolutionaries and members of the Cheka, sought a conference with the ambassador. They were admitted without difficulty; they had passes signed by Dzerzhinsky, and Blyumkin, a nineteen-year old youth, was the Cheka official deputized to guard the foreign representatives (!)..." (*The Bolsheviks,* pp. 424-5) https://books.google.com/books?id=TdCK1WkconkC&pg=PA425

Now, if I were a German in 1918, I might note these apparently suspicious circumstances, and might further note that the combination of the assassination and the crushing of the Left SR uprising [1] gave the Bolsheviks an excuse to get rid of troublesome domestic political opponents (the Left SR's had great appeal to the peasants, and would probably have outnumbered the Bolsheviks at the Congress of Soviets except for Bolshevik electoral manipulation) and the troublesome German ambassador. This theory has in fact been embraced by some historians, as noted in Lutz Hafner, "The Assassination of Count Mirbach and the 'July Uprising' of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries in Moscow, 1918", Russian Review, Volume 50, Issue 3, (Jul., 1991) 324-344, http://www.angelfire.com/nb/revhist17/lsr.pdf Hafner specifically mentions George Katkov and Yuri Felshtinsky who "point to the rather mysterious role played by Dzerzhinskii in July. The evidence he gave to the fact-finding committee was very contradictory." He notes that "Fel'shtinskii argues that Dzerzhinskii, as a Left Communist and outspoken opponent of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, planned the assassination of Mirbach."

Let me add that I do not accept this theory--nor does Hafner accept it in this extreme form [2]. (After all, the assassination of Mirbach did entail some risk that the Germans would now move militarily against the Bolsheviks, with fatal consequences for the latter. I don't think Lenin would take such risks, and I doubt that Dzerzhinsky would do so on his own.) Nevertheless, I don't think such a theory would necessarily seem implausible to the German government in July 1918--and that, not the theory's validity, is what is at issue here.

[1] If that indeed was what it was; as I will note, some historians claim there was no Left SR "uprising" in the sense of an attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

[2] Hafner thinks that Katkov and Felshtinsky go too far, but he does argue that there was no planned Left SR "uprising" against the Bolsheviks, and that the Left SRs' first move (the arrest of Dzerzhinsky), is "properly interpreted as an act of self-defense" since "[t]he Left SRs could not possibly accept the arrest of two of their Central Committee members."
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