Talk:Vladimir Lenin/Archive 4: Difference between revisions

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	: I agree with the above idea, about renaming the article Lenin (or Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) to avoid confusion about the name, and maybe add a paragraph about the Lenin pseudonym, and how he adapted Lenin later on. The new and current Encyclopædia Britannica article about Lenin is named "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich". However, it also states "Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk, which was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour. (He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901 during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia.)". < "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Sept. 2006 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-60986>.> -- ] 20:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)		: I agree with the above idea, about renaming the article Lenin (or Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) to avoid confusion about the name, and maybe add a paragraph about the Lenin pseudonym, and how he adapted Lenin later on. The new and current Encyclopædia Britannica article about Lenin is named "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich". However, it also states "Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk, which was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour. (He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901 during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia.)". < "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Sept. 2006 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-60986>.> -- ] 20:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)


			::Maybe someone knowledgable could step forward and take some action. I came here looking for an understanding of this very issue. Only not to find it.

	==Languages==		==Languages==
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	::::] has re-inserted the {{tl\|POV}} tag again, and I have removed it. He has not expressed any futher concerns and his previous concerns have been responded to without any comment from him, so I don't see how the tag is called for. If anyone has some concerns feel free to bring them up and put up the tag with ''reasons''. But I'm sorry reasons like "Lenin-fan editors" controlling the article and "idiots" putting in false information (which two users have responded to) are not good reasons.--] 08:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)		::::] has re-inserted the {{tl\|POV}} tag again, and I have removed it. He has not expressed any futher concerns and his previous concerns have been responded to without any comment from him, so I don't see how the tag is called for. If anyone has some concerns feel free to bring them up and put up the tag with ''reasons''. But I'm sorry reasons like "Lenin-fan editors" controlling the article and "idiots" putting in false information (which two users have responded to) are not good reasons.--] 08:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

			:::::Lenin is not known for his his "fight against anti-semitism". It is not central to his identity or his historical significance. In the limitied space that wikipedia offers we must remain focussed on the core historical truths. This is neither a 300 page biograpghy nor a one-page political brochure. Lenin will be remembered as integral in fighting the Tsar, creating a world-influencing strongly-disciplined top-down partisan organization, toppling the post-Tsarist Russian government, and winning the subsequent cinil war. Secondarily one might argue that the NEP was an important issue to discuss. Everything else smacks of hero-worship and rank partisanship.
			........
			In fact, many agree that this page is one of the worst examples of POV on all of wikipedia. I am not going to insert the POV tag. What is worse is that I am going to abandon reading this entry, and related entries and mourn the destruction of what should have been a masterful idea; that of an open encyclopedia. ]Phillip October, 2006

	==Name Pronounciation==		==Name Pronounciation==

	I think the pronounciation of Lenin's name should be in something more popular than Ogg.		I think the pronounciation of Lenin's name should be in something more popular than Ogg.

			:I don't think we CAN use anything more popular. .mp3s (and the like) require a license, or some such, and .oggs are free...Misplaced Pages being the 💕 (free as in ''gratis''). I should say I don't know this for a fact, so correct me if I be wrong.--<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 02:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

	== External links ==		== External links ==
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	Might I suggest you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's ''Stalin the Court of the Red Tsar'', on the assumption that you have not already done so? I think you will find that an entirely different picture of Stalin emerges. He did indeed suffer from some form of personal paranoia, but his political actions were based on rational calculations: even the purges served a purpose, advancing both his ideological position and his power within the party. If Stalin was mad there was always method in it. Where he came unstuck was in his dealings with Hitler, whom he believed was driven by the same rational and pragmatic calculations. Ironically, and to his cost, Hitler was the only man that Stalin ever trusted. Anyway, you say that Stalin virtually abandoned most Marxist ideals. On the contrary, he was the one that gave final shape to the Leninist vision of Marxism in Russia, with its intense suspicion of all opposition, its conspiratorial and elitist element, its hatred of the peasantry, and all of its murderous intolerance; as I have already said, it was merely a question of degree. There is nothing in Lenin's Russia that you will not find under Stalin, perfected in every malevolent aspect.		Might I suggest you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's ''Stalin the Court of the Red Tsar'', on the assumption that you have not already done so? I think you will find that an entirely different picture of Stalin emerges. He did indeed suffer from some form of personal paranoia, but his political actions were based on rational calculations: even the purges served a purpose, advancing both his ideological position and his power within the party. If Stalin was mad there was always method in it. Where he came unstuck was in his dealings with Hitler, whom he believed was driven by the same rational and pragmatic calculations. Ironically, and to his cost, Hitler was the only man that Stalin ever trusted. Anyway, you say that Stalin virtually abandoned most Marxist ideals. On the contrary, he was the one that gave final shape to the Leninist vision of Marxism in Russia, with its intense suspicion of all opposition, its conspiratorial and elitist element, its hatred of the peasantry, and all of its murderous intolerance; as I have already said, it was merely a question of degree. There is nothing in Lenin's Russia that you will not find under Stalin, perfected in every malevolent aspect.
	] 22:23, 29 September 2006 (UTC)		] 22:23, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

			:I don't know why we're arguing anyway. Stalin's personality is not especially relevant to this page. I agree with everything you've said so far about Lenin himself, so go ahead and make your modifications to the article. I apologise if I've appeared to be argumentative, but I've been trying to find points of consensus and a neutral platform between you, myself and Colin4C. Since I think we now agree on most of the main points - viz. that Lenin was guilty of committing numerous atrocities in the pursuit of Marxism, but that some White supporters (mainly Semyonov) also committed atrocities, mainly against Jews - I feel that we can now bring this discussion to an end. As I say, feel free to make modifications to the article. ] 11:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			'''Kolchak's Anti-Semitism'''
			This is recorded by his colleague G.K. Gins who wrote in his book (published in Peking in 1921)about the General that the Admiral 'literally devoured the Protocols' . He liked it so much that he had a special edition printed for his troops at Omsk. Further editions were published by the White armies in Vladivostock and Khabarovsk and even (presumably for white emigres) in Japan! (See 'Warrant for Genocide' by Norman Cohn (1967: 129).)] 18:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			:Thank you for that clarification. Beyond his enthusiasm for-and dissemination of-the ''Protocols'' what practical form did his anti-semitism take? ] 23:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			::'''Please''', both of you, can we just drop the topic of Kolchak's anti-semitism? This article isn't even about Kolchak. The two of you (by which I mean Colin4C and White Guard) seem to be locked in an eternal battle on this talk page, debating every possible matter relating to Lenin, the Civil War and the early Soviet period. Let's just try and proceed by consensus, and let's keep to the topic. ] 09:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::Yes, of course; but it is not in my nature to allow unsupported statements to stand. Kolchak's anti-semitism seems to have consisted of little more than reading the ''Protocols'', a pastime he shared with the editors of the London Times. Now, for contrast, read what I have written below on Lenin and anti-semitism.
			:::] 01:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

	== What Is To be Done?-Part III ==		== What Is To be Done?-Part III ==
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	'''How''' did Lenin worked hard to combat ] in Russia? Please give referenced, specific examples. "Worked hard" is non-encyclopedic. Because how can you measure how hard someone worked? Teach me please, I dont know jack about Lenin, how did he work against ], how was he opposed to ]? What kindof legislation did he pass for Jews? Did he give any other speeched? If so don't quote the speeches, reference the speeches. And please, don't respond to me here, respond to me in this article section, by adding verifiable sources which illustrates how Lenin <s>worked hard for</s> supported the Jews. ] (]) 10:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)		'''How''' did Lenin worked hard to combat ] in Russia? Please give referenced, specific examples. "Worked hard" is non-encyclopedic. Because how can you measure how hard someone worked? Teach me please, I dont know jack about Lenin, how did he work against ], how was he opposed to ]? What kindof legislation did he pass for Jews? Did he give any other speeched? If so don't quote the speeches, reference the speeches. And please, don't respond to me here, respond to me in this article section, by adding verifiable sources which illustrates how Lenin <s>worked hard for</s> supported the Jews. ] (]) 10:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

			:On this whole question please see the points I have raised in 'What Is to Be Done?-Part III'. Some people get very confused about this whole issue, especially those who see Jewish people purely in a bogus racial terms. Lenin freely admitted people from a Jewish 'background' to the highest ranks of both party and state, but this has to be coupled with a wholesale campaign '''against''' those who actually practiced Judaism, which reached particularly crude heights during the 1921 campaign against religion. Lenin essentially had the same view of Jewish people as Martin Luther: they were alright as long as they 'converted' to the new ideology. ] 23:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

			::There was a campaign by the Bolsheviks was against all religions, not just Judaism. Under Lenin and the Bolsheviks the Jews enjoyed more civil rights than at any time in their history in Russia. Trotsky himself is a hero for many Jews, as the greatest Jewish general ever. As for Martin Luther his venemous diatribes against the Jews have much more in common with the Tsarist, White and Fascist ideology. I could quote exactly what the Whites did to the Jewish women and children in their territory, but I'm afraid it might make people here physically sick.
			::Lenin often denounced Tsarist antisemitism, as well as the item mentioned in the article see for instance his Collected Works Vol 17 (London 1960-70) p 337 about the situation in 1914 where he opined that 'no other nationality in Russia is so oppressed and persecuted as the Jews'. Tsarist anti-Semitism was often used as a red-rag (literally!) to divert the oppressed masses from class-conflict to conflict against internal ethnic enemies - as for instance in the state-sponsored pogroms of 1905, in which the violence of the masses was succesfully diverted by the regime from the Tsarist establishment to Jews - resulting in mass-death of the latter. ] 17:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			Oh, I see-Trotsky is a hero for many Jews?

			: See for instance the biography of Trotsky by Prof R. Wistrich (who holds the Neuberger Chair of Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem): 'Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary' (1979) and also the same author's 'Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky' (1976). ] 09:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

			Would that include the Russian Chief Rabbi of the day, who said-"The Trotskies make the revolutions, but it's the Bronsteins who pay for them." Once again what I am getting here is a series of generalities, with no concrete examples, and then a completely fatuous diversion on to Tsarist anti-semitism and White atrocities. There were White atrocities; but this is a page ''about'' Lenin.

			That should not have to be said, but it clearly does-''ad nauseum.'' Just imagine trying to deduce the realities of Soviet life from the 'Stalin Constitution' of 1936. Yet here we are told that Jewish life in Soviet Russia can be deduced from a few anodyne generalities by Lenin about anti-semitism. So the attack on Judaism in 1921 was incidental, just a by-product of the attack on religion in general? But it challenged what it was to ''be Jewish in the first place'', and included a 'trial' of the religion in the same courtroom as the Beilis travesty of 1913. Could there be anything cruder than that? It has been argued that the Soviet attack on Judaism was worse than that on Christianity;

			''The assault on Jewish religious life was particularly harsh and pervasive because a Jew's religious beliefs and observations infused every aspect of his daily life and were invested with national values and feelings...family relations, work, prayer, study, recreation, and culture were all part of a seamless web, no element of which could be disturbed without disturbing the whole.''
			(Nora Levin, ''The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917'', New York and London, 1988, pp. 70-1)

			The logic behind the contention that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were for the Jews but against Judaism simply escapes me. No doubt some weakness in my rational capacities. I am sorry always to respond to an emotional diatribe with appeals to argument, specific examples and reason; but I can not help myself: its in my nature.
			] 23:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			: 'Lenin, the new head of the Soviet government, had already written in 1914 that 'no other nationality in Russia is so oppressed and persecuted as the Jews. As a Marxist he sincerely believed that anti-semitism, like all forms of ethnic prejudice, was an outgrowth of class conflict which would evntually dissapear in a classless society. It was essentially a feture of reactionary feudal and capitalist regimes, exploited for the benifit of the ruling classes to sow division in the masses and deflect them from the radical cause. Lenin realised, moreover, that antisemitism was being turned against the Bolshevik regime by its most dangerous opponents - the White counter-revolutionaries - who took advantage of the fact that a number of the top Russian Communist leaders were of Jewish origin. Hence, for pragmatic as well as ideological reasons, he firecely attacked antisemitism in statements and speeches during the Civil War, and as early as 27 July 1918 the Soviet government defined instigators of pogroms as 'enemies of the Revolution' who had to be outlawed. ''Stringent legislation'' , ''backed up by education and propaganda, was employed to suppress antisemitism in the 1920,s'' though such feelings continued to persist, especially during the New Economic Party
			(from 'Anti-Semitism' by R. Wistrich (1991) page 174) ] 09:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

			::Oh dear; once again, Colin, you are missing the point. The observation about Luther was for polemical effect; ''I did not say'' that Lenin's programme was like Luther's. What I did say was that for Lenin, as for Luther, Jews were acceptable, ''just as long as they were not Jews''. You seem to believe that a series of pious statements and Marxist generalities are enough: they are not. The 1921 campaign was anti-Judaic which, for Jewish people, is just the same as anti-Semitic. You have given not a single concrete example of Soviet defense of the right to practice freely as a Jew, and not as a worshiper of Lenin's secular ideology. But let's look at his actions-or lack of them-in broader terms. In November 1920 Lenin received detailed Cheka reports of the pogroms carried out by First Cavalry Army, a Red formation operating in Poland;

			::''A new wave of pogroms has swept through the district. The number of those killed cannot be established...As they retreated, units of the First Cavalry Army (and the 6th Division) destroyed, looted and killed the Jewish population...These are new pages in the history of pogroms in the Ukraine.''

			::What did Lenin do about this? Why, nothing. These reports were consigned to oblivion by the words 'For the archives.' No actions, therefore, but lots of meaningless words; as I have said, the usual generalities and platitudes. "While condemning anti-semitism in general, Lenin was unable to analyse, let alone eradicate, its prevalence in Soviet society." (Dmitri Volkogonov, ''Lenin'', London, 1994, p. 203)] 01:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

	==Other minor changes==		==Other minor changes==
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	Signed: ] (]) 10:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)		Signed: ] (]) 10:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

			::However by so-doing this you have created this illogical piece of syntax, with a clunking great non-sequitor in the middle of it!:

			:::Historian Richard Pipes has argued that policies such as handing sweeping power to the state, enforcing rigid party discipline, using terror as a means of political intimidation, and requisitioning grain paved the road to Stalinism. However, the scale was different: three times more political prisoners were executed in the first few months of Bolshevik rule than in over 90 years under the Tsar.

			::And following your point: if it is illegitimate to link Lenin's 'crimes' to the Tsar why is it legit to link them to Stalin as per Pipes? As for references I can provide several which link Tsarist tyranny with Soviet tyranny: see for instance Chamberlin's acclaimed 'The Russian Revolution' (1935), Princetown University Press. The opening chapters of this are a sobering reminder of the grisly slave-state the Tsars created, maintained by Terror and Torture, long before Lenin was even dreamed of. ] 17:40, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::Please don't cut up other people's posts with your own, post underneath the other person's comments. See ]

			:::''As for references I can provide several which link Tsarist tyranny with Soviet tyranny: see for instance Chamberlin's acclaimed 'The Russian Revolution' (1935), Princetown University Press.'' Good, then add it, state who says it, and add it. Otherwise it is an unreferenced sentence. We are talking about references, not grammar. ] (]) 22:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

	==Clunky sentence==		==Clunky sentence==
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	Thanks. ] (]) 10:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)		Thanks. ] (]) 10:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


			== Lenin and the Jews ==


			According to Zvi Gitelman in the 1920's the Soviet regime made a serious attempt to combat anti-Jewish prejudice:
			'Never before in Russian history - and never subsequently - has a government made such an effort to uproot and stamp out antisemitism' (Z. Gitelman 'Soviet Antisemitism and its perception by Soviet Jews' in Curtis (ed) 'Antisemitism in the Contemporary World (1986))
			By contrast the White regime saw the Jews as part of a demonic world conspiracy and massacred over 100,000 of them - men, women and children often in an obscenely brutal fashion only the SS would approve of (see Wistrich, R, 'Anti-Semitism the Oldest Hatred' (1991) pages 171 to 191). ] 17:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			I refer readers to what I have written above about this whole issue, under '''Lenin's Radio Speech Against Anti-Semitism'''.
			] 23:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			== Pipes ==
			This is what distinguished historian of the Russian Revolution Orlando Figes, in a newspaper article, says about our friend (but no friend of Lenin it seems) the noted 'historian' Pipes:

			:My main reservation is the tendentious nature of the editor's own role. Mr. Pipes, an emeritus professor of Russian history at Harvard, is famous for his low opinion of Lenin -- in ''The Russian Revolution'' (1990) and ''Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime'' (1994) he depicts Lenin as the devil incarnate -- and it is difficult to avoid the inference that his selection and interpretation of the documents in ''The Unknown Lenin'' have been slanted to support this view.

			As Pipes's biased comments about Lenin have been allowed to stand in the body of this article I reverse my condemnation of the mighty Hercules and 'White Guard''s NPOV label. I now agree with them that the article IS biased - against Lenin. ] 18:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			:Pipes is not really a historian, at least not an objectiv one. He is first and formost an ultra conservative politician and an anti-communist. ] 19:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			::I was hoping to take this article forward. I can see this is clearly going to be very difficult. Could I please have a source for the above quotation?
			] 23:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::It's from an article Mr Figes wrote for the New York Times on Oct 27 1996:

			:::http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1DB1230F934A15753C1A960958260 ] 08:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::I've read Pipes' book and it seems to me to be meticulously well-researched. To say that ''Pipes is not a historian'' is an unjustified slander. However Pipes certainly does have an anti-Leninist POV which shows through in his work. But I don't see why we have to keep on and on arguing about this article. Why not just include both Pipes' viewpoint and that of other historians, including a statement of where they depart from fact into opinion and subjective interpretation? In this particular article, with its controversial topic, the best way to achieve NPOV is not sticking to the facts (which are mostly disputed anyway), but to provide a fair balance between both left-wing and right-wing points of view. ] 09:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::::Unfortunately the opposing point of view to Pipes:

			Although many of these decried institutions and policies—such as secret police, labor camps, and executions of political opponents—were practiced under Lenin's regime, these techniques were all commonly used by the Tsars long before Lenin and were long since established as the standard means of dealing with political dissent in Russia."

			was removed by Travb, leaving a gaping non-sequitor and mangled sytax (which is not, however much it might be a source of solace to ungrammatical right wingers, enclyclopediac).
			Suffice to say that the link between the Tsarist tyranny and the Red tyranny has been made by umpteen writers (just two examples from a vast literature: chapter 1 of W.H. Chamberlin's standard 'The Russian Revolution' (1935) and a very interesting book by Alexander Yanov: 'The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History' (1981) University of California Press, which contra-Pipes concludes that the Russian autocractic tradition began in January 1565 rather than October 1917 and that Stalin's programme was uncannily similar to that of Ivan the Terrible (of whom Stalin was a fan - see the film about Ivan produced under his regime). ] 10:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


			:Thank you for the link to Figes article on Pipes. Perhaps people would like to know how the article continues? Well, for the sake of balance, here we are;

			::''Otherwise, however, Mr Pipe's editorial views are fully justified by the evidence. As one would expect, most of the newly released documents from the Soviet archives uncover Lenin's darker side. Three aspects of this in particular stand out''.

