BOOK REVIEW
LENIN- LIFE AND LEGACY, D.A. VOLKGANOV, HARPER BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1995
In my political life I have read numerous biographies, sketches and essays on the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, none of them recently. Thus, in looking for a new book on Lenin’s life I was searching for one that would reflect the latest information from the various archives opened up by the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92. With that in mind I happened upon this biography by a Soviet historian who had intimate access to and control of the Soviet archives. However, even with that imprimatur this hostile biography could easily have been written in 1955 by any number of former communist turned anti-communist Western writers during the heart of the Cold War under the influence of the ‘god that failed’ theory of anti-communism. So much for the virtue of access to the new files!
Moreover, after reading the biography I found that it told more about the author than the subject. He was a good Khrushchevite when Khrushchev was in power. He was a good Brezhnevite when Brezhnev was in power. He was a good Gorbachevite when Gorbachev was in power. Finally, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist counter-revolution under Yeltsin he was a good Yeltstinite. No one can deny that he knew how to trim his sails to determine which way the political winds blew. Whether such a checkered personal biography permits him then to write a critique of a revolutionary leader, any revolutionary leader, apparently without the least embarrassment is another question. Well, such is the literary life.
And so what is the latest in Soviet historiography on Lenin? The author retails every ‘horror’ story about Lenin that has sifted through the anti-communist milieu since Lenin first came on the political scene at the turn of the 20th century Russia. Of course, the author starts with the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in 1903- that is the ‘original sin’ for all anti-Leninists who claim to stand in any tendency of the international social democratic tradition. He then goes through the litany of later sins; the anti-nationalist, anti-war Bolshevik propaganda of the First World War; the hoary tales of ‘German’ gold to the Bolsheviks in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia; the ‘sealed train’ through Germany bringing Lenin and other Social Democrats back to Russia; the defeatism toward the Provisional Government; the Bolshevik ‘coup’ in October; the outrage to the author’s nationalist sentiments of the Brest Litovsk Treaty with Germany; the horrors of the Civil War, lightly passing over the White internal and foreign counterrevolutionary actions and placing the onus on the Bolsheviks; and the 'Moscow' gold provided to foreign Communist parties by the Communist International. And much more in that same vane.
The real point of the documentation presented throughout the book, however, is to buttress the author’s central argument that bad old Stalinism was not some sort of distortion of Bolshevism and Leninist thought but the true and natural heir of Leninism. Others have argued that position far more persuasively with far less access to the archives. The fact of the matter, at least based on this exposition, is that the archives provide little new hard material about Lenin and the early Bolshevik regime that has not already been in circulation for a long time. Take one example, the ‘relationship’ between the Bolsheviks and the German High Command during World War I that has been speculated on in reams of material. Volkganov sets up his argument for such an alliance using the time worn innuendoes of secret meetings, use of intermediaries, etc. However, if an author is using this argument in the post-Soviet period then one would expect some new information that definitely links Lenin to German ‘gold’ or let it rest. Where is the smoking gun? As there is nothing new the author lets us off with some dubious circumstantial evidence and lots and lots of conjecture. It goes on and on like that throughout most of the book. The author has personal axes to grind here and the archives only marginally help him in those efforts.
Finally, what of the counterfactual argument that every historian makes to argue that an alternative situation to the one that occurred was possible? Here the author argues that in 1917 some form of Menshevik/Social Revolutionary government or a more stable Kerensky government i.e. some kind of bourgeois government could have brought Russia out of its impasse and into the Western democratic parliamentary tradition. He even has a kind word for the Czar in retrospect, at least as a battering ram against the Bolsheviks. This hardened Stalinist who has since found ‘religion’ attempts to argue a very, very improbable position. Kerensky was the best, and I do mean best, those bourgeois democratic forces had at their command in 1917. No more need be said. We do not always get the revolutions in the pristine condition that we would like and this is not the place to argue extensively about the author’s politics but both by their actions and by the crush of events the possibility of some kind of stable bourgeois democracy in 1917 Russia was the least likely outcome. In short, like in other such revolutionary periods, it was the Bolsheviks or the counterrevolutionary Whites. And one had to take sides accordingly. I will stand with Lenin and Trotsky.
