lenin essay

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism [1], a popular outline.

Written: January-June, 1916 Published: First published in mid-1917 in pamphlet form, Petrograd. Published according to the manuscript and verified with the text of the pamphlet. Source: Lenin’s Selected Works , Progress Publishers, 1963, Moscow, Volume 1 , pp. 667–766. Transcription\Markup: Tim Delaney & Kevin Goins (2008) Proofed: and corrected Alvaro Miranda (2022) Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2005. You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.

This work in PDF format

[1] [PLACEHOLDER.]

On the pernicious legacy of Vladimir Lenin.

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Email

To view an exclusive video of James Panero and Gary Saul Morson in conversation on “Leninthink,” click here and consider joining The New Criterion ’s Circle.

Editors’ note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered at The New Criterion ’s inaugural Circle Lecture on September 25, 2019. 

Lenin was more severe.

—Vyacheslav Molotov, the only senior official to work for both Lenin and Stalin, when asked to compare them.

Lenin “in general” loved people but . . . his love looked far ahead, through the mists of hatred.

—Maxim Gorky

When we are reproached with cruelty, we wonder how people can forget the most elementary Marxism.

Beyond Doctrine

A n old Soviet joke poses the question: What was the most important world-historical event of the year 1875? Answer: Lenin was five years old.

The point of the joke, of course, is that the Soviets virtually deified Lenin. Criticism of him was routinely referred to as “blasphemy,” while icon corners in homes and institutions were replaced by “Lenin corners.” Lenin museums sprung up everywhere, and institutions of every kind took his name. In addition to Leningrad, there were cities named Leninsk (in Kazakhstan), Leninogorsk (in Tatarstan), Leninaul (in Dagestan), Leninakan (in Armenia), Leninkend, Leninavan, and at least four different Leninabads. On a visit to the Caucasus I remember being surprised at seeing Mayakovsky’s famous verses about Lenin inscribed on a mountaintop: “Lenin lived! Lenin lives! Lenin will live!” The famous mausoleum where his body is preserved served as the regime’s most sacred shrine.

As we approach the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, understanding him grows ever more important. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, Leninist ways of thinking continue to spread, especially among Western radicals who have never read a word of Lenin. This essay is not just about Lenin, and not just Leninism, the official philosophy of the ussr , but also the very style of thought that Lenin pioneered. Call it Leninthink.

Lenin did more than anyone else to shape the last hundred years. He invented a form of government we have come to call totalitarian, which rejected in principle the idea of any private sphere outside of state control. To establish this power, he invented the one-party state, a term that would previously have seemed self-contradictory since a party was, by definition, a part. An admirer of the French Jacobins, Lenin believed that state power had to be based on sheer terror, and so he also created the terrorist state.

Stephen Pinker has recently argued that the world has been getting less bloodthirsty. The Mongols, after all, destroyed entire cities. But the Mongols murdered other people; what is new, and uniquely horrible about the Soviets and their successors, is that they directed their fury at their own people. The Russian empire lost more people in World War I than any other country, but still more died under Lenin. His war against the peasants, for instance, took more lives than combat between Reds and Whites.

Numbers do not tell the whole story. Under the Third Reich, an ethnic German loyal to the regime did not have to fear arrest, but Lenin pioneered and Stalin greatly expanded a policy in which arrests were entirely arbitrary: that is true terror. By the time of the Great Terror of 1936–38, millions of entirely innocent people were arrested, often by quota. Literally no one was safe. The Party itself was an especially dangerous place to be, and the nkvd was constantly arresting its own members—a practice that was also true of its predecessor, the Cheka, which Lenin founded almost immediately after the Bolshevik coup.

nkvd interrogators who suspected they were to be arrested often committed suicide since they had no illusions about what arrest entailed. They had practiced exquisite forms of torture and humiliation on prisoners—and on prisoners’ colleagues, friends, and families. “Member of a family of a traitor to the fatherland” was itself a criminal category, and whole camps were set up for wives of “enemies of the people.” Never before had such practices defined a state.

For good reason, many have traced these practices to Lenin’s doctrines. In his view, Marx’s greatest contribution was not the idea of the class struggle but “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” and as far back as 1906 Lenin had defined dictatorship as “nothing other than power which is totally unlimited by any laws, totally unrestrained by absolutely any rules, and based directly on force.” He argued that a revolutionary Party must be composed entirely of professional revolutionaries, drawn mainly from the intelligentsia and subject to absolute discipline, with a readiness to do literally anything the leadership demanded.

These and other disastrous Leninist ideas derived from a specific Leninist way of thinking, and that is what this essay focuses on. I know this way of thinking in my bones. I am myself a pink diaper baby and I remember being taught this way of thinking, taken for granted by all right-thinking people. Memoirs of many ex-Communists, from David Horowitz to Richard Wright, confirm that, more than doctrines, it was the Leninist style of thought that defined the difference between an insider and an outsider. And that way of thought is very much with us.

Introduce at once mass terror, execute and deport hundreds of prostitutes, drunken soldiers, ex-officers, etc.

—Lenin’s instructions to authorities in Nizhnii Novgorod, August 1918

L en in regarded all interactions as zero-sum. To use the phrase he made famous, the fundamental question is always “Who Whom?”—who dominates whom, who does what to whom, ultimately who annihilates whom. To the extent that we gain, you lose. Contrast this view with the one taught in basic microeconomics: whenever there is a non-forced transaction, both sides benefit, or they would not make the exchange. For the seller, the money is worth more than the goods he sells, and for the buyer the goods are worth more than the money. Lenin’s hatred of the market, and his attempts to abolish it entirely during War Communism, derived from the opposite idea, that all buying and selling is necessarily exploitative. When Lenin speaks of “profiteering” or “speculation” (capital crimes), he is referring to every transaction, however small. Peasant “bagmen” selling produce were shot.

To use the phrase he made famous, the fundamental question is always “Who Whom?”—who dominates whom, who does what to whom, ultimately who annihilates whom.

Basic books on negotiation teach that you can often do better than split the difference, since people have different concerns. Both sides can come out ahead—but not for the Soviets, whose negotiating stance John F. Kennedy once paraphrased as: what’s mine is mine; and what’s yours is negotiable . For us, the word “politics” means a process of give and take, but for Lenin it’s we take, and you give. From this it follows that one must take maximum advantage of one’s position. If the enemy is weak enough to be destroyed, and one stops simply at one’s initial demands, one is objectively helping the enemy, which makes one a traitor. Of course, one might simply be insane. Long before Brezhnev began incarcerating dissidents in madhouses, Lenin was so appalled that his foreign minister, Boris Chicherin, recommended an unnecessary concession to American loan negotiators, that he pronounced him mad—not metaphorically—and demanded he be forcibly committed. “We will be fools if we do not immediately and forcibly send him to a sanatorium.”

Such thinking automatically favors extreme solutions. If there is one sort of person Lenin truly hated more than any other, it is—to use some of his more printable adjectives—the squishy, squeamish, spineless, dull-witted liberal reformer. In philosophical issues, too, there can never be a middle ground. If you are not a materialist in precisely Lenin’s interpretation, you are an idealist, and idealism is simply disguised religion supporting the bourgeoisie. The following statement from his most famous book, What Is to Be Done? , is typical (the italics are Lenin’s): “The only choice is: either the bourgeois or the socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for humanity has not created a ‘third’ ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology). Hence to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn away from it in the slightest degree , means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.” There is either rule by the bourgeoisie or dictatorship of the proletariat: “Every solution that offers a middle path is a deception . . . or an expression of the dull-wittedness of the petty-bourgeois democrats.”

Contrary to the wishes even of other Bolsheviks, Lenin categorically rejected the idea of a broad socialist coalition government. He was immensely relieved when the short-lived coalition with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries collapsed. Immediately after seizing power he declared the left-liberal Kadets “outside the law,” leading to the lynching of two of their ex-ministers in a Petersburg Hospital. He would soon arrest Mensheviks and the most numerous group of radicals, the Socialist Revolutionaries, famed for countless assassinations of tsarist officials. We think of show trials as Stalinist, but Lenin staged a show trial of Socialist Revolutionary leaders in 1922.

Lenin always insisted on the most violent solutions. Those who do not understand him mistake his ideas for those of radicals like the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who argued that violence was permitted when necessary .

By the same token, Lenin always insisted on the most violent solutions. Those who do not understand him mistake his ideas for those of radicals like the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who argued that violence was permitted when necessary . That squishy formulation suggests that other solutions would be preferable. But for Lenin maximal violence was the default position. He was constantly rebuking subordinates for not using enough force, for restraining mobs from lynchings, and for hesitating to shoot randomly chosen hostages.

One could almost say that force had a mystical attraction for Lenin. He had workers drafted into a labor army where any shirking or lateness was punished by sentence to a concentration camp. Yes, Bolsheviks used the term concentration camp from the start, and did so with pride. Until economic collapse forced Lenin to adopt the New Economic Policy, he demanded that grain not be purchased from peasants but requisitioned at gunpoint. Naturally, peasants—Lenin called recalcitrant peasants “kulaks”—rebelled all over Russia. In response to one such “kulak” uprising Lenin issued the following order:

The kulak uprising in [your] 5 districts must be crushed without pity. . . . 1) Hang (and I mean hang so that the people can see ) not less than 100 known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2) Publish their names. 3) Take all their grain away from them. 4) Identify hostages . . . . Do this so that for hundreds of miles around the people can see, tremble, know and cry . . . . Yours, Lenin. P. S. Find tougher people.

Dmitri Volkogonov, the first biographer with access to the secret Lenin archives, concluded that for Lenin violence was a goal in itself. He quotes Lenin in 1908 recommending “real, nationwide terror, which invigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.”

Lenin constantly recommended that people be shot “without pity” or “exterminated mercilessly” (Leszek Kołakowski wondered wryly what it would mean to exterminate people mercifully). “Exterminate” is a term used for vermin, and, long before the Nazis described Jews as Ungeziefer (vermin), Lenin routinely called for “ the cleansing of Russia’s soil of all harmful insects, of scoundrels, fleas, bedbugs—the rich , and so on.”

Lenin worked by a principle of anti-empathy, and this approach was to define Soviet ethics. I know of no other society, except those modeled on the one Lenin created, where schoolchildren were taught that mercy, kindness, and pity are vices. After all, these feelings might lead one to hesitate shooting a class enemy or denouncing one’s parents. The word “conscience” went out of use, replaced by “consciousness” (in the sense of Marxist-Leninist ideological consciousness). During Stalin’s great purges a culture of denunciation reigned, but it was Lenin who taught “A good communist is also a good Chekist.”

The Abbey of Thélème

A s pecial logic governs the Leninist approach to morality, legality, and rights. In his famous address to the Youth Leagues, Lenin complains that bourgeois thinkers have slanderously denied that Bolsheviks have any ethics. In fact,

We reject any morality based on extra-human and extra-class concepts. We say that this is a deception . . . . We say that morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle. . . . That is why we say that to us there is no such thing as a morality that stands outside human society; that is a fraud. To us morality is subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle.

When people tell us about morality, we say: to a Communist all morality lies in this united discipline and conscious mass struggle against the exploiters.