			::''One is Lenin's cruelty, his callous attitude to the helpless victims of his revolution and his calls for terror against his enemies. In one shocking letter of 1922, Lenin urged the Politburo to put down an uprising by the clergy in the textile town of Shuia; "the greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoise we succeed in executing...the better." One Russian historian has recently estimated that 8000 priests and laymen were executed as a result of this letter''.

			::''Another aspect is Lenin's contempt for his closest comrades (though not for Stalin, according to Mr. Pipes). Lev Kamenev was a "poor fellow, weak, frightened and intimidated." As for Trotsky, he was "in love with the organization, but as for politics, he hasn't got a clue."
			''
			:All very revealing, is it not? It would seem that Ivan Grozny had more than one fan. I have absolutely no objection to the view that the Red Tyranny has to be seen in the context of Russian history as a whole. Lenin is not an aberration. Readers can check out the rest of this sorry story for themselves. ] 00:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

			::Let's please try to put aside this POV debate. Pipes' views deserve to be included in this article, as do the opposing points of view. Clearly Figes, from the above combination of quotes, is rather more balanced between left and right than most writers on the subject, as he criticises Pipes but goes on to concede some of Pipes' criticisms of Lenin. ] 12:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

			== Removed POV Section ==


			I've removed the 'Criticism' section which just gives us various contradictory right and left wing POVs and contains stuff which links Lenin to Stalin's purges which happened 10 years after Lenin's death and for which various other deep historical currents in Russian history could be responsible for (see Vlasov: 'The Origins of Russian Autocracy'). This article should be about Lenin not Stalin. ] 12:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


			: Though Lenin advocated and helped to form a "]," it is often argued by Lenin's opponents on the right, like ], and on his left, like ], that he countermanded ] emancipation and democracy (workers' control through the ]s or ]) by force.<ref name = "Comeback"> {{cite journal
			\| first =
			\| last =
			\| authorlink =
			\| coauthors =
			\| year =1983
			\| month =
			\| title =The Mensheviks' Political Comeback - The elections to the provincial soviets in spring 1918: Vladimir Brovkin.
			\| journal =Russian Review
			\| volume =42
			\| issue =
			\| pages =
			\| id =
			\| url =
			}} 1-50</ref> Historian ] has argued that policies such as handing sweeping power to the state, enforcing rigid party discipline, using terror as a means of political intimidation, and requisitioning grain paved the road to ]. However, the scale was different: three times more political prisoners were executed in the first few months of Bolshevik rule than in over 90 years under the Tsar.<ref name = "book"> {{cite book
			\| last =Stephane
			\| first =Courtois
			\| authorlink =
			\| coauthors =
			\| year =1999
			\| title =The Black Book of Communism
			\| publisher =Harvard University Press
			\| location =
			\| id =ISBN 0-674-07608-7
			}}</ref>

			:Defenders of Lenin assert that these criticisms ignore many central events during Tsarist rule, such as the ], ], and ]. They also mention that the scale of the circumstances which surrounded the Bolsheviks was different as well: a country ravaged by an unprecedently destructive world war, a mass of people kept historically illiterate by Tsarist autocracy, an oppositional force that fought to oust the Bolsheviks from power, etc.{{WW}}

			:] stated that a "river of blood" separated Lenin from ]'s actions because Stalin executed many of Lenin's old comrades and their supporters, grouped in the ]. This was indeed to include Trotsky himself.' ] 12:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)


			:::We ''cannot'' separate Lenin's actions against dissent from the later, more sustained, campaign of Josef Stalin. Stalin and his own form of Terror would not have existed but for Lenin; it is incredibly facile, both in historical and philosophical terms, to suggest otherwise. I realise, Colin, that you do not like any kind of argument at variance with your own, but for all those willing to take an objective view here is what Dimitri Likhachev says on the matter;

			:::''One of my goals is to destroy the myth that the crullest era of repression began in 1936-37. I think that in future, statistics will show that the wave of arrests, sentences and exile had already begun at the beginning of 1918, even before the official declaration, that autumn, of the 'Red Terror'. From that moment, the wave simply grew larger and larger, until the death of Stalin.''
			:::(''Vospominaniya'', St. Petesburg, 1995, p. 118)

			:::Having said that I have no fundamental objection to the above excisions, which are, indeed, lacking in precision, clumsy and very badly phrased. I will, however, work in an appropriate reference to the 'genealogy of terror.'] 00:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::I agree with White Guard. This one question keeps coming up; whether Lenin and Stalin's political legacies can be separated, or whether they were part of the same tradition of brutality. Colin4C, I suggest you read ]. He himself fought in the Red Army in the Civil War and was originally a loyal Communist. Where he criticises Communism, therefore, one ought to pay attention to his critique. He argues that Lenin developed the system of terror and political imprisonment as a natural consequence of Marxism; Stalin just continued this tradition. In comparison, the Tsarist regime was relatively mild and humanitarian - those exiled to Siberia were not maltreated, and seemed to find it remarkably easy to escape. Lenin killed far more people than any Tsar since Ivan the Terrible; Stalin just continued his work. Trotsky is a biased source, far more so than Solzhenitsyn, and was trying to whitewash his own historical reputation by blaming Stalin for the evils of Soviet Marxism. ] 09:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::: Solzhenitsyn, whatever his past, is now a very right-wing Russian Nationalist and supporter of the Orthodox church. His interpretation of Lenin and the Communists as 'cosmopolitans' and somehow alien to the Russian tradition has been disputed by Robert Service in his recent (2000) widely acclaimed biography of Lenin. Russia has a very long history, both of repressive state apparatus and repressive Tsars and of massive revolts against it, by such as Pugachev and Stenka Razin etc. Lenin did not appear from nowhere - the whole of Russian History was pointed his way. Almost all the attempts by reforming liberals in the time of Tsar Nicholas II (now a saint....) were stymied by the Tsar leaving the jerrymandered Duma with no credibility when the Tsar was unexpectadly toppled from his throne in March 1917. As stated before Lenin's repressive measures were in the context of an extremely bloody and vicious (on both sides) civil war against the Whites and foreign regimes, which was very uncertain in its outcome. As for Lenin's responsibility for Stalinist terror, certain historians, such as M. Lewin in 'Lenin's Last Struggle' (1969) disagree and state that Lenin, tragically hampered by his final illness tried his damndest to try to muzzle mad-dog Stalin, before it was too late. Unfortunately it was too late...] 12:44, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::::You might care to dip into Ivan Bunin's Civil War diaries, ''Cursed Days'', to get a slightly different view of of Lenin and the Bolsheviks from Solzhenitsyn. For Bunin-Russia's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature-they were little more than a gang of criminals, ruining his country. I hope Service's biography of Lenin-which I have not read-is better than the similar treatment he gave Stalin, which I had to stop reading because of the simply huge number of cliches and tired old phrases he trots out with depressing frequency (including one reference to 'hanky-panky' in Stalin's entourage; yes, that's right, 'hanky-panky'!). Anyway, Lenin's repression was bloody before the Civil War, and even bloodier afterwards. And of all the things he could have said about Stalin to condemn him for 'rudeness' must, as I have previously argued, count as one of history's greatest understatements. Lenin was not responsible for Stalin's Terror: rather Stalin simply built and improved upon a practice and technique already well-established. Lenin was not parachuted into Russian history: no more was Stalin. ] 23:03, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

			== Amendments and alterations ==

			I've made a number of changes, amendments and alterations. I am willing to discuss any of these with a view to establishing a degree of consensus. I realise that not everybody will agree with my revisions, but it is necessary to achieve some balance, and I hope I have tried to be fair. After all there still remains much with which I do not agree. Anyway, here we go.

			1. ''Iskra'' was co-founded with Julius Martov.

			2. Lenin's goal in WWI was not specifically the defeat of the Tsarist government, but the transformation of an 'imperalist war' into a 'war between classes.' This, of course, would embrace all of the combatants.

			3. The story of the 'sealed train' is a myth: it was 'sealed' only in the sense that those inside were allowed to travel without the usual inspection of documents and passports. It was the German goverment's belief that Lenin would cause political upheaval in Russia. I doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm even knew he existed.

			4. Lenin's opposition to the Provisional Government made the Bolsheviks a likely refuge for all those opposed to its policies. An 'obvious home for the masses' reads as if it has been lifted straight out of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao.

			5. The previous version on the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly was, as I have said possibly the worst piece of bias and political manipulation that I have ever read on Misplaced Pages. I have now merely left it that it was closed down by force because the Bolsheviks lost the elections, an historically exact statement. I have followed this, though, with a sentence emphasising that this marked the beginning of a process of political repression, again an accurate statement of the facts. The long and tedious quotes from Lenin do not serve to advance the position in any meaningful sense.

			6. The left-wing opponents of Lenin, in particular the Social Revolutionaries, did not seek to 'overthrow the Soviet state' but to end the Bolshevik dictatorship. Lenin did not respond by 'shutting down their activities' (how does one shut down activities?), but by initiating widespread persecution of dissidents of all shades of opinion.

			7. The Cheka was established to challenge not just 'counterrevolutionaries' but political opponents of all kinds.

			8. Lenin started the Civil War first by seizing power in October 1917, and second by dismissing the democratically elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. To talk of 'deliberate continution' of the Civil War by anti-Communist forces and the Allied Powers is politically biased nonsense, as is the 'Stalinist' suggestion that this was the cause of the 1921 famine, which reached its height after the war ended. The famine was caused, in large measure, by Bolshevik policy towards the peasantry, in particular forced grain requsitions.

			9. I've given one detailed example of Lenin's support for Cheka excesses.

			10. The White armies were not exclusively 'Tsarist' in composition.

			11. The section on Lenin and imperialism concluded with this intellectual gem; ''This would allow these countries admittance into the Soviet Union rather than simply forcing them to become part of Russia as would be in imperialist practices.'' Excuse me? The people of Georgia and Armenia might have a different view on this question.

			12. NEP for Lenin was at best a tactical retreat. There is no reason to suppose that he would not have approved of Stalin's reversal of the policy in 1928.

			13. Lenin's statement on anti-semitism cannot be allowed to stand in some abstract Platonic sense without reference to the actual fate of Jewish people under early Soviet rule. Otherwise it is no more than vacant propaganda.

			I have thus removed-or balanced out-some of the 'agitprop' elements of the previous version, though what remains is far from ideal. Much more needs to be said about Lenin's early political influences-not all Marxist-his relationship with-and treatment of-former comrades in the RSDP, and the growing dictatorial and terrorist tendency within Russian Communism under his guidance. Above all, it is important to understand that Lenin laid foundations built upon by Stalin, by far his greatest disciple.
			] 08:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

			* I agree with much of this, but I think it is very wrong to say Lenin started the civil war. (Although he knew it would come and was preapared for it.) Lenin lead a revolution that came to power with the support of most of the people. After that, the counter-revolutionaries launched the civil war, which was a war they could not win (even wwith forign support), as the support for the revolutionon was much strunger than the counter revolution. ] 09:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

			::Just imagine if in your own country-wherever that is-a particular party or group seized power in a military coup, proceeding to eliminate most of the opposition and the established and legitimate forms of rule and governance? Now imagine further if in subsequent elections this same party obtained only 24% of the national vote and then simply dismissed-again by force-the newly assembled parliament or congress? Do you imagine your fellow countrymen would simply accept this situation, offering no resistence whatsoever? If you are honest I think the answer has to be no, and the obvious result would be civil disobedience at a minimum level and civil war at a maximum. Well, this was the situation in Russia in 1918. So on an objective level Lenin's actions must be said to have started the Civil War. I think, if you will forgive me for saying so, your view of both the Revolution and the subsequent Civil War is a little old fashioned. The Bolsheviks may have had majority support among the industrial working class in 1917 and early 1918, but this is far from saying that they had the support of the 'people' in the widest sense. Most of the peasants-by far the biggest sector of the population-supported the Social Revolutionaries. The counter-revolutionaries, moreover, were not all 'Tsarist reactionaries', but made up of a wide variety of groups and interests, which largely accounts for their ultimate defeat. What was strongest in 1918 was the peasant desire for land-not socialism-and that was the chief factor in the whole process underway. The Bolshevik promise of land-which in the end was to prove to be a lie-combined with the fear that the landlords might return determined the immediate political shape of Russia. Allied intervention was both peripheral and of minimal impact. ] 22:39, 7 October 2006 (UTC)


			== Editor's POV ==

			I have removed this as it is both factually inaccurate, unreferenced and POV:

			:Terror and political coercion were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under ].

			Terror and political coercion did not grow in intensity over the years - there was a hiatus of some 10 years or so between the end of the Red Terror of the Civil War and Stalin's attacks on the kulaks (1930-32) and the Purges (1934-38), by which time Lenin was long dead. ] 10:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

			::There was not a 'hiatus', as you put it, but an intensification in arrests, mass shootings, suppression of dissent, and the use of concentration camps-all features of the Lenin system. I have given one or two examples in the text, both of a specific and a general nature, but I could drown you in them if you wish. Colin, I'm sorry, but I really do have to question both your political agenda and your understanding of Soviet politics from 1922 to the declaration of the first Five Year Plan, as well as your obvious and unhistorical desire to portray Stalin as some kind of 'bogey-man' or 'mad dog', as you put it, in language ironically reminiscent of Vyshinsky and the Moscow Trails. I will argue this point by point, if you wish; but please have the courtesy to raise the matter here before you reject my contributions as 'POV'. I think I have given you enough grounds since I first entered this page to understand that I cannot be dismissed so lightly ] 23:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::I've just been reading Chamberlin's standard History of the Russian Revolution which he wrote ::
			whilst resident in Russia in the late 1920's. He was an American correspondant for the Christian Science Monitor and was able to research and write about the revolution, including Trotsky's role, totally unmolested by the authorities. He remarks in the intro how all that changed when Stalin came to power and the Soviet Union closed in on itself and became some sort of closed-in madhouse of repression and censorship. From what I have read about the subject the Real Revolution in Russia was the one Stalin launched from 1928 onwards. Lenin and co's 1917 revolution was just pussy-footing around compared with the immense transformation Russia experienced in the Stalin years. And if you think this is just my IMHO I can give you lots of references. Arguably Stalin combined some aspects of Marxist-Leninism with much older systems of Tsarist tyranny and Russian nationalism. Yes, maybe I was wrong to call Stalin a mad-dog, perhaps he should be given the credit due to his own Russian Revolution. ] 18:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::I have no fundamental disagreement with anything you have written here. You are absolutely correct-the real Russian Revolution, it might truly be argued, came in 1928, accompanied by even greater forms of terror than that which were ushered in by the events of 1917 and 1918. It was a transformation of economic and social relationships on a scale hitherto unprecedented in history. It was also, it has to be said, the very policy that the Left Opposition, headed by Trotsky and Zinoviev, had been arguing for in the mid-1920s, when Stalin was still allied with Bukharin and the 'NEP wing' of the Communist Party ] 01:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

			I think the problem here is an attempt at moral equivalence, on both sides of this debate. I have no doubt that Lenin was ultimately the founder of much of what Stalin took to the nth degree, but, at the same time, it's not neutral to use words like "terror" or "coercion", true or not. For example, if I changed around the above disputed sentence, and called it NPOV, I think some of you would disagree:

			:"'''Peace''' and political '''freedom''' were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under ]."

			Now, that's an extreme example (and, for that matter, false), but you get my point. Those on the anti-Lenin side would not like that. And yet they still want it the other way. See, the words "peace" and "freedom" as just as much meaningless platitudes as "terror" and "coercion", especially when deconstucting a figure like Lenin. One man's repression is another man's socialist paradise. Did the Soviet Union under Lenin engage in foundless repression? I'd say yes, but that's ''my'' view. There are multiple sources and opinions. Try stating them without endorsing them. None of this "'Lenin is guitless!' 'No! He's a monster!'" business.

			For example, the argument that "Lenin wasn't as bad as Stalin" is flawed. Whether or not you agree with his motives, the government he built did kill people, undeniably. So what if it was fewer than Stalin? Whether or not Lenin commited evil (and I think we can all agree killing is evil) in the name of good (as ] would put it) is contentious, and not something up for debate on Misplaced Pages: we state the perceptions, not the "facts" (unfortunately or not). Someone will always cry foul of facts, no matter the source. This is about being objective, presenting more than one view (views from reputable sources, of course, but you get my point I hope). And you can't be that by saying someone implemented "terror" and leaving it at that.

