THE LENIN MUSEUM
Information about Lenin is constantly being sought by the Lenin Institute where it is carefully sifted and skillfully worked up by experienced Communists engaged on the task of building up a historic monument to his memory.
It is not my purpose to present a finished picture of the modern Attila to the reader . . . All I am concerned with is to fill in a few gaps in the story of his rise to fame from the records of the Counter-Espionage Bureau, inasmuch as certain features of his career were of special interest to the latter.
Much of the information contained in this �registration card� of Lenin has been obtained from the documentary evidence of his old colleagues, and it includes some interesting details of the split in the Social Democratic Party caused by him when he left Russia in 1900.
From 1902 onwards internal dissensions on matters of party policy became increasingly acute. The Mensheviks adhered to the German interpretation of Marxism which provided a wide measure of independence for the mass of the workers, whereas Lenin eventually insisted on
giving their activities a conspiratorial character and notwithstanding what he advocated in his pamphlets, he virtually rejected all idea of temporary co-operation with other sections and groups of revolutionary thought. He organized robberies by force of arms and preached violence in the form of armed rebellion at the earliest opportunity.
An examination of the pamphlets of those early days, beginning with the assembly of conferences beyond the frontiers of Russia and extending to the outbreak of the Great War, is to all intents and purposes equivalent to the reading of a record of crimes of violence and crimes against property. It is a long story of passionate controversies, threats of exposure and unending disputes over party funds and property which Lenin and his Bolshevik adherents contrived to seize by a systematic series of frauds. Some of these frauds are described by the prominent Menshevik writer Martov in his book Saviours or Destroyers, and the following instances are included among them.
When the Bolshevik Centre was first formed it began by appropriating a large sum of money belonging to the Central Committee. Year by year Lenin�s attitude in regard to the control of the Party�s funds grew more and more autocratic. He utilized the substantial funds collected by the publishers of the Labour newspaper The Proletariat for the common cause, for defraying the expenses of the Bolshevik delegates to the London Conference—which Conference instructed the Central Committee of the Party to investigate the disappearance �of a considerable sum of money raised by the Party for its expenses in the U.S.A. and entrusted to a prominent
member of the Bolshevik Centre, who was unable to account for its mysterious disappearance.�
A legacy bequeathed to the party by one of its wealthy supporters in England was �expropriated by the Bolshevik Centre� and the matter became the subject of arbitration before a tribunal convoked by the Socialist Revolutionary Party for the purpose. Numerous similar cases could be cited.
After exposure by a plenary meeting of the Central Committee held in Paris in 1910, Lenin demanded compensation before agreeing to return the money which he had appropriated. His fraud was discussed at every meeting of the conference and he was compelled to give various promises—such as to refund the money within three years, to deposit it in safe custody, to devote the proceeds of the sales of the printed publications of the Centre to party purposes, &c., &c., All these resolutions were passed and duly entered in the minutes of the conference, but beyond that nothing further was done in the matter.
The above method of financing the Bolshevik section was supplemented by �petty swindling and the forging of official documents.� Martov refers to these practices as �glaring examples of a deliberate perversion of the truth by the press organs controlled by Lenin.� According to Martov, the notorious secretary of the publicity department, Zinoviev, was generally regarded as a common forger who would not be tolerated by any self-respecting bourgeois newspaper.
This state of affairs continued down to 1914, when, in accordance with instructions from Lenin, the Bolshevik Semashko seized the whole of the Party funds on behalf
of his newly formed and fictitious committee. At about the same time Lenin finally contrived to secure sole control of the Party�s printing works and remaining property.
All these facts are recorded by Martov in his book. There was ample documentary evidence to rove them, and they throw an interesting light on the attitude adopted by the Right Wing supporters of the Party—the Mensheviks#151;towards Lenin.