In short, Bolshevik morality holds that whatever contributes to Bolshevik success is moral, whatever hinders it is immoral.

Imagine someone saying: “my detractors claim I have no morals, but that is sheer slander. On the contrary, I have a very strict moral code, from which I never deviate: look out for number 1 .” We might reply: the whole point of a moral code is to restrain you from acting only out of self-interest. Morality begins with number 2. A moral code that says you must do what you regard as your self-interest is no moral code at all. The same is true for a code that says the Communist Party is morally bound to do whatever it regards as in its interest.

Rabelais’s pleasure-seeking utopia, the Abbey of Thélème, was governed, like all abbeys, by a rule. In this case, however, the rule was an anti-rule: Fay çe que vouldras , “Do as you wish!” People were to be restrained from yielding to any restraints. Ever since, such self-canceling imperatives have been called Thelemite commands .

Bolshevik legality was also Thelemite. If by law one means a code that binds the state as well as the individual, specifies what is and is not permitted, and eliminates arbitrariness, then Lenin entirely rejected law as “bourgeois.” He expressed utter contempt for the principles “no crime without law” and “no punishment without a crime.” Recall that he defined the dictatorship of the proletariat as rule based entirely on force absolutely unrestrained by any law. His more naïve followers imagined that rule by sheer terror would cease when Bolshevik hold on power was secure, or when the New Economic Policy relaxed restrictions on trade, but Lenin made a point of disillusioning them. “It is the biggest mistake to think that nep will put an end to the terror. We shall return to the terror, and to economic terror,” he wrote. When D. I. Kursky, People’s Commissariat of Justice, was formulating the first Soviet legal code, Lenin demanded that terror and arbitrary use of power be written into the code itself! “The law should not abolish terror,” he insisted. “It should be substantiated and legalized in principle, without evasion or embellishment.”

So far as I know, never before had the law prescribed lawlessness. Do as you wish, or else. Lenin had ascribed the fall of the Paris Commune to the failure to eliminate all law, and so the Soviet state was absolutely forbidden from exercising any restraint on arbitrary use of power. Indeed, officials were punished for such restraint, which Lenin called impermissible slackness and Stalin would deem lack of vigilance.

The same logic applied to rights. On paper, the Soviet Constitution of 1936 guaranteed more rights than any other state in the world. I recall a Soviet citizen telling me that people in the ussr had absolute freedom of speech—so long as they did not lie. I recalled this curious concept of freedom when a student defended complete freedom of speech except for hate speech—and hate speech included anything he disagreed with. Whatever did not seem hateful was actually a “dog-whistle.”

As far back as 1919, Soviet parlance distinguished between purely formal law and what was called “the material determination of the crime.” A crime was not an action or omission specified in the formal code, because every “socially dangerous” act (or omission) was automatically criminal. Article 1 of the Civil Code of October 31, 1922 laid down that civil rights “are protected by the law unless they are exercised in contradiction to their social and economic purposes.” Like the “material” definition of crime, the concept of “purposefulness” ( tselesoobraznost’ ) created a system of Thelemite rights: the state was absolutely prohibited from interfering with your rights unless it wanted to.

L en in’s language, no less than his ethics, served as a model, taught in Soviet schools and recommended in books with titles like Lenin’s Language and On Lenin’s Polemical Art . In Lenin’s view, a true revolutionary did not establish the correctness of his beliefs by appealing to evidence or logic, as if there were some standards of truthfulness above social classes. Rather, one engaged in “blackening an opponent’s mug so well it takes him ages to get it clean again.” Nikolay Valentinov, a Bolshevik who knew Lenin well before becoming disillusioned, reports him saying: “There is only one answer to revisionism: smash its face in!”

When Mensheviks objected to Lenin’s personal attacks, he replied frankly that his purpose was not to convince but to destroy his opponent. In work after work, Lenin does not offer arguments refuting other Social Democrats but brands them as “renegades” from Marxism. Marxists who disagreed with his naïve epistemology were “philosophic scum.” Object to his brutality and your arguments are “moralizing vomit.” You can see traces of this approach in the advice of Saul Alinsky—who cites Lenin—to “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it.”

L en in’s language, no less than his ethics, served as a model, taught in Soviet schools and recommended in books with titles like Lenin’s Language and On Lenin’s Polemical Art .

Compulsive underlining, name calling, and personal invective hardly exhaust the ways in which Lenin’s prose assaults the reader. He does not just advance a claim, he insists that it is absolutely certain and, for good measure, says the same thing again in other words. It is absolutely certain, beyond any possible doubt, perfectly clear to anyone not dull-witted. Any alliance with the democratic bourgeoisie can only be short-lived, he explains: “This is beyond doubt. Hence the absolute necessity of a separate . . . strictly class party of Social Democrats. . . . All this is beyond the slightest possible doubt.” Nothing is true unless it is absolutely, indubitably so; if a position is wrong, it is entirely and irredeemably so; if something must be done, it must be done “immediately, without delay”; Party representatives are to make “no concessions whatsoever.” Under Lenin’s direction the Party demanded “the dissolution of all groups without exception formed on the basis of one platform or another” (italics mine). It was not enough just to shoot kulaks summarily, they had “to be shot on the spot without trial,” a phrase that in one brief decree he managed to use in each of its six numbered commands before concluding: “This order is to be carried out strictly, mercilessly.” You’d think that was clear enough already.

No concessions, compromises, exceptions, or acts of leniency; everything must be totally uniform, absolutely the same, unqualifiedly unqualified. At one point he claims that the views of Marx and Engels are “completely identical,” as if they might have been incompletely identical.

Critics objected that Lenin argued by mere assertion. He disproved a position simply by showing it contradicted what he believed. In his attack on the epistemology of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius, for instance, every argument contrary to dialectical materialism is rejected for that reason alone . Valentinov, who saw Lenin frequently when he was crafting this treatise, reports that Lenin at most glanced through their works for a few hours. It was easy enough to attribute to them views they did not hold, associate them with disreputable people they had never heard of, or ascribe political purposes they had never imagined. These were Lenin’s usual techniques, and he made no bones about it.

Valentinov was appalled that both Lenin and Plekhanov, the first Russian Marxist, insisted that there was no need to understand opposing views before denouncing them, since the very fact that they were opposing views proved them wrong—and what was wrong served the enemy and so was criminal. He quotes Lenin:

Marxism is a monolithic conception of the world, it does not tolerate dilution and vulgarization by means of various insertions and additions. Plekhanov once said to me about a critic of Marxism . . . : “First, let’s stick the convict’s badge on him, and then after that we’ll examine his case.” And I think we must stick the “convict’s badge” on anyone and everyone who tries to undermine Marxism, even if we don’t go on to examine his case. That’s how every sound revolutionary should react. When you see a stinking heap on the road you don’t have to poke around in it to see what it is. Your nose tells you it’s shit, and you give it a wide berth.

“Lenin’s words took my breath away,” Valentinov recalls. I had the same reaction when I first heard a student explain that a view had to be wrong simply because it was voiced on Fox News.

Opponents objected that Lenin lied without compunction, and it is easy to find quotations in which he says—as he did to the Bolshevik leader Karl Radek—“Who told you a historian has to establish the truth?” Yes, we are contradicting what we said before, he told Radek, and when it is useful to reverse positions again, we will. Orwell caught this aspect of Leninism: “Oceania was at war with Eastasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

And yet the concept of “lying,” if one stops there, does not reach the heart of the matter. In The Death of Ivan Ilyich , Tolstoy remarks that, contrary to appearances, the hero was not a toady. Rather, he “was attracted to people of high station as a fly is drawn to the light.” A toady decides to toady, but Ivan Ilyich had no need to make such a decision. In much the same way, a true Leninist does not decide whether to lie. He automatically says what is most useful, with no reflection necessary. That is why he can show no visible signs of mendacity, perhaps even pass a lie detector test. La Rochefoucauld famously said that “hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue,” but a true Bolshevik is not even a hypocrite.

Western scholars who missed this aspect of Leninism made significant errors. For example, they estimated the size of the Soviet economy by assuming that official figures were distorted and made appropriate adjustments. But as Robert Conquest pointed out, “they were not distorted, they were invented.” The Soviets did not find out the truth and then exaggerate; they often did not know the truth themselves. In Nineteen Eighty-Four , Winston Smith hears that fifty million pairs of boots were produced that year and reflects that, for all he knows, no boots at all were produced. Orwell, who never studied the Soviet economy, grasped a point that escaped experts because he understood Leninthink.

L en in did not just invent a new kind of party, he also laid the basis for what would come to be known in official parlance as “ partiinost’ ,” literally Partyness, in the sense of Party-mindedness. Arthur Koestler understood part of partiinost’ when he described a Communist confessing to fantastic crimes because loyalty to the Party trumped everything else. If the Party needed one to confess to spying for the Poles, Japanese, and Germans at the same time, while conspiring with Trotsky to murder Stalin and spread typhus among pigs—all while one was already in prison—a true, party-minded Bolshevik would do so.

In his celebrated “Catechism of a Revolutionary,” the nineteenth-century terrorist Sergei Nechaev—whose story inspired Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed —writes that a true revolutionary “has no interests, no habits, no property, not even a name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed by a single, exclusive interest, a single thought, a single passion—the revolution.” Nechaev and his contemporary Pyotr Tkachov established a particular tradition of revolutionaries, to which Lenin traced his lineage. The true Party member cares for nothing but the Party. It is his family, his community, his church. And according to Marxism-Leninism, everything it did was guaranteed to be correct.

Trotsky, forced to reverse one of his positions to conform to the Party line, explained:

None of us desires or is able to dispute the will of the Party. Clearly the Party is always right. . . . We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right. . . . [I]f the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I will support the consequences of the decision to the end.

Even this much-quoted statement does not get partiinost’ quite right, since, immediately after affirming that history guarantees the Party’s infallibility, Trotsky speaks of supporting the Party even when it is wrong. His ally, the prominent Bolshevik Yuri Pyatakov, did better. When Valentinov happened to meet Pyatakov in Paris, he reproached him for cowardice in renouncing his former Trotskyite views. Pyatakov replied by explaining the Leninist concept of the Party:

According to Lenin, the Communist Party is based on the principle of coercion which doesn’t recognize any limitations or inhibitions. And the central idea of this principle of boundless coercion is not coercion itself but the absence of any limitation whatsoever—moral, political, and even physical, as far as that goes. Such a Party is capable of achieving miracles and doing things which no other collective of men could achieve. . . . A real Communist . . . [is] a man who was raised by the Party and had absorbed its spirit deeply enough to become a miracle man.

Pyatakov grasped Lenin’s idea that coercion is not a last resort but the first principle of Party action. Changing human nature, producing boundless prosperity, overcoming death itself: all these miracles could be achieved because the Party was the first organization ever to pursue coercion without limits . In one treatise Stalin corrects the widespread notion that the laws of nature are not binding on Bolsheviks, and it is not hard to see how this kind of thinking took root. And, given an essentially mystical faith in coercion, it is not hard to see how imaginative forms of torture became routine in Soviet justice.