			The same problem arises in the debate over the White and Red army. They both, clearly, commited atrocities. It is not right to say one is worse than the other because one's body count is higher, regardless of motive. It's not your responsibility to moralize, especially in the "my guy(s) killed fewer so it's justified" way:

			:"Yes, there was terror, extensive and brutal; but that of the Whites was more than '''matched''' by that of the Reds, and not just against counter-revolutionaries but peope who had been their allies and comrades in the political underground..." -- White Guard

			Is it worse that they betrayed their former comrades? Assuming it's true, yeah. But we're both moralising if we accept that as objectively truth. Matched is no excuse. The Whites were scum, too. Period. "Too" meaning "also". Terror is subjective, unfortunately, to a Western audience that doesn't know the meaning of the word some 90 years after the Russian civil war...so you just can't put it that way. I'd say the same if you were trying to say how great the USSR was.

			Not that I'm suggesting that you're doing this on purpose, but I notice that each side has the habit of countering each others arguments in this fashion...or simply by claiming the other side doesn't understand. Hey, maybe you're not doing this, but it certainly comes off that way...

			I don't mean to be harsh, but, clearly, none of this is getting you nowhere.

			So how ''do'' you make this neutral? Haven't got a clue. I'm just saying what I think you're doing wrong. Cheers -- <font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 03:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

			PS: On the whole Richard Pipes "thing": instead of giving him a title ("ultra conservative", "historian", etc.) why not just call him..."Richard Pipes". Let people look him up on their own.


			::::Thank you for that, but I'm still not quite sure what your point is. That we should use no 'loaded' words in describing a particular political process, system or set of beliefs? That historical assessments should always be free of dynamic descriptive terms or any attempt at judgement? That bland euphemism should serve where possible bias may be suggested? That there was no 'Reign of Terror', merely the 'Reign of a very Large Number of State Sponsored Executions'? Fine it's an intellectual perspective, certainly, and a dare say an honest one; but it is not one that I find either meaningful or useful. I could not imagine writing about twentieth century dictatorships without using the word 'coercion'. And as for the use of the word 'terror', it was Lenin's regime that gave it both currency and legitimacy. So I do think the sentence quoted is useful and descriptive, focusing, as it does, on forms and modes of political practice. You may not happen to like it; but it is true notwithstanding.

			::::The point I was making about the Red Terror in the above was intended for polemical effect, as part of an ongoing debate on these pages. This, I think, is where you will find the most 'loaded' terms, and I freely confess I vigorously countered each point in a deliberate attempt to undermine what I considered to be a particularly facile Lenin bias. The real point here was that the Terror could be justified against genuine political dangers faced by the Soviet regime, against those who would employ it to an equivalent or even higher degree. In this regard it could be perceived as a question of survival, a position being defended by my interlocutor. But could it also be justified against those who simply had a different point of view, who may not have been Bolsheviks but were still socialists and who represented no physical danger to the state? If not, then Terror was simply an end in itself, a part of a new political culture.

			::::Oh yes, you can be as 'harsh' as you like: I welcome robust debate, and indeed let's search for objectivity. But what you can not do is reduce history to 'bloodless discourse' in pursuit of an elusive neutrality. For that, too, serves its own political purpose. ] 05:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

			:I agree that you can't be "bloodless". But my point was that I perceived you guys justifing the actions of one party by pointing out atrocities by the other. See, I don't think your method has been effective (the point by point business)...I mean, it just makes you sound like your defending the Whites over the Reds because you think they didn't kill as many people (the guy you're arguing with is sounding the same way, but in reverse). I know that's not what you mean, but it could sure be read that way. Certainly it's important to outline both sides of the issue, positive and negative, but it's not logical to suggest that you can counter another argument simply by offering a "your guy did the same thing...but it was worse" kind of argument.

			:I mean, I agree about the Red Terror (despite a lot of misconceptions). The results of the Bolshevik revolution were tragic, and a blot on the reputation socialism from which it still hasn't recovered. But many of my fellow lefties might not agree. I hate Ronald Reagan (correction, I loathe Ronald Reagan with every ounce of being I can afford to waste upon him), but he was right about '''one''' thing: it ''was'' the evil empire. But that doesn't justify helping Contras, you know? My point is, there are those who could come up to us and say that the Bolshevik party was entirely justified in every execution (in the same way ] can defend ], a lesser form of the same evil, IMHO), and that calling it a terror (which it was) is intellectually dishonest. But you ''can'' call it the "Red Terror", because that's a name that some historians have given it. I should have been clearer: it's not that you ''can't'' say these things, it's that you have to say them through the mouths of others. Truthfully. The same goes for those that claim the positive. The trick is not to write it yourself (sorta), if you see what I mean. Think of yourself as a documentarian, taking all the interviews and compiling them. Don't worry about getting it "right". Just report it right. For better or for worse, Misplaced Pages is about presenting the views that constitute neutrality, regardless of what is truly, objectively correct, and of the editor's own view. Try writing something that's not "anti" Lenin once in a while. Something that doesn't get your hackles up. The blood is in the other, as Hegel might say, so you're not obligated to provide your own. Hope that clarifies it. Cheers --<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 08:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

			:: Just to reply to one of your points, Yossarian, I am thinking, all things considered, that maybe an adjective to describe where a historian is coming from, politically, or in any other way, is not a bad thing, in the sense that a lot of history writing seems to me to be as much about the author's POV and spiritual autobiography as about what really happened in history in real reality. And maybe it is epistimologically or ontologically impossible, anyway, to describe what really happens in real reality, divorced from our perception of it, our cultural and class background our gender and ethnicity etc. As per some of us leftist's bug-bear Mr Pipes, I am thinking now that he probably does have the right to be called an historian, but that we could qualify that with 'conservative', 'ultra-conservative' or whatever. Similarly if an historian is of a Marxist bent we can call him a Marxist historian or whatever. Certain adjectives also have the beauty of not being absolute terms (which could be philosophically disagreable) but are relative to other terms: thus 'left' and 'right'. Thus I think it is fairly uncontroversial to describe Pipes as 'right-wing' and Trotsky as 'left-wing', even if by some miracle one of the other of them had somehow stumbled on absolute truth. ] 11:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

			:Well, for one thing, "ultra-conservative" is a tad loaded...I mean, he ''is'' (a Reaganite, no?), but it's hard to justify saying that...just conservative would probaly be more apt. The problem is one of perception: if a leftist, for example, looks at "historian Richard Pipes" they might say "That Pipes is an ultra-conservative, and we need to show his bias." Which is what you're saying, I think. Fair enough. But if someone more conservatively minded comes along and sees that addition they might go "They're labelling him a conservative in order to discredit his opinion as pure bias." I don't think that's true at all, but this is about objectivity and consensus...so sometimes we can't do what we think is ''most'' right. Only what is right by will of the mob (okay, it's not ''that'' bad, but you get me). Anyway, if you're dead set on it, I'd go with an noun adjunct, rather than an adjective. Like, his position under Ronnie. Or whatever. That could bring up other issues, but it is an alternative.

			:Still, I think that it'll be a problem no matter what. Like, with your example on Trotsky. He was pretty unabashedly left-wing. When we talk about Trotsky we know what his political position is. It would be redundant to call Trotsky "left-wing" in an article like this (people would laugh). Pipes is a controversial figure in this case. Not merely because he is right wing (he IS), but because by stating that people will think there's an alterior motive. If we were using Trotsky in the same way as the Pipes reference, it's pretty clear why we're using him, and no descriptor is necessary. So why not treat Pipes the same? If people don't know who Leo is, they go to his article. If people don't know who Pipes is, they can go to his. If they know who he is, they already understand his bias, and probably need not be reminded. While, personally, I think that it would be fine to establish the historian's bias, in-article, I suspect others would read too much into it. Cheers--<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 21:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

			::Yossarian, I think, just think, we may be able to do business. You have an interesting and subtle mind, and a reasonable grasp of a few of the issues I have been trying to tackle-with limited effect, I have to confess-on this page. Read over what I have written above since the opening debate on the murder of Nicholas II. In particular I would ask you to pay close attention to the points I have been making in 'What is to be Done?', parts I-III. Then, I think, we might be able to talk in a little more detail. Also go back to the previous version of the main page before I became involved-if the bias does not leap up and slap you on the face I will be amazed. I must say, as a first reaction, that I simply do not agree, can not agree, with your perspective on the writing of history: without engagement it would be reduced to a meaningless and disconected set of facts. Now, take a history book down from your self, any history book, and then open it at any page. Inevitably the historian 'intrudes', defines, clarifies and describes. How else can you write history? If I write a monograph or a paper on the Red Terror I simply have to use the word 'terror'-outwith sourced context-in describing the operation of a given set of policies. You see I would have no problem with any attempt to justify the rate of execution under Lenin, because this would, for me at least, confirm a point-that mass execution became a part of the system, confirmed even by a 'positive' assessment of this process. I would then have to ask why and what purpose it served? History, all history, is engagement. Otherwise it becomes no more than 'listing', a form of second-rate chronology.

			::Now, you will find as you read over my stuff that I do become increasingly polemical; but that, quite frankly, was because I considerd much of the feed-back hysterical and second-rate. I think you have already detected this in the ill-informed and subjective comments about Richard Pipes. I do not mean to be unkind, but the 'debate' has become a little like a tutorial in forms of argument and presentation. It has improved as I have gone along, though there are still problems; amongst other things I am having to repeat the same points time and again because they appear not to have been understood (I'm now about to do it once again in the section below). You have been honest enough to declare your own politics, so I will declare mine, assuming you have not already deduced what they are: I belong to the conservative and libertarian right and have the same feelings about Lenin as you do about Ronald Reagan. However, as I have said before, I believe in simple historical truth, where this can be achieved, an would never knowingly twist the facts to suit my ends. But the facts, I repeat, have to be engaged critically and placed in context: otherwise all meaning and sense is lost. ] 00:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			See, I agree with that. History does need its blood...but the problem is, or as far as I can tell, that Misplaced Pages's neutrality policy puts the kibosh on how much you and I, personally, can put into this. Sometimes it really does come down to numbers. It doesn't ''really'' have to come off the page (it is an encyclopaedia, after all). But you're right. The business of reporting history through neutrality is dry. Very dry. But it's the task we've assigned ourselves.

			Perusing this a tad more, your debate is really coming down to a historical debate. A debate of historical interpretation, I give you that, but a historical one nonetheless. For example, it is truly neutral to present both views of the Tsar's execution, rather than to merely say it is debated, or to favour one position over the other.

			I think you both should focus more on compromise: obviously any strong, preconcieved views of Lenin are not going to change, so you're not getting anywhere with arguing history. What is true is not what has to be determined.

			I don't think much of Lenin either way. Perhaps more negatively than positively...but the man was complex, so I'll give him credit where credit is due. To me he was just another intellectual (heck, an aristocrat...hero of the working class, indeed) cum commie trying to implement ideas he hadn't understood the gravity of, with people dying needlessly as a result (it gets more and more tragic as the years go on...Kim Il-sung, Pol Pot, etc.) Perhaps he was a man who had the well being of his people in mind with all he did, but it's something that can't be determined objectively. Too much blood. I mean, the Allies dropped firebombs on Dresden. Truman dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. These were great evils. But many say they were necessary. Are Truman and the Allies to be villified? They did defeat Hitler. But they did kill innocent people. As did the Bolsheviks. But were they not defending what they percieved as freedom? This is all just defending the ends with the means, which just doesn't work. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, you know? If we can call the Red Terror evil (which it was), then we can call the firebombing of Dresden evil (which it was). Well, we can't on Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is really about neutrality. It's bloodless. It's the worst system...except for all the rest. We respect the views of others to a degree, whether they regard Lenin as a monster or Lenin as a blameless. Synthesis, gentlemen. Synthesis. I don't think the tone here has been one of respect. You guys need to lose the bile. I understand this is polarizing, but is arguing going to help? Cooperate. <small>Collectivize, if you will.</small>

			But yeah, I think I could be safely catagorized as "ultra-left" (free health care, free education, free internet, free speech...I'd scare the hell out of so called "liberals" in the States...), but apologist for the USSR I am not. I just happen to think, aesthetically, hammers and sickles are snazzy...note the sig. So there's my bias.

			Anyway, you can see where I'm coming from. Certainly this debate can find a middle ground. --<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 04:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::I have no disagreement on any of these issues, but I think, perhaps, that you may be in danger of confusing the somewhat partisan comments that may appear here with what I for one would consider appropriate for the article itself. I really have no fundamental problem with concepts of neutrality other than to say that the article itself must have stood in violation of every criterion of such a concept, though only those with detailed knowledge of the subject would understand this. Read what it said-before my edits-about the Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly. Quite frankly this, as I have said, was the worst piece of political bias I have ''ever'' read. It was for this and other reasons (all given above) that I put the POV tag on the page, though I had to fight for its retention. I would never, repeat never used adjectives like 'bad' or 'evil' or anything close to describe the actions of historical figures, no matter how much I believed this to be true; but there are other, more subtle ways of manipulating history without it being obvious to the uninitiated. The page on Lenin came close to ''nothing but manipulation'', sad to say, and it is true of a great many others. I treat people as they treat me, though I never descend to personal insult and invective, so I am not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'lose the bile.' Please read again all my contributions in the above debate. I am a polemicist, yes; but before that, above that and after that I am a historian. ] 05:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::: 'The worst piece of political bias' you have ever read? Really? Have you ever looked at this one for instance?: ]. No mention of White atrocities, White Terror, White genocide against the Jews. NOTHING. ] 16:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::::Yet again I have to tell you that none of this is relevant to a page about Lenin. Please try to think ''coherently'' and take any concerns you have about these issues to the appropriate location. ] 22:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:Sorry...I should have said the bile is more the ''tone'' of the whole thing. Everyone's been ''fairly'' well behaved, but it could be a bit more civil (for example, coming in and proclaiming this article is all a bunch of propaganda won't win you many friends). I dunno. Maybe I'm just reading into it. There is a lot of bias in this piece, definitely. I'm seeing it from both sides, though. I think "He was very concerned about creating a free universal health care system for all, the emancipation of women, and teaching the illiterate Russian people to read and write" is one bias. Who says that? Lenin himself? The person who inserted it into the article? The interpretation of "terror and coercion" becoming part of the Soviet apparatus is another bias. No doubt terror and coercion were parts of the Soviet government, but this is where it gets tricky. It's very much you coming to that conclusion (one I'm inclined to believe, but that's not the point). Misplaced Pages has no problem with that interpretation if it comes from an independant (of Misplaced Pages) historian. Drawing conclusions on subjective historical events is a point of view. If it's written as the point of view of the editor of the article, then it becomes the article's point of view. The articles can't have a point of view. They have one of neutrality. Neutral is not saying the Soviets use terror. Neutral is not saying Lenin was undisputablely social progressivew when it came to women (I think he probably was pretty liberal that way, but it's not my place to state it as fact). You can say both those things without endorsing either.

			:As for your arguments, I think good points have been made (some are subjective to what the reader is ultimately inclined to believe, but so be it). However, history is never going to be truly precise, especially its interpretations. Those points are, indeed, polemical. Polemics are anethma to neutrality. Working toward consensus, rather than toward debate, is a more effective use of your time. White Guard, how can you ''work'' with Colin? Colin, how can you ''work'' with White Guard? You have to put aside what you are inclined to believe, and decide what vies should be expressed. Both the ones you are presenting are important. The debate (which I've read a great deal of) is pretty much repetitive at this point. You're beating a dead horse. You've both presented a lot of good information and sources. Why are you trying to reject some over the others? Why aren't you implementing them into this artice (which, might I add, is rather scant on sources)? It doesn't matter that you don't like Source, or you don't like Solzhenitsyn. Both have something to say, right or wrong. It's not fair to the reader to present only the view that Lenin was evil. It's not fair to the reader to present only the view that Lenin was good. People should be allowed to draw their own conclusions. Cheers, --<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 02:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

			::Hello again comrade Yossarian. Just to say that, though White Guard, has described me (in a Stalinist way) as a saboteur, I have removed his POV piece on post-Lenin terror because:
			*1 - It was stuck in the middle of the article: thus violating chronology. If we follow this logic we would be putting stuff about Maggie's war in the Falklands in the middle of the Winston Churchill article, because, arguably, she was following his agenda. IF we have to include controversial claims by whatever historian about Lenin's legacy vis-a-vis Terror or whatever (and why not the Health Service as well?) they would best be put at the end of the article.
			*2 - He has still not proven (what is in fact false) that Terror was 'growing in intensity', but has rather elided the Terror of the Civil War with Stalin's Terror and joined up the middle with some isolated acts of Terror in the 1920's. In reality in the late 1920's Terror diminished in intensity and then in the 1930's rose in intensity and post-1938 diminished in intensity again and after Stalin died was abandoned as a bad idea by Krushchev who dismantled Stalin's police state. Cheers, Colin ] 11:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

			== More Terror ==

			Could we have some comments about the relevence of this latest piece from White Guard....(which I haven't cut, merely copied...):

			:Terror and political coercion were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under Joseph Stalin. Some early examples of this process may suffice. In August 1924 there was a rising in Georgia against which was suppressed with considerable brutality, the Soviet press later admitting to some 4000 executions. (Vera Brodio, Lenin and the Mensheviks, Aldershot, 1987, p. 155). In Petrograd-now Leningrad-a state of emergency was declared in December 1924, during which several hundred people were arrested, sometimes from the street. The suppression of dissent was also to reach deep within the ranks of the Communist Party itself. Lenin's resolution at the tenth party congress to outlaw 'factions', was used against any view contrary to the established political line. In September 1923 many of the remaining members of the Workers' Opposition were arrested and imprisoned in various labour camps, where most were later to be executed. The anti-faction resolution was also to be used successively against senior party figures, from Trotsky downwards, creating a widespread atmosphere of fear and intimidation throughout the 1920s.

