“Not by Politics Alone – The Other Lenin” edited by Tamara Deutscher, 1973-2024
This selection of letters, remembrances and notes’ purpose
is to ‘humanize’ Lenin for those who think of him as some monomaniacal robot. Indeed he was intensely focused on the
Russian and world revolution, as that was his main purpose in life. But human beings are not just their job or
their purpose. Deutscher notes that
Stalin turned Lenin into an embalmed individual hero, a practice that Lenin
argued against in life. Following the
method of ‘personality cult,’ Mao and Ho also became embalmed, almost like religious
idols.
So this is Lenin’s ‘human’ side, if meant by that his
attitude towards people, nature, the arts, activities and life, along with his
own regrets. Deutscher had access to new
material in Lenin’s Selected Works and some of this comes out of that. So let’s see what ‘human’ things Lenin did…
Lenin was not a tall, imposing presence. He was shorter - 5’ 5”, weighing about 150 lbs. - with an ordinary face that would not stand out in a crowd. While smaller he was very strong. He liked to hunt, though he was a poor shot, because he liked being in the woods. He enjoyed singing, though his singing was sub-standard. He was an ardent hiker, once trying to climb a mountain in the dark with a friend without lights. The family chose spots to live in Europe that were close to forests or rivers if possible, in order to be close to nature. He was a speed-reader and could fly through books without missing details. He was an avid chess player and competitive in whatever he did. He liked to swim and bicycle too. He was a listener and always asked questions, learning everything he could from others. He set aside days for peasants and workers to directly talk to him about their issues. People who blab endlessly without listening to anyone else or never questioning anything might as well be the definition of stupid. In addition, Lenin was never shrill in his speaking tone, unlike so many leftists.
Lenin’s family had worked themselves up from former serfs,
his father becoming a school administrator, he becoming a lawyer. His youth summers were spent holidaying at a
rural manor near Simbirsk, where he spent his time outdoors with his family. This
experience comes out in a rebuke against the radical Proletkult, which after
1917 wanted to ignore any art or writing by upper-class writers like Tolstoy or
anything ‘old.’ This included enjoying a
summer scene at an aristocratic dacha, redolent as it was of class or
serfdom. Lenin supported workers reading
the classics as he had done, as art is not just about ‘the new.’ He liked Beethoven and music in general, which affected him deeply. He had conservative,
realist tastes in literature, enjoying Russian classics like Pushkin and
Nekrasov, Victor Hugo, and of course Chernyshevsky’s great novel “What is To Be Done?” (reviewed below),
which changed his life and those of his generation.
This leads to a discussion about the socialist attitude
towards art. Lenin liked realist art
styles, but was modest about his own understanding of visual art, music or
literature. He was not a culture critic,
but takes a deep materialist look at both Herzen, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in
this book. He opposed Maykovsky’s ‘futurism’
and the “Oblomovism” of too many Party meetings. He understood that the state
could not decree an art style, but that the Party could ask its own artistic
members to produce agitational, revolutionary, progressive art, comprehensible
to workers and peasants. Bourgeois critics have
stretched this to include his prescriptions for the state as a whole, which is
nonsense, as he states “Everyone is free
to write or say whatever he likes, without restrictions.” His 1905 essay on this is included. The restrictions were done by Stalin’s
bureaucracy, which decreed ‘socialist realism’ as the only acceptable approach to
art in society.
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| Zhenotdel in Peasant Cooperatives |
Lenin was a great friend of Inessa Armand, being endearing,
concerned and demanding with her. She became one of his emissaries in
Europe. When she died in 1920 observers at
the funeral thought he was almost a broken man.
There is no hint of a sexual relationship in the 70 letters however. He
always told comrades to take vacations, a break or medical care of themselves
when they became exhausted, so he was no slave driver or cruel. In his own rigorous schedule, he always set
aside time later in the day for rest, play, walks and socializing. He was solicitous of Peter Kropotkin, the
great anarchist, scientist and philosopher, who moved near Moscow after the
1917 revolution. While they disagreed on politics – Lenin marveling that
Kropotkin thought co-operatives were going to lead to state power – he provided
housing, doctors and help to the old man until his death in 1921. The house
Kropotkin lived in became a museum until 1938 … predictably.
Lenin praised the New York Public Library to the skies in
1911, as opposed to the lack of public libraries in Russia. He pointed out the continuing low level of
literacy in 1923 in the USSR – 32% overall, when it had been 22.3% under
Czarism – as literacy and education had to prepare the soil for any ‘higher’
culture. He lived a Spartan lifestyle,
giving away gifts. He rebuked Gorky for not opposing all liberal ‘god-seeking’
and makes a hearty plea for atheism against bourgeois power, as part of a
number of 1919 letters to Gorky about the St. Petersburg ‘intelligentsia.’ Lenin
advocated clear political writing and was against abbreviations and bureaucratize;
supported monuments to various cultural and political figures and developing
newsreels and later film.
In his correspondence with Armand and Zetkin over women’s class
issues, he opposed ‘free love’ while supporting ‘the emancipation of women,’ starting with the socialization of
housework and legal equality. Unlike
Marx’s attitude in the 1st International, he was against internal Party
groups for women. At the same time the Zhenotdel was a Soviet organization for women, led by the Party. In 1921 Lenin said
that the USSR was a worker’s state with bureaucratic distortions, with a majority
of peasants, not workers. In 1922 he
said “Our worst internal enemy is the
bureaucrat” and warned against a conflict among the ‘Old Guard.”
Tactically Lenin understood the need not just for ‘revolutionary
advances’ – but for retreats, as he noted in 1917 when idiots were calling for
an uprising no matter what the conditions.
It was also shown when the Soviets signed the hard Brest-Litvosk treaty
with Germany ending the war, ceding much territory. The New Economic Policy was
also a retreat. His main criterion was
‘where are the masses?’ Later in life
when he was sick he deeply questioned the dire state of the USSR after the
bloodshed of the Civil War, economic difficulties and deepening divisions
within the Politburo. He took some of the blame upon himself. This ultimately resulted in suggestions to
enlarge the Politburo, demote Stalin and his allies, fight bureaucracy (as he
promised Kropotkin) and uphold the right of nations to self-determination
against Russophilia and Great Russian chauvinism.
This is a good book about the ‘small things’ of politics
that are overlooked by some, as exemplified by how Lenin thought about them.
Prior blog reviews of this topic, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Lenin’s Last Struggle,” “The Struggle for
Power,” “October – the Story of the Russian Revolution” (Mieville); “Art of the
Soviets,” “Red Star” (Bogdanov); “A People’s History of the Russian Revolution,”
“Three Essays of Alexandra Kollontai," "Red Valkyries," "Radek" or the word “Soviet.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog / June 9, 2024
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