A different kind of post:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This is the first of what will be several kinds of posts about influential political thinkers/statesmen, asking people their views of the legacies of the individuals in question. Today's figure is Vladimir Ulyanov, leader of a faction of the Russian Social Revolutionaries, and founder of the dictatorial, bloodthirsty regime known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Lenin was and still is a very influential thinker and political leader, his analysis of imperialism and capitalism was to a real extent backed up by what actually happened before and after WWI. His concepts of a decentralized but authoritarian movement working in cells for an apocalyptic goal is the fundamental construction of all subsequent terrorist groups. His actions as first ensuring his return to Russia and second in taking over the former Tsarist Empire showed the greatest pragmatism and practical thinking of any of the Bolsheviks.

At the same time Lenin was unprincipled, believing fully in the concept that a revolutionary is a doomed man who is monomaniacally in, of, for, and engulfed in Revolution. He gained his way to power on German marks, and was willing to sign no less than two treaties with the Germans. He created the Gulag, and established traditions of Red Terror and a powerful, autonomous secret police. He viewed Stalin as a protege and directly made the rise of his more brutal successor possible. His only critique of Stalin was rudeness and insufficient caution, viewing all the other Bolsheviks as directly unable to lead the state he had created. He had a tendency to geopolitical mistakes, such as his statement very shortly before the fall of the Tsar that revolution would never happen in his lifetime in Russia, his attempts to transform Bolshevism in Russia into a global revolution, his War Communism idea, and most dramatically his Last Will and Testament viewing the answer to the problem of an overmighty General Secretary ensuring the Communist Party favored himself was to give him still more power by wanting to expand the Party and Political Bureau both.

In my view the evils of Lenin by far outweigh the good, and he was never anything like the "good" Bolshevik. If such an invisible pink unicorn could be found it was either Bukharin or Mikoyan, neither of whom seemed to be very evil by comparison to the rest of them. In my view at the same time he's arguably the most influential evil malevolent bastard of the 20th Century and ensured the rise of the two nastiest of the WWII era was both possible and perhaps far more likely than otherwise. I also think he was right on the link of imperialism and capitalism, but wrong in the concept that imperialism in its direct rule fashion disappearing would imperil capitalism.

Your thoughts on Vladimir Lenin? Does the holder of an idea with some truth to it being evil negate truth in an idea? For that matter, why is it that Lenin has tended to be whitewashed next to his successors when he really doesn't resemble anything of the whitewashed view of him as either a man or a politician?

Comments

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Your thoughts on Vladimir Lenin?
My thoughts on historical personalities like Lenin or Alexander or Napoleon are basically, "They were of a certain flawed caliber so far beyond my pathetic ken that holding them to my standards is kind of a silly exercise."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'll grant this as a perfectly valid viewpoint.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I am the Walrus.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, the Walrus is Paul.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Shut the fuck up, Donny.

[jolly-roger.livejournal.com]

Why do you think Lenin had done everything that he did? What were the reasons to make that blood bath which he had made in Russia? As I remember from history - it was only revenge for hanged brother.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Lenin did what he did because Imperial Germany was thinking in the short term and had no ability to think in the long term, and because his enemies were too monstrous to get popular support and too few to ever challenge him on equal terms. He succeeded due to the idiocy of Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the incompetence of most of his enemies.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

That is the how, not the why. The why would be Lenin's motivations in starting the revolution.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The why is complicated because 1) Lenin did not start the 1917 Revolution, it was the result of a sequence of mistakes on the part of the Tsarist Regime, 2) the resulting regime had two, not one government, 3), Lenin hid himself after the failure of the July Days, and 4) Lenin "launched" the revolution by co-opting an existing social trend with Trotsky doing all the actual work and Stalin safeguarding Lenin-in-hiding.

The why in its simplest form is that the Provisional Government was unwilling to give up the war and Lenin was willing to do it if it meant he could control the Soviets, which were steadily controlling more of Russia than the Provisional Government did. The result wound up being a long, protracted, ugly little Civil War.

[fornikate.livejournal.com]

ultimately responsible for more deaths than Hitler, the man was evil. that's what i think.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

How do you figure? I've seen no death tolls for the RCW that match the Nazi genocide.

[fornikate.livejournal.com]

i include stalin's death toll with lenin, but that's just my personal opinion.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

That's like including Hitler's death toll with Paul von Hindenburg's.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That doesn't work. Stalin was a very different man and by far a more efficient dictator. Lenin's responsibility is the Russian Civil War and Red Terror then, he was dead long before Stalin began his own Terror in 1935.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

Does the holder of an idea with some truth to it being evil negate truth in an idea?