Strangely enough, the Left Wing extremists or Bolsheviks—whose leader was G. A. Alexinsky and who rejected all idea of co-operating with Martov and the more moderate elements of the Party—were equally hostile to Lenin. These orthodox Bolsheviks expressed their views of his conduct in the February, 1910, issue of their monthly organ Vperiod (Forward) published in Paris, in the following terms:
�No accounts of expenditure of any description have been submitted to the Party organisations for the last two years, although this expenditure runs into hundreds of thousands. In lieu of responsible supervision of our material resources, we find uncontrolled dissipation by irresponsible persons. Thee have, in several instances, been forgeries of documents, according to exposures made in the Party press. We hereby declare that we entirely dissociate ourselves from such a scandalous state of affairs.�
These Party matters invariably concerned money. Still another such case is referred ton on page 623 of Tatiana Alexinskaya�s Souvenirs d�une socialist russe, published in 1923.
In 1907 the militant section of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, consisting of
Bolsheviks, concluded an agreement with . . . [please see the texts - (WPT)].
There is a strange similarity in all these incidents and Plehanov, the original founder of the Russian ideals of Socialism, expressed his view on them in plain terms. In his anxiety to avoid a split in the Party, he began by supporting Lenin, but later joined the Mensheviks only to leave them in 1908.
At the conference held in Brussels in June, 1914, by the International Socialist Bureau, Plehanov publicly stated that �the main cause of Lenin�s intransigence is his
reluctance to relinquish control of the Party funds, a portion of which he has seized by fraudulent means.� The conference resolved to investigate the matter in the course of their next session which was to take place in Berlin in the following august, but the outbreak of the Great War prevented it from being held.
It should be noted that in these cases there could be no question of the end justifying the means ; these financial irregularities dated from the early days of the Party when their internal dissensions were still of a minor character. The funds of the Bolshevik Centre were handled exclusively by Lenin himself and by his wife Krupskaya. Even the secretary of the publicity department, Zinoviev, was not permitted to have access to them.
Not unnaturally the above details of a record of crime were of interest to the counter-Espionage Bureau of the time, although they may appear trifling as compared with Lenin�s later achievements . . .
The significance of these early activities really lay in a somewhat different aspect of the matter, as revealed by his contemporaries—Lenin subsidized the members of the Central Committee in order to secure their votes.
The members received their salaries from Lenin and they were liable to be deprived of them if they fell foul of him. This almost happened in the case of Kamenev when he allowed himself to be subjected to certain undesirable philosophical influences and was only able to save himself by a public recantation in the press. Prior to the conference held in 1908 in Geneva, Zinoviev
confirmed that the Polish [?] delegates would agree to support Lenin �if they were paid a little more.�
These facts are fully set out in pages 250-255 of Tatiana Alexinaskaya�s book.
Martov writers ; �It was only by recourse to such methods that Lenin retained his dictatorship of the Party by means of financial pressure.�
In the statement published by the Bolsheviks in the issues of their paper Vperiod already referred to, they also say :
The Bolshevik Centre exercised such influence as they desired on the general policy of the Party by means of the financial dependence imposed both on individual members and complete organisations, both Bolshevik and non-Bolshevik.�
The Counter-Espionage Bureau drew their own conclusions. They were not slow to appreciate the fact that money was the real cause of Lenin�s steady rise to power among his Party and enabled him to control their publicity and pay their active members. It made him complete master of their various organisations in Russia and in Western Europe and it supplied him with his own means of livelihood.
In the words of Martov : �The Bolsheviks did not dare to oppose Lenin except by a prayer to him on their knees.�
As for Lenin�s doctrines, their effecting those early days was exactly the opposite ; they repelled all those who attached the slightest importance to individuality. Moreover, these doctrines were based on the nebulous theories of Karl Marx and earlier writers whose ideas were wholly
inapplicable to the times ; pre-War Russia offered no scope for their development.
Lenin�s paid agitators were the least reputable and able members of his Party and they frequently included others of more than dubious character. His extreme intolerance of the opinions of others was reflected in his choice of followers throughout every phase of his political and private life. The intellectual standard of his adherents may be judged from the fact that one of his leading disciples in Western Europe and in 1917, in Russia, was Kamenev. Endowed with a certain gift for oratory and an exceptional knack of exploiting other people�s ideas, Kamenev�s outstanding characteristic was his extreme timidity both in his conduct and in the making of any definite decision. If compelled to act on his own initiative, he invariably gave way and his political weight in the councils of the Taurid Palace was practically nil.
