Dear Editor
Dear Editor Proliferating Parties Moshe Brilliant's "Israel's Uncertain Elections," (NL, May 9) was both meaty and savory. He proves that the existence of a large number of tiny parties—the...
...In 1921, with the Civil War won, Lenin and Trotsky put down the Kronstadt rebellion with guns, labor camps began their existence, and Lenin decreed the abolition of factions in the Party—democracy was now dead not only in Russia, but among the Communists as well...
...Indeed, it is surprising that the capitalists have not built a monument to him...
...Allen supports the thesis that the modem artist is not an adversary by citing the opinions of the Museum of Modern Art and Peter Gay...
...Nor would he have treated the peasants as did that incredible assassin...
...Medford, Mass...
...Herrick must know that from his sickbed, Lenin studied what the scoundrel Stalin was accomplishing in bureaucratizing the Bolshevik Party and undermining the Revolution—and demanded a coalition to unseat Stalin as general secretary...
...Richard H. Schulman Uncle Lenin I noted with interest William Herrick's sad "Letter to Uncle Lenin" (NL, March 28...
...I would also remind Herrick that Lenin saw to it that Martov was allowed to leave Russia and was not imprisoned or killed...
...Zoller drew mainly, as I knew, on Hitler's private secretary, Christa Schroeder...
...political scientists don't seem to realize how they can preserve the PR system's democratic features, while simultaneously guarding against the proliferation of splinter parties...
...It was Stalin who betrayed not only the Bolshevik Revolution, but also the revolutions that might have happened in Germany, Spain and France...
...Lenin meant what he said and placed in the Constitution, hyprocritically accepted by Stalin, about all parts of the USSR (including the Balkans) having the right to secede if they so desired...
...And democratic centralism, Lenin's great invention, meant that the Party would be dominated by the Politburo...
...Lenin died just as the doctors were predicting his recovery...
...And he requested that the woman who wounded him, Kaplan, not be killed...
...John P. Roche Hitler and the Jews By chance I read—and chuckled over?Richard Hanser's review of my recent book Hitler's War (NL, April 25...
...She showed me her own copy of his book...
...Dictatorship of the proletariat as enunciated by Marx (rule by the majority of the working class) was perverted by Lenin to mean dictatorship of the Party...
...The solution, it seems to me, is to divide legislative seats proportionately, but only among parties winning at least 20 per cent of the vote...
...The theme, of course, would be that Stalin had absolutely no conception of what was going on in the Gulag Archipelago...
...I think my book contains enough documentary evidence—which Hanser cunningly neglects to print—to sustain my view...
...It was years later before Trotsky realized that Lenin had been poisoned by Stalin...
...Circles and Squares In his review of 1900: The Generation Before the War (NL, April 25), James Sloan Allen in effect calls Edward Tannenbaum a "square...
...Isaac Don Levine tried to find some evidence of this in the Soviet Union, but naturally everything had been covered up...
...unfortunately, he engages in circular reasoning to reach this conclusion...
...pondering your colossal success and the blood red fruits of the seed you planted, harvested by Big Uncle Joe...
...she had extensively scored the passages where this occurred...
...Maybe, but what about the refusal of the Ukrainian and Beyelorussian Republics to support Transkei's admission to the United Nations...
...I am well aware of the sentences your reviewer quotes against me—I remember clearly my delight at finding what at last seemed some basis for believing that Hitler contrived in the atrocity...
...Thus he has "proved" he is right because "authorities" espouse the same doctrines he does...
...The usual response to this situation is abolishing proportional representation...
...She replied indignantly, "Monsieur Zoller published my writing without my permission, and interpolated extensive passages in them from his own imagination...
...I defy any researcher to prove that it is wrong...
...London, England David Irving Richard Hanser replies: Having provided David Irving with some chuckles, I venture to do him another service...
...I do not believe in the absolute inevitability of anything, except death, of course, yet it was as near to inevitable as possible that Osip the 'Orrible—or whoever assumed power after Lenin's death—would misuse his position at least as badly as Lenin did, and probably even worse...
...I suggest that his next book be a history of Joseph Stalin's regime...
...While in captivity she was forced to write a memoir, and Zoller later published it under his own name, omitting hers...
...he who was the ruler of that body would be dictator of all the Russians...
...Both men felt that if the proletarian revolution did not spread there, the Russian Revolution would be a failure...
...But he was not heeded...
...He proves that the existence of a large number of tiny parties—the present state of affairs in Israeli politics—frustrates majority rule...
...And he cites only one source in opposition to my arguments—a book published many years ago by a Frenchman, Albert Zoller...
...Lenin's wife, Krupskaia, was watched day and night and was threatened with being written out of history if she talked...
...Perhaps a saint, if such exist in this world, could have resisted, but I doubt it...
...However, since Frau Schroeder is a good friend of mine, and .-ince I tend to distrust all texts, I took the precaution of asking her to confirm Zoller's wording...
...Hypocrisy In "Transkei Looks for Recognition," (NL, April 25), Lorna Hahn suggests American nonrecognition is the height of hypocrisy...
...Fort Lee, N.J...
...New York City Jack Weber William Herrick replies: Many of the points lack Weber makes are true, but some other points that he does not make are also true, and they are central: Within six weeks after Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and the Constituent Assembly were at an end, and the Cheka and rule by terror were established...
...The saddest part of Herrick's letter is its near identification of Lenin with Stalin...
...While Frau Schroeder did tell me many disturbing things about the Fiihrer, which I disclose in Hitler's War, she emphasized: "Never once did he ever refer to, let alone show that he know about, the extermination of the Jews...
...Bronx, N.Y...
...He expresses frank and fashionable disbelief of my statement that Adolf Hitler neither ordered nor knew of the Jewish extermination program until late 1943 at the earliest...
...Certainly Lenin would never have killed off all his old Bolshevik followers, as did Stalin...
...My book supports this view with evidence that would stand up in any court of law...
...Neither man could have known, of course, exactly how this would eventually occur...
...That would limit the number of seatholding parties to four, a number that would allow both a diversity of views and true majority rule...
...Stephen Housman...
...Sixty years?0 long years—have passed since the October Revolution, and although China has adopted a Communist system, nothing that Lenin and Trotsky expected has happened in Western Europe...
Vol. 60 • June 1977 • No. 12