LENIN- LIFE AND LEGACY, D.A. VOLKGANOV, HARPER BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1995
In my political life I have read numerous biographies, sketches and essays on the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, none of them recently. Thus, in looking for a new book on Lenin’s life I was searching for one that would reflect the latest information from the various archives opened up by the demise of the Soviet state in 1991-92. With that in mind I happened upon this biography by a Soviet historian who had intimate access to and control of the Soviet archives. However, even with that imprimatur this hostile biography could easily have been written in 1955 by any number of former communist turned anti-communist Western writers during the heart of the Cold War under the influence of the ‘god that failed’ theory of anti-communism. So much for the virtue of access to the new files!
Moreover, after reading the biography I found that it told more about the author than the subject. He was a good Khrushchevite when Khrushchev was in power. He was a good Brezhnevite when Brezhnev was in power. He was a good Gorbachevite when Gorbachev was in power. Finally, after the demise of the Soviet Union and the capitalist counter-revolution under Yeltsin he was a good Yeltstinite. No one can deny that he knew how to trim his sails to determine which way the political winds blew. Whether such a checkered personal biography permits him then to write a critique of a revolutionary leader, any revolutionary leader, apparently without the least embarrassment is another question. Well, such is the literary life.
And so what is the latest in Soviet historiography on Lenin? The author retails every ‘horror’ story about Lenin that has sifted through the anti-communist milieu since Lenin first came on the political scene at the turn of the 20th century Russia. Of course, the author starts with the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in 1903- that is the ‘original sin’ for all anti-Leninists who claim to stand in any tendency of the international social democratic tradition. He then goes through the litany of later sins; the anti-nationalist, anti-war Bolshevik propaganda of the First World War; the hoary tales of ‘German’ gold to the Bolsheviks in the wake of the February Revolution in Russia; the ‘sealed train’ through Germany bringing Lenin and other Social Democrats back to Russia; the defeatism toward the Provisional Government; the Bolshevik ‘coup’ in October; the outrage to the author’s nationalist sentiments of the Brest Litovsk Treaty with Germany; the horrors of the Civil War, lightly passing over the White internal and foreign counterrevolutionary actions and placing the onus on the Bolsheviks; and the 'Moscow' gold provided to foreign Communist parties by the Communist International. And much more in that same vane.
The real point of the documentation presented throughout the book, however, is to buttress the author’s central argument that bad old Stalinism was not some sort of distortion of Bolshevism and Leninist thought but the true and natural heir of Leninism. Others have argued that position far more persuasively with far less access to the archives. The fact of the matter, at least based on this exposition, is that the archives provide little new hard material about Lenin and the early Bolshevik regime that has not already been in circulation for a long time. Take one example, the ‘relationship’ between the Bolsheviks and the German High Command during World War I that has been speculated on in reams of material. Volkganov sets up his argument for such an alliance using the time worn innuendoes of secret meetings, use of intermediaries, etc. However, if an author is using this argument in the post-Soviet period then one would expect some new information that definitely links Lenin to German ‘gold’ or let it rest. Where is the smoking gun? As there is nothing new the author lets us off with some dubious circumstantial evidence and lots and lots of conjecture. It goes on and on like that throughout most of the book. The author has personal axes to grind here and the archives only marginally help him in those efforts.
Finally, what of the counterfactual argument that every historian makes to argue that an alternative situation to the one that occurred was possible? Here the author argues that in 1917 some form of Menshevik/Social Revolutionary government or a more stable Kerensky government i.e. some kind of bourgeois government could have brought Russia out of its impasse and into the Western democratic parliamentary tradition. He even has a kind word for the Czar in retrospect, at least as a battering ram against the Bolsheviks. This hardened Stalinist who has since found ‘religion’ attempts to argue a very, very improbable position. Kerensky was the best, and I do mean best, those bourgeois democratic forces had at their command in 1917. No more need be said. We do not always get the revolutions in the pristine condition that we would like and this is not the place to argue extensively about the author’s politics but both by their actions and by the crush of events the possibility of some kind of stable bourgeois democracy in 1917 Russia was the least likely outcome. In short, like in other such revolutionary periods, it was the Bolsheviks or the counterrevolutionary Whites. And one had to take sides accordingly. I will stand with Lenin and Trotsky.
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