Pyatakov drew significant conclusions from this concept of the Party:

For such a Party a true Bolshevik will readily cast out from his mind ideas in which he has believed for years. A true Bolshevik has submerged his personality in the collectivity, “the Party,” to such an extent that he can make the necessary effort to break away from his own opinions and convictions, and can honestly agree with the Party—that is the test of a true Bolshevik.

There could be no life for him outside the ranks of the Party, and he would be ready to believe that black was white, and white was black, if the Party required it. In order to become one with this great Party he would fuse himself with it, abandon his own personality, so that there was no particle left inside him which was not at one with the Party.

Did Orwell have this statement in mind when O’Brien gets Winston Smith to believe that twice two is five? In 1936 Pyatakov asked the Party secretariat to censure him for not having revealed his wife’s Trotskyite connections. To prove his partiinost’ , he offered to testify against her and then, after her condemnation, shoot her. Pyatakov was himself shot.

The Nature of Leninist Belief

P ar tyness does not entail merely affirming that black is white but actually believing it. The wisest specialists on Bolshevik thinking have wondered: What does it mean to believe—truly believe—what one does not believe?

Many former Communists describe their belated recognition that experienced Party members do not seem to believe what they profess. In his memoir American Hunger , much of which is devoted to his experiences in the American Communist Party, Richard Wright describes how he would point out that the Party sometimes acted contrary to its convictions, or in the name of helping black people, actually hurt them. What most amazed Wright was that he usually could get no explanation for such actions at all. “You don’t understand,” he was constantly told. And the very fact that he asked such questions proved that he didn’t. It gradually dawned on him that the Party takes stances not because it cares about them—although it may—but because it is useful for the Party to do so.

The wisest specialists on Bolshevik thinking have wondered: What does it mean to believe—truly believe—what one does not believe?

Doing so may help recruit new members, as its stance on race had gotten Wright to join. But after a while a shrewd member learned, without having been explicitly told, that loyalty belonged not to an issue, not even to justice broadly conceived, but to the Party itself. Issues would be raised or dismissed as needed.

My mother left the American Communist Party in 1939 in response to the Hitler–Stalin pact, but her friends who remained were able, like Pyatakov, to turn on a dime. One morning The Daily Worker followed Pravda and described Nazis as true friends of the working class; the next, nothing too strong could be said against them. Crucially, and as Orwell dramatized in Nineteen Eighty-Four , there was never an admission that any change had taken place.

When it suddenly dawned on them that issues were pretexts, Wright and some others like him faced a choice. Usually, however, there was no sudden realization and so no choice was required. I speak from memory now. What happens is something like this: when a criticism of the true ideology is advanced, or when embarrassing facts come out, everyone learns a particular answer. One neither believes nor disbelieves the answer; one demonstrates one’s loyalty by saying it. It is interesting to be present when the answer is still being rehearsed. Gradually, one acquires a little mental library of such canned answers, and the use of them signals to others in the know that you are one of them. If this process took place often enough in childhood, the moment of decision lies in the remote past, if it ever happened at all. For those who joined as adults, there is social pressure to accept one more explanation. Imagine not accepting today’s charge against Trump or Chick-fil-A. Why stop now? Wright is unusual in that for him the process became acute and demanded he address it.

In his history of Marxism, Kołakowski explains some puzzling aspects of Bolshevik practice in these terms. Everyone understands why Bolsheviks shot liberals, socialist revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Trotskyites. But what, he asks, was the point of turning the same fury on the Party itself, especially on its most loyal, Stalinists, who accepted Leninist-Stalinist ideology without question? Kołakowski observes that it is precisely the loyalty to the ideology that was the problem.

Anyone who believed in the ideology might question the leader’s conformity to it. He might recognize that the Marxist-Leninist Party was acting against Marxism-Leninism as the Party itself defined it; or he might compare Stalin’s statements today with Stalin’s statements yesterday. “The citizen belongs to the state and must have no other loyalty, not even to the state ideology,” Kołakowski observes. That might seem strange to Westerners, but, “it is not surprising to anyone who knows a system of this type from within.” All deviations from the Party line, all challenges to the leadership, appealed to official ideology, and so anyone who truly believed the ideology was suspect. “The [great] purge, therefore, was designed to destroy such ideological links as still existed within the party, to convince its members that they had no ideology or loyalty except to the latest orders from on high . . . . Loyalty to Marxist ideology as such is still—[in 1978]—a crime and a source of deviations of all kinds.” The true Leninist did not even believe in Leninism.

The Other Foot

I k now of no other political ideology that entails such a conception of belief. When I was a young associate professor teaching in a comparative literature department, whose faculty were at each other’s throats, I remarked to one colleague, who called herself a Marxist-Leninist, that it only made things worse when she told obvious falsehoods in departmental meetings. Surely, such unprincipled behavior must bring discredit to your own position, I pleaded.

Her reply brought me back to my childhood. I quote it word-for-word: “You stick to your principles, and I’ll stick to mine.” From a Leninist perspective, a liberal, a Christian, or any type of idealist only ties his hands by refraining from doing whatever works. She meant: we Leninists will win because we know better than to do that. Even Westerners who regard themselves as realists have only taken a few baby steps towards a true Leninist position. They are all the more vulnerable for imagining they have an unclouded view.

The whole point of Leninism is that only a few people must understand what is going on.

Recently Attorney General William Barr asked how his critics would have reacted had the fbi secretly interfered with the Obama campaign: “What if the shoe were on the other foot?” From a Leninist perspective, this question demonstrates befuddlement. In his book Terrorism and Communism , Trotsky imagines “the high priests of liberalism” asking how Bolshevik use of arbitrary power differs from tsarist practices. Trotsky sneers:

You do not understand this, holy men? We shall explain it to you. The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. . . . Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals . . . . Do you grasp this—distinction? For us Communists it is quite sufficient.

What is reprehensible for them is proper for us, and that’s all there is to it. For a Leninist, the shoe is never on the other foot because he has no other foot.

The Spectrum of Awareness

W he n I detect Leninist ways of thinking today, people respond: surely you don’t think all those social justice warriors are Leninists! Of course not. The whole point of Leninism is that only a few people must understand what is going on. That was the key insight of his tract What Is to Be Done? When Leninism is significant, there will always be a spectrum going from those who really understand, to those who just practice the appropriate responses, to those who are entirely innocent. The real questions are: Is there such a spectrum now, and how do we locate people on it? And if there is such a spectrum, what do we do about it?

There is no space to address such questions here. My point is that they need to be asked.

A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORS

Support our crucial work and join us in strengthening the bonds of civilization., your donation sustains our efforts to inspire joyous rediscoveries..

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion , Volume 38 Number 2, on page 4

Copyright © 2019 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

https://newcriterion.com/article/leninthink/

Popular Right Now

Related Articles

More from this author.

• Narratives of Russian history
• Galaxy brains
• Emperor of chaos
• A genius at suffering
• A Taoist sage on horseback

Social Sciences

© 2024 Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse LLC . All rights reserved. ISSN: 2153-5760.

Disclaimer: content on this website is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical or other professional advice. Moreover, the views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of Inquiries Journal or Student Pulse, its owners, staff, contributors, or affiliates.

Home | Current Issue | Blog | Archives | About The Journal | Submissions Terms of Use :: Privacy Policy :: Contact

Need an Account?

Forgot password? Reset your password »

EssayEmpire

Vladimir lenin essay.

Among the savviest and most single-minded politicians of the 20th century, Vladimir Lenin capitalized on the chaos in Russia caused by World War I and the resentments spawned by the advent of industrial capitalism. By imposing discipline and a radical agenda on his Bolshevik Party and by providing a clear alternative to the repressive autocracy that had acquiesced before, if not abetted, Russian economic and social backwardness, Lenin acquired the power to lead his country toward socialism.

The Soviet regime established after the Russian Revolution in 1917 did not meet Lenin’s ideals, but he continued to strive to enact the reforms he deemed necessary for modernizing Russian culture, the economy, and society. Ruthless yet compassionate, pragmatic yet idealistic, Lenin was a paradox who knew how to recognize the opportunity for revolution when others did not.

Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov grew up in Simbirsk, on the Volga, where his father was a school inspector. Born on April 22, 1870, he had two brothers and three sisters with whom he had a close relationship. Along with others of similar education and professional attainments, Lenin’s father hoped for major reforms to the Russian political, economic, and social systems. Yet Lenin’s revolutionary aspirations and Marxist principles, which were avidly supported by his sisters, far transcended the reformist goals of his father.

Around 1886 Lenin began to develop his political thought and committed to revolution as a means of bringing about substantive, profound change in Russia. His brother Alexander was arrested in that year for having plotted to assassinate Czar Alexander III; his execution marked the young Vladimir and made him more politically conscious. He yearned for an end to crass materialism, the sexual double standard, and the corrupt values of late 19th-century Russia. Perhaps as a consequence of his brother’s experience, Vladimir opted against terrorism and assassination; instead he cultivated the persona of a self-conscious, professional revolutionary.

As a consequence of his brother’s conviction, Lenin endured police surveillance. Although he was among the best students in Russia, he could not obtain a place at any of the major universities; he settled for the local university in Kazan. He was soon expelled, however, along with all “risky” students. He later studied law by correspondence at the University of Saint Petersburg, but conventional careers were clearly closed to him.

As he began his sporadic work as a legal assistant in late 1893, Lenin continued his voracious reading. He delved even further and more deeply into the works of intellectuals such as George Plekhanov, the founding father of Russian social democracy, and Karl Marx. In 1889 he translated the Communist Manifesto.

While Lenin continued to mourn the loss of his much-loved sister Olga, who died in 1891, he met the woman who would become his longtime companion and wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya. Together they studied Marx, contemplated social democratic strategy, and started to practice the tactics required of political subversives in czarist Russia. Around the same time Lenin appeared in police surveillance records on his own account, having defended Marxist views in a debate with a populist in 1894. He also wrote his first pamphlets and articles around this time.

Lenin made his first trip outside Russia in 1895, when he met with social democrats such as Wilhelm Liebknecht in Germany and Paul Laforgue in France. Upon his return to Russia, he cofounded a social democratic group and established a newspaper. These activities attracted police attention, and Lenin was arrested in December along with many of his colleagues. He spent about a year in Saint Petersburg, where he was interrogated four times, before being sentenced to three years in Siberia. Krupskaya was arrested while Lenin was in jail, and she received permission to join him in exile. Lenin spent the years in Siberia (1897–1900) reading, writing, and giving legal advice to local peasants. He began to develop his own interpretations of Marxism and to interpret Russian conditions in that light. Lenin and other Russian social democrats rejected the populist argument that peasants were proto-communists.

Lenin rigorously opposed the notion that socialism would “just happen” or even come about as a consequence of a series of incremental reforms to capitalism. He maintained that both dramatic political change and dramatic socioeconomic change would have to occur; social democrats had to fight for them all simultaneously. Lenin’s perspective was influenced by the ideas of Russian revolutionary and anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, who had focused criticism on the state and the church as the major sources of oppression in Russia. Lenin shared Bakunin’s antipathy toward religion and the Russian Orthodox Church, though he thought that the state could be captured and directed to serve the working class.

