MARX AND ENGELS formulated the basic doctrines of modern communism. However, they supplied few guides to everyday revolutionary activity.
Remaining in the Marx-Engels stage, communism might well have been drowned in an ocean of angry words, manifestoes, quarrels, and personal feuds. If so, the world today would be a much different place for all of us.
But there was another man, whom Marx and Engels never knew, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin. It was Lenin’s destiny to lead the first successful communist revolution, about which Marx and Engels had dreamed so long. He was the man who took communist theory and galvanized it into communist organization and action. Lenin’s activation of communist theory resulted in the seizing of power in Russia. Lenin stands today, just after Marx and Engels, as the movement’s third force. More than any other man he is the “developer” of modern-day communism and the father of Party structure and dictatorship. His importance is reflected in the communist description of its way of life as the “science of Marxism-Leninism.”
Today Lenin’s prestige has been inflated even more as a result of the “downgrading” of Stalin. He is looked upon as the “ideal” communist leader and, in the words of N. A. Bulganin, Chairman of the U.S.S.R. Council of Ministers, “the great founder of our party and the Soviet State.”
Lenin was born April 22, 1870, in Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk (changed after Lenin’s death in 1924), a town on the Volga River, deep in Russia. His father was a school inspector and a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church. Vladimir, one of six children, was a model student. He had a great capacity for concentration and could quickly answer his father’s questions about schoolwork.
Youth, however, was short-lived; Lenin soon was on the way to becoming a “revolutionary.” It is interesting and important to note here, as with Marx and Engels, that atheism was the first step toward communism. At the age of sixteen, as he later said, Lenin ceased to believe in God. It is reported that he tore the cross from his neck, threw this sacred relic to the ground, and spat upon it.
Soon after, in 1887, when Lenin was seventeen, Alexander Ulyanov, his elder brother and boyhood hero, was hanged in the courtyard of Schlüsselburg Fortress in Saint Petersburg, later known as Petrograd and Leningrad, along with four companions, charged with conspiracy to assassinate the Czar of Russia. Alexander was a member of People’s Will, a revolutionary organization. This event deeply affected young Lenin.
In the fall of 1887 Vladimir entered Kazan University and soon became involved in student disorders. He was arrested and lived for a while under police surveillance. A short time later, at the age of eighteen, he started reading Karl Marx and soon was expounding Marxist principles to his sister Anna and organizing Marxist discussion groups. In 1891, in Saint Petersburg, he passed his law examination with honors and was admitted to the bar. Although young in years, he was “old” in disposition. At the age of twenty-four, a companion remarked, Lenin already had a tired-looking face. His head was entirely bald, except for fringes of hair at the temples. “The most striking thing about him,” went another description, “was his large head, with its large white forehead. His rather small eyes seemed perpetually narrowed, his glance was serious. .”
Within a few short years Lenin was to dominate the Russian Marxist movement. This man who loved to play with children, who, after he became dictator of all Russia, occasionally liked to sleep in a hayloft rather than in a bed, was utterly cynical and ruthless. In one instance an associate in Stockholm complained that couriers were not delivering newspapers on schedule. “Please send me their names,” Lenin curtly ordered. “These saboteurs shall be shot.”
Another time a companion complained about his work. Shut up, were Lenin’s orders. “I will turn you over to the party court; we will shoot you.” Without tenderness, with not a muscle responsive to mercy, he had one goal—revolution. For twenty years, whether as an exile in Siberia or as a wandering conspirator in Europe, he kept working, dreaming, and thinking about revolution. Guided by his “evil genius,” he never deviated from that goal.
Russia, by the 1880’s, was seething with discontent. A strong revolutionary movement, dating from the 1820’s, was in rebellion against the despotic Czarist regime. Many of the suggested revolutionary programs were impractical. Some demanded greater voice for the peasants or industrial workers; some espoused violent revolution; others, democratic reform. But on one point they all agreed: there must be a change. The more radical groups believed in political terrorism. Their violent escapades, however, such as assassinations, led only to greater oppression.
Marxist writings had early found their way into Russia. The first language into which Marx’s Das Kapital (originally written in German) had been translated was Russian. Many revolutionaries were attracted by these new communist ideas. In 1883 a Marxist group was founded. Ten years later, when Lenin joined an underground group in Saint Petersburg, the movement was strong.
These early Russian Marxists, however, were deeply divided. They were babblers of theory, not apostles of action. Lenin immediately undertook to change the situation. But in December, 1895, he was arrested, imprisoned, and later exiled to Siberia.
In 1900 he was released and fled from Russia, more ardent than ever for revolution. With fiendish devotion and intensity he set about the task of creating a revolutionary organization that could seize power in Russia.
