Lenin: A Revolutionary Life (44 page)

6 The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central
Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party
(Bolsheviks) August 1917–February 1918 (trans. Anne Bone) (London,
1976), p. 107.

7 Sukhanov (1962), vol. 2, p. 524.

6
FROM CLASSROOM TO LABORATORY – EARLY EXPERIMENTS

1
Lenin’s campaign is discussed at greater length in Christopher Read,
From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution,
1917–21 (London, 1996), pp. 161–76. There is a useful compilation of
Lenin’s writings of 1917 – V.I. Lenin, Between the Two Revolutions:
Articles and Speeches of 1917 (Moscow, 1971).

2 W.H. Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, vol. 1 (New York, 1965), p. 320.

3 The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution: Minutes of the Central
Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party
(Bolsheviks) August 1917–February 1918 (trans. Anne Bone)
(London, 1976), pp. 141–2.

4 Ibid., p. 145.
5 Ibid., p. 137.

6 Ibid.

7 Read (1996), pp. 228–30.

8 Ibid., p. 203. See V.I. Lenin i VChK: sbornik dokumentov (1917–1922

gg.) (Moscow, 1987) for examples.

9 ‘Extraordinary Meeting of delegates of Factories and Plants in the
City of Petrograd’, in Kontinent 2: The Alternative Voice of Russia
and Eastern Europe (London, 1978), pp. 238–40.

7

REVOLUTIONARY WAR

1 The scene is described, with slightly different words, by David Shub in Lenin (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 285. 2 R.H. McNeal (ed.), Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Toronto, Buffalo, 1970), pp. 74 and 76. 3 See Christopher Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–21 (London, 1996), pp. 209–11. 4 E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth, 1968),
p. 163. 5 An account which follows the lines of this interpretation can be found in Read (1996), chs 8–12, pp. 177–282. 6 J. Bunyan and H.H. Fisher (eds), The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–18 – Documents, 3 vols, vol. 1 (Stanford, 1961), p. 136.
7 Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin (London, 1965), p. 619.
8 I.P. Bardin, Zhizn’ inzhenera (Moscow, 1957), p. 46.
9 Carr (1968), p. 217.

10 Ibid., p. 216. 11 Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–29 (Cambridge, 1985). 12 Christopher Read, Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia (London, 1990), p. 173. 13 For the emergence of Bolshevik policy in this area, see Read (1990) and Kenez (1985). 14 See the discussion of these issues in Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000), pp. 218–20 and 231–2.

15 R.H. McNeal (ed.), Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 4 vols, vol. 2 (Toronto, Buffalo, 1974), pp. 63–5.

16 See Read (1990) as a starting point for this discussion. It includes references to many other works on the topic.

17 McNeal, vol. 2, p. 63.

18 On the Organizational Question, see ibid., p. 89.

19 Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901–41 (London, Oxford and New York, 1963), p. 74. 20 McNeal, vol. 2, pp.83–4. 21 Ibid., p. 84. 22 Leonard Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 2nd edn (London, 1979), p. 235.

23 By March 1920 the membership stood at 611,978; Schapiro, p. 235.

24 www.defenselink.mil/news/apr2003/. Note the significant absence of Mao Zedong.

25 Arno Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and
Russian Revolutions (Princeton, 2000), p. 4.
26 These figures come from Read (1996), pp. 206–8 where a fuller dis

cussion can be found.
27 Pravda, no. 116, 31 May 1919.
28 R. Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (Princeton, 1996).
29 Read (1996), p. 207.
30 Quotations taken from Pipes, pp. 153–5.

31 R. Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’, in The Russian Revolution
and Leninism or Marxism (Ann Arbor, 1961), p. 71.

8 RE-EVALUATION, SUCCESSION AND TESTAMENT
1 The best account of Lenin’s day-to-day administrative routine is still

T.H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom (1917–22) (Cambridge,
1979).
2 The article can be found in Communist International, no. 12, 1920,

pp. 7–8.
3 Angelica Balabanoff, Impressions of Lenin (Ann Arbor, 1968), p. 15.
4 R. Pipes, The Unknown Lenin (Princeton, 1996), pp. 8 and 10.
5 Vladimir Brovkin suggests this in Behind the Front Lines of the Civil

War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–22
(Princeton, 1994).
6 R. McNeal (ed.), Resolutions and Decisions of the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union, 4 vols, vol. 2 (Toronto, Buffalo, 1974), pp. 126–7.
7 ‘Purging the Party’, Pravda, no. 210, 1 September 1921.
8 Christopher Read, ‘Values, Substitutes, and Institutions: The Cultural

Dimension of the Bolshevik Dictatorship’, in Vladimir Brovkin (ed.), The Bolsheviks in Russian Society: The Revolution and the Civil Wars (New Haven and London, 1997), pp. 308–12.

