When Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died, the Czech politician Karel Kramář wrote that “in the dark corners of Russia they will talk about the antichrist for a long time with horror, but where they can objectively assess the bloody era of Russian Bolshevism, perhaps they will see in Lenin and his work the culmination of the difficult Russian crisis, the liberation of all humanity from the suggestion of socialist utopias, which everywhere threatened the moderate and organic development of human society”.
There was a bit of wishful optimism in it, that Russian Bolshevism would be enough of a warning to the world not to take the same path.
One hundred years later, Lenin is routinely denounced as a “conceited pseudo-philosopher”, a “bloody tyrant” or “the most famous syphilitic”.
But is reducing Lenin to a caricature enough to prevent anyone from following his path ever again?
In Lenin’s obituary, Ferdinand Peroutka emphasized above all his dangerous intellectual performance. Yes, when he approached philosophy, he behaved “like Chaplin in a china shop.”
His theses were not sweeping and did not take into account the variety of life, about which Lenin knew little. His thoughts were sticks meant for beating.
Lenin did not have a multitude of ideas to deal with, but he invented a revolution like no one in his time.
As the Menshevik Fyodor Dan put it – no one thinks about revolution all day like Lenin, no one dreams about it all night, and no one talks about anything but revolution like him.
And then argue with him.
Lenin’s speech in Moscow in May 1920. Photo – Wikimedia Commons
How a person becomes Lenin
Lenin was not a political leader connected to
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