The technical side of the Bolshevik Centre was administered by Lenin�s wife, Krupskaya. Lacking all ability as an organizer himself, Lenin was fortunate in that she was well endowed in this respect. Apart from this, she was a nonentity. Her former coadjutor, Tatiana Alexinskaya, described her in an article in the Excelsior of the 10th September, 1922, as �a cunning and resourceful woman, but devoid of any real ability or personality.�.
The most prominent member of the Bolshevik Centre working in Russia was Rykov, who used to visit Lenin to collect instructions and money at regular intervals and manfully faced the risk of running into the arms of the Soviet Police on returning to Russia. In 1917 he narrowly escaped expulsion from the Party for insubordination. His personal influence was notoriously small.
Such were the outstanding pupils of the early school of Bolshevism and there could be little fame won by its master, but it was precisely in this school that in the course of many years Lenin acquired his authority and displayed is tyranny.
( pages 255 - 263 )
The Bolsheviks were, and still are, anxious to claim the credit for the March Revolution and for their �services� in breaking the yoke of Czardom, but the past 20 years have not sufficed for the purpose of establishing such a claim. Trotsky made desperate attempts to pluck a few of the laurels for his quondam friends, but the statement on page 361 of his March Revolution which reads tat �the old Bolsheviks were doomed to defeat as they stood for ideas of a Party tradition which have not survived the acid test of history� is sufficient proof of his failure I this respect.
( page 264 )
It may, therefore, be said that there was nothing in Lenin�s early career as a revolutionary to justify the reputation of infallibility so zealously claimed for him by the Bolsheviks at the present [1938] time. He left Russia in 1900 by permission of the authorities, as he preferred to take up his residence beyond the reach of the Russian Secret Police. Readers of the biography of Lenin will seek in vain for any record of personal valour or self-sacrifice such as adorn the past of any revolutionary idealist. He sent his advice and instructions to Russia from across the frontier and in the course of 17 years he only visited Russia once—after the manifesto of the 18 October, 1906—to spend a few days in the country. Even then he adopted the most extraordinary precautions to ensure
his safety ; he traveled with a British passport, stayed at a villa in Kuokala (Finland) and carried a large sum of money in case of emergency.
He once ventured into the suburbs of Petrograd to attend a political meeting which was interrupted by the approach of a troop of Cossacks.
In the French edition of Lenine à Paris by the orthodox Bolshevik �Aline� (reputed, on reliable authority, to be the well-known Bolshevik Ryjkov), there is a description of a meeting in 1910 in a café at 11 Avenue d�Orleans. [Please see the sources — (WPT) � . . .with the exception of this episode, the contents of �Aline�s� book are devoted to uninterrupted adulation of Lenin.
No. 21 / 4826 of Pravda, dated the 21st January 1931,
contains the Recollections of Krupskaya. She recalls the arrest of Lenin by the Austrian authorities in Poronin just after the outbreak of war as a suspected spy. Even the lapse of many years has not dimmed her recollection of the terror inspired in Lenin by this incident and of the difficulty he experiences in regaining is composure. He was rescued by the intervention of Ganetsky.
Without any desire to dwell on the importance of any particular instance of Lenin�s peculiarities, I nevertheless think it necessary to cite one more, as it marks the time when he finally turned against Russian on the instructions of his German paymasters.
Krupskaya describes a conversation between the Socialist deputy, Victor Adler, and an Austrian minister, as the result of which Lenin was released from custody.
�Are you sure that Oulianov* is really an enemy of the Czar�s Government?� asked the minister.
�Oh yes!� replied Adler, �a far more bitter enemy than Your Excellency.�
*Lenin's real name was Vladimir Oulianov.
Apparently this declaration sufficed to effect Lenin�s release from prison and, notwithstanding the fact that he was of military age, to procure his free passage to Switzerland.
