What Made Lenin Tick?
WOLIN, SIMON
What Made Lenin Tick? Lenin and World Revolution. By Stanley W. Page. New York University. 252 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Simon Wolin Author, "Communism's Postwar Decade" Co-author, "The Soviet...
...He comes to the conclusion that Lenin's views, always so forcefully expressed, and his acts in the political field were not an emanation of the general theories and principles in which he believed, and that "only through an understanding of Lenin's emotional well-springs can his teachings and...
...hence, the ways of Communism be understood...
...Such minor errors do not detract from the value of Page's well-documented study and his efforts "to remove Leninism from the realm of the scientific" and shift it to the realm of power politics, where it belongs...
...At first, the author states, Lenin's ambition was confined to revolution in Russia, and he accordingly praised the unique qualities of the Russian proletariat, which, despite its backwardness, was alone capable of triggering world revolution...
...The older leaders, George Plekhanov, Paul Axelrod and Vera Zasulich, were greatly impressed by Lenin's outstanding abilities...
...What was the force that fed Lenin's drive—as relentless when he was the leader of an obscure underground as when he became the head of a great power...
...Page's thesis may be an oversimplification, but, like every oversimplification, it contains a grain of truth, and in this case the grain is a solid one...
...In 1915, in the midst of World War I. he perceived new and higher vistas and began to blaze for himself a road to leadership in the allegedly imminent European revolution...
...This thesis helps the author explain the many inconsistencies and contradictions in Lenin's statements...
...He concluded the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in the conviction that the imminent German revolution would scrap it, but the revolution never materialized, and Russia was saved from the Treaty only by the victory of the "imperialist" Allies and by the "bandit," Woodrow Wilson...
...With his inflated ego, he was convinced that he alone was capable of leading the proletariat on the right road and to deliver it from the "reformists," "revisionists," and "traitors" among the Western labor leaders...
...Page has tried to find the answer to this question by plowing thoroughly through Lenin's writings, especially those of the crucial periods of the Revolution of 1905, World War I and after 1917...
...Or to say that the Moscow armed uprising in 1905 broke out after Lenin "ordered the one-sided battle to take place" is to underrate the spontaneous nature of the uprising and the participation in it of other revolutionary groups, and to exaggerate the role of the Bolshevik forces, thus following the Soviet interpretation but not the historical facts...
...Reviewed by Simon Wolin Author, "Communism's Postwar Decade" Co-author, "The Soviet Secret Police" ON THE NIGHT of the October Revolution, Lenin confessed to Trotsky that the sudden advent to supreme state power made him dizzy...
...But to say that they decided that the 25-year-old Lenin "was a natural choice to lead the Russian Marxist movement" is to follow the false Bolshevik version...
...Page seems to share the widely held opinion that Lenin's strength lay in his political acumen and extraordinary realism...
...The book is a contribution to the proper assessment of Lenin and his work...
...One of Lenin's salient characteristics was blind fanaticism, and fanaticism does not blend with realism...
...Page, of course, does not contend that Lenin's struggle for leadership was a reflection of mere petty vanity...
...But he very soon recovered his customary self-assurance and dynamic drive...
...For this purpose he tried to unite leftist internationalist elements at the conferences of Zimmerwald and Kenthal, and later formed the Comintern under his unrestricted control...
...It was a desire to serve his cause best...
...They were caused by pragmatic considerations in changing circumstances, but always with a view to Lenin's personal aims...
...This view, in my opinion, is exaggerated...
...Thus his expectation, in the old Marxian tradition, of immediate world-wide revolution was pare fantasy...
...The caution that a historian must exercise in using Soviet sources can be illustrated by Page's description of Lenin's arrival in Switzerland in the mid-'90s...
...Some of Lenin's crucial decisions were based on a total misreading of realities...
...Therefore, what was good for Lenin was good for world revolution...
...These emotional well-springs consisted of a "demon-driven" urge to attain supreme revolutionary leadership...
...The thesis also explains the contradiction between Lenin's professed devotion to Marxism and his departure from some of its basic tenets—for instance, his un-Marxist, but pro-Leninist, policy in the underdeveloped East after 1917, or his statement that revolution in one country "would stir up among [other countries] revolt against their capitalists, and if necessary, even advance with military might against the exploiting classes and their states...
...This idea of socialist revolution by foreign military aggression seemed to open great opportunities for Lenin's further advance, but it was as incompatible with Marxism as with the "peaceful coexistence" of which Lenin is now proclaimed to have been the spiritual father...
...In 1917 he misunderstood the mood of his people and the existing circumstances and introduced the preposterous system of "world Communism," which he was soon forced to abolish...
Vol. 42 • October 1959 • No. 37