Strong Executive

When Lenin finished his period of exile in Siberia, he settled briefly in Pskov, where he worked in the Bureau of Statistics. He visited Nuremberg, Munich, Vienna, London, and other European cities. After he and Krupskaya settled in Geneva, they became central to the project of building an effective, disciplined Russian social democratic party.

Although Lenin occasionally sought reconciliation, the 1903 split between his Bolsheviks and the more reformist Mensheviks became permanent. Lenin averred that Russian social democracy most needed a tightly disciplined party with a strong executive. As events showed, his organizational model proved valid.

The Russian Revolution of 1905 disappointed Russian radicals and revolutionaries, though they did find their way back into the country for a few years. Lenin saw the beginnings of a bourgeois revolution, though the ephemeral character of constitutional reforms granted by the czar indicated that Russians had much revolutionary ground yet to travel. After returning to exile in Europe, where he would remain for the decade prior to 1917, Lenin resumed his efforts to push Russia out of its czarist rut.

The International Socialist Bureau did not recognize Lenin as sole leader of the Russian socialists, though he did gain control over the key newspapers of the group. In the years prior to World War I, Lenin organized, read, and wrote. He published articles on party organization, socialism, religion (in which he recommended that the party oppose religion, even as a private affair), and socialism in Asia.

The outbreak of World War I found Lenin and Krupskaya in Kraków, Poland. Lenin had taken an interest in the implications of foreign affairs for social democracy in Russia since the turn of the century, and he reservedly predicted that the war would hasten the advent of socialism in Europe. Although unafraid of class, civil, or revolutionary wars if they would promote socialism, Lenin could not abide imperialist, bourgeois international wars. Lenin envisioned a Socialist International that would recognize national cultures as equal and sovereign while emphasizing the shared character of the socialist struggle. Lenin continued and further elaborated his thought on wars and the overall international situation in Imperialism (published in 1917) and State and Revolution.

When the revolutionary year of 1917 dawned, Lenin seemed a rather marginal figure on the Russian political stage. Having been out of Russia for decades and with only a relatively small group of ardent supporters, Lenin returned to Petrograd in April with apparently little prospect of acquiring power. He surprised even his allies, many of whom had greeted him upon his arrival at Finland Station, with his April Theses; the party did not fall into line with his radical demands until three weeks of debate had passed. Lenin’s refusal to endorse participation in the provisional government contravened the desire of many Bolsheviks (including Joseph Stalin) to exercise influence in any way they could. He advocated an immediate end to Russian participation in World War I.

Gradual Socialism

He encouraged Bolsheviks to cultivate close relations with the soviets that had formed in the cities and the countryside. Lenin wanted to destroy the state institutions that were oppressing Russians, though he did not state that he aimed to eliminate the police, the bureaucracy, and the army for good. Lenin further recommended the confiscation and redistribution of landed estates; he hoped to prevent small peasant farms from replacing them by immediately nationalizing the land. He planned to introduce socialism gradually, first by giving control over production and distribution to the soviets of workers’ deputies.

As the days and months of 1917 passed, Lenin became an increasingly important leader, even after the provisional government began to hound the Bolsheviks. His decisive moves to capitalize on the weakness of that government enabled his party to seize power in October, even though the Bolsheviks had not yet converted even a minority of Russians to their ideology. The Bolsheviks did not have control over the countryside in 1917 or immediately thereafter, with the result that peasants had proceeded to form smallholdings; some of them had already begun to amass considerable acreage. Hence, collectivization could not occur as Lenin had hoped. The Ukraine and other provinces under the control of the Russian government experienced a revival of nationalist sentiment. The economy remained in shambles. World War I had already demonstrated the incapacity of Russian infrastructure and industry to provide for the people, but Russia’s gross national product suffered even further after the Bolsheviks gave control of factories to workers who had no training in management and little real knowledge of the overall production process. Lastly, the party abandoned real democracy; Lenin declared that the Bolsheviks had to direct the government and the economy until such time as the Russian people had experience with the new system and had enough education to appreciate the communist ideal. The Bolsheviks enacted legislation that gave equal rights to women, though the people had not pushed for such changes.

Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke in 1923 after having previously suffered two less harmful attacks. By that time the Communist government had yielded to political and economic pressure as well as the reality of food shortages and lack of industrial supplies, by enacting the New Economic Policy. Lenin and his supporters intended for such reforms to ease nationalization, collectivization, and the end of private enterprise, though they allowed for the latter and for small family farms in the short term as a means to generate the national wealth needed to effect the transition to communism.

Before Lenin died he had already surrendered real, everyday control over the government. He had not appointed a successor; his close associates Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin each viewed themselves as such, along with several other aspirants. When he died in 1924, Lenin had effected a revolution that had radically changed perceptions of Russia and its prospects for the future. Whether his successors could realize the potential of the revolution and the promise of communism remained unknown.

Bibliography:

• Read, Christopher. Lenin. London: Routledge, 2005;
• Service, Robert. Lenin: A Life. London: Belknap, 2002;
• White, James. Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001;
• Williams, Beryl. Lenin. London: Pearson Longman, 2000.

This example Vladimir Lenin Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.

• How to Write a History Essay
• History Essay Topics
• History Essay Examples

ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER

Special offer!

GET 10% OFF WITH  24START  DISCOUNT CODE

Related posts.

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

9 Things You May Not Know About Vladimir Lenin

By: Jesse Greenspan

Updated: September 7, 2023 | Original: January 21, 2014

1. Lenin’s brother was hanged for plotting to kill the czar.

Lenin’s older brother, Alexander, a university zoology student, was arrested in March 1887 for participating in a bombing plot to assassinate Czar Alexander III. Some of his co-conspirators begged for clemency and therefore had their sentences reduced. But Alexander initially refused to take that route, believing it would be “insincere.”

Eventually, he sent an unrepentant letter to the czar in which he requested mercy for the sake of his mother. “[Her] health has been strongly shaken in recent days, and if my death sentence is carried out it will put her life in most serious peril,” Alexander wrote. The plea went unheeded, and he was hanged that May.

2. Lenin was kicked out of college.

In August 1887, just a few months after his brother’s death, 17-year-old Lenin entered Kazan University to study law. He was expelled that December, however, for taking part in a student protest. Though numerous attempts at readmission failed, he later enrolled as an external student at St. Petersburg University. Lenin completed his education there in 1891 and then briefly labored as a defense attorney. By that time, he had become enthralled by the work of famed communist thinker Karl Marx.

3. Lenin was exiled to Siberia for three years.

Lenin published his first Marxist essay in 1894, and the following year he traveled to France, Germany and Switzerland in order to meet with like-minded revolutionaries. Upon returning to Russia, he was arrested while working on the inaugural issue of a Marxist newspaper. He then spent over a year in jail prior to being sent off to Siberia, where he married a fellow exile and purportedly passed the time taking long walks, writing, hunting and swimming.

Following the completion of his sentence in 1900, Lenin received government permission to leave the country. He remained abroad for most of the next 17 years, coming back only briefly during a failed revolutionary uprising in 1905.

4. Lenin was not his real name.

Born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, Lenin tried out a number of pseudonyms, including “K. Tulin” and “Petrov,” prior to settling on “Lenin” by 1902. Historians believe it may have been a reference to the Lena River in Siberia. Other Russian revolutionaries likewise used pseudonyms, in part to confuse the authorities. Joseph Stalin’s birth name, for example, was Iosif Dzhugashvili, and Leon Trotsky’s was Lev Bronshtein.

5. Lenin hoped Russia would lose World War I.

When World War I broke out in 1914, every political faction in Russia supported the war effort except for Lenin’s Bolsheviks, who predicted that heavy losses on the battlefield would bring about the czar’s downfall. Lenin even accepted financial assistance from Germany, one of Russia’s enemies in the conflict. In March 1917, with inflation rampant, food supplies low and the army in tatters, Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. A sealed railroad car provided by Germany brought Lenin back to Russia the following month.

That November, he engineered a new revolution, seizing power from the provisional government that had been in place since the czar’s collapse. On his first day in office, his regime abolished private landownership and began truce talks with the Germans. Despite agreeing to give up a huge chunk of territory in Finland, Ukraine, the three Baltic states and elsewhere in exchange for peace, the Bolsheviks annulled the deal once Germany surrendered to the Allied powers in November 1918. A few years later, much of that land was then incorporated into the newly formed Soviet Union.

6. Lenin quickly did away with an experiment in democracy.

Before taking power, Lenin spoke in favor of a popularly elected Constituent Assembly that would hash out a post-revolutionary form of government. But he quickly changed his tune after the Bolsheviks won only a quarter of the seats in November 1917 elections. When the assembly convened the following January in St. Petersburg’s Tauride Palace, the Bolshevik delegates attempted to disrupt the proceedings with a cacophony of noise. They then walked out after losing a vote to limit the assembly’s authority.

After over 12 hours of deliberations, in which, among other things, they declared Russia a republic, the remaining delegates adjourned for the night. Before they could meet again, Lenin dissolved the body and posted guards outside the meeting hall. In so doing, he claimed to be carrying out the “will of the people.” Not long afterward, Lenin banned all political parties except his own, strictly censored the press and ruled, in his own words, “based directly upon force, and unrestricted by any laws.”

7. Lenin succeeded where his brother had failed.

As civil war raged between Lenin’s supporters and opponents, Czar Nicholas II and his family were awakened on the night of July 16, 1918, and instructed to dress quickly. Their captors in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, purportedly told them that the anti-Bolshevik White Army was closing in, and that they needed to move to a safer location. Instead, however, the czar, his wife, their five children and four servants were whisked into a basement, where a firing squad burst in and gunned them all down.

According to the Bolsheviks, local government officials in Yekaterinburg made the decision to kill the royal family without consulting their superiors. Yet this version of events has not gone unchallenged. Historians who doubt Lenin’s innocence point, among other things, to an entry in Trotsky’s diary, in which he recalled a top Bolshevik official telling him: “[Lenin] believed that we shouldn’t leave the Whites a live banner to rally around.”

In addition to the czar, the Bolsheviks executed thousands of other perceived political opponents without trial during the civil war, particularly after an August 1918 assassination attempt left Lenin with bullet wounds in his neck and shoulder. The White Army also committed many atrocities.

8. Lenin began to harbor serious doubts about Stalin.

Stalin, a close member of Lenin’s inner circle, became general secretary of the Communist Party in April 1922. Soon after, Lenin began to regret that appointment. In a letter to Russia’s congress, penned in December 1922 and January 1923 but not read until after his death, he described Stalin as “too rude.” “This failing … becomes intolerable in the office of general secretary,” he wrote, adding that Stalin should be replaced with someone “more patient, more loyal, more respectful and more attentive to his comrades, less capricious and so on.”

In a separate letter, Lenin accused Stalin of having “the gall to call my wife to the telephone and abuse her.” Around that time, however, Lenin suffered a third stroke that left him essentially unable to speak. Stalin went on to win a vicious power struggle to succeed Lenin and become one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators.

9. Lenin was mummified following his death.

Thousands upon thousands of mourners streamed past Lenin’s exposed coffin at his funeral, which took place a day after St. Petersburg was renamed Leningrad in his honor. A months-long embalming process then transpired, followed by the construction of a permanent mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square. Lenin’s mummified body has been on display there ever since, except for a four-year period during World War II when it was moved to Siberia.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

• Society and Politics
• Art and Culture
• Biographies
• Publications

History Grade 11 - Topic 1 Essay Questions

Explain to what extent Stalin succeeded in transforming Russia into a superpower by 1939.

