The Case of the Debt to Anna Ivanovna Umnova. An Episode in the Financial History of Bolshevism

During the years in emigration that followed the abortive revolution of 1905 and the political repression that accelerated during 1907, the Bolshevik and Menshevik fractions of the RSDRP experienced
chronic financial difficulties. Subscriptions became an unreliable source of income and the fractions
would attempt to maintain solvency by, inter alia, obtaining donations and loans from benefactors.
In June 1907 the notorious robbery at the Tiflis State Bank made for a temporary improvement in
the finances of the Bolsheviks, as did the bequest of Nikolay Pavlovich Shmit, income from which
was acquired during the years 1908–1911. During the “Meeting of the Expanded Editorial Board of
Proletariy” of 21–30 June 1909, a Conflict Commission considered the matter of a loan that had
been granted to the Bolshevik Centre in 1907 by Anna Ivanovna Umnova through the agency of
Leonid Krasin, and recommended that the loan should be repaid. However, schism in the Bolshevik
fraction delayed full repayment until 1910, when the debt was redeemed not by the “Left Bolsheviks”
or by the Lenin group, but by the Foreign Bureau (ZBTsK) of a temporarily “united” RSDRP. The
case of Umnova provides insight into how the Bolsheviks managed their finances; helps to explain
the breakdown in relations between Krasin and Lenin; and illustrates the extent to which Lenin was
prepared to disregard collective decision making.