After the end of the World War special emissaries of the Soviet collected the records and documents relating to this episode in Austria and removed them to Russia where they were subsequently placed in the Lenin Museum. For obvious reasons these exhibits do not include a copy of the written undertaking given by Lenin to the Austro-Hungarian Minister of the Interior.
Lenin�s activities in Switzerland and his association through Robert Grimm with the German Vice-Consul in Geneva have already been referred to in an earlier chapter. Lenin worked with the Germans to achieve victory for Germany over his Russian countrymen who suffered such incredible losses in the World War and he added to their number in order, as the Communists explain, to achieve his great goal. It would, therefore, appear paradoxical to conceal the document in which he bound himself to effect this from his admirers. Is it because they might, in their ignorance, fail to distinguish it from a betrayal of his own country?
In 1917, after the July Rising, Lenin fled once more, the only leading Bolshevik to do so—apart from the notoriously cowardly Zinoviev. He had no hesitation in abandoning his followers to their fate at a time of crisis. He returned cautiously three months later—on the 20th October, by which time Trotsky, released from prison, had since the 8th October become the acknowledged leader of the Soviet and secured the allegiance of the entire garrison. Even then Lenin returned in disguise and in great fear of being identified—at a time when it had become dangerous for army officers to appear in public wearing their badge of rank.
On the night of the 5-6 November, after the troops had openly espoused the Bolshevik cause, the disguised Lenin crept into the Smolny Institute under the protections of their guns, rifles and machine guns. He felt safer there and made his appearance in public in the Sovdep on the 8th November, n the morrow of �victory in the civil war� as he called it.
There are no grounds for challenging his statement.
I am more concerned with the characteristic which so sharply distinguished Lenin from his fello-revolutionaires—his complete lack of any spirit of self-sacrifice. Personal valour, moral and physical courage need not necessarily constitute an essential element of human character. The instinct of self-preservation is a perfectly natural one and a man�s personal courage may only have to be displayed in cases where special reasons call for it. In the case of a soldier, the instinct for self-preservation is subordinated to personal honour, a sense of duty and a love of country, while in that of a politician it should give way to his ideals and a readiness to make personal sacrifices for the common cause. It can be confidently asserted that there was nothing of that kind to be found in the character of Lenin—the animal instinct of self-preservation dominated his entire personality. He could always be relied on to be the first to run in the hour of danger.
According to Plehanov, he could display �intransigence� when called upon to make restitution of stolen money, since it was money alone which enabled him to gratify his ambition to become the leader of his political party.
( pages 266 - 270 )
My first contact with Lenin dated from the time of Major Alley�s indignant amazement when I failed to secure the prohibition of the entry of Lenin and his friends into Russia in their sealed railway carriage. Alley was beside himself over it, and there was unspeakable anguish in his voice when he cried : �Do you realize what will happen now ?� He realized it.
A series of blows shattered the Russian Empire in the course of a few hours during the March Revolution and over its ruins appeared the symbolical trio of the Anarchist Jelezniakov, the German agent Müller and the ex-convict and their Asnin—in close alliance and typical of the untold legions who came after them.
The educated classes of Russia, supporters of the idea of empire, believed in the Provisional Government and looked upon it as the lawfully constituted authority of the
realm, but they did not move quickly enough. They did not realize that the Government was merely a blind for the anonymous International and a screen for a vague democracy groping its way in the darkness under the auspices of Nahamkez and his like. The Provisional Government displayed no signs of a fixed policy and the unlimited freedom conferred on the masses called forth unrest among the latter. Much of it was due to the effects of the War, but the Jelezniakovs, Müllers and Asnins quickly came to the front in the headlong rush to disaster which followed.
