Your views on Lenin

**Formative Years** · 16th August 2009 11:20 AM

Of all historic revolutionaries, Lenin is the most controversial. I think it has to do with him being a very strong shade of gray. While he certainly contributed to the Red Terror, I remind myself that he grew up in a society that had taught terror as a legitimate response to actions. For most Russians it would seem natural to respond to a bloody Civil War with some faithful reciprocation, especially when you were the target of assassination. This should not be an apology for his actions, but rather an understanding of why he undertook the path he did instead of rehashing religious dichotomies of "good" and "evil." If such dichotomy were to exist, I'd say...

Good sides:

- Decried anti-Semitism for not focusing on class conflict

- Legalized bi-gender suffrage

- Legalized homosexuality

- Legalized birth control and abortion

- Pulled out of WWI

Negatives:

- Implemented the Red Terror

- Banned opposition parties during the Civil War for "traitorous" activities

Toss-ups:

- Allowed small businesses and private farmers to remain, no forceful collectivization (depends on your view of communism)

- Possibly ordered for the execution of the tzar and his entire family

I think Lenin did what he felt he had to do in order to win. But means ultimately compromised the ends.

Also, he and Trotsky will always have a strike against them in my book for crushing the Kronsdadt sailors when they made their list of demands to the Lenin government. They represented the truest aspirations of the Russian Revolution, all hopes for Soviet Democracy and Socialism was crushed with them.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

**caffeine** · 27th August 2009 03:36 AM

[quote name='Formative Years' date='16 August 2009 - 07:20 PM' timestamp='1250443213' post='5986']

- Implemented the Red Terror

- Banned opposition parties during the Civil War for "traitorous" activities[/quote]

To act as if this and the repression of the Kronstadt rebellion were the only oppressive measures undertaken by Lenin lets him off the hook a fair bit. The early post-Revolution history of Russia is about the concentration of all power in the hands of the Bolsheviks and the elimination of any alernative centre of power until and unless it was under their control. The Bolsheviks supported factory committees together with anarchist groups, because otherwise the natural unit of control was the Menshevik-dominated trade unions. They fought to preserve their independence from unions up until the October Revolution but, once they were in power, quickly did an about face and adopted the Menshevik policy of subordinating the committees to unions and to state-controlled organisations (note the Stalinesque strategy of cooperating with one rival to eliminate another, and then adopting the eliminated rival's policy before turning on those you were cooperating with). When the Bolshevik paper Kommunist criticised the loss of worker's control its editorial independence was abolished and Lenin published his "Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government", which extolled the necessary virtues of individual dictatorship and expressed the paradoxical nonsense that the road to a society controlled by the workers required the unquestioning submission of all these workers to their leaders.

Now, you could say that Lenin genuinely believed that the total concentration of all power in the hands of a few and the often brutally violent elimination of all real and potential opposition from both within and without the party were necessary evils on the road to a more just society, but so what? So do the vast majority of vicious, murdering tyrants, and we don't give them passes for it.

**The_Bear** · 5th September 2009 01:52 PM

How about:

Created the Gulag.

**caffeine** · 7th September 2009 07:19 AM

[quote name='The_Bear' date='05 September 2009 - 09:52 PM' timestamp='1252180360' post='17206']

How about:

Created the Gulag.

[/quote]

He didn't though. The Gulag wasn't formed until 1930, quite a while after Lenin's death.

**Zarathustra** · 15th September 2009 07:09 PM

While I find much of what he beleives intriguing, I also consider him a reprehenisble human being...Honestly I have never found one influential Communist figure to be anything more than a mass murderer. Possibley Gorbechev but he doesnt really count since SU was collapsing anyway.

**The_Bear** · 16th September 2009 02:36 PM

[quote name='caffeine' date='07 September 2009 - 09:19 AM' timestamp='1252329562' post='17888']

He didn't though. The Gulag wasn't formed until 1930, quite a while after Lenin's death.

[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovetsky_Islands

Nicknamed 'Solovki'. Formed DURING the Russian Civil War, in order to imprison political rivals.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/r...-monastery.htm

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviet authorities closed down the monastery and incorporated many of the buildings into Solovki, one of the earliest Soviet forced-labor camps. First opened in 1923 as a work camp for "enemies of the people," Solovki was not so bad at first, with prisoners keeping up the botanical gardens and library.