For most of the time after 1900 Lenin and his wife, Nadezhda, lived as exiles in Western Europe, going from city to city, often under aliases. Nadezhda in writing about Lenin gave a vivid account of their life in cheap boardinghouses. In Switzerland, on one occasion, they stayed in a room where the windows could be opened only at night because of the “intolerable stench” of a nearby sausage factory. Another time they took their meals at a house where, in the words of Lenin’s wife, “the very ‘lower depths’ of Zurich” congregated.
Lenin was happiest when he could talk revolution. Nadezhda was constantly on guard to protect his health. Many times Lenin, engrossed in revolutionary activities, would work himself into a highly nervous state. One time, Nadezhda writes, he “came home after a heated debate . . . I could hardly recognize him, his face was so drawn and he could barely speak.” She encouraged him to take a vacation. In London, Lenin “developed a nervous illness called ‘holy fire.’” Nadezhda, after consulting a medical student, painted him with iodine. She, however, couldn’t prevent her husband, lost in thought while pedaling a bicycle, from running into the back of a tram and “very nearly” knocking out an eye.
Borrowing from the autocratic character of Marx himself, Lenin made Marxism a highly disciplined, organized, and ruthless creed. How can revolution be achieved? Not by democratic reforms, ballots, or good will but by naked, bloody violence. The sword is the weapon. Everything must be dedicated to this aim: one’s time, talents, one’s very life. Revolutions do not just happen. They are made.
Lenin conceived of the Party as a vehicle of revolution. Marx, in his philosophical abstractions, had never thought out the day-to-day composition of the Party. Lenin did. The Party must be a small, tightly controlled, deeply loyal group. Fanaticism, not members, was the key. Members must live, eat, breathe, and dream revolution. They must lie, cheat, and murder if the Party was to be served. Discipline must be rigid. No deviations could be permitted. If an individual falters, he must be ousted. Revolutions cannot be won by clean hands or in white shirts; only by blood, sweat, and the burning torch. These ideas were all inherent in Marxist thought, but they waited for Lenin to translate them into organized action.
In 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (which was the Russian Marxist Party) met in convention in Brussels. The proceedings were later transferred to London, after Belgian authorities had warned several of the delegates to leave the city. One session of the congress was routed by an army of vermin.
A dispute arose. Should Party membership be restricted or open to anybody? Lenin fought for restricted membership and won. His group was called the Bolsheviks (the majority); the losers became the Mensheviks (minority). The Party, Lenin said, must be composed only of trained revolutionaries. To allow anybody, curiosity seekers, the half-hearted, weaklings, to join would reduce the Party’s discipline, striking power, and fanaticism. The masses couldn’t be trusted to make a revolution. They would run at the first sound of gunfire. What were needed were men willing to die because the Party told them to die. This principle of Party organization remains in full effect today throughout the communist world.
Lenin was an able propagandist and agitator. He thought chiefly in terms of battle plans, tactics, and strategy rather than of theories or philosophical abstractions. In 1900, from his exile in Europe, he helped found a revolutionary paper, Iskra (the Spark), printed in Germany but smuggled into Russia. (A young ex-seminary student in southern Russia, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili, later known as Stalin, was a reader of Iskra,) This paper offered directions to the secret revolutionaries in Russia, told them the “line” to follow, urged better Party organization. In addition, Lenin pounded out his “rules of revolution” in articles and pamphlets that were widely circulated in the Russian underground.
Though militant himself, Marx was never able, in his detached atmosphere, to instill the spirit of militant action into communist policy as did Lenin. The crafty Russian, brought up in an atmosphere of revolutionary agitation, did not shrink from any crime. He held that there could be no hesitation or vacillation. Use any weapon—knife, hatchet, or gun—to achieve your aim, he urged. A man was either your friend or your foe. Find out quickly. If a friend, clasp his hand; that is, as long as he served a purpose. If a foe, take drastic action.
All during his lengthy exile Lenin was constantly studying, writing, debating, and expounding revolutionary principles. Like Marx, he used the facilities of Western democracy, such as the great library of the British Museum, to undermine the very freedom that gave him this opportunity. Nadezhda tells of his studies in the Geneva library:
“He would again take out the books left unfinished the day before. They would be about barricade-fighting or the technique of offensives. He would go to his customary place at the little table by the window, smooth down the thin hair on his bald head with a customary gesture, and bury his nose deep in the books. Only rarely would he get up, and then in order to take down a dictionary from a shelf and search for the explanation of some unfamiliar term. He would then stride up and down for a while, resume his seat, and in a tense manner rapidly scrawl something in minute handwriting on little squares of paper.”