Lenin, in distant Switzerland, watched and waited. He might never have appeared in the light of day if the adventurers Parvus and Ganetsky had not conceived the idea of getting the German military authorities to utilise his services. On leaving Zürich, Lenin wrote to the workers of Switzerland that �the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia may be the prelude to a socialistic revolution throughout the world.�
On arriving in Petrograd on the 16th April, Lenin greeted the crowds at the station with the words : �Long live the Universal Socialistic Revolution!�
( pages 271-2 )
What Lenin brought to Russia was class hatred, German money and elaborate works on the application of Marxism in Russia. These books, written in the polemical style to which he was addicted, were numerous and lengthy because Lenin was in the habit of repeating himself. They were only revealed after the 7th November, but produced a tremendous effect on the Bolsheviks, who were able to quote Lenin as an authority on the dictatorship of the proletariat as a prelude to the Socialism which could not be introduced in 1917. Finding the politicians at the cross-roads on arrival in Russia, with a definite bias towards Menshevism and a gradual transition to Socialism, Lenin seemed to discern the shores of the promised land so close at hand that he felt certain that they could be reached by means of a single leap and without any laborious stages involving socialistic upheavals outside Russia and their reaction in that country. His political mirage perturbed veteran Bolsheviks and let to heated debates, but Lenin had recourse to his usual weapon—money ! Once again it was money—not stolen or obtained by fraud as formerly, but furnished by the German General Staff—which enabled him to win the day. Lenin�s leading disciples, including Kamenev and Zinoviev, narrowly missed expulsion form the Party and the �prayers on their knees� of the Bolsheviks were terminated within a fortnight. Socialism was deleted from the agenda, as there was no object in
wasting time over it when money was forthcoming and power could be achieved without it. Before the War Lenin had to use persuasion and stolen money to bend the broken remnants of the Party to his will ; after the War he pushed the entire people of Russia into a yawning abyss to achieved his purpose and there it remains to this day.
Lenin achieve his victory over the Provisional Government by the application of German money to the work of destruction carried out by the criminal elements with whom he entered into alliance. He not only advanced with them, but prepared their way by means of a large-scale campaign of propaganda conducted with the aid of no less than 35 different periodicals, such as the Pravda, all of which began to appear within a space of a month, and he maintained a veritable army of paid agitators whose duty it was to repeat and spread the doctrines and slogans of their associated thieves and German agents.
In the words of P. N. Pereversev, �The number of traveling paid agitators maintained by Lenin surpassed anything that the Provisional Government could have imagined.�
The Bolsheviks refer to this ideological procedure as �the extraordinary foresight of the genius who heard the voice of the people.�
The Bolsheviks have never yet explained whom they regard as the people and the masses. The voices which Lenin and his friends both heard and utilized were those of the criminals liberated on the 14th March—a fact fully appreciate by Major Alley, Captain Laurent, the Allied Intelligence Services, the Counter-Espionage bureau, the Director of Public Prosecutions, General
Polovtsov, Balabin and perhaps the Socialist Tseretelli . . . Kornilov saw the writing on the wall ; so did the ministers in Petrograd who resigned ; so did the generals and officers at the front, who did not vie way to panic, but endeavoured to protest for the sake of the Army and Russia.
Lenin assiduously fostered class hatred in order to increase his own influence by an artificial widening of the gulf between a poorly developed group of intellectuals and the illiterate masses. The criminal classes flocked to the support of the despotic leader of an insignificant party, who freely scattered German money and openly incited them to commit robbery and violence. Their kinetic energy was united for one purpose and served to raise Lenin to a position in which he made use of it to acquire power and authority.