Hmmm....forced labor camps for 'enemies of the people'....

But in 1937, Stalin reorganized it into the one of the severest Gulags in his empire.

So Lenin created the GULAG, Stalin just made it horrible.

Lenin provided the 'seed', Stalin provided the 'substance'.

**kynaston** · 17th September 2009 10:09 AM

[quote name='The_Bear' date='16 September 2009 - 08:36 PM' timestamp='1253133373' post='22504']

http://en.wikipedia....ovetsky_Islands

Nicknamed 'Solovki'. Formed DURING the Russian Civil War, in order to imprison political rivals.

http://www.sacred-de...y-monastery.htm

Hmmm....forced labor camps for 'enemies of the people'....

So Lenin created the GULAG, Stalin just made it horrible.

Lenin provided the 'seed', Stalin provided the 'substance'.

[/quote]

No - the massed armies of foreign intervention and the violent murder and torture of revolutionaries created the gulags. Imperialism was just as it is now - snow-white, pure, media-owning filth.

**caffeine** · 18th September 2009 01:37 AM

[quote name='The_Bear' date='16 September 2009 - 10:36 PM' timestamp='1253133373' post='22504']

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovetsky_Islands

Nicknamed 'Solovki'. Formed DURING the Russian Civil War, in order to imprison political rivals.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/r...-monastery.htm

Hmmm....forced labor camps for 'enemies of the people'....

So Lenin created the GULAG, Stalin just made it horrible.

Lenin provided the 'seed', Stalin provided the 'substance'.

[/quote]

So, what you're saying is, forced labour camps were introduced in Soviet Russia in 1923, after Lenin's second stroke and after he had withdrawn from any active involvement in running the country, possibly after his third stroke (March 1923) when he was pretty much incapable of speech.

Lenin contributed to the culture of oppression and insularity that led to the Gulag, but forced labour was still agaisnt the Soviet state's official policy under his leadership and was only introduced by his successors.

**justoneman** · 18th September 2009 05:51 PM

Lennin was not nearly as terrible as Stalin. Here is one example of what I think was terrible about him:

He decided to follow Marx's theories of collectivism. the Serf's who had not long been able to own land and farm on their own, had become moderately successful. With the end of WW1 Lennin started the process of collectivising the farms. The logic was if the government took them over that farms could be made to be more productive. Slowly by a series of acts, the government took over these private entities. Each time they gained more and more control over the farms they became less and less productive. Those farmers that held out were either cast out of their farms by military force or worse some were imprisoned for not abiding by the new laws willingly. Eventually became entirely communal. Production was made to be at an all time low. This took away the people's will to strive. The country ran out of food. people starved to death. All the while Lennin attrivuted this to the people not following the new collective rules. those people who spoke against these rules were systematically found out by spies and were put in prison.

Communism is an unatural state for people to exist in. It saps people of their individuality and the zest to strive for more and better.

**kynaston** · 19th September 2009 07:37 AM

[quote name='justoneman' date='18 September 2009 - 11:51 PM' timestamp='1253317899' post='23648']

Lennin was not nearly as terrible as Stalin. Here is one example of what I think was terrible about him:

He decided to follow Marx's theories of collectivism. the Serf's who had not long been able to own land and farm on their own, had become moderately successful. With the end of WW1 Lennin started the process of collectivising the farms. The logic was if the government took them over that farms could be made to be more productive. Slowly by a series of acts, the government took over these private entities. Each time they gained more and more control over the farms they became less and less productive. Those farmers that held out were either cast out of their farms by military force or worse some were imprisoned for not abiding by the new laws willingly. Eventually became entirely communal. Production was made to be at an all time low. This took away the people's will to strive. The country ran out of food. people starved to death. All the while Lennin attrivuted this to the people not following the new collective rules. those people who spoke against these rules were systematically found out by spies and were put in prison.

Communism is an unatural state for people to exist in. It saps people of their individuality and the zest to strive for more and better.

[/quote]

As a result of the interventions it was take over the land or starve to death. You believe the revolutionaries should have put on their hair shirts and starved politely? They were very narrow-minded and prefered to live. Shocking!