9 More detail on these developments can be found in Christopher
Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their
Revolution, 1917–21 (London, 1996), pp. 211–23; and Christopher
Read, The Making and Breaking of the Soviet System (Basingstoke
and New York, 2001), pp. 41–7.

10 First published as ‘The Party Crisis’, in Pravda, no. 13, 21 January 1921.
11 Pipes (1996), pp. 156–7.
12 The seminal account of this argument is to be found in Moshe

Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggle (New York, 1968).
13 Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000), p. 474.

CONCLUSION: LENIN LIVED! LENIN LIVES! LENIN WILL LIVE FOREVER!

1
For an excellent survey, see N. Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1983).

2 I am indebted to Jonathan Davis for these references taken from his forthcoming article, ‘Left out in the Cold: British Labour Witnesses the Russian Revolution’ and from his Ph.D. thesis, Altered Images: The Labour Party and the Soviet Union in the 1930s (De Montfort University, Leicester, 2002). The comments were originally published in G. Lansbury, What I Saw in Russia (London, 1920), pp. 22 and 26 and Ethel Snowden, Through Bolshevik Russia (London, 1920), p. 117. 3 Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London, 1962), pp. 26–7. The book was first published in 1920. 4 H. Seton-Watson, The Russian Empire 1801–1917 (Oxford, 1967), pp. 605 and 606. 5 Leonard Schapiro, ‘Lenin after Fifty Years’, in L. Schapiro and P. Reddaway (eds), Lenin: Man, Theorist and Leader (London, 1967), pp. 8 and 19–20. 6 Daily Mail, 22 January 1994. 7 D. Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (London, 1995), p. 326. 8 R. Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives (New Haven and London, 1998), pp. 8, 10, 12 and 13.

9 Lars Lih, ‘How a Founding Document Was Found, or One Hundred Years of Lenin’s What is to be Done?’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 4(1), Winter 2003, pp. 5–49. The phrase quoted occurs on pp. 41 and 49.

10 Important recent accounts of Lenin, in addition to those mentioned above, include: R. Service, Lenin: A Political Life, 3 vols (London, 1985; 1991; 1994); R. Service, Lenin: A Biography (London, 2000); B. Williams, Lenin (London, 2000); J. White, Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (London, 2001); Anna Krylova, ‘Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm: Class Instinct as a Promising Category of Historical Analysis’, Slavic Review, 62(1), 2003, pp. 1–23; Leopold Haimson, ‘Lenin’s Revolutionary Career Revisited: Some Observations on Recent Discussions’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 5(1), Winter 2004, pp. 55–80; R. Zelnik (ed.), Workers and Intelligentsia in Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 1999); R. Zelnik, ‘A Paradigm Lost? A Response to Anna Krylova’, Slavic Review, 62(1), 2003, pp. 24–30; L. Haimson, Russia’s Revolutionary Experience and the Issue of Power (1905–1917) (New York, 2004); L. Haimson, Political Struggles and Social Conflicts in Early Twentieth-Century Russia (1900–1917) (forthcoming).

11 Some of these considerations are raised in C. Read, ‘Lenin and Mass Action in the Russian Revolutionary War’ (paper presented at the History Under Debate conference, July 2004, Santiago de Compostela. Publication forthcoming. (Abstract available on the History Under Debate website, www.h-debate.com/congresos/3/) 12 These issues are explored more fully in C. Read, The Making and Breaking of the Soviet System (Basingstoke and New York, 2001), chs 1–5.

F
URTHER
R
EADIN
G

The best way to get to understand Lenin is to read some of his works. This is a very easy proposition since the forty-seven volumes of his
Collected Works
are gradually being transferred to the Web at www.marx
ists.org. This American site also has biographical and other information and an excellent collection of photos of Lenin. For those who prefer traditional print there are useful collections of his works which have been mentioned in the text, notably
Collected Works
, 47 vols (Moscow, 1960–70) (English edition) and the three-volume
Selected Works
(Moscow, 1963–4).