These studies, as later events were to prove, helped produce practical and concrete ways of making revolutions:
“[Lenin, says Nadezhda] not only read through, thoroughly studied, and thought over everything that Marx and Engels had written on revolution and insurrection. He also perused numerous works on the art of warfare, considering the technique and the organisation of the armed insurrection from all standpoints. He was occupied with this work much more than people realised, and his talk about “shock” groups during the civil war and “groups of five and ten” was not the chatter of a layman, but a well-thought-out proposition.”
Lenin labored day and night for seventeen years in perfecting his plans for the revolution. His opportunity was to come in November, 1917.
In March, 1917, revolution erupted in Russia. The German army had defeated Russian troops. The Czar’s government was tottering, and a liberal regime, later headed by Alexander Kerensky, assumed control. The Czar was forced to abdicate. This was the signal for Russian revolutionaries of all types to return to Petrograd: Lenin from Switzerland, aided by the German High Command; Leon Trotsky, later to become a high official in the Bolshevik regime, from New York City; Stalin from Siberian exile.
Lenin plotted against Kerensky, eagerly awaiting the moment he could overthrow the new government. He created dissension in the armed forces. He refused to cooperate with the government except on his own terms. All the time he was desperately building up and training his Bolshevik Party. Lenin had a “sixth sense” in diagnosing revolutionary situations. He knew when to act and when not. Like a crafty tiger, he was circling his prey. Lenin was the true leader of the Russian revolution. Stalin, fresh from Siberia, was relatively unknown, but he was learning the skills of deceit and murder that were soon to catapult him to power.
In the fall of 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution. Lenin became the dictator of all Russia. Communism had made its first breach in the wall of capitalism. (The revolution occurred on October 25, 1917, according to the Eastern calendar then in use in Russia. Hence, the term “October Revolution.” Under the Western calendar, later adopted by the Soviets, the date is November 7, 1917.)
The Bolsheviks immediately instituted a terroristic “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx had conceived the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitory period for the establishment of a communist society. Lenin, however, dipped it in blood and gave it a prominence and ruthlessness that shocked the entire world. The secret police, then known as the Cheka, instituted a reign of terror; capital punishment was meted out widely. A search for enemies rocked the country. Pravda, the Party newspaper, urged drastic measures.
The Czar and members of his family were executed by the Bolsheviks and their bodies destroyed. Here is an eyewitness account by Leonid Krassin, a member of the early Bolshevik government, as related by his wife, Lubov Krassin:
“. . . we went through a period of so-called “Terror”. . . About six hundred to seven hundred persons were shot in Moscow and Petrograd, nine-tenths of them having been arrested quite at random or merely as suspect of belonging to the Right Wing of the S. R.’s [Socialist Revolutionaries, a Russian revolutionary party], or else of being counter-revolutionaries. In the provinces this developed into a series of revolting incidents such as arrests, executions en masse, and Wholesale eviction of bourgeois and educated people from their houses, leaving them homeless.”
The test of loyalty was often to what class the individual belonged, the extent of his education, how he was dressed, how much food he had in his house. If his pantry was too well stocked or his clothes too new, he might be accused of being an exploiter and sent before an execution squad.
This was an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat in action. This was a first step toward what Marx proclaimed as the “final” and “perfect” state of society, which is as visionary now as it was then. Millions of Russians found themselves gripped by a tyranny incomparably worse than that of the Czar.
Oddly, despite the predictions of Marx, communism seized power in a country where Marx would least have expected it. Marx had prophesied that the revolution was destined to occur in a highly industrialized nation. Russia was industrially backward.
During the years 1917-20 the Bolsheviks were forced to fight for survival, first against the German army, then in a war with Poland. Also, the White Russians, a vigorous anti-Bolshevik group, assembled powerful military forces. A bitter White-Red civil war raged.
Lenin’s answer was a policy of “war communism.” Most industry was nationalized. Trade and commerce were officially abolished. The government undertook to distribute manufactured articles to the people. In agricultural regions food supplies were openly confiscated. Poor peasants were assembled in committees to spy on their richer neighbors who might be hiding grain. The setting of class against class was an established tactic of communism.
By 1921, when the last “enemies” had been driven from Russia, the nation was a shambles. The Bolsheviks, trying to adapt Marxist theory to a nation predominantly rural, had compounded confusion. Industrial production was down, peasants were in open revolt. Private incentive had been ruined. By 1922 famine raged, with tens of millions of people starving or on a semi-starvation diet. Some estimates place the loss of life at five million. This was Russia’s introduction to communism.
Fanatical Lenin, after years of working for the revolution, would not let it slip away from him now. He struck back furiously. Slave labor camps were increased; dreaded secret police compelled conformity; churches were closed. “Enemies of the people,” those who opposed the Bolsheviks, were ruthlessly executed. Uprisings were cruelly suppressed.
However, terror was not the answer. In March, 1921, sailors of the Red navy in Kronstadt, formerly strong Bolshevik supporters, rebelled. Lenin, with his keen sense of timing, realized that a change had to be made.