Stalin came to power on the back of Lenin’s death in 1925, after which he instituted a range of far-reaching policy changes that would alter the course of Russian society and politics for the rest of the 20th century. The communist Soviet Union we now remember was the product of Stalin, although it can be argued that Lenin was responsible for laying the foundations of its highly authoritarian political culture. The new Russia under Stalin was supposed to radically break from the economic and social backwardness that characterised the Tsarist regime, and which Lenin had little time to achieve. In many ways, Stalin did create a completely different Russia, one almost unrecognisable from before the October revolution which overthrew the provisional government. However, whether that translated into it being a superpower is quite another thing. This paper will argue that although momentous and radical, the reforms Stalin instituted did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, although it did lay the framework for such a status to be attained during the post-WWII era.

Stalin rose to power as the leader of the Soviet Union by crushing his opposition in the Central Committee led by Leon Trotsky. Although we shall not detail this complicated political battle, it is important to note that the vying for power between the powerful figures was also a contestation over the ideological and policy framework which the Soviet Union should take. By the late 1920s, Stalin had emerged victorious, and went on to institute his own brand of communism in the Soviet Union. This centred on the notion of ‘Socialism in one Country’, which was ideally to build up the “industrial base and military might of the Soviet Union before exporting revolution abroad.” [1] This was in contrast to earlier pronouncements made by Lenin and Trotsky, which indicated the need to establish a worldwide ‘uninterrupted revolution’ of workers. [2] The logic here was that socialism could never survive independently outside of a socialist world order; Stalin, on the other hand, saw a national socialism – which, ironically, would be compared to Nazism – as the only way for socialism to survive. [3]

The practical effects of Stalin’s socialism in one country was the rescindment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) – which had allowed for small-scale capitalist enterprise to operate – the collectivisation of agriculture, and rapid forced industrialisation. [4] Socialism in one country forced the Soviet Union to look inwards, to create a socialist nation whose lessons and ideas could then be exported overseas. This means that, for all practical purposes, Russia was not interested in attaining any overtly ‘superpower’ status in global politics. It meant, in terms of foreign policy, of “putting the interests of the Soviet Union ahead of the interests of the international communist movement.” [5] Ideally, when Russia became powerful enough, it would then ferment for workers’ revolutions the world over.

The costs and benefits of these sweeping policy changes – which essentially closed off the Soviet Union from the outside world – are difficult to determine. On the one hand, they certainly led to large-scale industrialisation which outstripped the pace of Russia’s Western counterparts. Through the policy instrument of Five-Year Plans, which set production targets for industries and farms, Stalin was able to bring Russia up to date with modern heavy-industry production techniques and increase output exponentially. For example, cast iron production increased 439% in ten years, and coal extraction 361%. [6] Russia also went on an extensive electrification programme, called GOELRO, which increased electricity production from 1.9 billion kWh in 1913 to 48 billion kWh in 1940. [7]

However, despite the resounding success with which certain - especially heavy - industries benefitted from forced industrialisation, many other industries and rural farmers often suffered. Because of the focus on heavy industrialisation, lighter industries that catered for consumer goods were often poorly made and faced shortages. The agricultural collectivisation programme which was conducted with increased inflexibility and violence across the Russian hinterland cost the lives of millions of peasants, who died of hunger resulting from famine caused by the upheaval of forced collectivisation. Figures range from 5.6 million to 13.4 million. [8] Millions of other prosperous peasants – known as Kulaks – were sent to gulag camps in Siberia for work; Molotov suggested that between 1.3 and 1.5 kulak households (accounting for between 6 and 7 million persons) were expropriated. [9] Thus, whilst Stalin broke the back of these peasants – by 1941, 97% of agriculture was conducted in collectives, and finally there was enough food to feed the cities – the human cost remains an ever-contested aspect of this period.

What is clear about this period, is that these policies centralised the economy and political power in Russia in Stalin’s hands. The increased industrial output, and the ability for (eventual) increased agricultural production to feed the cities, allowed Russia a certain amount of confidence in its ability to conduct itself as an industrial nation. As Stalin was once quoted as saying, “We are fifty to one hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.” [10] Thus, one of the primary reasons for industrialisation was for the ability for Russia to protect itself. This fits in well with the overall ideological implication of Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’, which advocated for an insular reading of socialism that would allow for ‘proper’ socialist conditions to be reached within the massive country before a worldwide socialist revolution took place.

And in many ways, the industrial capacity generated during Stalin’s leadership up to 1939 was crucial for Russia to defend itself against Germany in 1941. Not only did allow for the production of millions of armaments and supplies crucial to the success of any armed conflict, but it also laid the groundwork for a post-war reconstruction. Because the Soviet Union boasted such impressive industrial capacity, it could rebuild after WWII much easier – and more importantly, without the help of aid from the West, especially the USA. The Marshall Plan, in which the USA loaned $15 billion to European countries to help rebuild industry and cities after their decimation during the second world war, was largely a strategic move to counter the spread of communism in Europe. [11] The spread of Russian influence into eastern Europe, on the other hand, was premised on its industrial power, which resulted in its alternative to the Marshall Plan - namely the Molotov Plan - which extended aid to socialist regimes in central and eastern Europe. [12]

The success of Russian industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation during the pre-war years allowed for the repel of German forces and the extension of Russian influence into the eastern European region. It was then that Russia became a superpower. In fact, it is only during the post-WWII war era when the notion of an international ‘superpower’ becomes widespread, when the cold war divides the world into two ideologically opposed sides – America on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other. [13] One could thus argue that the relative military strength of Russia after WWII, a result of its impressive industrial capacity – and its focus on heavy industry and agricultural production – meant that it could become a superpower. Thus, although no one would suggest that Russia was a superpower before WWII in 1939, its ability to retain its industrial strength after the war meant that it would become one. In conclusion, although Stalin did not transform Russia into a superpower by 1939, he laid the necessary groundwork for that to occur in the post-war era.

This content was originally produced for the SAHO classroom by Sebastian Moronell, Ayabulela Ntwakumba, Simone van der Colff & Thandile Xesi.

[1] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199

[2] Erik Van Ree. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77.

[3] Kate Frey. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permane… .

[4] "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica.

[6] John P. Hardt and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968, pg. 6.

[8] Massimo Livi-Bacci. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 751

[9] Ibid, pg. 744.

[10] Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of The Soviet By Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .

[11] "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1 .

[12] Morroe Berger. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 18.

[13] Joseph M. Siracusa. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 3.

• Berger, Morroe. "How the Molotov Plan Works." The Antioch Review 8, no. 1 (1948): 17-25.
• "Communism - Stalinism". 2021. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Stalinism#ref539199 .
• Flewers, Paul. 2021. "The Economic Policy of the Soviet by Isaac Deutscher 1948". Marxists.Org. https://www.marxists.org/archive/deutscher/1948/economic-policy.htm .
• Frey, Kate. 2020. "An Introduction to Trotsky’S Theory of Permanent Revolution". Left Voice. https://www.leftvoice.org/an-introduction-to-trotskys-theory-of-permanent-revolution .
• Livi-Bacci, Massimo. "On the Human Costs of Collectivization in the Soviet Union." Population and Development Review (1993): 743-766.
• "Marshall Plan". 2021. History. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/marshall-plan-1.
• Siracusa, Joseph M. "Reflections on the Cold War." Australasian Journal of American Studies (2009): 1-16.
• Van Ree, Erik. "Socialism in One Country: A Reassessment." Studies in East European Thought 50, no. 2 (1998): 77-117.
• Hardt, John P. and Carl Modig. The Industrialization of Soviet Russia in the First Half Century. Research Analysis Corp. McLean, 1968.

Return to topic: Communism in Russia from 1900 to 1940

Return to SAHO Home

Return to History Classroom

Collections in the Archives

Know something about this topic.

Towards a people's history

• Content Guidelines
• Privacy Policy

Essay on Lenin: Bio, Life and Political Ideas

ADVERTISEMENTS:

After reading this article you will learn about Lenin:- 1. Short Life History of Lenin 2. Background of Lenin’s Thought 3. Political Ideas.

Short Life History of Lenin :

The family name of this world famous revolutionary and a great interpreter of the political ideas of Marx and Engels is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. He was born on 22 April 1870 (in old style or system of calculation it was 10 April).

Simbirsk was Ulyanov’s birth-place and it is now called Ulyanovsk. From the end of 1901 he came to be known as ‘Lenin’ because in his writings he used that pseudonym.

Vladimir’s father Ilya Nikolayevich was an educated person and held the post of school inspector. He had also direct and strong connection with Russian particularly Tsarist bureaucracy and in bureaucratic circle he was a respected person.

Ilya Nikolayevich took special care of his children’s education. Though he was very much religious-minded and imparted religion-based education upon his children he was not a bigot.

His elder brother Alexander was a student of Petersburg University and from his early-hood he was revolutionary in his attitude and activities. This mentality led him to be a member of a terrorist and secret organization popularly known as Narodnaya Volya. This organisation was involved in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and when Alexander’s involvement was discovered he was hanged.

Lenin believed that his brother Alexander was innocent and when he was hanged for no fault of his own Lenin became furious and decided to take revenge. But Lenin’s mother did not approve his decision and she wanted to divert the attention of Lenin. His mother took serious efforts to involve him in studies and because of her efforts Lenin was allowed to be a student of St. Petersburg University and by 1891 he became a law-graduate.

Lenin’s membership of the university and mother’s efforts failed to bring about a break on his connection with the secret organizations, particularly Narodnaya Volya. He was determined to end the autocratic rule of the Tsar and in order to achieve that ambitious objective he began to study the various revolutionary literature. By 1890 Lenin came in close contact with the works of Marx and Plekhanov.

Before Lenin Plekhanov was a great Marxist and he published a number of booklets and articles explaining and interpreting the thoughts of Marx and Engels. Plekhanov’s writings impressed Lenin and he began to study seriously the works of Marx.

His attachment with revolutionary philosophy in general and Marxian philosophy in particular began to increase in astronomical proportion and before the end of the 19th century his name appeared to be a very known figure among the socialist circles.

The secret police and organization of the Tsar intensified their surveillance over Lenin and he was not permitted in the academic affairs of St. Petersburg University. This, however, could not deter Lenin. With added enthusiasm he carried on his revolutionary activities.

Background of Lenin’s Thought :

In his letter to Weydemeyer on 5 March 1852 Marx wrote “And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me the bourgeois historians have described the historical development of this struggle of the classes and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes.”

Needless to say that the same also holds good for Lenin. Lenin’s political philosophy or what is better known as Leninism did not emerge accidentally. It is coupled with a long and multi-faced background whose understanding is essential for a comprehensive grasp over Leninism.

When Lenin embarked upon the turmoil political and economic situation of the then Russia (roughly in the middle of the nineties of the nineteenth century, he witnessed a host of revolutionaries and socialist thinkers such as Struve, Martov, Krzhizhanovsky, Potresov etc.