			As for myself I just like to say that:
			*1, All these events happened after Lenin was dead, or non-compis-mentis so arguably have no place in a bio of Lenin. I have certainly never seen them cited in any bio of Lenin I have seen.
			*2, They don't prove that the terror and coercion was 'growing in intensity', just that there were certain acts of terror and coercion between the time of the Civil War and the assault on the kulaks and the Purges by Stalin.
			*3, As for the Georgian killings, do I detect the hand of comrade Stalin? The same Stalin who was criticised by Lenin for his heavy-handed behavior in that same region when the latter was alive.
			*4, If we are to include such comments in a bio of Lenin, then maybe they should be put in a final section called 'Lenin's Legacy' or some such. ] 12:23, 15 October 2006 (UTC)


			::Colin, you know very well that I put these details in to counter your assertion that there had been a ten year 'hiatus', as you put it between the end of the Red Terror and the beginning of Stalin's attack on the kulaks. You see, what I have been arguing for all along is that Lenin and Stalin belong to the same political process; that Lenin defined the system and Stalin built upon his foundations. Stalin is not an aberration, a 'mad-dog', or a Martian; he belongs to Russian history; he belongs to Bolshevism and, ultimately, he belongs to Lenin. Here is a quote from at least one 'bio' of Lenin that you have clearly not read; "Lenin had transformed the dicatatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the Party, and Stalin went further by making the dictatorship of the party into the dictatorship of one man...Stalin finished building Lenin's totalitarian pyramid, and under him the Politburo came to resemble the court of the Inqusition." (Dimitri Volkogonov, pp. 313-4). And still further, "Even when he was seriously ill, Lenin never lost sight of his obsession with 'cleansing Russia for a long time', and he continued to give Stalin instructions to carry out his punitive orders through the Cheka. Stalin was still following Lenin's advice in the 1930s, although in his own original way...he had learned much from Lenin. From the moment in May 1918 when Lenin had signed the order appointing Stalin to control food production in the south of Russia, and had vested him with extraordinary powers, Stalin had become accustomed to making decisions without regrad to justice, to morals, elementary human feeling or mercy." (p.269)

			::I have already said to you-though once again you seem blind to the point-that I could drown you in references to Soviet state terror prior to Collectivisation if you so wish.

			::Stalin was not in Georgia in August 1924. You seem to detect the hand of Stalin in every enormity of the Bolshevik state, quite in keeping with the Manichaean position you have taken on this all along. Please try to resist the attempt to view these questions devoid of historical context.

			::The page is not simply a 'bio' of Lenin but a description of the political culture arising from his writings and actions; so it is both relevant and meaningful to make reference to outcomes and consequences in the course of the article.

			::Colin, I rather though I would have heard from you long since on some of these points. I have also been surprised somewhat by your rather more sober assessment of Russian history in your post on Stalin prior to the above. I suspect Yossarian has given fresh impetus to the old you, arising Dracula style from the crypt. Do not be deceived. ] 01:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:Hey, I think he's been as wrong in going about this as you have, so don't blame me! ;) --<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 05:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			::You may have bamboozled comrade Yossarion, White Guard, but I am not so easily fooled by your incoherent rhetoric and illogicality. For instance I still don't understand your claim that the terror after the Civil War was 'growing in intensity'. Do you honestly expect us to believe that there was more terror after the Civil War than during it? This is simply not true and is just an indication of your right-wing POV - which we know about already. ] 16:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			:::Incoherent rhetoric and illogicality? Illogicality-wonderfull! I would have though everything I said in the above was both clear-and logical-but if you would like further clarification on any specific point-or more information-please ask. Alas, one step forward and two steps back. I have told you before, Colin, that I am immune to childish invective. It's regrettable that you have descended once again to foot-stamping frustration; it serves no useful purpose, merely demonstrating a certain incapacity for mature debate. More important, it's not worthy of you; for I know you can do better. I'm sorry also you have resorted to removing sourced statements-a new tactic on your part-which must be contrary to Misplaced Pages policy. What I have been trying to tell you, repeatedly so, is that terror under Lenin was an established part of the Soviet system, which did indeed grow both in refinement and sophistiction over the years. I also put forward examples to counter an unhistorical and unsourced statement on your part. I freely confess that my politics are conservative-I have never made any secret of that; but as I have also stressed time and again-most recently in the above-I would never allow this to corrupt the historical record. I will be happy to continue discussion with you on the activities of the Cheka and the uses of state terror in the 1920s in relation to the polity established by Lenin, if you so wish. But I urge you not to sabotage the development of this article, and to remove statements simply because you do not like them. ] 22:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			::::Some statements may be sourced, but they are irrelevent to Lenin's career, as they happened after his death, as I pointed out before. And you still haven't given a reference for the untrue statement that terror was 'growing in intensity' in the later 1920's. Objecting to your insertion of controversial right-wing Povs in the middle of the article is not 'sabotage', to use your own 'childish invective' (and didn't Stalin accuse political oppenents he disagreed with as 'saboteurs' I seem to recall.....?).] 10:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

			== Lenin's Theoretical Work ==
			How is there only a single sentence on Lenin's literary productions?! Scarcely any mention of things like "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism," which continues to be discussed in academic circles today. Lenin, whatever else may be said about him, contributed a serious body of intellectual work on imperialism and Marxist theory, which should be noted in this article. ] 11:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			::When a politician and an important historical figure also produces a body of theoretical work the problem then arises of what to include and what to leave out. A life of Marx, for instance, could focus on theoretical work to the exclusion of all else; that of Lenin clearly could not. Ultimately, its a question of proper balance and, above all, ensuring that the whole thing does not become too unwieldy. There is, I think, some mention of Lenin's theoretical work; but by all means work in some more specific references-or a dedicated section-where you feel this is appropriate. ] 22:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

			== ] ==

			I've started an approach that may apply to Misplaced Pages's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on ''in popular culture'' information. I started that last year while I raised ] to ] when I created ], which has become a ]. Recently I also created ] out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, ''']''' 17:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

			== Anti-Semitism ==

			This section does not belong here. More improtantly, it is devoid of any scholarly, objective sources. Seems that there has been Zionist inflitration of this page. It will be removed because if Lenin's stance on Jews is to be vividly described, then there should be equal emphasis given to other nationalities.

			:Those Zionists. I tell ya. They have their hands in everything! Incorrigable scamps! 9/11? The Jews. The Holocaust? The Jews (for some reason). Your mom's hernia? Masons. But them Jews must have had a hand in it. I'm surprised they aren't draining your precious bodily fluids as we speak...] --<font face="Times New Roman">] ]</font> 04:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

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Archive 1 | Archive 2

His name

Could I put in a plea against calling him Vladimir Lenin or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin? His name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. His revolutionary pseudonym was "Lenin" without adornment, or sometimes "N. Lenin" (hence the name "Nikolai" sometimes attributed to him). After 1917 his "official" name was "V.I. Lenin," but he was never called Vladimir Lenin or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin as though Lenin was his surname. He was usually refered to as Lenin or Comrade Lenin and addressed as "Vladimir Ilyich" as is the Russian custom. I would title this article Lenin and explain all this in the second paragraph of the article. Adam 13:50, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree, and he is right about all he said. I think it should be done.

.................................................................................................................................................................... Trotsky wrote the 1938 Britannica entry for Lenin:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1939/1939-lenin02.htm

which he begins:

LENIN, VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV

....................................................................................................................................................................

I agree with the above idea, about renaming the article Lenin (or Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) to avoid confusion about the name, and maybe add a paragraph about the Lenin pseudonym, and how he adapted Lenin later on. The new and current Encyclopædia Britannica article about Lenin is named "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich". However, it also states "Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk, which was renamed Ulyanovsk in his honour. (He adopted the pseudonym Lenin in 1901 during his clandestine party work after exile in Siberia.)". < "Lenin, Vladimir Ilich." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 23 Sept. 2006 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-60986>.> -- Kirkegaard 20:22, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe someone knowledgable could step forward and take some action. I came here looking for an understanding of this very issue. Only not to find it.

Languages

What languages did Lenin speak?

Russian, of course.
German
French
Latin & Greek
English (I'm pretty sure of)

...more?...

Bronks 17:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I am not sure he spoke English.--Nixer 08:08, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

He spoke English alright, he translated a whole book from English to Russian. However, he only learnt to SPEAK the language properly when he visited London in 1902 with Krupskaya. This site contains a personal account by Krupskaya that proves this: . Black-Velvet 13:04, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Polish

Lenin's linguistic powers

When Lenin and Krupskaya arrived in London in about 1900, Krupskaya noted in her diary that they were amazed by the great size of the capital and, although they thought that they knew English, by the fact that they could not understand a word that was said. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dev920 (talk • contribs) 18:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV banner reinserted -- again

This entire article needs to be deleted and rewritten from scratch. Some Lenin fan-club has turned this Misplaced Pages article into a Lenin shrine. It is a complete embarrasment. The Harvard historian Richard Pipes is referred to by some idiot as "the ultra-conservative politician, Richard Pipes". A bogus section on Lenin's non-existent "fight against anti-semitism" has even been included. My suggestion: 1) Contact as many administrators as you possibly can. Alert them to what has been going on with this article for over two years now. 2) Ban the Lenin-fan editors who have abused their Misplaced Pages privileges with regard to this article once-and-for-all. J.R. Hercules 21:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:CIVIL--Konstable 22:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

As for your other comments, I have never read this article fully, nor edited it any one bit. But I have personally heard a recording of Lenin's speech targetting "anti-semitism", so I don't know what you're talking about. As for calling editors "idiots" have a read of WP:NPA also, its an enforced policy.--Konstable 22:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean about Lenin’s fight against anti-semitism beeing “bogus”? There are approx. 7 audio-recorded speeches by Lenin. One of them is his speech against anti-Semitism. It is VERY famous, and represents what he and his party stood for, (i.e. against all forms of racism), despite of what Richard Pipes claims. (He is the real bogus.) There are two traditional conservative lies used to attacked bolshevism. One is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to kill all the Jews for some reason, (this is what Pipes claims.) The other ultra-conservative tradition is to accuse the Bolsheviks of being the leaders of a Jewish world conspiracy to take over the world in the name of Zion. (The tsar and the white guards used to say this about Lenin.) Neither is true. Therefore it is important for an honest encyclopedia to bring forward Lenin’s stand against anti-semitsim. --Bronks 08:08, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

J.R. Hercules has re-inserted the {{POV}} tag again, and I have removed it. He has not expressed any futher concerns and his previous concerns have been responded to without any comment from him, so I don't see how the tag is called for. If anyone has some concerns feel free to bring them up and put up the tag with reasons. But I'm sorry reasons like "Lenin-fan editors" controlling the article and "idiots" putting in false information (which two users have responded to) are not good reasons.--Konstable 08:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Lenin is not known for his his "fight against anti-semitism". It is not central to his identity or his historical significance. In the limitied space that wikipedia offers we must remain focussed on the core historical truths. This is neither a 300 page biograpghy nor a one-page political brochure. Lenin will be remembered as integral in fighting the Tsar, creating a world-influencing strongly-disciplined top-down partisan organization, toppling the post-Tsarist Russian government, and winning the subsequent cinil war. Secondarily one might argue that the NEP was an important issue to discuss. Everything else smacks of hero-worship and rank partisanship.

........ In fact, many agree that this page is one of the worst examples of POV on all of wikipedia. I am not going to insert the POV tag. What is worse is that I am going to abandon reading this entry, and related entries and mourn the destruction of what should have been a masterful idea; that of an open encyclopedia. 70.226.144.230Phillip October, 2006

Name Pronounciation

I think the pronounciation of Lenin's name should be in something more popular than Ogg.

I don't think we CAN use anything more popular. .mp3s (and the like) require a license, or some such, and .oggs are free...Misplaced Pages being the 💕 (free as in gratis). I should say I don't know this for a fact, so correct me if I be wrong.--Yossarian

02:13, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

External links

I think TeaDrinker is wrong about http://www.vilenin.info/.

http://www.vilenin.info/ have voting about carrying out of a body of Lenin from the Mausoleum, except for that a site contains more than 586 comments of high quality with various estimations about Lenin's activity and the Mausoleum.

Please, see http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:TeaDrinker#Lenin.27s_Mausoleum

With respect, Aleksandr 82.208.121.130 22:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Lennin's Embalment

The article states that after Lennin died, it was intended that he should be cryogenically frozen for future revival but that this was not done for a 'variety of reasons'. Shouldn't the article state what those reasons were instead of being vague? I don't know what they were but hopefully someone will. ::..SMI..:: 09:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

The user who keeps on adding the tags has not made any efforts to make any futher comments apart from the ones that have been strongly refuted without any attempt at defense from him. I don't want to be involved in petty revert wars over this, but if no rationale for his tag will appear here any time soon I will remove it again and take action against this user on the basis of uncivility, personal attacks and disruption. Does anyone find this unreasonable or have any other thoughts on this?--Konstable 21:29, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you. As for the laborious 'Hercules' - I deprecate his attempts to vandalise 'Lenin Shrines'. I have one of these in my back garden and it is the pride of the neighbourhood. Anyway, better sign off, it's my turn to do duty under the bed of the local Neo-Con - 'Red Rosa'

NPOV banner reinserted (again)

Reasons:

1) "Lenin's fight against anti-semitism" - This sounds like something from out of a campaign brochure; it's not appropriate phrasing in an encyclopedia article. More to the point, despite his speech quoted in the article, Lenin actually did very little about anti-semitism, and, in fact, merely replaced Tsarist anti-semitism (which he railed against) with a Communist anti-semitism:

"Although Lenin found anti-Semitism abhorrent, the regime was hostile toward Judaism from the beginning. In 1919 Soviet authorities abolished Jewish community councils, which were traditionally responsible for maintaining synagogues. They created a special Jewish section of the party, whose tasks included propaganda against Jewish clergy and religion. Training of rabbis became impossible..."http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+su0128) User:J.R. Hercules

The Bolsheviks were atheists and criticized all religions. But they were not against jews as a people, the were in no way racist. They were above all internationalists, and believed in for the equal rights for all people, no matter color or race. And as Lenin's speech explains, he fought against anti-semitism, which had been a problem in tsarist and capitalist russia, you can’t lie and say that’s not true. Bronks 20:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

During the Civil War, the Bolshevik areas were a haven for the Jews who were granted unheard of authority, with one even being put in charge of the Red Army. By contrast when the White Army took Ekaterinburg from the Bolsheviks the White Army massacred 2,000 of the Jewish inhabitants just for the fun of it. The Tsarist anti-Semitism which you talk about was continued by the Whites not the Reds. The White leadership was viciously anti-Semitic and used the 'Protocals of the Elders of Zion' as their bible when carrying out their pogroms. Indeed the pro-Semitic policies of Lenin and the Bolsheviks were accounted an utter scandal by their Jew-baiting opponents:

'Previously, Russians have never seen a Jew in a position of authority: neither as governor, nor as policeman, nor even as postal employee...Now the Jew is on every corner and on all rungs of power. The Russian now sees the Jew as judge and executioner. He meets Jews at every step...issuing orders, working for the Soviet regime...' (I.M. Bikerman quoted in 'The Fate of the Romanovs' (2003) by G. King and P. Wilson pages 186-187). Colin4C 20:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

2) Anti-Communist historian and ultra-conservative politician Richard Pipes has argued that policies such as... - As I already pointed out (and which no one attempted to refute), this is a blatently NPOV and laughable description of Richard Pipes, a Harvard professor widely considered among historians of Soviet Russia as one of the leading figures in the field. He is a historian, nothing more. User:J.R. Hercules

Pipes had a political role advising Reagan, (who was an anti-communist - see for instance his support for HUAC) during the Cold War and latterly the neo-cons. Colin4C 19:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Pipes is a conservative politician first, a historian second (if even that). Bronks 20:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

3) However, the nature of these so-called "excesses," as well as Lenin's reasons behind their defense, remain unnamed. - The nature of the "excesses" of the Cheka's terror, referring to Orlando Figes' writing, are specified in Figes' book, and with a great amount of detail. For instance, he recounts how, when Lenin passed Dzerzhinsky a note with a crossed-off figure of "1500 counter-revolutionaries in prison", Dzerzhinsky had those 1500 immediately executed, because he thought that's what Lenin wanted. It wasn't what Lenin wanted in that particular case, but it reveals the kind of environment of random, mass executions which existed under Lenin's leadership.

This whitewashing of Lenin's acts is the reason why this article requires an NPOV banner. With some effort and cooperation, the article can easily be made neutral, factual, and encyclopediac. J.R. Hercules 14:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. Trotsky, Lenin's comrade was jewish! and Richard Pipes IS ultra-conservative and very closed minded and unintelligent if you ask me. so please can you stop claiming and get a life

In fact the Soviet Russia (and early USSR) was the first state in history where there was capital punishment for anti-semitism invented in the criminal code.--Nixer 15:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Might I suggest that you have a look at the actual conduct towards those who practiced Judaism during the campaign against religion in 1921. States should be judged on the basis of what they do, not what they say they do. If they really did hang people for expressing an anti-Jewish opinion-which seems a bit extreme-, then this would have to have included many Soviet state functionaries. On this whole question please see 'What Is To Be Done-Part III' below

White Guard 23:05, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Killing the Tsar

I would dispute this black-washing of Lenin in the article:

'Sverdlov made a quick decision to execute the Tsar and his family right away, rather than having them being taken by the Whites. Sverdlov later informed Lenin about this, who agreed it had been the right decision, since the Bolsheviks would rather not have let the royal family become a banner for the White Movement.'

According to the very well researched 'The Fate of the Romanovs' (2003) by G. King and P.Wilson the decision to kill the Tsar was made by the Ekaterinburg Soviet, who then telegraphed Sverdlov to get his approval to kill the Tsar and then transport the Tsar's family into Bolshevik territory. Sverdlov agreed. However the Ekaterinburg Soviet took this opportunity to kill the royal kids and the Tsarina as well, thus hoodwinking Sverdlov and Lenin as to their true murderous intentions. And no - Anastasia didn't survive... Colin4C 20:45, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, just to make sure that there is no attempt to 'white-wash' Lenin and his fellow gangsters here are the facts behind the murder of Tsar Nicholas and his family.

