The puppeteer of the Bolshevik Revolution with a Ukrainian background: how Doctor Elephant promoted Lenin's rise to power.

This individual achieved far more than many leaders of the October Revolution in the territories of the former Russian Empire for its success. However, the first "Lenin Guard" ensured that a former resident of multicultural Odessa was kept far from power.

Revolutionary with Traits of a Swindler

Israel (Alexander) Gelfand was born in 1867 into a Jewish family in the town of Berezino, Belarus, but moved with his family to Odessa, his father's hometown, when he was still a child. His father was a bindyuzhnik (port loader).

In this open city, bloody Jewish pogroms occasionally occurred with the complicity of imperial authorities. Therefore, representatives of a nation constantly under pressure from Great Power chauvinists and black-hundredists found it challenging to avoid the ranks of radical parties such as the Social Democrats (Esdeks) and Socialist Revolutionaries (Esers). Alexander excelled in the local gymnasium and was a true polyglot; he joined a secret group called "People's Will," a radical revolutionary faction advocating terror against autocracy.

At the age of 19, he moved to Zurich (Switzerland), where he became captivated by Marxism, familiarizing himself with its theoretical foundations while studying at the economic faculty of Basel University. He quickly became well-integrated both among Russian political émigrés and Western European social democrats.

Among his new acquaintances were Georgy Plekhanov, Pavel Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, as well as Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. After moving to Germany, Alexander Gelfand became a well-known and highly popular journalist, publishing not only purely theoretical political and economic articles but also engaging pieces that attracted the attention of the masses. These articles, stylistically brilliant (Lenin even asked his mother to send them to him in exile in Shushenskoe!), often had a scandalous aura, yet the author consistently managed to escape unscathed. Even then, Alexander exhibited a striking blend of revolutionary zeal and high-level swindler traits, applicable not only to politics but also to economic ventures.

In 1893, Prussia expelled this restless individual, nicknamed "Parvus" (from Latin, meaning "small"), as an "undesirable foreigner." He continued his revolutionary activities, returning to Saxony (the borders between the semi-independent states within the German Empire remained unchanged), and later to Bavaria. In his Munich apartment, the Russian Social Democrats' newspaper "Iskra" was published, with Parvus's articles always appearing on the front page. There, he became acquainted not only with Vladimir Lenin but also with Leon Trotsky, who adopted Parvus's expansive idea of a permanent and therefore continuous revolution (a continuation of the ideas of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Kautsky). Parvus emphasized the role of Russia and its proletariat as the driving force behind the world revolution, which would march victoriously from the Romanov Empire to the Western countries.

Parvus's extensive revolutionary activities were intertwined with… luxurious hotels and restaurants, and a whole string of mistresses. He changed not only mistresses (one of whom was Rosa Luxemburg) but also wives.

Interestingly, in his articles for "Iskra" in 1904, at the very outset of the Russo-Japanese War, Parvus warned of the inevitable defeat of the tsarist regime and that this conflict in the Far East would serve as a prologue to revolution. The following year, he was back in Russia, actively participating in revolutionary events. He was arrested in 1906, spending several months in the infamous "Kresty" prison in St. Petersburg, and received only three years of exile instead of the noose of the "Stolypin necktie": likely due to his immense popularity, which was hard to compare even with the contemporaneous fame of Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolshevik leaders. On the way to exile, Parvus, along with future Menshevik leader Lev Deich, managed to escape by getting the guards drunk with vodka. Within a few weeks, they found themselves in Germany.

There, a grand financial scandal unfolded: details emerged of Parvus's scheme involving the translation and staging of Maxim Gorky's play "The Lower Depths" in the theaters of the empire. It was a sensational success, but only the "literary agent," also known as "Doctor Elephant" (as the Germans called Parvus, a robust giant), received his payment, while the party treasury of the RSDRP and Maxim Gorky himself never saw a dime. Of course, his reputation suffered on multiple occasions, not least due to the notorious case of not paying a truly colossal sum—130,000 gold German marks—just to Gorky. The party was short-changed by an even larger amount.

By the way, 130,000 gold marks equate to 32,500 gold Russian rubles at that time (a whole thousand months' salaries for a middle school teacher with many years of experience). The "stormy petrel of the revolution," proletarian writer Maxim Gorky, was, like Parvus, quite the "aesthetic" and lover of luxury.

At the party court of the German Social Democrats, the swindler was expelled from the party, and he quietly "slipped away" from the country, first moving to Vienna and then to Constantinople—the capital of the Ottoman Empire. There, he also engaged in vigorous activities, working in journalism and even advising the economic block of the Young Turks' government. By the shores of the Bosphorus, Parvus finally struck it rich, trading grain and arms; prior to this, he had not been particularly concerned about money, mostly squandering it on women and entertainment.

In 1911, as some researchers believe, Parvus became a German agent. The ambassador in the Turkish capital, Hans von Wangenheim, wrote: "The well-known Russian socialist and publicist Dr. Gelfand, one of the leaders of the last Russian revolution, who emigrated from Russia and was expelled from Germany several times, has been writing extensively here lately, mainly on issues concerning the Turkish economy. Since the beginning of the war, Parvus has clearly taken a pro-German stance."

At the start of World War I (1914–1918), he traveled from Vienna to Berlin, where in March he presented a 20-page memorandum to the German Foreign Ministry. Here are some points from the so-called Parvus Memorandum (a term coined by researchers and writers in the mid-20th century):

• By spring, a mass political strike in Russia should be prepared under the slogan: freedom and peace. The center of the movement will be St. Petersburg, specifically the Obukhov, Putilov, and Baltic factories. The strike should cover the railway communications of St. Petersburg – Warsaw, Moscow – Warsaw, and the Southwestern railway.
• This task can only be accomplished under the leadership of the Russian social democracy. Its radical wing has already begun actions. However, it is necessary for the moderate minority faction to join them. Until now, radicals have obstructed such a unification. However, two weeks ago, their leader Lenin himself openly raised the issue of uniting with the minority.
• Financial support for the Bolshevik faction of the Russian social democrats, which is fighting against the tsarist government by all means. Its leaders can be found in Switzerland.

In the second part of the Memorandum, Parvus also addressed purely technical issues necessary for initiating a revolution in the Russian Empire: preparing accurate maps of the railway transport, the amount of required explosives and instructions for their manufacture and use, and developing a plan for the resistance of the population in St. Petersburg (primarily, the proletariat), which would rise up in the event of hostilities in the streets of the imperial capital.

Money Laundering for the Germans

In May 1915, Lenin met with Parvus in a luxurious hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland. Although he never mentioned this meeting: he certainly feared "getting stained."

However, the machinery for laundering German money (in response to Parvus's request to the Germans for five million gold marks, they agreed to provide "only" one million) began to operate. Parvus opened a series of trading enterprises in the capitals of neutral states—Copenhagen in Denmark and Stockholm in Sweden. These were typical "laundries" for money laundering, so familiar to our contemporaries. One of the pharmaceutical "enterprises" was headed by Lenin's close friend, Polish social democrat Jakub Hanetski-Fürstenberg. Among Parvus's agents was another Lenin associate—Pole Mieczysław Kozłowski. The "leader of the world proletariat" also loved luxurious hotels and restaurants.

When in February 1917, quite unexpectedly for both the Entente countries and the Central Powers, the second revolution occurred in the Russian Empire, overthrowing the tsarist regime, all hopes of Berlin for a separate peace in the east turned out to be a bluff. The Provisional Government confirmed its commitments to its allies in the Entente, continuing military actions on the Eastern Front.

And here again, Parvus's talent was needed. He played a crucial