There was also Plekhanov who built up a powerful group of Marxists and elaborated, interpreted and propagated the main currents of Marxist thought. Plekhanov’s intellectualism created an impact upon the revolu­tionary zeal of Lenin.

In the fifties of the nineteenth century Belinsky and Harzen launched, at a limited scale, the revolutionary movement in Russia which created a stir among the peasants, because they believed that only the Russian peasants could form a potential force to save Russia from the Tsarist misrule.

In the 1860s some Russian thinkers and revolutionaries believed that only a reform movement could be a right way. Chernyshevsky gave leadership to this movement. Though many people call Chernyshevsky’s reform movement revolu­tionary, in practice, it was not so.

Many people think that the purpose of this reform movement was to slow down the terrorist movement which was gathering momen­tum under the leadership of Lenin. His movement was partially anarchist and partially individualist. It was, however, anti-establishment.

Narodnik (Populist) and Narodnaya Volya (People’s will) parties emerged in the seventies to press the cause of common people, particularly the peasants. The populist or Narodnik Party had no practical experience of revolution or leading the toiling masses to revolutionary activities and, as such, the Narodnik Party failed to achieve even moderate success. After sometimes the party gave the Slogan “Go to the people”. The activities of the party went off to the countryside to raise their enthusiasm.

The successive failures of the Narodnik Party split it into two groups—one terrorist and the other, to some extent, reformist. The former was called Narodnaya Volya and Lenin had weakness for this group.

Lenin’s elder brother was connected with this terrorist group and the group was responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Tsar police did not hesitate to adopt most repressive measures and some were hanged. This could not generate any deterrent effect upon the revolu­tionaries. Conspiratorial activities went unabated.

In the mid 1880s some Marxists in exile intensified their activities for the cause of emancipation of the working class and most prominent among them were Plekhanov and Axelrod.

Plekhanov was rated as the key factor for transforming populism into Marxism. In has been observed by a critic that Plekhanov’s writings not only converted Lenin but also reared a whole generation of Russian Marxists. Plekhanov emphasized that populists’ method of terrorism was in bankruptcy and hence it could not be relied upon.

He was sure that capitalism was rapidly developing in Russia and would create a vast army of proletariat who would overthrow the autocratic rulers from power. This analysis of Russian capitalism impressed Lenin and he took active interest.

It has been pointed out by Christopher Hill that Russia during the Tsar rule was in fact divided into two opposite class’s landlord and bourgeois on the one hand, and toiling masses on the other. There was no middle class as it is to be found in other capitalist countries of Europe.

In the midst of this terrorist and revolutionary movement the liberal philosophy of the 19th century could not get any scope to flourish in Russia. Moreover, the landed and industrial interests in Russia were chiefly dominated by the foreigners who created a strong resentment among the common people.

This was quite favourable for the advancement of revolutionary movement and, needless to say, Lenin took the full opportunity of this situation. A large number of socialist thinkers and activities had already prepared an academic atmosphere by interpreting and propagating Marx’s thought and ideas.

Political Ideas of Lenin:

1. the russian revolution :.

A number of Russian revolutionaries ploughed the field for sowing the seeds of revolution and Lenin was undoubtedly the most prominent personality. In fact, without the dynamism and bold leadership of Lenin the Russian revolution would never have been being a reality.

The ruthless administration of Russia sent him to jail and exile for a number of times, but everywhere he continued his schemes of revolution with added zeal and enthusiasm.

In 1893 he returned to St. Petersburg and made efforts to unite the various revolutionary groups. But Russian police did not allow him to remain outside jail to continue revolutionary activities. He was arrested and sent to Siberia.

Lenin was an inborn revolutionary and while in exile he continued his revolu­tionary activities which resulted in the formation of a revolutionary party known as Russian Social Democratic Labour party (R.S.D.L.P).

Under its leadership number of strikes in the textile factories of St. Petersburg took place. Lenin was at that time in Siberia and when he returned in 1900 he witnessed that Russian social and political situation was quite ripe for a revolution.

At the same time he strongly felt the necessity of a journal to spread and inculcate the principle of revolution among the workers and with the help of Potresov and Martov he clandestinely published a journal called Iskra (The Spark) and immediately it was received by the workers and revolutionaries enthusiastically.

Lenin thought that the publication of Iskra was a positive step towards the materialisation of revolutionary objectives. The years following 1893 were years of confusion and indecision.

In the Minsk Congress the RSDLP was formed, but it could not proceed rapidly towards the fulfilment of revolutionary goals. It simply organized few strikes. There were, moreover, dissensions among the revolutionaries.

How to organize a movement?

What would be the objectives of revolution any movement?

Some revolutionaries advanced the argument that the workers should form trade unions to press their demands upon the capitalists.

The political objectives of any organization will definitely divide the workers. But the core group set up by Lenin, when he was in Geneva, strongly opposed this move. His argument was trade union based on economic factors would make the workers reform-minded and enslave them to capitalists. So Lenin advised his followers to discard such trade unionism.

Before 1905 Lenin was convinced that the peasants and workers must under­stand the necessity of a revolution and in order to organize and unite them a party organization is a must.

Lenin once said:

It is not sufficient for revolution that the exploited and oppressed masses understand the impossibility of living in the old way and demand changes. For revolution it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, politically active workers) should fully understand that revolution is necessary and be ready to sacrifice their lives for it, secondly, that the ruling classes be in a state of govern­mental crisis.

Lenin thought that if the government were in crisis that would encourage the backward and politically conscious people to assemble together and form a coherent movement against the government which will precipitate the fall.

This fundamental principle of revolution formulated by Lenin is not imaginary. The revolution of 1905 and two revolutions of 1917 corroborate Lenin’s fundamental law. He was of opinion that the mere presence of objective situation was not enough for any revolution, it must be organized.

Lenin fully realized that the prevailing political situation of Russia was quite congenial for a revolution. The Tsar govern­ment was weak and to cover up its weakness it resorted to repressive measures and for that purpose it employed a large number of agent provocateurs. Lenin thought that intensive propaganda and large scale organization of masses could be alienated from the government and simultaneously its misdeeds and weakness should be exposed to the people so that they can form an anti-government attitude.

He also emphasized that the Russian economy was dominated by the foreign investors and capitalists. Lenin was convinced that for the emancipation of the working class it is necessary to seize political power because it is the cause of exploitation.

2. The Revolution of 1905 :

In the 1905-war with Japan Russian army received a severe defeat at the hands of Japanese army and this brought about several setbacks for the Russian government.

The autocratic and repressive rule of the Tsar already created an anti-government attitude and the abortive Russia-Japanese war fuelled that dissension beyond all sorts of pacification. People of all sections of Russian society adopted the agitative tactics to curb the governmental activities.

The working class was more militant; Strikes, demonstrations and other tactics were adopted by them. The peasants also joined hands with them and, ultimately, the countrywide agitation made the Tsar rulers helpless.

The workers, peasants and even the members of the bourgeoisie formed organizations to give concrete shape to their movements. In such a situation a revolution took place in Russia in 1905 (22 January). It is also called “Bloody Sunday”.

Russian people demonstrated before the palace of the Tsar peacefully, but repressive and ruthless measures were perpetrated by the Tsar police upon them and this made the people furious. Waves of strikes and demonstrations flooded the Russian Society.

At the time of 1905 Russian revolution Lenin was in Geneva. So the revolution was absolutely spontaneous.

The activities and the policies of the Tsar government crossed all the limits of toleration. But the revolution could not succeed; it was crushed by the Tsar Government.

On the question of leadership of revolution and the tactics to be followed in it severe differences of opinion developed between Lenin representing Bolshevik group and the Mensheviks.

The main cause of the conflict between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was that the former wanted to cooperate with the bourgeois democratic groups in their fight. Lenin said that the help of the bourgeois democratic liberals should be sought and on this issue he had no difference of opinion with the Mensheviks. But the moot question is are the members of the bourgeoisie liberal?

He was convinced that the Russian bourgeoisie was not liberal at all and accepting the help of this bourgeoisie does not arise at all. During the reign of Alexander II, Zemstovs were set up.

These were local assemblies and were given extensive powers for self-government. But the Zemstovs were in favour of autocratic rule and for that reason Lenin did not support any cooperation with them which the Mensheviks refused to accept.

Lenin could not find any revolutionary trait among the members of the bourgeoisie and he thought that it was anti-revolutionary.

It has been observed by Marcel Leibman “Between the end of revolution of 1905 and the outbreak of war in 1914, Lenin’s struggle against Menshevism became very largely a struggle against liberation and against all tendencies towards alliance between Social Democrats and Constitutional Democrats” .

3. The Revolution of 1917 :

Lenin investigated the causes of the failure of the revolution of 1905 and he stated his conclusions in Lessons of Revolution published in 1910.

His analysis contains the followings points:

(a) No cooperation with the so-called Russian liberals,

(b) Only a revolutionary struggle of the masses can lead to victory,

(c) Mere underestimation of Tsarism is not enough; all efforts must be made to destroy it.

(d) Only the working class can provide proper leadership because the peasants are weak and unorganized.

(e) Constitutional tactics adopted by the Tsar government should be discarded,

(f) Mensheviks were the tools of Russian liberals and democrats and hence they cannot be relied upon.

Keeping the above lessons in mind Lenin wanted to launch a final strike against the Tsar authority. From the activities of the Tsar government he realized that it was gradually becoming weak and reckless and trying to save itself from complete disaster.

The agitation of the masses was increasing rapidly. Lenin was determined to utilize the large scale mass discontent.

Lenin was convinced that it was beyond the capacity of the Tsar government to provide bread and other necessaries and ensure peace and allot land to the landless people and under such situation he gave a clarion call to the masses to rise against all sorts of odds and repressions. He openly declared that he would not accept parliament.

By October 1917 the weakness and inefficiency of the government reached their zenith and Lenin thought that the most opportune moment had arrived to launch a final attack and he did that immediately.

The bold leadership of Lenin and the enthusiastic support of the people helped him to corner the Mensheviks. The Bolshevik group under his leadership marched ahead and in October 25, 1917 (New system 7 November), the Bolshevik party captured power. R. N. Carew Hunt writes… “both the social revolutionaries and the Mensheviks were outplayed by a party far smaller, but better organized” .

The success of the revolution of 1917 demonstrates that the fundamental difference between Lenin and the Mensheviks was that the former wanted to adopt a pragmatic policy to win the fight against the Tsar government and the latter were orthodox Marxists. They held that the Russian situation was not ripe for seizure of power.

This orthodox attitude towards the Russian situation was the chief factor of debacle from which the Mensheviks suffered and from which they never recovered. Some critics (mainly from Western countries) accuse Lenin of distorting Marxism. But a proper assessment reveals that he possessed unbound acumen of dealing with practical situations and this made him victorious.

4. Theory of Party :

During their lifetime Marx and Engels could not find sufficient time and scope to prepare a full-dress theory of party. In Manifesto of the Communist Party (henceforth Manifesto) they have said that the working class must form a party to seize political power and establish its dictatorship without which the in emancipation would never be possible.

In his Civil War in France Marx clearly stated that the chief cause of the failure of the commune was workers’ inability to form a party. But when Lenin appeared in the Russian political scene and decided to launch an uncompromising struggle against Tsardom, he felt the necessity of a party and this realization came as early as 1901.