For the Ural Soviet the presence of the royal family in Ekaterinburg was a source of unease, particularly with loyal armies close by. They decided on death as the only solution to their problem, but were unwilling to act on this without the approval of Moscow. Isiah Goloshchekin, a member of the Soviet and a personal friend of Sverdlov, was sent to Moscow to sound out the feelings of the council of commissars. While in Moscow he stayed with Sverdlov, who told him that the government was still considering puting Nicholas on trial, an idea favoured by Trotsky.

This changed when White forces drew ever closer to Ekaterinburg. Goloshchekin returned with the news that the fate of the family had been delegated by Moscow to the Ural Soviet. With the Czech Legion closing in the decision was taken for immediate execution.

It was 'the fate of the Tsar', which was the question, not 'the fate of the family'. The Ekatarinburg Soviet took the decision, in the light of the military situation, to execute the Tsar, rather than put him on trial - with the tacit support of Sverdlov (not Lenin, who was at this time fully occupied battling the insurrection of the Left SR's in Moscow).

'Such reluctant provisional permission, predicated on the military situation in the Urals, clearly only referred to Nicholas himself. He was to be the only member of the Imperial family put on trial; neither the empress, though popularly believed to have been complicit in the disintegration of the empire, nor her children, were to be implicated or charged with any crime. On this point, as he again told Sverdlov, Lenin was adamant: he vehemently opposed wholesale executions, such as that proposed by Ekaterinburg, which would include the royal children. This, he repeated, would have a negative effect on public opinion, both in Russia, where it would concentrate discontent against the Bolsheviks, and abroad, where it would be viewed as a moral question' (King and Wilson 2003 'The Fate of the Romanovs': 288) Colin4C 15:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

News of the death of Nicholas was reported by Sverdlov, with Lenin's approval, at a meeting of the Executive Council on 18 July, though no mention was made at the time of the fate of the rest of the family. Both Lenin and Sverdlov, however, knew that the entire family was dead. Tapes of Kremlin telegrams were later discovered, one of which contains the following; "Tell Sverdlov that the whole family met the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will perish during the evacuation." The official statement that the family had been moved from Ekaterinburg was a deliberate lie.

Your Kremlin tape transcript seems to contradict the point you are making viz: 'Tell Sverdlov...'. If Sverdlov ordered the executions it would be pointless telling him what he already knew! Your reference to 'Kremlin telegrams' is a bit mystifying, I imagine that a telegram communication would come from elsewhere (i.e. I don't think the Soviets telegraphed each other inside the Kremlin building)? If so who is giving official policy advice to the head-men of the Soviet regime???? (the ghost of Rasputin maybe??? or maybe the 'White Guard'?) Colin4C 15:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

A year after the event the government finally admitted that the whole family had been killed, though they tried to blame the Social Revolutionaries for the act, claiming that they did so in order to discredit the Bolsheviks. But the links between the Urals and Moscow was later made patently clear by Trotsky:

"My next visit to Moscow took place after the fall of Ekaterinburg. Talking to Sverdlov, I asked in passing: 'Oh, yes, and where is the Tsar? 'It's all over,' he answered. 'He has been shot.' 'And where is the family?' 'And the family along with him.' 'All of them?', I asked, apparently with a touch of surprise. 'All of them,' replied Sverdlov. 'What about it?' He was waiting to see my reaction, I made no reply. 'And who made the decision?', I asked. 'We decided it here. Ilych believed that we shouldn't leave the Whites a live banner to rally round, especially under the present difficult circumstances.' I did not ask any further questions and considered the matter closed. Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of the summary justice (sic) showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy, but also in order to shake up our own ranks to show that there was no turning back, that ahead lay only complete victory or complete ruin...This Lenin sensed well."

We have only Trotsky's word for this. Also, the historical records show that Trotsky was actually in Moscow at the time of the executions, not at the front as he claimed, so he got that bit of the story wrong.... Also in a later book he told a completely different story about the executions, claiming that Stalin ordered them! Colin4C 15:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Neither Lenin nor Sverdlov had been 'hoodwinked'; and as the Communist regime grew in strength they showed their pride in the act by renaming Ekaterinburg as Sverdlovsk.

'the Communist regime', maybe, but not Lenin, he did not live long enough to see Stalin's perversions of his ideals Colin4C 15:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

White Guard 23:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Response

1. The Ekaterinburg Soviet did not take this decision in isolation; it specifically sought the approval of Moscow, both in Goloschekin's visit to the capital and in subsequent telegrams. The fate of the whole family, not just Nicholas, was delegated to the local Soviet. Both Sverdlov and Lenin were involved throughout, Sverdlov actively and Lenin tacitly. The family would not have been murdered if Lenin had issued orders to the contrary.

The Ekaterinburg Soviet had considerable autonomy and often disagreed with and disobeyed Moscow's directives. For a start off, months before the executions, they detoured the train carrying the Moscow bound Tsar to Ekaterinburg. They had their own agenda...

Moscow's agenda was to put the Tsar on trial. Sverdlov and co had no plans to put the children on trial, as far as I'm aware, and it would be still more bizarre to try the Tsar and then murder the kids without a trial. And as I mentioned before, at this time Lenin was distracted by a mini-revolution of the Left SR's in Moscow itself which almost toppled the Bolshevik regime. He was very far from being an omnipotent dictator. Colin4C 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

2. There was every point in informing Sverdlov that Moscow's orders had been carried out. When raised at the executive council meeting Lenin said not a word, either in surprise or disapproval.

That doesn't prove anything. Colin4C 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

3. The Kermlin tape is an exchange of telegrams between Moscow and Ekaterinburg, and make it clear that the cover story that the family had been moved was a deliberate lie. Your heavy-handed sarcasm is wasted on me.

I'm still not sure about the import of your telegram...or who it was addressed to....it can't be Sverdlov himself or it wouldn't start 'Tell Sverdlov'....and why remind Sverdlov of what is 'official policy'? Surely Sverdlov would know what official policy is....

As far as I'm aware the Ekaterinburg Soviet telegraphed Moscow with a message giving them a fait accompli. Not much Sverdlov or Lenin could do about that. Colin4C 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

4. Trotsky lied? It's possible; but why? What had he to gain? He approved both of the act itself and the political logic leading up to it.

Not necessarily lied. Maybe just a faulty recollection of things which happened many years ago. There is certainly a discrepancy between his recollection of his exact whereabouts at the time of the executions and what other historical sources tell us. Colin4C 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

5. Mass arrest; execution without trial; secret police and official terror; suppression of dissent. These were some of Lenin's 'ideals', amplified and improved by Stalin, by far his most effective disciple.

These were not Lenin's ideals but rather emergency measures taken during the Civil War. Lenin - too late - tried to relieve Stalin of power. The dark ages and mass-killings in the Soviet Union started when Stalin overturned Lenin's NEP policy, inaugerated agrarian communism and then killed all his former Bolshevik colleagues....Stalin was more an effective disciple of Tsars such as Ivan the Terrible than Lenin.....Something about those Asiatic steppes which encourages despotism I guess: look at Genghis Khan (not a Marxist-Leninist) for instance...

Colin4C 01:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC) White Guard 23:33, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Second Response

Thank you for answering my points. It's not clear to me, though, who you are because of the anonymous IP address. Can you be the same Colin4C? If so I applaud your slightly more sober tone. Well, this may be an argument destined to go round in circles forever, but here is my second response.

1. Inevitably, given the political circumstances, there had to be a high degree of administrative devolution and local initiative; but on such a crucial matter no Soviet would have acted without central authority. Sverdlov was involved from beginning to end. The trail was Trotsky's idea; mass murder served the purpose better. I'm am not surprised the true facts were covered in an official fog: it was a shameful act.

2. You must surely be aware of Lenin's intellectual style? Every point was argued flat into the ground, even on quite trivial issues. To say that his silence on this crucial matter 'does not prove anything' is highly disingenuous.

3. Telegrams of this nature would pass to secretaries or lower functionaries before the content was passed on. Sverdlov was not being advised of a fait accompli but of the fulfilment of a pre-agreed action.

4. On such a crucial conversation-especially when it touched on a matter close to his heart-I would have assumed Trotsky would be reliable. The details he reports are certainly highly specific. Are you saying he lied about Lenin's approval of the murders?

Trotsky reports, many years after the event, a conversation with Sverdlov, who in turn reports (for whatever reason) what an absent Lenin was supposed to have said and authorized at some time in the past. Trotsky then purports to or really does believe that what Sverdlov has told him about Lenin is an accurate statement of Lenin's actions and views. I think that this is what they call 'hear-say' evidence in a court of law: x told me that y said such and such etc...But whatever Trotsky's beliefs did he even remember the conversation accurately in the first place? Granting this, did Sverdlov himself report the truth? Maybe Sverdlov wanted to shift the responsibility...or maybe he thought that Lenin as 'the great leader' should be given the 'credit' for the executions. Who knows? Colin4C 04:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

5. NEP was a departure from the 'socialist' ideal. Stalin, it might be said, rescued this by returning Russia to the horrors of War Communism.

White Guard 01:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Once again I have to stress that Trotsky's report is highly specific for a man who may have been uncertain about the details. There are some conversations-and incidents-that never dim, no matter how much time passes, and some forms of hear-say evidence are admissible in a court of law. Certainly either Sverdlov or Lenin or both deserve the 'credit' for the wholesale murder of the royal family, which is precisely the point I am making. White Guard 23:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What Is To Be Done?

Oh dear, oh dear; this whole article demonstrates a quite appalling political bias.

Here are some of the worst examples;

CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY. We are told that the Bolsheviks closed down the Constituent Assembly "with the backing of the overwhelming majority of the workers in both of Russia's major cities", though this simply glosses over the fact that this was another coup, comparable to that of October 1917, designed to ensure that a political minority retained control of absolute power. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' was, in practice, never more than the dictatorship of the Bolshevik Party. Quotations are used here to support a distinctly political-and undemocratic act-as an intellectual and historical necessity. This is the worst example of manipulation and bias that I have ever come across in Misplaced Pages.

SOVIET DEMOCRACY. We are told that Lenin 'advocated and helped to form' a 'Soviet democracy', though the whole drift of Leninism since 1903 had been towards political professionalism and centralised control. Lenin's concept of 'democratic centralism' militated against effective democracy by silencing debate after decisions had been taken; and the political organisation of the Bolsheviks ensure that the Soviets quickly ceased to represent any dissenting views.

OPPRESSION. The Soviet state is defended against the use of secret police and labour camps on the entirely disingenuous grounds that these had been used by the Tsars! The Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday and World War I are then alluded to for some bizarre and unexplained reason to excuse forms of oppression used by the Bolsheviks. "They also mention that the scale of the circumstances which surrounded the Bolsheviks was different as well: a country ravaged by an unprecedentaly destructive world war, a mass of people kept historically illiterate by Tsarist autocracy, an oppositional force that fought to oust the Bolsheviks from power etc." Make what you will of that semi-literate and intellectually incoherent nonsense. Trotsky and a 'river of blood'? If there was such a river he began the flow.

WORKERS STATE. Consider this: "The Leninist vision of revolution demanded a professional revolutionary cadre that would lead the working class in their conquest of power and centralize economic and administrative power in the hands of a workers state." This could be straight out of official Soviet publications from the Brezhnev era. As a statement of historical and political fact it is utter tosh.

THE TSAR'S CRIMES. So the Bolsheviks intended to put the Tsar on trail for his 'crimes against the Russian people'? What crimes might these have been? Incidentally, Lenin was not an 'auxiliary' in Sverdlov's decision to murder the Tsar and his family; he was instrumental in the whole process.

The tsar was a dictator who oppressed the russian people. He was overthrown by the russian people and (like Saddam Hussein today) should have been put to trail for his crimes against the russian people! Bronks 10:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

What about the millions killed in the battlefields of the Eastern Front - sent there by the Tsar? Also the Tsar was not above promoting a few pogroms against the Jews now and again and also lending his weight in a trial to convict a Jewish school-teacher accused of ritual murder! Lenin wanted the Tsar tried in Moscow, unfortunately the Ekaterinburg Soviet had different ideas.Colin4C 12:52, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned above Sverdlov (not Lenin, who was not consulted) gave the go-ahead to the Ekaterinburg Soviet for a trial of the Tsar, or if that was not possible, due to the exigencies of war, his execution. Killing the rest of the family was the decision of the Ekaterinburg Soviet alone. Lenin, in his wisdom, of which he had plenty, thought that killing the children would be a public relations disaster (which is what turned out to be the case). Lenin was a very astute politician, who acted with a lot more moderation than his succesor: for instance accepting foreign aid for the famine, re-establishing capitalism with the NEP etc etc. Colin4C 23:00, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

CIVIL WAR AND FAMINE. On this point the bias become almost palpable. We are told that the 'deliberate contintuation of the civil war' by the White forces and their allies 'caused widspread famine and the death of millions.' The inference here is that those opposed to the Bolsheviks, the October coup and all the undemocratic actions taken thereafter should simply have gone away and accepted the new realities. This is a bit like saying that the actions of a few colonial rebels in 1776 led to the deaths of thousands of innocent people, to take but one example. Not a word is said about the effects of War Communism and the seizure of thousands of tons of corn-including seed corn-by Bolshevik agents, the true cause of the mass famine.

The Bolsheviks didn't start the civil war, the were not responsible for the horrors of the white guards and invading forign troops. Also, the reds could not have survived and won unless they had had the absolute majority of the russian people on their side. Bronks 10:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

LENIN'S FIGHT AGAINST ANTI-SEMITISM. Apart from a single speech, what form did this take? What way, in other words, did the Soviet state encourage and support the practice of Judaism? One might as well deduce the actual practice and structure of Leninist government from 'The State and Revolution.'

Lenin and the bolsheviks fought against anti-semitism, don't pretend anything ells. Bronks 10:55, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

This wasn't just talk. As I mentioned above, the Bolshevik regime puts Jews in positions of power and authority for the first time in Russian history. Meanwhile the pro-Tsarist White Guard was massacering any Jew they could get hold of. The White leadership had the same feelings about the Jews as corporal Adolf and believed that the Bolshevik regime was part of a Jewish World Conspiracy orchestrated by 'the Elders of Zion' (who apparantly met in a Jewish graveyard in Prague and there decided on a fiendish plan to take over the world...Doh!).Colin4C 13:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I have NEVER read an article on Misplaced Pages in more desperate need of a major overhaul; and until such time as this is carried out I intend to reinstate the NPOV label for all of the above reasons. I will he pleased to argue the case on a point by point basis if anyone wishes. White Guard 01:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Here are some words by Trotsky on the revolution and red terror during the civil war:

In Petrograd we conquered power in November, 1917, almost without bloodshed, and even without arrests. The ministers of Kerensky’s Government were set free very soon after the revolution. More, the Cossack General, Krasnov, who had advanced on Petrograd together with Kerensky after the power had passed to the Soviet, and who had been made prisoner by us at Gatchina, was set free on his word of honor the next day. This was “generosity” quite in the spirit of the first measures of the Commune. But it was a mistake. Afterwards, General Krasnov, after fighting against us for about a year in the South, and destroying many thousands of Communists, again advanced on Petrograd, this time in the ranks of Yudenich’s army. The proletarian revolution assumed a more severe character only after the rising of the junkers in Petrograd, and particularly after the rising of the Czechoslovaks on the Volga organized by the Cadets, the S.R.s, and the Mensheviks, after their mass executions of Communists, the attempt on Lenin’s life, the murder of Uritsky, etc., etc. Communism and Terror -Bronks 19:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

What Is To be Done-part II

Some of the points I raised above have been questioned, but not all. Here is my repsonse;

1. The Tsar was an autocratic ruler, not a dictator; and to attempt to compare him with Saddam Hussein is ludicrous. I would ask people to try to think beyond petty prejudice, and to look at the specific circumstances of history, not to attempt to reduce everything to a single common denominator. I am reminded of a headline in Die Rote Fahne, the German Communist party newspaper, greeting the minority cabinet of Heinrich Brunning in 1930 with Faschismus ist schon da! (Fascism is now here). They were to find out three years later just how wrong they had been.

2. Is the Tsar really to be blamed for taking his country into the First World War, in fulfilment of his treaty obligations? Well, in that case an indictment should also be made out against Raymond Poicaré, Herbert Asquith, Kaiser Wilhelm and the like. It seems so unfair that Nikkie should carry such a burden on his own.

There actually was an idea mooted at this time, amongst some Britons, to 'Hang the Kaiser'. Asquith got away with it though....as did Lloyd George (despite the debacle of 'Wipers III')Colin4C 02:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

3. What pogroms did Nicholas authorise? The trial of the Tsar, as far as I am aware, was Trotsky's project, not Lenin's.

The notorious 'Easter Massacre' of Jews (50 killed, 600 beaten and tortured) at Kishinev in 1903 was authorized by good old 'Nickie'. Leaflets inciting the violence were printed by the Ministry of Interior Press. Nickie commented with satisfaction that Jews 'have got above themselves' and 'ought to be taught a lesson'.

After this we just lose count of the number of pogroms: there were 690 separate incidents in 1905 alone, including 1000 killed in a single incident at Odessa. These were not all orchestrated by Nickie, but there was a feeling amongst the authorities that if Jews were being killed by an anti-Semitic mob - men, women and children - it was best not to intervene. In 1906 Nickie (evidentally not divining the thoughts of Lenin on this matter) refused requests to rescind anti-Jewish laws. Some of his favorite reading at this time was the 'Protocals of the Elders of Zion'. Says Nickie about this farrago of nonsense: 'What depth of thought! Everywhere one sees the directing and destroying hand of Jewry!' Nickie was also whole hearted in his support of the para-military 'Black Hundreds' (who were a sort of Ku Klux Klan for Jews). However Nickie did suffer a set-back when a Jew was aquitted for the ritual murder of a child in 1913, despite him actively perjuring the evidence and knowing full well that he was innocent: 'all Russia has suffered a defeat' commiserated the official government newspaper. Colin4C 02:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

4. I said nothing in 'What Is To Be Done?' about the murder of the Tsar and his whole family; but all I have to say on this matter is covered above.