The result was the NEP—New Economic Policy. Capitalist practices, so denounced by the Bolsheviks, were temporarily introduced to save the Russian government. Peasants were now allowed to keep surpluses of grain after taxation, instead of having them confiscated. They could even dispose of their surplus products as they chose, and private trade was allowed to develop. In the industrial field many businesses were returned to private owners, although the government retained control over larger concerns.
To the surprise of Bolshevik leaders the NEP proved a relative success. It gave them the breathing spell they so desperately needed to consolidate their gains. Both agricultural and industrial production jumped. Lenin never lived to see the final results of the temporary NEP, but the revolution was no longer in immediate danger.
Lenin’s scheming mind was laying the groundwork for extending the communist conspiracy throughout the world. In March, 1919, Lenin founded the Third International (better known as the Communist International or Comintern). The Third International was a keystone of Soviet policy, whereby Moscow, through Bolshevik discipline, could guide the activities of communists around the world, including those in the United States. To the communists, victory in Russia was only the first step. The whole world, they said, must go communist “. . . victory is ours,” Lenin proclaimed at the First Congress of the Comintern in 1919; “the victory of the world Communist revolution is assured.” In early days the regime confidently expected communist revolutions in Western Europe. A communist regime sprang briefly into power in Hungary, another flickered in Germany. Although no permanent communist successes were achieved outside Russia, an effective agency of conspiracy now existed to undermine noncommunist governments.
The skill of Lenin simply cannot be overestimated. He introduced into human relations a new dimension of evil and depravity not surpassed by Genghis Khan or Attila. His concept of Party supremacy, girded by ruthless and ironclad discipline, gave communism a fanaticism and an immorality that shocked Western civilization. Countless individuals, some in high places, simply did not believe that men could behave as did the Bolsheviks; that brutality, terror, and the utter meaninglessness of human dignity could be a policy of state. But that was the contention, and the legacy, of Lenin.
Underlying all of Lenin’s thoughts and actions was the use of naked force to achieve Party ends. He held that there could be no permanent coexistence between communists and non-communists. The latter must be liquidated, by force if necessary. “Marxists have never forgotten that violence will be an inevitable accompaniment of the collapse of capitalism on its full scale and of the birth of a socialist society.”
“Dictatorship is power based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws.”
****
“The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate war of life and death . . .”
****
“As long as capitalism and socialism exist, we cannot live in peace: in the end, one or the other will triumph—a funeral dirge will be sung either over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism.”
Lenin liked to use the word “ruthless,” which is a due to his thinking:
“There is still too little of that ruthlessness which is indispensable for the success of socialism . . .”
****
“. . . capitalism cannot be defeated and eradicated without the ruthless suppression of the resistance of the exploiters . . .”
****
“Contempt for death must spread among the masses and thus secure victory. the ruthless extermination of the enemy will be their task . . .”
****
This is the Lenin who has always been hailed by the Moscow ruling hierarchy as the guiding genius of communism in Russia and in this country. In fact, with the downgrading of Stalin, Lenin became increasingly extolled in Russia as the “guide to communist action.” Nikita Khrushchev, speaking before the Twentieth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in February, 1956, stated categorically:
“The central committee has always and undeviatingly been guided by Lenin’s teachings on the party.”
****
“Lenin taught us that a line based on principle is the only correct line. Never to deviate a single step in anything from the interests of the party . . .”
****
“We must be guided by these wise injunctions of Lenin in all our activity.”
In April, 1956, a Moscow journal, International Affairs, also made clear the pre-eminence of Leninism in Russia:
“Using the brilliant plan left by Lenin. All the complex questions of home and foreign policy are decided by the Party, basing itself on the teaching of the immortal Lenin. That is why the Soviet people recall the words of Vladimir Mayakovsky [Soviet poet]:”
“Lenin
is now
the most live of all living,
Our weapon,
our knowledge,
our power.”
These sentiments have been echoed by communists in the United States. In January, 1957, for example, Eugene Dennis, former General Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, wrote, “. . . it is essential at all costs to consolidate and build the CPUSA as a strong Marxist-Leninist political party of the working class.”
Another American Party leader, Hyman Lumer, stated in February, 1957:
“. . . he [Lenin] showed . . . the need for a vanguard type of party, armed with the Marxist theory of scientific socialism and possessing a high degree of unity and discipline . . . In its essential features, this is no less true today than it was when Lenin first formulated it.”
Lenin could not have anticipated the lofty pedestal on which he was to stand in Moscow a generation after his death. However, his nation and the Party were to pass under the control of an ambitious, scowling, mustached revolutionary from the province of Georgia in south Russia, Joseph Stalin, who until recently was regarded as the fourth great personality of communism.