Books about Lenin are legion. In the forefront of recent scholarship is Robert Service whose political and personal biographies are the starting point for all explorations of Lenin’s life and works. They are R. Service,
Lenin: A Political Life
, 3 vols (London, 1985; 1991; 1994) and R. Service,
Lenin: A Biography
(London, 2000). Other excellent recent biographies include Beryl Williams,
Lenin
(London, 2000) and James White,
Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution
(London, 2001). Notable as the leading Russian contribution to the literature is D. Volkogonov,
Lenin: Life and Legacy
(London, 1995).

In addition to these there are a number of older biographies which still retain much interest. These include: L. Schapiro and P. Reddaway (eds),
Lenin: Man, Theorist and Leader
(London, 1967); David Shub,
Lenin
(New York, 1948; revised edition, Harmondsworth, 1966); Adam Ulam,
Lenin and the Bolsheviks
(London, 1969); Harold Shukman,
Lenin and the Russian Revolution
(London, 1967). Christopher Hill’s
Lenin and the Russian Revolution
(London, 1947) is a curiosity both because it reflects the period in which it was written and because of the person who wrote it rather than the person written about. Leon Trotsky,
The Young Lenin
(New York and London, 1972), Rolf Theen,
Lenin: Genesis and Development of a Revolutionary
(Philadelphia and New York, 1973) and Isaac Deutscher,
Lenin’s Childhood
(Oxford, 1970) all seek to show the child as father of the man.

There are numerous accounts by people who knew Lenin. The following are all flawed in various ways but are still stimulating and valuable if used with discrimination and critical intelligence. They are Nadezhda Krupskaya,
Memories of Lenin
(London, 1970), Angelica Balabanoff,
Impressions of Lenin
(Ann Arbor, 1968) and N. Valentinov,
Encounters with Lenin
(Oxford, 1968).

There are a number of important books on aspects of Lenin’s life and thought. Neil Harding’s two-volume
Lenin’s Political Thought
(London, 1977 and 1981) was pathbreaking. A very readable guide to Lenin’s thought illustrated with many, extensive quotations from his work is E. Fischer and F. Marek (eds),
The Essential Lenin
(New York, 1972). Carmen Claudin-Urondo has written about
Lenin and the Cultural Revolution
(Hassocks, 1977). The hypothesis that there is really a democratic Lenin is scrutinized from different angles by Marcel Liebman,
Leninism under Lenin
(London, 1975) and Samuel Farber,
Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy
(New York, 1990). Moshe Lewin,
Lenin’s Last Struggle
(New York, 1968) is a classic account of Lenin’s attempt to censure Stalin in 1922–3. Tamara Deutscher,
Not by Politics Alone: The Other Lenin
(London, 1973) focuses on the emotional and cultural side of Lenin’s life he was so at pains to keep under control.

Recent items focusing on specific questions include: Richard Pipes,
The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archives
(New Haven and London, 1998); Lars Lih, ‘How a Founding Document Was Found, or One Hundred Years of Lenin’s
What is to be Done?
’,
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
, 4(1), Winter 2003; Anna Krylova, ‘Beyond the Spontaneity-Consciousness Paradigm: Class Instinct as a Promising Category of Historical Analysis’,
Slavic Review
, 62(1), 2003, pp. 1–23; and Leopold Haimson, ‘Lenin’s Revolutionary Career Revisited: Some Observations on Recent Discussions’,
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
, 5(1), Winter 2004, pp. 55–80.

There is an exhaustive chronology of Lenin’s life in one of the supplementary volumes of his
Collected Works
. A really excellent and more manageable chronology which incorporates key selected phrases from many of his works is G. and H. Weber,
Lenin: Life and Works
(London and Basingstoke, 1980).

The reader looking to put Lenin into his political context could do worse than to start with Christopher Read,
From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and Their Revolution, 1917–21
(London, 1996) or Rex Wade,
The Russian Revolution 1917
(Cambridge, 2000). Also in this category are the rather idiosyncratic but very interesting and readable Richard Pipes,
The Russian Revolution 1899–1918
(New York, 1990) and
Russia under the Bolshevik Regime 1918–24
(New York, 1995) and Orlando Figes,
A People’s Tragedy
(London, 1996).

I
NDE
X

ABC of Communism 236, 262

Abo 85

Academy of Sciences 238; Committee for the Study of Scientific Productive Forces (KEPS) 231

Adler, Victor 185,127

Alakaevka 17, 281

Aleksinsky, Grigorii 85, 94, 161