Of course he had to hide it, because it would have been embarrassing. But I did have in mind the power of demagoguery. Some of the same things are said about him: He lies shamelessly; he promises anything and everything; he offers very simple solutions to complicated problems.
This is very recognizable today. He would have been fantastic on Twitter. Do you see a parallel there as well? Lenin was also obsessed with propaganda. What were his innovations on that front? He was really obsessed with film and radio. But he would have used whatever the new technology was at the time. I dread to think how he would use the Internet. His style was always to look at the worst of his opponents and brand them that way.
That was always in his argument: Exaggerate everything wrong that your opponent does, and then identify them only like that. Nor has President Vladimir Putin. Why is that? But trying to come to terms with the communists is not an easy one for Putin. He hates the word revolution. To them modern history begins in , with victory in the Great Patriotic War, and you can almost forget the years before it.
Why does Putin seem uninterested in putting it to rest? He had the chance in , when the mausoleum was in such bad shape that there was a danger of it falling down. Free love was encouraged and abortion was permitted without restriction. Young people found that life at school was much more free under Communist rule. The authority of teachers over pupils was very restricted. Taylor claimed that. But others see him as a ruthless dictator who paved the way for the even more ruthless and brutl dictatorship of Stalin.
He rejected genuine democracy when he used force to disperse the Constituent Assembly in He was convinced that the Bolshevik party had an historic mission: to lead the working-class revolution; since the working class were small in number and needed to be led and guided, it followed, as he himself put it, that "the will of a class is sometimes fulfilled by a dictator. When he died, Lenin left in place the weapons which Stalin was able to use for his tyranny- the party state, a ban on 'factionalism' the use of secret police, and the removal of most of the powers of trade unions.
His defenders argue that had Lenin lived another twenty years to the same age as Stalin , Russia would have developed quite differently. This was how socialism would triumph in the end, not through the Stalin method of brute force. Lenin and Stalin had many characteristics in common, but many marked differences. One of his major strengths was that he was a great intellectual. Indeed Lenin was one of the leading Russian writers and thinkers of the period publishing many works. Lenin was unquestionably brilliant and a great organiser.
He was also exceptionally hard working and one hundred percent dedicated to his cause. History illustrates so many times this was vital to the Bolshevik success. He seized the moment by ordering revolution. In contrast to Lenin, Stalin was comparatively dull. He could not in any way match the intellectual ability of Lenin.
However like Lenin, Stalin was a good organizer, and hard working and absolutely dedicated. For example Trotsky created the Red Army and Lenin showed his complete trust in Trotsky by giving him a free hand in military matters. These attributes contrast markedly with those of Stalin. Unlike Lenin, Stalin was rude and ambitious. He was very vain and excessively neurotic. He frequently got rid of rivals even if they were of no threat to him.
Unlike Lenin, Stalin trusted no one and ran everything. One of the other great strengths of Lenin, was that he commanded great respect and personal loyalty.
This loyalty allowed him to change policies even when they were unpopular within the Bolshevik Party. Lenin always had a realistic approach to his problems.
Lenin was pragmatic and was able to change his policies. A good example was his adoption of war communism to win the civil war, and then to introduce the NEP afterwards to help the economy recover. Stalin by contrast did not command such personal loyalty. I believe that Stalin was also quite pragmatic, but only when it suited his own ambitions and interests. For example Stalin helped the Republicans during the Spanish Civil war by supplying them with weapons whereas the Fascists were helped by Hitler.
For a decade Lenin had an on-off love affair with a glamorous, intelligent and beautiful woman, Inessa Armand, who became a close friend of his wife. Lenin wanted power, and he wanted to change the world. He retained power personally for just over four years before failing health rendered him physically and mentally incapable. But, as he predicted that it would, the Bolshevik revolution turned the world upside down. Russia never recovered, and nor did many of its neighbours.
Lenin was the product of his time and place: a violent, tyrannical and corrupt Russia. The revolutionary state he created was less the socialist utopia he dreamed of than a mirror image of the Romanov autocracy into which he was born.
The fact that Lenin was Russian is as significant as his Marxist faith. He was not a monster, a sadist or personally vicious. In personal relationships he was invariably kind, and his behaviour reflected the way he was brought up — like an upper-middle-class gentleman.
He was not vain. He could laugh — even, occasionally, at himself. He never donned uniforms or military-type tunics, as favoured by other dictators.
But during his years of feuding with fellow revolutionaries and battling to maintain his grip on power he never showed generosity to a defeated opponent nor performed a humanitarian act unless it was politically expedient. He built a system based on the idea that political terror against opponents was justified for a greater end. He had not always been a bad man, but he did terrible things. It remains a suitable epitaph. Speaking of his ruthlessness Yes, Lenin unleashed violence against his enemies.
But bear in mind, these were years of civil war and massive instability. As writer Gary Younge says, Lenin is now criticised for "dictatorial tendencies as though he were ruling an established democracy in peacetime rather than a ravaged nation emerging from autocracy, at war first with itself and then with foreign powers.
And here's another key point in Lenin's defence. In his dying days, Lenin recognised the danger of Stalin, and tried to stop his rise to power. He wrote a now-famous testament, in which he lambasted "Comrade Stalin" for having "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
Lenin was, of course, more right than he could have known. Stalin, whom Lenin also described as "coarse" and "intolerable" would indeed go onto betray the ideals of the revolution, and victimise his own people. That was a terrible crime, but not one which we can lay at the feet of Lenin. Stalin was bad.
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