Lenin�s German allies also assisted him by breaking down the barriers in his path, beginning with the Counter-Espionage Bureau. The latter, built up afresh on ruins, did all that was humanly possible to check Lenin�s progress, but the lists we compiled were necessarily far from complete. Such as they were, they comprised two main categories :
The first of these was the network of spies and traitors maintained by Germany through the Stockholm organization, which included :
Karl Gibson, who destroyed the Counter-Espionage Bureau in March ; the merchant Bemme, who organized the espionage behind the front lines ; Robert Grimm, the convener of pro-German conferences and editor of pro-German Social-Democratic
resolutions which called forth such enthusiastic admiration among the Russian democracy ; the journalist K— who kept Mrs. Breidenbeidt informed about the progress of his work in effecting the removal of Miliukov and Guchkov from the Government and who also endeavoured to secure control of a leading press organ to facilitate the conclusion of a separate peace treaty ; K—�s lieutenants, for propaganda and liaison work, Dietrichs and Stepin, the former with Stockholm and the latter with Lenin�s group and the mob of Petrograd ; the political agent Müller, inciting to anarchy and conducting a vigorous agitation for stopping the War ; the officer in the Ministry of War, who stole an important document and played an important part in and after the March Revolution by spreading sedition and corruption in administrative establishments—his name is well known and I leave it to my successor Colonel Poradelov to publish it ; the agitator Sorokin, who organized meetings and strikes in the city suburb of Narva ; numerous prisoners of war, especially the N.C2.s of the 206th Prussian Regiment, Alfred Ulke and Hans Streich.
The second category was the network of spies and traitors administered from Berlin through the agency of Lenin by at least two different channels known to us—one via Parvus and the other via the director of the Siemens Company and financial agent of the Bolshevik Party, Krassin. This category included :
Lenin himself, Ganetsky, the lawyer Kozlovsky and Sumenson, the former treasurer of the Party Semashko, who helped to foment the mutiny in the
First Machine Gun Regiment, the former agent of the singer Company Stepin, who distributed money to the soldiers of the Second Division of Foot Guards.
It is worth noting that precisely the troops �worked on� by Semashko and Stein, viz. the First Machine Gun Regiment and Second Division of Foot Guards, headed every outbreak and rising.
Bronislav Vesselovsky, editor of the Pravda, should also be included in this category. Lourier and Mme. Kollontai undoubtedly acted as liaison agents between Petrograd and Stockholm. The German agent Unschlicht worked in the Polish organization, where he was more or less independent, but he maintained contact with Lenin through Kozlovsky.
As might be expected, the names of some of the above persons figures in both categories. Ample documentary evidence of their complicity is available in the case of every one of the persons referred to in the foregoing list . . ..
( pages 273 - 277 )
After his flight in July Lenin�s personal influence underwent a raid eclipse. His letters were slow in arriving . . . The Revolution found . . . a leader in Trotsky. A permanent and convinced advocate of Revolution at any time, he was already sending his barbed arrows across the ocean from America against the victors of the March revolution. He arrived in Russia as intransigent as Lenin, but a month after him. . . . He had the political cynicism of Nechaev coupled with the Olympic self-conceit of Lenin, being just as ready �to sacrifice millions of lives without batting an eyelid�—as he did sacrifice them. Skilled in every trick of oratory, he was an amazingly effective public speaker. Less stubborn than Lenin and even capable of effecting a compromise if necessary, Trotsky was frequently inspired by a hysterical enthusiasm. . . .
The October Revolution was carefully planned and prepared by Trotsky. He became President of the
Petrograd Soviet on the 8th October and boycotted Kerensky�s preliminary parliament. As Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, Trotsky prepared his scheme, directed the rising and effected the Bolshevik Revolution.
Bolshevik writers and others credit Lenin with having timed the rising correctly, although Trotsky deferred it to the 7th September, but in point of fact its actual date had been fixed by the German General Staff beforehand—and it was known to the members of the Provisional Government. In July the outbreak occurred by their instructions and against the wishes of Lenin, whereas in October he fully concurred in it. Incidentally, it did not involve him in any personal risk.
Trotsky gradually won the support of every unit of the garrison, then seized the arsenals, administrative institutions, stores, railway stations and telephone exchange and systematically distributed his commissars everywhere . . .
On the 9th November a brief declaration covering three main points was broadcast from the Petrograd W/T station by the new Government and read throughout all Russia. It dealt with the National Assembly, the transfer
of ownership of the land to the peasantry and an appeal to the nations and governments of all the countries at war to conclude peace.
. . . It was [not Lenin but] the Grand Duke Michael who first mentioned the National Assembly in his manifesto to the people of Russia of the 176th March The land and peace were subjects which were, and always have been, favourite grievances . . . The appeal for peace was primarily inspired by the agents of Germany. Lenin�s banner . . . appears to have no claim . . . to figure in the agenda. The people were tired of their eight months� wait . . .