5. The Bolshevik's did not start the Civil War? Well, it's a point of view, certainly; others might argue that they did so both by their illegal seizure of power in October 1917 and by their dismissal of the democratically elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. You may not like this, but if the Reds were justified in making a 'Revolution' the Whites were equally justified in opposing it. If you understood anything about the history of Russia in this period you would see that the horror was not confined to one side alone. The Communists survived for all sorts of strategic reasons, controlling all interior lines of communication and having a co-ordinated command structure, unlike the Whites. They did indeed have the support of the peasants, fearful that a White victory might reverse some of their gains. The peasants had to wait until 1928 to understand that they faced a far greater enemy.

5. Please have the goodness to re-read and, more to the point, try to understand the question I am raising in regard to Lenin's alleged campaign against anti-semitism. I am not pretending anything: I am, rather, asking for practical examples of Lenin's campaign. So, in what way did Lenin and the Bolsheviks fight anti-semitism; and once again, what steps were taken to promote and defend the Jewish religion in Russia? Both my respondents clearly see the Jewish people in purely racial terms; I see Judaism as a religion. Were Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Sverdlov and the like practicing Jews? I suspect that if we look at the effect of the Bolshevik seizure of power on Jewish congregations a different picture will emerge.

Yes, but if you actually were a Jew in Lenin's Russia, where would you rather be: in the territory of the White Army, subject to their pogroms, or in the territory of the Reds, subject to their allegedly dim view of the Jewish faith? Colin4C 01:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

6. Could I have examples please of the White leadership's views on the Jewish question? What, for example, did Anton Denikin say or do in the matter? Please do not confuse wholesale pogroms with specific political policies. Your points about Hitler and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have no bearing on the matter, and were not raised by me. Once again I have to say that your sarcasm says more about your own intellectual immaturity than offering an effective counter to any argument I have presented.

I think the Protocols were forged by the Tsarist secret police. Its prophecies of Jewish world domination were seen by the Whites to be fulfilled in the Soviet Regime. Hitler, who also read the book, had the same idea that the Soviet Regime was an integral part of the Jewish World Conspiracy, which inspired him to write his own book: Meine Kampf and then to attack Russia...(moral: books can be bad for you)Colin4C 03:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

7. Thank you for that passage from Trotsky. Now, please have a look at the course of the Revolution in Moscow and attempt to draw some contrast.

Only these points were made to question my argument set out above. Not a word has been said about the Constituent Assembly, Soviet Democracy, Oppression or the Workers State, or in response to my points about the contribution of War Communism to the mass famine during the early 1920s, particularly in reference to the confiscation of seed corn.

Lenin has his advocates; that's fine: but this is supposed to be an encyclopedia article, not a political appreciation. I will make my own POV plain: I loath Lenin and I consider the Bolsehvik coup to have been a disaster for the Russian people, which even now they are still struggling to overcome. I would, however, never allow subjective views to influence an attempt at historical detachment. This article is not detached, for all of the above reasons, and that is why I put an NPOV label on it. This has been removed for no very coherent reason. I am relatively new to Misplaced Pages; but does this attempt to undermine legitimate and closely argued objections over the lack of neutrality of an article not constitute a form of vandalism? I will reinstate the tag because my arguments have not been properly addressed. If an edit war results I assume I will have to seek some form of official intervention. But I do emphasise again please do not attempt to insult me by sarcasm or any other childish device; it makes no difference to me personally, I assure you, and is intellectually counter-productive. White Guard 00:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I, personally, think putting NPOV labels on articles (rather than editing them, which you are totally free to do) is intellectually counter-productive as is your disingenuous statement:

'I loath Lenin and I consider the Bolsehvik coup to have been a disaster for the Russian people, which even now they are still struggling to overcome. I would, however, never allow subjective views to influence an attempt at historical detachment' .

Anyway we all salute your manly imperviousness to sarcasm and your lack of a sense of humour: I however equally am equally impervious to your threat (once you've lost the intellectual argument?) 'to seek some form of official intervention' and your wild accusations of 'vandalism'. You'll be accusing us of 'Bolshevism' next, no doubt.....(and as for the Ekaterinburg business I have a valid alibi...)Colin4C 01:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I made no threat or accusation, but simply raised what I consider to be a legitimate procedural question. You removed a tag without proper justification, which I thought might be considered as a form of vandalism. I can assure you that I never make 'wild accusations' of any type; it is not in my nature. I though it might help if I made my own POV plain, but emphasise again that I would never allow it to contaminate proper historical discussion. NPOV tags must serve some purpose; otherwise they would not exist. What I am saying is this article does not correspond to acceptable standards of encyclopedic detachment, and deserves to be flagged up as a problem until such time that it does.

I am afraid your humour escapes me. My problem, no doubt. White Guard 02:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

White Atrocities

Just to point out that during the Civil War the Whites distinguished themselves in many ways against the Reds. Take Semyonov for instance, who with the support of the White Gov of Siberia 'murdered, raped, and pillaged his way from the Pacific to the Urals, leaving behind a wave of human misery unequaled even by the most virulent Red Army leaders...Hundreds of towns and villages were burned to the ground, peasant farms were destroyed, women and children tortured and raped. In all more than a hundred thousand men, women and children were killed by Semyonov and his division, a number without parallel by any other single leader, White or Red, in the Civil War.' (King and Wilson 2003 The Fate of the Romanovs 187-188); see also Henry Barlein (1926) The March of the Seventy Thousand).

Your evidence? Certainly there is some evidence that the Cossacks fighting on the White side conducted purges of Jews and of suspected Bolshevik sympathisers, but in all my extensive reading on the topic (see Orlando Figes' seminal work A People's Tragedy, 1919-1924) I have never come across allegations that the Whites indiscriminately murdered peasants. Please quote the precise source of your information. 82.110.125.83 08:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry forgot to login before signing the above contribution Walton monarchist89 08:24, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I've added my reference and given some further reading above. According to King and Wilson Semyonov, though indeed a 'rogue cossack', was under the direct command of Admiral Kolchak, who was aware of what he was doing but did nothing to stop him. Semyonov's atrocities were the subject of a hearing by the US Senate Committee on Labour and Education in 1922 who took evidence from General William Graves, a member of the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia at the time. Colin4C 11:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

He is at Grigory Semyonov. PatGallacher 21:38, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Just looked also at the White Army article: White movement. Unlike this article's inclusion of criticisms of Lenin there is NOTHING AT ALL critical of the Whites in the White article. The anti-Semitic and other atrocities committed by the White armies go blithely unmentioned. Despite this whitewash of the Whites NOBODY has put a 'neutrality disputed' notice on it or threatened to get the admins involved etc etc. Makes you wonder doesn't it? Colin4C 23:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No, not really; well certainly not in the sense you would prefer. If you think there is a problem with the article on the Whites then I suggest that you make the necessary amendments, or raise any disquiet you have on the talk page. Also, as your remarks are obviously directed at me, I emphasise once again that it was not my intention to 'threaten' but to raise a specific procedural point on content disputes, which I think is my right. White Guard 00:53, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with White Guard on this. However, to be fair to Colin4C, I did some further reading and discovered that, reportedly, Kolchak's favourite book was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - possibly explains his anti-Semitic attitudes, and says something about Kolchak and the Whites in terms of attitude. But it's my view that we can't simply condemn Kolchak and the Whites for this - bear in mind that there was a vicious streak of anti-Semitism in Russian society, both pre- and post-revolution, and they lived in an age when moral standards were somewhat different. Plus, bear in mind that the Bolsheviks' well-documented atrocities (see Cheka) against the bourgeoisie and suspected pro-White supporters certainly outweigh the atrocities that were committed by the Whites against Jews. I'm not trying to whitewash the Whites' reputation (sorry, rather bad play on words there); they certainly did conduct horrific purges of Jews. But however bad they were, the Bolsheviks were worse, and their success in the Civil War led eventually to the deaths of 70 million Russians and other Soviet peoples through starvation, governmental incompetence, purges, and gulags. Walton_monarchist89

Of course the irony (and tragedy) is that the Bolsheviks themselves were eventually liquidated by Stalin, which makes it hard to believe that the Purges were all part of some Marxist-Leninist grand plan (I mean surely they didn't all have some sort of death wish?). And it is well known that Lenin tried to sideline Stalin, just before he died. Maybe the responsibility lies with those Left SR's etc who were so keen to pump full of lead the only man (Lenin) who could have saved the situation for Russia. And maybe we should try to look at the place of Lenin in history in some kind of objective fashion, rather than blame him for things which happened after he was dead and of which he would have deeply dissaproved. Lenin was in many ways a moderate: witness the NEP, his acceptance of foreign aid during the famine etc etc. History is complex: it is all to easy (in the Texan bar-room of the soul) to construct some grand scheme Manichaen scheme of Good vs Evil, Hobbits vs Orcs, Light vs Darkness, Black Hats versus White Hats with the evil-enemy constantly being redefined as Catholic/Commie/Moslem/Flavour of the month/Colin4C 14:34, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Was Stalin not a Bolshevik, or Mikoyan, or Ordzhonikidze, or Molotov, or Yezov or Kalinin etc. etc.? Do you have a Marxist view of history, or do you simply admire Lenin as a man? You are absolutely right when you contend that history is complex, and cannot be divided into simple issues of black and white, all good on one side and all bad on the other. But that is precisely what you are doing yourself-Lenin all good and Stalin all bad. Is that not a Manichean-as opposed to a Marxist-view of history? Lenin could have 'saved the situation' if it had not been for the bullets of poor Dora Kaplan? Who knows? Perhaps Marat would have saved the Jacobins if it had not been for Charlotte Corday? Again, it's possible; but this seems to me to be a hopelessly narrow reading of the past. The real point is that all the tendencies that took shape under Stalin were already present under Lenin; it was just a matter of degree. To define Lenin as a 'moderate' seems to be so far off target that I have to question your depth of reading, if not your depth of understanding. Even after the emergency of the Civil War had passed the repressive and extraordinary measures put in place under the Red Terror remained in place; more to the point, they got steadily worse, forcing Julius Martov, Lenin's old colleague in the RSDP, into exile, and confining other socialists and anarchists endlessly in concentration camps. Lenin was familiar with the 'wonderful Georgian's' methods both at Tsaritsyn and in the Caucasus; so to condemn him simply for 'rudeness' to Krupskaya seems to be one of history's greatest understatements. NEP, moreover, was for Lenin little more than a tactical retreat, and he accepted foreign aid to combat a famine created by the previous policy of War Communism. Let us indeed look at history objectively: Lenin was not a saint and Stalin was not a devil. They represent, each in their own way, evolutionary stages in a particularly murderous and intolerant view of historical necessity. White Guard 23:30, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, if you really want to know I'm a sort of post-modern Marxist. I once constructed a grand synthesis of the ideas of Foucault and Gramsci only to discover that a tiresome fellow called Edward Said had already invented that particular wheel...anyway I arrived at the same conclusions as he did...As for Lenin I admire him as a politician and a theorist...or rather how he combined theory and practice (a la Marx). The guy was, well, rational....not some paranoid psycho like Stalin/Genghis Khan/Ivan the Terrible or devious cretin like Bush/Blair or obsessive puritan like Robespierre or retarded social Darwinist like f*****g Adolf Thatcher. As for moderation my exact words were 'in many ways a moderate'. Lenin had strong beliefs but they did not lead him into cloud-cuckoo land like the aforementioned (un)worthies IMHO Colin4C 03:20, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I urge you to look again, and in more detail, at Lenin's career. He had a lot more in common with Ivan Grozny than you would allow. Soviet Russia was the worst cloud-cuckoo land ever conceived up to that point in history, far more malevolent in every way than the Republic of Virtue. White Guard 06:03, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with White Guard on this. Colin4C, to say that Lenin was somehow "better" than Stalin, Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible is self-deluding in the extreme. While Stalin went to greater heights of paranoia than Lenin, it was Lenin who established the Soviet state's basic framework of authoritarianism, violent purges of the bourgeoisie (once again see Cheka), class warfare, and general destructive lunacy. Most reputable historians of the period (Orlando Figes, Richard Pipes, etc., even the Russian novelist Solzhenitsyn) view Lenin's rule as a tremendous human tragedy. And to call Margaret Thatcher a "Social Darwinist" and compare her with Hitler is, quite frankly, offensive. The leader with whom Lenin most invites comparison is, in fact, Robespierre; and the ideologically-based mass murder of the middle classes and the kulaks (so-called "rich" peasants) in Soviet Russia is very similar to the murder of royalists and the aristocracy during the French Revolution. Walton monarchist89 07:53, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Lenin's authoritarianism was mainly a reaction to the terrible Civil War. As we have mentioned here before, Pipes in an extreme right-winger, cold-warrior, advisor of Reagen, the neo-cons etc; Solzhenitsyn is a reactionary Russian nationalist - in his latest book he is once more making the White assertion about the connection between Jews and Communists, and calling for the Jews to repent for their role in the Bolshevik revolution!; as for Figes I wasn't totally bowled over by his book, despite all the commendatory newspaper reviews, plastered all over the jacket - he has a very annoying habit of indulging in counter-factual reveries...seeming to suggest, for example, that if the Left SR's had overthrown Lenin and co all would have been for the best for Mother Russia, which is in no way provable...and is not 'history'. You may have a point about certain resemblances between Robespierre and Lenin, except that Robespierre eventually dived off the deep-end, and came unstuck, which Lenin never did. As for the kulak purge. that was Stalins idea, long after Lenin was dead, even the idea of what a kulak was, was Stalin's invention. Colin4C 11:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Once again I have to say your grasp of historical fact is very poor. In April 1918, before the Civil War was properly underway, Julius Martov wrote the following in Novaia Zaria, the newspaper of the Moscow regional committee of the Mensheviks;

After all that the workers have gone through during the past six months, it should be clear to anyone that "soviet power" is a fairy tale, and not a beautiful one at that. There is no soviet power in Russia, and no proletarian power. Under this label reign armed members of the Bolshevik party, who go against workers and peasants when workers and peasants disagree with them. In reality "soviet power" has turned into an irresponsible, uncontrolled, unjust, tyrannical, and costly power of commisars, committees, staffs and armed bands.

Your comment about the kulaks also reveals the depths of your ignorance (or wilful blindness): it was not Stalin who devised the campaign against the kulaks; this was an early Bolshevik initiative. In May 1918 Sverdlov outlined Bolshevik policy in the countryside; "two hostile camps must be created in the villages, setting the poorest layers of the population against the kulak elements." That same month a decree was issued calling all "working and property-less peasants to unite immediately for a merciless war on the kulaks", and declaring grain-horders to be 'enemies of the people', subject to ten years imprisonment and confiscation of property. Peasant attempts-not just kulaks- to resist the unrealistic grain requistions of War Communism, which continued after the Civil War ended, met with severe reprisals: many were flogged, beaten and shot, and their houses burned down. The Tambov rebellion was one such response to this official barbarism.

Lenin was every bit as savage and mercilesss as Stalin, as I have said ad nauseum; it was only a question of degree. I. S. Unshilikht, a leading Chekist, later recalled how Lenin "made short shrift of philistine party members who complained of the mercilessness of the Cheka, how he laughed at and mocked the 'humanness' of the capitalist world." There was nothing in Stalinism that was not already present in Leninism. A good Communist, as Lenin said, 'is a good Chekist.' Spying, informing and terror were a permanent part of Soviet life. Robespierre was a cold-blooded fanatic: Lenin's blood was not a degree warmer. Since you seem to know what 'history is' try to understand it a little better. White Guard 01:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry but I don't buy your cold-war teleology and demonology and grand domino theories no matter how many times you repeat them and even if you drag in disgruntled Mensheviks to help you out. Lenin was Lenin and Stalin was Stalin. History happens. Events occur. Who is to say what causes what and what is to happen the day after tomorrow? I remember cold-warriors in the old days, fingers poised on their nuclear buttons, who imagined that the Soviet regime would go on forever - maintained in permanent existence by a system of terror...then all of a sudden it collapsed in a heap, which left them a bit non-plussed - the permanent system of terror was obviously not so effective as they imagined and left them without an excuse to destroy humanity in an atom bomb war (which was THEIR system of terror). As I said before the most merciless killer in the Civil War period and the one with the highest body count wasn't Lenin or Trotsky or Stalin or even Sverdlov, it was the White leader Semyenov, who no doubt was also a dab hand at laughing and mocking at 'humaness'. We can all construct cod teleological theories...perhaps draw a line from Semyenov to Mussolini onto General Franco maybe, with a branch out to Hitler ending up with Pinochet and construct a grand scheme of right-wing terrorists forever laughing and mocking at whatever.....

