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I have a newspaper clipping which refers to a speech Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave to the AFL-CIO where Solzhenitsyn mentions Shlyapnikov. My clipping quotes Solzhenitsyn:
In the years before the Revolution it was Shliapnikov who ran the whole communist party in Russia--not Lenin, who was an emigre. in 1921, he headed the Workers' Opposition which was charging the Communist leadership with betraying the workers' interests . . . Shliapnikov disappeared from sight. He was arrested somewhat later and since he firmly stood his ground he was shot in prison and his name is perhaps unknown to most people . . . But I remind you: Before the Revolution the head of the Communist party of Russia was Shliapnikov--not Lenin.
I figure that Solzhenitsyn's opinion, right or wrong, is worth adding to this article. Unfortunately, I don't have a verifiable citation for this quotation. Thoughts? -- llywrch (talk) 22:10, 2 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think Solzhenitsyn also voices this opinion in his novel "August 1914". It is an exaggerated assessment. Lenin, Shlyapnikov, and others both in Russia and abroad were in the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee during World War I. Shlyapnikov traveled several times from Scandinavia to Russia to reconstitute the Bureau of the Central Committee in Russia, which kept being devastated by arrests. Michael Melancon's book "The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Russian Anti-War Movement, 1914-1917" discusses the extent to which the various revolutionary socialist parties were able to carry out work in Russia during the war. Nevertheless, the Solzhenitsyn statement alludes to the longstanding tensions between workers and intellectuals within the Bolshevik Party, as to who should have responsibility for guiding it.