On the 8th November Lenin must have forgotten his banner when he appeared at the meeting of the Central Committee and proposed that Trotsky should be appointed President of the Soviet of People�s Commissars. �You were at the head of the Petrograd Soviet which assumed the functions of government,� said Lenin. But Trotsky declined the honour, as he was a comparative newcomer to the Party and considered the proposal to be a mere formality since he could not expect to secure election after already declining the post of People�s Commissar for the Interior on the plea of his Jewish origin.
The foregoing facts should suffice to dispose of the
legends which have been woven around the name of Lenin at that historic hour of the destiny of Russia, on the eve of the prolonged agony of blood and misery which that unhappy country was fated to live through and from
which it has not emerged to this day. Lenin's immediate entourage was, with the exception of a few newcomers, made up of veteran Bolsheviks whose intellectual standard and will power were definitely subnormal. They licked Lenin's boos fro force of habit.
The first years of the new Government's existence were fully occupied by continuous civil war and militant Communism and the dynamic force of the latter served to sustain its rule. At all critical moments it was again Trotsky who appeared at the spot where danger threatened, although he no longer remained in Petrograd but rushed about the country in his special train. The most prominent of the Bolshevik hierarchy of a somewhat later period was the sinister Dzerjinsky, an incorruptible cripple and fanatic, but devoid of outstanding initiative or ability. The conflagration of the civil war afforded opportunities for new men to rise to eminence at various distant fronts, while others of the Kamenev type and the hooded Lenin remained in the centre. In order to appreciate the nature of the Lenin ideology in actual practice, it is necessary to pass from the early stages of the Revolution to the time when Soviet Russia as now constituted was in process of development under the auspices of Lenin. In referring decrees to his "old servants" for publication and necessary action, he made it plain that he would tolerate neither opposition nor criticism, although he frequently had to use various stratagems to impose his will.
In order to consolidate his authority over the Party which had spread its tentacles throughout the whole of Russia in 1921, Lenin contrived to get the Tenth Assembly
to adopt his proposals concerning the unity of the Party. The details of this resolution only became known in March, 1924, after Lenin's death, when it was revealed that the penalty for any divergence of opinion was expulsion from the Party. The stranglehold which gripped individual political refugees of 1902 was to be applied to the entire country, and the nation accustomed by centuries of despotic rule to tyranny, accepted it as matter of course.
The many millions of books and pamphlets about Lenin scattered by the Bolsheviks in every country of the world, produced a corresponding effect, so that much is heard of the genius and power (for evil) of Lenin and nothing of his real character. . . .
Lenin died in due course and his successors hastened to convert his theories into doctrines—his "utterances" as they are termed by Krupskaya. The doctrines of Lenin proved of great value to Stalin for the purpose of overthrowing Trotsky ; to Trotsky for exposing Stalin ; to all the Communist gangsters and leaders for racking the people.
The glorification of Lenin constitutes an openly acknowledge justification of their own crimes. They likewise use it as means to retain power, as in times of crisis the utterances of Lenin can always be quoted as infallible authority for their actions. For this reason it is essential to inculcate a blind faith in Lenin into the masses and to foster the belief that he was the creator of the Russian Revolution and never made a mistake. This explains the Bolshevik name for Petrograd, now Leningrad [now Petrograd�, the innumerable Lenin institutions, libraries, factories, decorations, icebreakers, portraits, festivals, anniversaries, �Lenin corners,� pagan temples, pilgrimages to his remains disinterred for that express purpose, and the rest of the claptrap.
The Bolshevik mythology based on the cult of Lenin is the acknowledge religion of the Soviet proletariat and the moral degradation which accompanies its enslavement.
Stalin is beginning to revise the Party mythology as the memories of the Revolution grow dimmer. He is turning more and more towards the age-long principle of individuality, which Lenin so consistently opposed in the Soviet of his day.
( pages 278 - 284)