One gem appears in a recent issue -
The Russian revolutionary Lenin is perhaps the most misunderstood, maligned and lied-about figure in history. If you learn about him at all, you’re likely to hear that Lenin was a violent conspirator and a fanatical dictator.Apparently it seems that's wrong! (Believers in the benevolence of Mr Lenin perhaps also believe that there is a tooth fairy and that Santa - unless he's kidnapped by the aliens - will leave a lovely present under your pillow in a few months). The SW true believer explains that -
According to this version of history, Lenin was no better than the man who succeeded him in power in Russia – Joseph Stalin, the dictator of the ex-USSR who built his career on the bones of revolutionaries in Russia.I do wonder whether the devot has actually read much Lenin or considered the numerous well-documented studies about his ruthlessness in ordering the deaths of those who disagreed with him or who simply committed the crime of belonging to the wrong class.
Yet at the end of his life in 1924, Lenin wrote a testament demanding Stalin’s removal from power. It was a desperate attempt to stop the growing state bureaucracy that Lenin saw springing up around him.
The truth is that Lenin dedicated his life to one thing and one thing only – the establishment of a society free from all forms of oppression. And to achieve this, he focused his attention on building an organization of revolutionaries – primarily of workers –capable of achieving that goal.
The article goes on ...
Lenin’s conception of revolutionary organization has been distorted beyond all recognition. In part, these distortions are the work of people who continued to look upon Russia as socialist after Stalin came to power. This required accepting the idea that a Leninist “vanguard” party demanded blind obedience.Dissidents across Russia are presumably rolling in their graves at that one. Freedom to discuss and then be "exterminated", as St Vladimir put it.
“The special feature of the Communist Party,” wrote one Stalinist hack in the 1930s, “is its strictest discipline, i.e., the unconditional and exact observance by all members of the party of all directives coming from their party organizations.”
Compare this to what Lenin said about the Bolsheviks: “The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party is organized on democratic lines. This means that all the affairs of the party are conducted, either directly, or through representatives, by all the members of the party.”
Lenin wanted all issues of theory and tactics to be debated “as openly, widely and freely as possible.” “Freedom of discussion,” he said. “Unity in action.”