As for the 'kulaks', what I meant is that Stalin, in his time, long past the period of War-Communism, defined them and 'constructed' them in his own particular way. They did not really exist as a class - they were invented according to a quota system of Purges, the same way Pol Pot classed anyone wearing glasses as 'bourgeois'. Colin4C 02:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I have no interest in teleology or demonology but in simple historical facts; and I have never promoted 'domino theory', so I take your point as nothing more than a vacant polemic. You are obviously determined to reject every critique of Lenin, regardless of the source, so there really is no purpose is to be served by quoting Martov or any other 'disgruntled Menshevik.' Lenin and Stalin cannot be separated as historical entities: Stalin added nothing to a practice fully formed in every conceivable sense. But you are obviously incapable of making the connection. I cannot follow the rest of your logic, which seems to me to display a very poor level of debating skill and a high level of simple intellectual incoherence, as most of your other interventions have. You are right, of course, this is a pointless exercise, and I will make no further attempts to persuade you by way of argument or example. Your Lenin is beyond real history, and thus beyond reproach. I wish you joy of him. White Guard 02:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

White Guard, I do agree with you, but we probably shouldn't start flinging insults (viz. intellectual incoherence). I am happy to continue rational debate.Colin4C, I concur with White Guard that Lenin and his government committed many atrocities against the Russian people, and your attempt to 'whitewash' their reputation is somewhat historically inaccurate (please don't take this as a personal attack). As for the kulaks, you're perfectly correct that they never really existed as a class, and were invented by the Communists as an attempt to encourage 'class warfare' in the countryside - yet you choose to ignore the fact that it was Lenin, not Stalin, who began the campaign against the kulaks. It was, admittedly, Stalin who was responsible for the wholesale purging of kulaks as part of his collectivisation programme. Overall, I would say Stalin took Lenin's ideology to new heights of paranoia and mass murder - but the foundations of this ideology were all in the system that Lenin established. Stalin was worse than Lenin, but there wasn't a clean historical break between the two - they were part of the same authoritarian and brutal Communist tradition. Walton monarchist89 08:26, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

As we have mentioned before, an 'authoritarian and brutal tradition' had been part of the system of Imperial Russian governance since at least the time of Ivan the Terrible (or perhaps from the time of the Mongol rulers beforehand). This was the way things were done in Russia, otherwise the place would fall apart (as it eventually did under Gorbachev). It was not an invention of Lenin. Some places are just difficult to govern without wielding a stick (Iraq for instance). There is no democratic tradition in Russia, even today after the overthrow of communism things happen in the same bad old way. The 'heights of paranoia and mass murder' you mention occured in a discrete time-period between 1930-1938. Even Stalin thought it was bad idea after a while and halted the purges in 1938. After him Marxist-Leninist Krushchev thought it was a bad idea and Brezhnev concurred. Sure, these guys were not democrats but neither did they use Lenin's supposedly perfect apparatus of terror to commit mass-murder. But this has not stopped opponents of Marxist-Leninism to use Stalin's purges of the kulaks and his opponents between 1930-38 as a stick to beat Lenin (but not Tsar Nicholas it seems and Ivan the Terrible emerges with a clean bill of health) before him and the Soviet regime of Krushchev and Brezhnev after him. Our friend Solzhenytsin even has a scheme of his own in which Karl Marx back in leafy Highgate in the nineteenth century was somehoew complicit in the Russian purges of 1930-38, (contra this thory I have read (in Piers Brendon's 'The Dark Valley') that Stalin's mass-terror of 1934-38 was inspired by him reading about Hitler's 'Night of the Long Knives' in the newspaper "Good chap that Hitler! He showed how to deal with his opponents!" he opined). Despite 'White Guards self assurance on these matters the historical jury is still out on what inspired Stalin to commit mass murder between 1930-38.

Even the head of the Cheka, whom you mention, Mr Felix of infamous memory, thought Stalin was a bloodthirsty brute. The other Bolsheviks were no less kind. Kamenev thought him a 'ferocious savage'. Zinoviev opined that he was a 'bloodthirsty Ossetian' who had 'no idea of the meaning of conscience'. Trotsky thought him 'the grave-digger of the proletarian revolution'. Bukharin regarded him (as I do myself) as a 'debased Genghis Khan. But 'White Guard' knows best: Lenin was to blame....Not Nicholas, not Alexander the third, not Peter the Great, not good old Ivan always Lenin (and maybe Karl of Highgate as well?). Colin4C 10:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Walton monarchist, I use my words advisedly and never knowingly insult anyone, in which there is very little point. 'Intellectual incoherence' I use in a strictly descriptive sense. Read the above response, and the rest of Colin4C's contributions, with care, and you should begin to understand. A disorganised mind inevitably produces disorganised thought. No insult is intended, I assure you. Consider this, and I paraphrase: Lenin was part of an authoritarian and brutal tradition, wielding a stick where there was no democracy. After all, this was the way things were done in Russia. That was indeed the case, and I am glad for the admission, though I doubt the author understands the full significance of his remarks. I would, however, add that I do not agree with the determinism with which this point is put: there were plenty of people outside the Bolshevik party looking for a different route. I have argued throughout-with limited direct success- that Lenin, Stalin and any other Russian or Soviet leader should be seen in historical context, not isolated in an arbitrary and ideological fashion Two further points of information: Stalin halted the hysteria of the Yezhovchina in 1938; the Terror continued along more controlled lines under Beria, taking the life, amongst others, of the writer Isaac Babel in 1940. Stalin? To the above assessments I would simply add that he was Lenin's 'wonderful Georgian.' White Guard 10:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

White Guard, I apologise for misinterpreting your remarks. Let's not become enemies - after all, we are, broadly, on the same side in this debate. I agree with every historical point you've made so far. Colin4C, I think maybe you and I should agree to disagree. The fact is that every historian writing about the Soviet period has a POV, whether leftist or rightist. You and I can sit here quoting different historians at each other all day, and we'kll never get anywhere. The fact is that, during the Russian Civil War, both Bolsheviks and Whites committed acts of violence against the Russian people in support of their aims. My personal POV, as a moderate conservative, is that the Whites were preferable to the Bolsheviks - but I don't intend to idealise Kolchak or Denikin, as you seem intent on doing with Lenin. Yes, Kolchak was a virulent anti-Semite; but I think you need to admit, in the face of the historical evidence, that Lenin personally did favour acts of brutality. First-hand contemporary sources show that Lenin recommended hanging the kulaks - a practice that Stalin was later to carry out during the collectivisation of the 1930s - and also that Lenin encouraged wholesale brutal 'class warfare' against the bourgeoisie. I agree with you that Lenin was more rational than Stalin, in that all his actions were clearly aimed at achieving the Marxist state - but this doesn't excuse the acts of violence and brutality committed by his regime, viz. the random arrests, interrogations and torture by the Cheka of innocent people, and the extralegal murder of the royal family (and, incidentally, their servants) by Lenin's supporters. (Whether Lenin personally ordered this murder is a controversial point of debate, and I don't want to get bogged down in arguing it.)

So, overall, I think we both need to concede the following points.

1) Yes, some White supporters (mostly Semyonov and his Cossacks, but with the broad approval of Kolchak) carried out extralegal killings of Jews and of suspected Bolshevik supporters.

2) Lenin and his supporters were also responsible for extralegal acts of brutality in order to consolidate their own power and combat the so-called 'decadent bourgeoisie'.

3) It is irrelevant whether or not Lenin was 'right' to use violence in pursuit of Marx's aims. All that matters is the facts. Let's stick to them Walton monarchist89 08:27, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your apology, but it is really not necessary; it took your remark purely at face value, and my response was by way of clarification.

I have one or two small points to raise concerning some of your above statements. First of all a question. You say that Kolchak was a 'virulent anti-semite', but do you have any evidence for this? The Jewish population of Siberia, his area of control, was so small that hostility towards the Jews would not really have made any political sense. I am not saying he was not anti-semitic, it's just that I have never come across any reference to this.

I have to disagree with your assessment of Stalin: I think he was perfectly rational and also aimed for the Marxist state as conceived by Lenin, the greatest intellectual and political influence in his life. In 1921 Lenin was forced into the tactical retreat of NEP: in 1928 Stalin reversed this process, beginning the construction of a 'Socialist Society' along the lines that would very much have been approved by Lenin. Lenin's contempt for the peasants was boundless. You only have to consider his response to the famines of 1891 and 1920, the latter his own creation, to understand this; so I do not believe he would have been in any way preturbed by Stalin's mass collectivisation and the horror that followed from this.

Finally, I would like to take this article forward, removing the NPOV in the near future, hopefully on the basis of some kind of general consensus. I intend to put forward several suggestions-using my previous observations as a start point-within the next few days. I too am sympathetic to the Whites-probably even more than you are-but as I have tried to make plain I would never allow this to influence the pursuit of historical objectivity. Regards White Guard 23:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In principle I totally agree, White Guard. Lenin's contempt for the peasants was evidenced by his reported order to 'hang the kulaks'. Although he tried to secure peasant support with his land promises in 1917, it was soon clear that he viewed the peasants as a class enemy, with the industrial workers as the true Marxist proletariat. This irrational view did indeed lead to his deliberate brutality to peasants during War Communism, and was the ideological foundation for Stalin's purges of kulaks. So, overall I agree with everything you've said. But I have to disagree with an assessment of Stalin as rational; certainly he was the ideological heir to Lenin, but he replaced Lenin's cold Marxist rule with sheer paranoia and insanity, at least by the time of the purges of the 1930s. In my (admittedly biased) view, they were both insane but in different ways; Lenin the fanatical Marxist, to the point that he was willing to commit mass murder in pursuit of his aims, and Stalin the personally deranged, virtually abandoning most Marxist ideals.

But I digress. I agree with you that the page needs to be less POV. As for whether Kolchak was an anti-Semite, Figes did claim that Kolchak's preferred reading was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - but you're right, there isn't much hard evidence. Walton monarchist89 09:46, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Might I suggest you read Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin the Court of the Red Tsar, on the assumption that you have not already done so? I think you will find that an entirely different picture of Stalin emerges. He did indeed suffer from some form of personal paranoia, but his political actions were based on rational calculations: even the purges served a purpose, advancing both his ideological position and his power within the party. If Stalin was mad there was always method in it. Where he came unstuck was in his dealings with Hitler, whom he believed was driven by the same rational and pragmatic calculations. Ironically, and to his cost, Hitler was the only man that Stalin ever trusted. Anyway, you say that Stalin virtually abandoned most Marxist ideals. On the contrary, he was the one that gave final shape to the Leninist vision of Marxism in Russia, with its intense suspicion of all opposition, its conspiratorial and elitist element, its hatred of the peasantry, and all of its murderous intolerance; as I have already said, it was merely a question of degree. There is nothing in Lenin's Russia that you will not find under Stalin, perfected in every malevolent aspect. White Guard 22:23, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know why we're arguing anyway. Stalin's personality is not especially relevant to this page. I agree with everything you've said so far about Lenin himself, so go ahead and make your modifications to the article. I apologise if I've appeared to be argumentative, but I've been trying to find points of consensus and a neutral platform between you, myself and Colin4C. Since I think we now agree on most of the main points - viz. that Lenin was guilty of committing numerous atrocities in the pursuit of Marxism, but that some White supporters (mainly Semyonov) also committed atrocities, mainly against Jews - I feel that we can now bring this discussion to an end. As I say, feel free to make modifications to the article. Walton monarchist89 11:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Kolchak's Anti-Semitism This is recorded by his colleague G.K. Gins who wrote in his book (published in Peking in 1921)about the General that the Admiral 'literally devoured the Protocols' . He liked it so much that he had a special edition printed for his troops at Omsk. Further editions were published by the White armies in Vladivostock and Khabarovsk and even (presumably for white emigres) in Japan! (See 'Warrant for Genocide' by Norman Cohn (1967: 129).)Colin4C 18:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for that clarification. Beyond his enthusiasm for-and dissemination of-the Protocols what practical form did his anti-semitism take? White Guard 23:25, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Please, both of you, can we just drop the topic of Kolchak's anti-semitism? This article isn't even about Kolchak. The two of you (by which I mean Colin4C and White Guard) seem to be locked in an eternal battle on this talk page, debating every possible matter relating to Lenin, the Civil War and the early Soviet period. Let's just try and proceed by consensus, and let's keep to the topic. Walton monarchist89 09:41, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, of course; but it is not in my nature to allow unsupported statements to stand. Kolchak's anti-semitism seems to have consisted of little more than reading the Protocols, a pastime he shared with the editors of the London Times. Now, for contrast, read what I have written below on Lenin and anti-semitism.

White Guard 01:22, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

What Is To be Done?-Part III

Further remarks are obviously required.

ANTI-SEMITISM. Could I please have a reference for Nicholas' authorisation of the Kishinev massacre? As far as I am aware this episode was the handiwork of Vyacheslav Plehve, minister of the interior and a notorious anti-semite. The pogrom was condemned by the governor of Bessarabia and by the central government. Sergius Witte, by far the Tsar's best minister, made his own feelings on the matter plain.

There were pogroms in Tsarist Russia, and anti-semitism was a long-established and poisonous tradition. The point is that this cannot always be traced back to the Tsar: Russian state and government was far too complex for that. Official anti-semitism was, moreover, of a confessional rather than a biological nature. Under Alexander III the drive for assimiliation became ever greater, after the murder of his liberal-minded father, but it also affected Catholics, Lutherans and Muslims, as well as Jews. Civil disabilities could always be lifted for converts to Orthodoxy, for those who were minded to take this path.

Nicholas was a conventional and unimaginitive man, but even he could detect the patently false. Although he was initially taken in by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (as was the London Times in 1919) he soon recognised them, according to Vladimir Burtsev, no friend of the Tsar, as dangerous political nonsense. You may care to consult Solomon Grayzel, again no admirer of Tsarist Russia, who in his A History of the Jews says "Even the Tsar had considered the forgery utterly improbable and unworthy of consideration." (Philadelphia, 1968, p. 613).

Now, this whole debate arose because I questioned Lenin's credentials as a campaigner against anti-semitism on the basis of a single speech with no examples provided. If we look at the actual record of Soviet Russia under Lenin a quite different picture emerges. The age-old antisemitism of the Tsars showed little sign of going away; if anything, it got worse. Red army units were amongst those responsible for pogroms in the Ukraine, to the obvious disquiet of Trotsky. During the 1921 campaign against religion, specifically authorised by Lenin, the Jews were singled out as a special target; even Maxim Gorky accused the government of using anti-semitism for political purposes. There were pogroms in Smolensk and other places. When Jewish people tried to defend their synagogues, threatened with confiscation, troops broke in, shouting 'Death to the Yids' in the process. The campaign of 1921 peaked in the mock trial of 'Judaism', carried out, for additionl emphasis, if any such was needed, in the very same courtroom as the Beiliss trial of 1913. What price Lenin's support for the Jews?

TERROR. Yes, there was terror, extensive and brutal; but that of the Whites was more than matched by that of the Reds, and not just against counter-revolutionaries but peope who had been their allies and comrades in the political underground. By 1921, well after the White threat had gone away, oppression and terror had become a fact of life in the 'worker's fatherland'. It never went away.

Let me make it plain that I am simpy asking that this article reflects the true facts of Lenin's career. As it stands at present it is little more than a biased 'appreciation.' White Guard 00:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I see you've been doing your homework 'White Guard'...We are evidentally getting a more intellectual class of red-baiter these days...I therefore pledge myself - on behalf of the 'Guardians of the Lenin-Shrine', at whatever expense in time and money, - to read the chapter 'The Pogroms and White Ideology in the Russian Civil War' by P. Kenez in Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russia (2004) edited by J.D. Klier and S. Lambroza (CUP), and will be back with a series of devastating counter-attacks to your above points...which will send you reeling right back up the trans-Siberian railway of intellectual discourse.... Colin4C 05:12, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I welcome any intelligent and well-informed debate or exchange of views. I would only remind you that this page is about Lenin, not White anti-semitism, though, of course, I would be happy to talk about that where appropriate.. White Guard 05:19, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Red Koala

He is a red koala and want to dictatate the whole world he should be killed.

If this comment refers to Lenin, I wholeheartedly agree. But this encyclopedia isn't the place for political posturing. Walton monarchist89 07:55, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Removed tag on Richard Pipes

Changed:

Anti-Communist historian and ultra-conservative politician Richard Pipes

To:

Historian Richard Pipes

First of all, let me state how much I personally despise Pipes.

See the: Richard_Pipes#Team_B section, I wrote this section, and for the past year, I have been defending this section from vandals and those who want to white wash Team Bs history, which I also wrote.

That said, I have to agree with User:J.R. Hercules, I don't know who User:J.R. Hercules is, but he is correct, Richard Pipes is a historian. Further, labeling Pipes with all of those labels is not encyclopedic. My view is consistent on this, I don't care who is doing the labeling, and who is being labeled.

Let people decide for themselves who Richard Pipes and Lenin are, any interested casual reader can go to Richard Pipes and read the Richard_Pipes#Anti-Communist section themselves. It always baffels me how ideologues on both the right and the left are so blinded in their ideologies that they can't let any deragatory information into their pet articles. Instead, they want to spoonfed readers their own POV. Don't insult their intellegence, most casual readers can easily detect bias. The most convincing article is an article which presents both sides, not one side. Some of you probably want to convince people that Lenin was a swell guy, some of you probably want to convince people that he was a criminal. Present both sides equally and let people decide for themselves, quit trying to spoonfeed readers, thats the whole concept behind NPOV. Travb (talk) 10:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Lenin's radio speech against anti-Semitism

I changed:

==Lenin's fight against anti-Semitism==

After the revolution, Lenin worked hard to combat Anti-Semitism in Russia. In a radio speech in 1919, Lenin said:

To:

==Lenin's radio speech against anti-Semitism==

In a radio speech in 1919, Lenin stated:

How did Lenin worked hard to combat Anti-Semitism in Russia? Please give referenced, specific examples. "Worked hard" is non-encyclopedic. Because how can you measure how hard someone worked? Teach me please, I dont know jack about Lenin, how did he work against Anti-Semitism, how was he opposed to Anti-Semitism? What kindof legislation did he pass for Jews? Did he give any other speeched? If so don't quote the speeches, reference the speeches. And please, don't respond to me here, respond to me in this article section, by adding verifiable sources which illustrates how Lenin ~~worked hard for~~ supported the Jews. Travb (talk) 10:15, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

On this whole question please see the points I have raised in 'What Is to Be Done?-Part III'. Some people get very confused about this whole issue, especially those who see Jewish people purely in a bogus racial terms. Lenin freely admitted people from a Jewish 'background' to the highest ranks of both party and state, but this has to be coupled with a wholesale campaign against those who actually practiced Judaism, which reached particularly crude heights during the 1921 campaign against religion. Lenin essentially had the same view of Jewish people as Martin Luther: they were alright as long as they 'converted' to the new ideology. White Guard 23:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

There was a campaign by the Bolsheviks was against all religions, not just Judaism. Under Lenin and the Bolsheviks the Jews enjoyed more civil rights than at any time in their history in Russia. Trotsky himself is a hero for many Jews, as the greatest Jewish general ever. As for Martin Luther his venemous diatribes against the Jews have much more in common with the Tsarist, White and Fascist ideology. I could quote exactly what the Whites did to the Jewish women and children in their territory, but I'm afraid it might make people here physically sick.