Truth is neither evil nor good. Truth simply is.

[ja-va.livejournal.com]

I what think he means is that the idea was evil, not the truth.
However "idea having some truth" is also a strange and awkward sentence. I suppose what he means is that he agrees with it somewhat.

[ja-va.livejournal.com]

I think Lenin's reliance on the help from the German Imperial Government is overstated, to say the least. It is a hot topic on a Russian history community, and most of evidence points to the following:
1) Lenin never took German funds directly or indirectly (at least it was never proven that he did), most of what he got was the free ride through Germany back to Russia in 1917, but he was not alone there.
2) Lenin, being realist, would accept any help from the enemy in order to use it to destroy the enemy, and Germany is a good example. He hated Kaiser just as much as he hated the tzar.
3) Treaties with Germany were not the result of some kind of "debt payment", but a necessity. The only other option was to lose power, and that was way too high of a prize. The way bolshiviks looked at it "World revolution is going to make it all a moot point, anyway"

I would also refrain from making generalizations about Lenin. He was what he was, you may call him an asshole, an evil man, whatever, but he certainly was too big of a person for a simplistic judgement from bunch of nobodies.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Given the Bolsheviks had this tie going back to 1915 and Lenin forced through Brest-Litovsk over the disagreement of the entirety of the General Committee I think it tends if anything to be *under*stated. The USSR was the first example of why the German Army of the German Empire should have been well away from politics (the decision by Ernst Rohm and Adolf Hitler to infiltrate a spin-off of Austrian and Czech political movements in Bavaria approved by the Reichsheer is the second).

[ja-va.livejournal.com]

The evidence does not support it. Prior to Brest Litovsk the policy was to "do nothing" and appeal to German soldiers hoping for the revolution, as a result German army began an offensive and advanced almost to the outskirts of Petrograd, at which point it was decided to reach an agreement. Lenin's position at the time was practical, nothing else was left to be done.
Lenin was never proven to receive any money from the Germans, number of documents surfaced since then turned out to be forgeries.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Er, no, not at all. The actual policy was no war, no peace, in order to ensure that the USSR didn't give up any Russian territory. The Bolsheviks weren't appealing to German soldiers, they were trying to transition WWI into their concept of the world revolution and end a conventional war with a continental set of civil wars. Unfortunately for them the Kaiser wouldn't play ball. The Kaiser's army only backed the Bolshies to win the war quickly, they didn't have the intelligence to realize how dangerous what they were doing actually was.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Lenin did not create the gulag, although the gulag was expanded during his time. The gulag was an invention of the Czar as were many of the other despotic institutions that grew under the guidance of the thumb of Lenin and Stalin.

Lenin was a Czar by another name.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Tsarist Siberia was a colonization project more than concentration camps. Stalin, after all, escaped five times from Tsarist Siberia. In the USSR Stalin would have been shot when he met his first Bolshevik leaders in Tsiblisi.

Lenin was not a Tsar by another name, if any Soviet leader was properly that it was Stalin, and even then Stalin made Russia *work* where Tsarism....pffft.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have mixed opinions on the subject of Lenin, but lean towards the negative.

When I read State and Revolution I am looking at an "almost anarchist" text. When I read "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder", published a few years later I am seeing the path to Stalinism.

Lenin was a brilliant organiser and and exceptional opportunist. The fact that the Bolshies were able to organise workers and soldiers (because that's where the frontline had moved to) against a superior invading army is certainly an achievement in itself. His call of "All Power to the Soviets" (and the subsequent abolition of the Duma) had both a positive side (the Soviets represented a council system) and a negative (the Duma had wider suffrage).

Overall I'd prefer Luxembourg to Lenin (and, for that matter, Proudhon to Marx)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I agree that in practice Leninism directly anticipated all the worst elements of Stalinism. I also agree that in leading the Russian Civil War Lenin did accomplish the amazing feat of reconquering the great bulk of Russia's Empire. My view of Lenin is that he has far more in common with Stalin than people give both credit for and that Stalin in the converse gets blamed for continuing most-everything Lenin began.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, the main difference is of course when Lenin engaged in said actions it was during a period of war and civil war. A thoroughly unpleasant period of history. Stalin's "improvements" on such policies occurred during a time when there was no such conditions.

BTW, I think you're being a little unfair on the comments in Lenin's Last Testament as well. After all, it did contain but one practical and immediate proposal - remove Stalin from the position of General Secretary. As it was, he held that position from 1922 until his death in 1953.