Two issues dominated Lenin’s mind when he was seriously thinking about organizing a party. One is, he thought that a political party of the Western type (bourgeoisie democratic party of Western Europe) could never be able to fulfil the objective of the Russian working class whose chief aim was to overthrow the rule of the Tsar.

Political parties of Western bourgeois democracies always follow a tactics of compromise and cooperation with the capitalist’s class.

The second issue is on the role of the party. Lenin openly challenged the argument and stand of the economists. “The economists interpreted historical materialism as a theory of primacy of the proletariat’s economic struggle as compared with political aims”.

The argument of the economists was that the material interests of the workers is economic interests and those must be met at first and after that they will spontaneously fight for political struggle and domination. To unite the workers, they held, this condition must be fulfilled.

In his famous work what is to Be Done, Lenin attacked this economism. He said that the chief objective of the workers would be to capture political power and emancipation from economic bondage would follow. He also refuted the econo­mists’ argument of spontaneity. The revolutionary principles shall be spread through various means among the workers so that they can form a definite opinion about the exploitation of the capitalists. Hence the theory of spontaneity does not hold good at all.

Lenin has said that without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. Only a well-organized party can preach and propagate it among the workers. He has further observed that left to themselves the workers were not capable of attaining consciousness of the fundamental opposition between their class as a whole and the existing social system.

The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness. But for a complete emancipation trade union movement and spontaneity cannot work satisfactorily.

The role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced concepts and ideas of the theory of socialist revolution.

While Lenin was channelizing his efforts for organizing a party for conducting revolution he simultaneously thought of spreading ideology among the workers. It is not true that the working class will develop an independent ideology of its own while guiding a movement.

Only a struggle can form the foundation of an ideology. This naive contention of some persons has been challenged by Lenin. He is of opinion that no independent ideology can develop in the process of labour movement.

In any society there can be only two ideologies bourgeois and socialist and the working class will have to select any one of these two. There is no middle course and hence there is no third ideology.

It is the most important task of a revolutionary party to convince the workers of the necessity of socialist ideology, because only this course will convince them of the extent of capitalist exploitation.

The task of the party is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working class movement from the spontaneous trade union movement to the umbrella of revolutionary movement.

At the beginning of twentieth century, in Russia, there were a number of revolutionary groups who were fighting against Tsardom. Lenin felt the necessity of a united party, because only such an organization could succeed in capturing political power. He wanted to call it a homogeneous All Russian Party.

A centralized and well-organized party was to him the only way. “As against the populists, he conceived of this party as proletarian, as against the legal Marxists, as a party of action as well as of theory, and as against the economists as a party with a political as well as an economic programme”

Lenin thought that in order to be the vanguard of the proletariat the party must be an “iron party”, that is, it must enforce discipline and principles of revolution and protracted class struggle among the members.

Without an “iron party” it was impossible to carry out the dictatorship of the proletarian. Party should be the highest form of organisation for carrying out proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie.

What Lenin wants to emphasize is that without a nod from the central committee or organisation regional branches cannot take any decision.

To fulfill the goals of revolution Lenin thought that the party should be small so that it can function swiftly and quite effectively.

The central committee of the party will dominate the ideological and other aspects of the organisation and from this view of Lenin critics draw the conclusion that he was thinking about the dictatorship of party. From the political experience of Russia, Lenin formed the opinion that only a small party can work efficiently.

As regards the organisation of the party Lenin states that it will not only be small, but will consist of professional revolutionaries. These persons will take revolution­ary activity as the in profession.

The allegiance of these persons to both ideology and party shall be beyond all sorts of doubt and suspicion. Explaining Lenin’s view Kolakowski says that such a party of professional revolutionaries must not only gain the confidence of the workers and take over the spontaneous movement, but must make itself the centre of all forms of protest against social oppression.

A small well-organized party will highlight the class interest and expose the class antagonism among the workers and peasants. It will warn the working class against any possible onslaught released by the capitalist and their puppet counter-revolutionary forces.

It may suitably be called general campaign of exposure. Lenin laid great faith on the party. He believed that it was the duty of the party to expose the motives and character of religious fundamentalists and reactionary forces.

Lenin believed that the leadership of the party shall be at the hands of professional revolutionaries who may be workers or intellectuals. But his preference was always for the workers dedicated to the cause of revolution and emancipation of workers. It has been maintained by Christopher Hill that he had very little faith on the intellectuals because they can easily be purchased by the capitalists.

The latter offer them lucrative employment and other comfortable opportunities and amenities and this make them oblivious of revolu­tion. Even they may abandon revolutionary activities. The intellectuals prefer seminars and declarations. They very seldom think how to implement the decla­rations.

This view of Lenin about the intellectuals was opposed by many of his own party. Even a number of top revolutionaries held the view that large numbers of intellectuals were in favour of revolution and they believed that only a revolution could emancipate the working class.

In 1920 Lenin laid down that the basis of the party should be “democratic centralism” which implies the combination of democratism and centralism or centralisation. Lenin elaborated the principles of democratic centralism under the new historical conditions when the age of proletarian revolution had come. Lenin wanted to apply the principle in the party congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.

All organisations of the party, according to Lenin, are subordinated to the central authority, the decisions of the higher party organisation are obligatory for lower party organisations.

All the units of the party are well-connected and the office-bearers are elected by the members of the party. All the important issues shall be threadbare by analyses in different units of the party and the final decision will be taken by the majority which will be binding on all.

Lenin’s theory of party as well as its role in the Russian revolution may also be explained in the light of the relationship between the party and Soviets. In State and Revolution and other works he has stressed that the proletarian revolution will smash the bourgeois state and that will be replaced by the Soviets.

“The decisive feature in Lenin’s analysis, and those to which he attached the greatest importance were his insistence on smashing the old state apparatus, on replacing it by the dictatorship of the proletariat and his new vision of Soviets as the political machinery through which this dictatorship could best be exercised”.

Lenin thought that after the revolution the proletariat will seize power and dictatorship will be established. All these were categorically stated by Lenin before 1919.

In this year he said:

“The party must win for itself undivided mastery over the Soviets” Critics are of opinion that with the change of time and situation Lenin had jumped from one concept to another.

Dictatorship of the Soviets, dictatorship of the party and dictatorship of the proletariat are not identical terms.

Subsequently the matter was clarified according to the following line. The party will guide and lead the Soviets and will never replace them. That means the Soviets will be in full control of ail the activities of the state and society.

Stalin in his Problems of Leninism has offered a slightly different explanation. He has said that the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat which is organized into society and is led by the party.

The party, in essence, exercises the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets are the direct expressions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not a single important political or organizational question is decided by our Soviet without guiding direction from our party.

Criticism :

Lenin’s theory of party has been subject to severe criticisms by both Marxists and non-Marxists.

He and his adherents have always assured us that Lenin is neither distorting nor amending the central principles of Marxism. But if we look at his theory of party we will witness a clear negation of this contention. Both Marx and Engels have all long advocated the establishment of dictatorship of proletariat after the seizure of power by the proletarians.

Instead of advocating for dictatorship of proletariat, Lenin ultimately supported the dictatorship of party which Marx and Engels never wanted. His advocacy for the mastery of party over all the affairs of state clearly curtails the power and rule of the Soviets. Dictatorship of party undoubtedly makes Marxism a mockery.

His criticism of his opponents’ view reveals that he was intolerant and very often used indecent phrases.

Marcel Liebman has said:

“One could go on indefinitely accumulating examples of the invectives indulged in by Lenin in his pursuit of what he himself called an “implacable campaign”.

Once he described Trotsky a Judas Trotsky. Though Lenin himself had sufficient sense of decency. Martov was also subjected to his thunderbolts. Lenin even went so far as to insinuate that Martov was in the service of Tsar”. Such insinuations are unworthy for Lenin.

5. Theory of State :

A very important contribution of Lenin lies in his interpretation and elaboration of the concept of state of which Marx had said very little. The best treatment is found in Engels’s The Origin of Family, Private Property and-State.

Lenin, borrowing the central idea from Marx and Engels, has expounded the Marxian doctrine in his The State and The State and Revolution. The latter was published in August 1917 and the former in 1919. The State and Revolution is regarded by many scholars as a very important writing of Lenin. What Engels did not say but wanted to say, Lenin has explained in The State and Revolution.

Following Marx and Engels Lenin says that in the primitive society there was no existence of state because there were no classes. When the society came to the divided into opposing classes as a result of the emergence of private property the necessities of state became inevitable. History shows that the state is a special apparatus for coercing people.

One class uses this apparatus to coerce another class. The state is by no means a power forced on society from without. It is the product of society at a certain stage of development. This society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself.

It is now clear that according to Lenin also Marx and Engels the state is a human product not bestowed upon man by any invisible power: A product of irreconcilability of class antagonism.

Marx, Engels and also Lenin have viewed history from the standpoint of materialist conception. They have said that the study of history reveals that in different periods of time different classes arose and their interests were diametrically opposite; and because of this the in interests could not be reconciled.

In the slave society there were slave-owners and slaves, in the feudal period there were landlords and serfs. Finally, in industrial society, there arose capitalists and working class or proletarians.

In all these epochs these classes stood against each other. One class wanted to dominate another. But ultimately it was found that the economically dominant class got an upper hand and established its mastery over the weaker class which was in numerical majority.

The powerful class with the help of police, army, bureaucracy and other coerce- enforcing machinery succeeded in controlling the weaker class. These forces are state forces and controlled and maintained by state. It may also be put in a different way.

The economically stronger class created machinery which could help it in exploitation. It is now obvious that if the interests of the opposing classes could be reconciled such an apparatus could not have arisen.

Let us sum up the matter in the words of Lenin:

The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises, where when and in so far as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled. The existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.

The state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. It has been maintained by Lenin that although the state represents the powerful class, it sometimes plays the role of arbitrator in cases of disputes and this state does to show its neutrality. But ultimately the state fails to settle the disputes simply because these cannot be reconciled.

When the settlement fails the real character of state is exposed, it takes the side of the dominant class state. The state is the rule of a definite class.

Immediately after October Revolution (November Revolution, New Style) Lenin castigated the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. They argued that the state could reconcile the classes. Lenin called this petty bourgeois theory. He also called it petty bourgeois and Philistine reconciliation theory.

He concluded that the state is an organ of class rule and product of class antagonisms. This specific role of the state helps its alienation from the rest of the society. It keeps itself above the society and rule from above. Hence the emancipation of the working class shall be preceded by destruction of ruling class and seizure of state power.

An Instrument for Exploitation :

The chief role of state according to Marx, Engels and Lenin is it is an instrument of exploitation. The dominant class controlling the sources of production uses the state for its own benefits. So if there were no classes there could not arise the necessity of state.

In the State Lenin makes the following observation:

The state is a machine for maintaining the rule of one class over another. How the state plays the role of exploitation? It has a vast army of bureaucracy which from time to time makes laws fulfilling the interests of the ruling class and again when these laws prove redundancy they are abolished or amended and in this way the process continues. In case of violation of state laws, army or police are pressed into service.

The state is a machine for the oppression of one class by another, a machine for holding the obedience to one class other subordinate classes. There are various forms of this machine. The slave owning state could be a monarchy, an aristocratic, republic or even a democratic republic.

In fact, the forms of government varied, but their essence was always the same. The slaves could not enjoy any rights. The condition of serfs in feudal state was better in comparison with slaves, but they were oppressed and exploited. The industrial workers in the same way were also oppressed and exploited.

In a democratic republic wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely, first, by means of the direct corruption of officials as in America and secondly by means of an alliance with government and Stock Exchange as in France and other capitalists countries. In all the capitalist countries, Lenin observes, banks and other financial institutions have developed exceptionally and these are controlling the financial world.

Moreover, these financial institutions are in the full control of the wealthiest section of the community. These capitalist countries are called democra­cies or republics, but these terms are misnomers.

People hardly enjoy any rights or privileges. The interests of Stock Exchange and financial institutions are fully protected by the various machinery of state. Political, economic and other interests of the working class and peasants received no importance at the hand of persons manning the state machinery.

Some petty-bourgeois democrats, socialist revolution­aries and Mensheviks liberally eulogies the so-called democratic methods of bourgeois state. These are universal suffrage and party system.

Lenin is of opinion that these petty-bourgeois democrats have dismally failed to understand the real character of the exploitative role of the capitalist state. These are subterfuges employed by the state.

Withering Away of State :

Engels, in his pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, says “interference in social relation becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous and then dies out of itself. The state is not abolished, it dies out.” This is, in nutshell, the famous doctrine of withering away of state.

This doctrine has been variously interpreted and the bourgeois theoreticians and sociologist have distorted the concept to suit their motives. Lenin in The State and Revolution has offered us a clear exposition of the theory.

Lenin’s clarification of withering away of state is:

First, Engels said in seizing state power the proletarial thereby abolishes “The state as state”. This phrase of Engels is the source of a lot of confusion.

Detractors of Marxism say that Engels advocated for an abolition of state and in that case he was at par with anarchists, because the anarchists also wanted to destroy the state.

Lenin’s clarification is that after the proletarian revolution, the bourgeois state will be abolished. But such a state will not immediately wither away. Why? When the proletarian seizes state power, for its own convenience and benefit it will keep certain elements of the bourgeois state.

Only the repressive aspects of bourgeois state will be abolished, not the whole structure of such a state. After the socialist revolution there will be no classes. The proletarian state will be a symbol of perfect democracy.

The phrase withering away means the remnants of the proletarian state will die or wither away. Lenin emphasizes that there is difference between the abolition of state as state and withering away of state. Bourgeois thinkers, because of their shallow knowledge, have failed to realize this difference.

Second, about the withering away of state Lenin says that the central idea of what Engels wanted to say had not been fully understood by the bourgeois thinkers. In speaking of the state as dying down of itself Engels refers clearly and definitely to the period after the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole society, that is, after the socialist revolution.

A socialist revolution will abolish state as state. But when there will be a perfect democracy there will be no need of any state apparatus. The remnants of the bourgeois state will then wither away. In other words, the withering away of state is in full consonance of perfect democracy.

Third, Lenin says that the proposition the state withers away is mainly directed against opportunists and anarchists, particularly the latter. This is due to the feet that the anarchists raised a slogan that state should be destroyed to ensure maximum freedom of people. Engels threw a challenge to it. So long there would be necessity of state it could not be destroyed.

In Manifesto Marx and Engels have said:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands the proletariat organized as the ruling class.

Commenting upon this observation of Marx and Engels Lenin says that this is the most remarkable and important formulation of Marx about state. Here they have also given a brief definition of state proletariat organized as ruling class.

In order to suppress the counter-revolutionary forces and reactionary elements the proletariat will need a State.

Let us put it in the words of Lenin:

“The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out.”

When the dictatorship of proletariat will be established there will no longer be any classes in society, that is, it will be a classless society. Lenin says that the chief role of the bourgeois state is to exploit the proletariat, and when the proletariat will seize power the role of the state as an instrument of exploitation will be redundant. By interpreting Marxian theory of state in his way Lenin was successful in removing all sorts of confusion and propaganda let loose by the bourgeois theoreticians.

6. Liberalism:

Lenin’s attitude to liberalism and specifically to liberal philosophy of the bourgeoi­sie has been a controversial one. Critics say that he did not hold any definite view. He expressed different opinions at different times.

In 1903, when the Russian Social Democracy was split into two broad groups Mensheviks and Bolsheviks the issue of cooperating with the liberals or accepting their assistance in overthrowing autocratic rulers of Russia was first raised and debated.

It was thought at that time that if the social democrats refused to take any help of the liberal elements of the bourgeoisie, they will be ultimately isolated in their protracted struggle against Tsardom, and in order to avoid this it would be prudent to make an alliance with the liberals. Lenin shared this view.

The struggle against the reactionary and autocratic sections of Russia must be broad-based and, in order to isolate them from the majority, of the masses, the progressive section must be brought into confidence.

This opinion Lenin expressed as early as 1897. But subsequently he added “This support does not presuppose, nor does it call for, any compromise with non-socialist-democratic programmes and principles”. The naive implication is alliance might be sought but not at the cost of democratic principles of the Bolshevik party.

In What is to be Done? Lenin said that the bourgeois democrats are the natural and desirable allies of Social Democracy, but the essential condition of such an alliance must be the full opportunity for the socialists to reveal to the working class that its interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the bourgeoisie. From the above comments it is quite obvious that so far as the alliances with the progressive section of the bourgeoisie are concerned Lenin did not adhere to any orthodox stand.

The only point he harped upon was that principles and ideology of Social Democracy could not be jettisoned; they must be strictly followed at any cost. It further means that Lenin had always indulged in distrust about bourgeois liberalism.

Any alliance with it was absolutely for advancing class struggle and isolating the bourgeoisie. But the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 brought about a radical change in the political scene of Russia.

Russia’s defeat exposed her bankruptcy in all spheres, and the working class and peasants, utilizing the opportunity, intensified agitation throughout the country and under such circumstances. Lenin was not in favour of any alliance with the liberals.

On the contrary the Mensheviks decided to support the liberals and Zemostovs. Zemstovs were the local assemblies. Mensheviks believed that the liberals were part of the struggle against autocracy. Lenin discarded this contention and said that they were more counter-revolutionaries.

Lenin’s difference with the Mensheviks began to multiply after 1904 and assumed enormous shapes between 1905 and 1914. He differed from the Mensheviks on two issues organisation of party and alliance with the liberals.

His struggles against Menshevism was largely a fight against liberalism He could not accommo­date himself with the Constitutional Democratic Party because in his view it was the symbol of reactionism and the bourgeoisie.

Again, the Mensheviks were in favour of participating in the Duma (Russian Parliament). Even they planned to forge an electoral alliance with the Constitutional Democrats. But Lenin rejected such a proposal outright.

He believed that within the four walls of Duma, the Social Democrats would hardly get any scope to fight the Tsar rulers. Moreover, with their limited membership and practically no power they would not be able to force the autocratic government to concede to their demands.

It is not easy to assess the steps taken by Lenin and the attitude he adopted. Whatever he said depended upon the prevailing situation. But Lenin always held the view that the liberals could not be wholly relied upon and in no case could they be allowed to capture the leadership of proletarian struggle. He by saying this made clear his position, although to his leaders it was not always clear.

7. Parliamentarism :

In order to understand Lenin’s views on the Russian Parliament (Duma) it is necessary to know what Mensheviks and other leaders held about it.

One of the main planks of dissension between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks is the participation in the activities of the Duma, 1906 and years following it saw the intensifications of conflict between the two parties. Mensheviks and other leaders such as Plekhanov, Axelrod etc. held the view that the powers of the Duma were highly limited and in some cases fictitious.

But in spite of this the socialists under the banner of Menshevism could easily participate in the activities of Duma and whenever any opposition to Tsarism would arise the socialists must not hesitate to utilize it for mass struggle and to expose the misdeeds of the Tsar. A section of Menshevik Party desired to convert the floor of Duma for socialist movement.

In this way Mensheviks proceeded to reformism and parliamentarism which was strongly presented by Bolsheviks. The Menshevik leaders thought that in most of the European countries the socialist movement was graced by parliamentarism and naturally they cannot go against the tide.

This tendency of the Mensheviks was vehemently opposed by Lenin and he warned his comrades against the Menshevik trap. He advised them to go to the workers of factory and villagers and peasants of countryside and to propagate among them that without class struggle and revolution it was impossible to seize power.

He told them of the “Impossibility of achieving political freedom by parliamentary means as long as real power remains in the hands of Tsarist government and to show the people the utter uselessness of the Duma as a means of achieving the demands of the proletarian and the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie especially the peasantry”.

Though Lenin called the Mensheviks’ decision to join Duma as opportunism, he was faced with a dilemma. A section of the Bolshevik Party was in favour of participating in the Duma and it was not possible for him to disregard it.

Softening his rigid stand he said that the socialists must see that the participation in parliamentary activities was to further the socialist movement and the goals of the party.

In other words, the objective of participation in parliament would be “debunking of parliamentarism”. Socialists must remember that the Duma was the spawn of counter-revolution and that no real good could be expected from it.

The socialists or Social-Democratic members may join the Duma on the condition that they will carry out the task of criticism, propaganda agitation and organisation. They will use the general elections as broad and effective platform of propaganda.

It would never be the purpose of the socialist members of the Duma to sincerely participate in the legislative functions of the Duma.

Lenin stressed another point about the participation in the Duma. He said that the socialist members must be preserved from contamination of bourgeois parlia­mentary members. How could it be achieved? Lenin said that cooperation between socialist and bourgeois members must be forbidden.

The Social-Democrats must strictly adhere to the principles of revolution and militancy, any deviation of socialist ideology resulting from the participation in the Duma would be a suicidal policy.

Lenin also said that the Constitutional Democrats would adopt all possible steps to purchase or motivate the Social-Democrats.

It would be the duty of the Bolshevik Party to keep a close watch over that. Because the manoeuvring capacity of the Constitutional Democrats is superb and they would not hesitate to adopt any measure to disrupt the socialist programme. This proposal of Lenin emanated from the Menshevik move for a joint meeting between the Social-Democrats and Constitutional Democrats.

Lenin was also not in very much favour of electoral alliance with the Constitu­tional Democrats in all cases. He said that only under exceptional circumstances such electoral alliance might be forged. On this issue he differed from Mensheviks. He was of opinion that in order to fight the right wing and reactionary candidate’s alliance might be made. Lenin thus adopted a mid and moderate path so far as participation in parliament was concerned.

Related Articles:

• Lenin’s Contribution towards Marxism or Communism
• Essay on Mao Zedong: Bio, Life and Political Ideas
• Essay on Karl Kautsky: Bio, Life and Political Ideas
• Essay on Rosa Luxemburg: Bio, Life and Political Ideas

Upload and Share Your Article:

• Description *
• Your Name *
• Your Email ID *
• Upload Your File Drop files here or Select files Max. file size: 3 MB, Max. files: 5.

Politics , History , Political Thinker , Lenin , Essay

Upload Your Knowledge on Political science:

Privacy overview.