Lenin often denounced Tsarist antisemitism, as well as the item mentioned in the article see for instance his Collected Works Vol 17 (London 1960-70) p 337 about the situation in 1914 where he opined that 'no other nationality in Russia is so oppressed and persecuted as the Jews'. Tsarist anti-Semitism was often used as a red-rag (literally!) to divert the oppressed masses from class-conflict to conflict against internal ethnic enemies - as for instance in the state-sponsored pogroms of 1905, in which the violence of the masses was succesfully diverted by the regime from the Tsarist establishment to Jews - resulting in mass-death of the latter. Colin4C 17:56, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see-Trotsky is a hero for many Jews?

See for instance the biography of Trotsky by Prof R. Wistrich (who holds the Neuberger Chair of Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem): 'Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary' (1979) and also the same author's 'Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky' (1976). Colin4C 09:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Would that include the Russian Chief Rabbi of the day, who said-"The Trotskies make the revolutions, but it's the Bronsteins who pay for them." Once again what I am getting here is a series of generalities, with no concrete examples, and then a completely fatuous diversion on to Tsarist anti-semitism and White atrocities. There were White atrocities; but this is a page about Lenin.

That should not have to be said, but it clearly does-ad nauseum. Just imagine trying to deduce the realities of Soviet life from the 'Stalin Constitution' of 1936. Yet here we are told that Jewish life in Soviet Russia can be deduced from a few anodyne generalities by Lenin about anti-semitism. So the attack on Judaism in 1921 was incidental, just a by-product of the attack on religion in general? But it challenged what it was to be Jewish in the first place, and included a 'trial' of the religion in the same courtroom as the Beilis travesty of 1913. Could there be anything cruder than that? It has been argued that the Soviet attack on Judaism was worse than that on Christianity;

The assault on Jewish religious life was particularly harsh and pervasive because a Jew's religious beliefs and observations infused every aspect of his daily life and were invested with national values and feelings...family relations, work, prayer, study, recreation, and culture were all part of a seamless web, no element of which could be disturbed without disturbing the whole. (Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917, New York and London, 1988, pp. 70-1)

The logic behind the contention that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were for the Jews but against Judaism simply escapes me. No doubt some weakness in my rational capacities. I am sorry always to respond to an emotional diatribe with appeals to argument, specific examples and reason; but I can not help myself: its in my nature. White Guard 23:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

'Lenin, the new head of the Soviet government, had already written in 1914 that 'no other nationality in Russia is so oppressed and persecuted as the Jews. As a Marxist he sincerely believed that anti-semitism, like all forms of ethnic prejudice, was an outgrowth of class conflict which would evntually dissapear in a classless society. It was essentially a feture of reactionary feudal and capitalist regimes, exploited for the benifit of the ruling classes to sow division in the masses and deflect them from the radical cause. Lenin realised, moreover, that antisemitism was being turned against the Bolshevik regime by its most dangerous opponents - the White counter-revolutionaries - who took advantage of the fact that a number of the top Russian Communist leaders were of Jewish origin. Hence, for pragmatic as well as ideological reasons, he firecely attacked antisemitism in statements and speeches during the Civil War, and as early as 27 July 1918 the Soviet government defined instigators of pogroms as 'enemies of the Revolution' who had to be outlawed. Stringent legislation , backed up by education and propaganda, was employed to suppress antisemitism in the 1920,s though such feelings continued to persist, especially during the New Economic Party

(from 'Anti-Semitism' by R. Wistrich (1991) page 174) Colin4C 09:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear; once again, Colin, you are missing the point. The observation about Luther was for polemical effect; I did not say that Lenin's programme was like Luther's. What I did say was that for Lenin, as for Luther, Jews were acceptable, just as long as they were not Jews. You seem to believe that a series of pious statements and Marxist generalities are enough: they are not. The 1921 campaign was anti-Judaic which, for Jewish people, is just the same as anti-Semitic. You have given not a single concrete example of Soviet defense of the right to practice freely as a Jew, and not as a worshiper of Lenin's secular ideology. But let's look at his actions-or lack of them-in broader terms. In November 1920 Lenin received detailed Cheka reports of the pogroms carried out by First Cavalry Army, a Red formation operating in Poland;

A new wave of pogroms has swept through the district. The number of those killed cannot be established...As they retreated, units of the First Cavalry Army (and the 6th Division) destroyed, looted and killed the Jewish population...These are new pages in the history of pogroms in the Ukraine.

What did Lenin do about this? Why, nothing. These reports were consigned to oblivion by the words 'For the archives.' No actions, therefore, but lots of meaningless words; as I have said, the usual generalities and platitudes. "While condemning anti-semitism in general, Lenin was unable to analyse, let alone eradicate, its prevalence in Soviet society." (Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin, London, 1994, p. 203)White Guard 01:08, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Other minor changes

removed "intolerable" non-encyclopedic adjective

claiming--> stating WP:AWW my big pet peeve.

Removed the sentence:

"Disregarding the words of Lenin is often perceived to have been a fatal error."

By who?

Removed the sentence:

"Although many of these decried institutions and policies—such as secret police, labor camps, and executions of political opponents—were practiced under Lenin's regime, these techniques were all commonly used by the Tsars long before Lenin and were long since established as the standard means of dealing with political dissent in Russia."

We are talking about the alleged crimes on Lenin, not the alleged crimes of the Tsars. In addition, this sentence is unreferenced.

Removed the sentence:

However, this is most likely due to the sudden and dramatic revolution and change of government, not to mention the approaching civil war and intervention by 21 foreign nations.

Unreferenced apologist sentence.

Signed: Travb (talk) 10:21, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

However by so-doing this you have created this illogical piece of syntax, with a clunking great non-sequitor in the middle of it!:

Historian Richard Pipes has argued that policies such as handing sweeping power to the state, enforcing rigid party discipline, using terror as a means of political intimidation, and requisitioning grain paved the road to Stalinism. However, the scale was different: three times more political prisoners were executed in the first few months of Bolshevik rule than in over 90 years under the Tsar.

And following your point: if it is illegitimate to link Lenin's 'crimes' to the Tsar why is it legit to link them to Stalin as per Pipes? As for references I can provide several which link Tsarist tyranny with Soviet tyranny: see for instance Chamberlin's acclaimed 'The Russian Revolution' (1935), Princetown University Press. The opening chapters of this are a sobering reminder of the grisly slave-state the Tsars created, maintained by Terror and Torture, long before Lenin was even dreamed of. Colin4C 17:40, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Please don't cut up other people's posts with your own, post underneath the other person's comments. See Misplaced Pages:Refactoring talk pages

As for references I can provide several which link Tsarist tyranny with Soviet tyranny: see for instance Chamberlin's acclaimed 'The Russian Revolution' (1935), Princetown University Press. Good, then add it, state who says it, and add it. Otherwise it is an unreferenced sentence. We are talking about references, not grammar. Travb (talk) 22:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Clunky sentence

I am not sure why this sentence is in the supporter, criticm section:

Leon Trotsky stated that a "river of blood" separated Lenin from Stalin's actions because Stalin executed many of Lenin's old comrades and their supporters, grouped in the Left Opposition. This was indeed to include Trotsky himself.

Thanks. Travb (talk) 10:46, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Lenin and the Jews

According to Zvi Gitelman in the 1920's the Soviet regime made a serious attempt to combat anti-Jewish prejudice: 'Never before in Russian history - and never subsequently - has a government made such an effort to uproot and stamp out antisemitism' (Z. Gitelman 'Soviet Antisemitism and its perception by Soviet Jews' in Curtis (ed) 'Antisemitism in the Contemporary World (1986)) By contrast the White regime saw the Jews as part of a demonic world conspiracy and massacred over 100,000 of them - men, women and children often in an obscenely brutal fashion only the SS would approve of (see Wistrich, R, 'Anti-Semitism the Oldest Hatred' (1991) pages 171 to 191). Colin4C 17:14, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I refer readers to what I have written above about this whole issue, under Lenin's Radio Speech Against Anti-Semitism. White Guard 23:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Pipes

This is what distinguished historian of the Russian Revolution Orlando Figes, in a newspaper article, says about our friend (but no friend of Lenin it seems) the noted 'historian' Pipes:

My main reservation is the tendentious nature of the editor's own role. Mr. Pipes, an emeritus professor of Russian history at Harvard, is famous for his low opinion of Lenin -- in The Russian Revolution (1990) and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime (1994) he depicts Lenin as the devil incarnate -- and it is difficult to avoid the inference that his selection and interpretation of the documents in The Unknown Lenin have been slanted to support this view.

As Pipes's biased comments about Lenin have been allowed to stand in the body of this article I reverse my condemnation of the mighty Hercules and 'White Guards NPOV label. I now agree with them that the article IS biased - against Lenin. Colin4C 18:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Pipes is not really a historian, at least not an objectiv one. He is first and formost an ultra conservative politician and an anti-communist. Bronks 19:10, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I was hoping to take this article forward. I can see this is clearly going to be very difficult. Could I please have a source for the above quotation?

White Guard 23:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It's from an article Mr Figes wrote for the New York Times on Oct 27 1996:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1DB1230F934A15753C1A960958260 Colin4C 08:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I've read Pipes' book and it seems to me to be meticulously well-researched. To say that Pipes is not a historian is an unjustified slander. However Pipes certainly does have an anti-Leninist POV which shows through in his work. But I don't see why we have to keep on and on arguing about this article. Why not just include both Pipes' viewpoint and that of other historians, including a statement of where they depart from fact into opinion and subjective interpretation? In this particular article, with its controversial topic, the best way to achieve NPOV is not sticking to the facts (which are mostly disputed anyway), but to provide a fair balance between both left-wing and right-wing points of view. Walton monarchist89 09:37, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately the opposing point of view to Pipes:

Although many of these decried institutions and policies—such as secret police, labor camps, and executions of political opponents—were practiced under Lenin's regime, these techniques were all commonly used by the Tsars long before Lenin and were long since established as the standard means of dealing with political dissent in Russia."

was removed by Travb, leaving a gaping non-sequitor and mangled sytax (which is not, however much it might be a source of solace to ungrammatical right wingers, enclyclopediac). Suffice to say that the link between the Tsarist tyranny and the Red tyranny has been made by umpteen writers (just two examples from a vast literature: chapter 1 of W.H. Chamberlin's standard 'The Russian Revolution' (1935) and a very interesting book by Alexander Yanov: 'The Origins of Autocracy: Ivan the Terrible in Russian History' (1981) University of California Press, which contra-Pipes concludes that the Russian autocractic tradition began in January 1565 rather than October 1917 and that Stalin's programme was uncannily similar to that of Ivan the Terrible (of whom Stalin was a fan - see the film about Ivan produced under his regime). Colin4C 10:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for the link to Figes article on Pipes. Perhaps people would like to know how the article continues? Well, for the sake of balance, here we are;

Otherwise, however, Mr Pipe's editorial views are fully justified by the evidence. As one would expect, most of the newly released documents from the Soviet archives uncover Lenin's darker side. Three aspects of this in particular stand out.

One is Lenin's cruelty, his callous attitude to the helpless victims of his revolution and his calls for terror against his enemies. In one shocking letter of 1922, Lenin urged the Politburo to put down an uprising by the clergy in the textile town of Shuia; "the greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoise we succeed in executing...the better." One Russian historian has recently estimated that 8000 priests and laymen were executed as a result of this letter.

Another aspect is Lenin's contempt for his closest comrades (though not for Stalin, according to Mr. Pipes). Lev Kamenev was a "poor fellow, weak, frightened and intimidated." As for Trotsky, he was "in love with the organization, but as for politics, he hasn't got a clue."

All very revealing, is it not? It would seem that Ivan Grozny had more than one fan. I have absolutely no objection to the view that the Red Tyranny has to be seen in the context of Russian history as a whole. Lenin is not an aberration. Readers can check out the rest of this sorry story for themselves. White Guard 00:36, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's please try to put aside this POV debate. Pipes' views deserve to be included in this article, as do the opposing points of view. Clearly Figes, from the above combination of quotes, is rather more balanced between left and right than most writers on the subject, as he criticises Pipes but goes on to concede some of Pipes' criticisms of Lenin. Walton monarchist89 12:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Removed POV Section

I've removed the 'Criticism' section which just gives us various contradictory right and left wing POVs and contains stuff which links Lenin to Stalin's purges which happened 10 years after Lenin's death and for which various other deep historical currents in Russian history could be responsible for (see Vlasov: 'The Origins of Russian Autocracy'). This article should be about Lenin not Stalin. Colin4C 12:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Though Lenin advocated and helped to form a "Soviet democracy," it is often argued by Lenin's opponents on the right, like Kautsky, and on his left, like Kollontai, that he countermanded proletarian emancipation and democracy (workers' control through the soviets or workers' councils) by force. Historian Richard Pipes has argued that policies such as handing sweeping power to the state, enforcing rigid party discipline, using terror as a means of political intimidation, and requisitioning grain paved the road to Stalinism. However, the scale was different: three times more political prisoners were executed in the first few months of Bolshevik rule than in over 90 years under the Tsar.

Defenders of Lenin assert that these criticisms ignore many central events during Tsarist rule, such as the Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday (1905), and World War I. They also mention that the scale of the circumstances which surrounded the Bolsheviks was different as well: a country ravaged by an unprecedently destructive world war, a mass of people kept historically illiterate by Tsarist autocracy, an oppositional force that fought to oust the Bolsheviks from power, etc.

We cannot separate Lenin's actions against dissent from the later, more sustained, campaign of Josef Stalin. Stalin and his own form of Terror would not have existed but for Lenin; it is incredibly facile, both in historical and philosophical terms, to suggest otherwise. I realise, Colin, that you do not like any kind of argument at variance with your own, but for all those willing to take an objective view here is what Dimitri Likhachev says on the matter;

One of my goals is to destroy the myth that the crullest era of repression began in 1936-37. I think that in future, statistics will show that the wave of arrests, sentences and exile had already begun at the beginning of 1918, even before the official declaration, that autumn, of the 'Red Terror'. From that moment, the wave simply grew larger and larger, until the death of Stalin.

(Vospominaniya, St. Petesburg, 1995, p. 118)

Having said that I have no fundamental objection to the above excisions, which are, indeed, lacking in precision, clumsy and very badly phrased. I will, however, work in an appropriate reference to the 'genealogy of terror.'White Guard 00:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with White Guard. This one question keeps coming up; whether Lenin and Stalin's political legacies can be separated, or whether they were part of the same tradition of brutality. Colin4C, I suggest you read Solzhenitsyn. He himself fought in the Red Army in the Civil War and was originally a loyal Communist. Where he criticises Communism, therefore, one ought to pay attention to his critique. He argues that Lenin developed the system of terror and political imprisonment as a natural consequence of Marxism; Stalin just continued this tradition. In comparison, the Tsarist regime was relatively mild and humanitarian - those exiled to Siberia were not maltreated, and seemed to find it remarkably easy to escape. Lenin killed far more people than any Tsar since Ivan the Terrible; Stalin just continued his work. Trotsky is a biased source, far more so than Solzhenitsyn, and was trying to whitewash his own historical reputation by blaming Stalin for the evils of Soviet Marxism. Walton monarchist89 09:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Solzhenitsyn, whatever his past, is now a very right-wing Russian Nationalist and supporter of the Orthodox church. His interpretation of Lenin and the Communists as 'cosmopolitans' and somehow alien to the Russian tradition has been disputed by Robert Service in his recent (2000) widely acclaimed biography of Lenin. Russia has a very long history, both of repressive state apparatus and repressive Tsars and of massive revolts against it, by such as Pugachev and Stenka Razin etc. Lenin did not appear from nowhere - the whole of Russian History was pointed his way. Almost all the attempts by reforming liberals in the time of Tsar Nicholas II (now a saint....) were stymied by the Tsar leaving the jerrymandered Duma with no credibility when the Tsar was unexpectadly toppled from his throne in March 1917. As stated before Lenin's repressive measures were in the context of an extremely bloody and vicious (on both sides) civil war against the Whites and foreign regimes, which was very uncertain in its outcome. As for Lenin's responsibility for Stalinist terror, certain historians, such as M. Lewin in 'Lenin's Last Struggle' (1969) disagree and state that Lenin, tragically hampered by his final illness tried his damndest to try to muzzle mad-dog Stalin, before it was too late. Unfortunately it was too late...Colin4C 12:44, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

You might care to dip into Ivan Bunin's Civil War diaries, Cursed Days, to get a slightly different view of of Lenin and the Bolsheviks from Solzhenitsyn. For Bunin-Russia's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature-they were little more than a gang of criminals, ruining his country. I hope Service's biography of Lenin-which I have not read-is better than the similar treatment he gave Stalin, which I had to stop reading because of the simply huge number of cliches and tired old phrases he trots out with depressing frequency (including one reference to 'hanky-panky' in Stalin's entourage; yes, that's right, 'hanky-panky'!). Anyway, Lenin's repression was bloody before the Civil War, and even bloodier afterwards. And of all the things he could have said about Stalin to condemn him for 'rudeness' must, as I have previously argued, count as one of history's greatest understatements. Lenin was not responsible for Stalin's Terror: rather Stalin simply built and improved upon a practice and technique already well-established. Lenin was not parachuted into Russian history: no more was Stalin. White Guard 23:03, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Amendments and alterations

I've made a number of changes, amendments and alterations. I am willing to discuss any of these with a view to establishing a degree of consensus. I realise that not everybody will agree with my revisions, but it is necessary to achieve some balance, and I hope I have tried to be fair. After all there still remains much with which I do not agree. Anyway, here we go.

1. Iskra was co-founded with Julius Martov.

2. Lenin's goal in WWI was not specifically the defeat of the Tsarist government, but the transformation of an 'imperalist war' into a 'war between classes.' This, of course, would embrace all of the combatants.

3. The story of the 'sealed train' is a myth: it was 'sealed' only in the sense that those inside were allowed to travel without the usual inspection of documents and passports. It was the German goverment's belief that Lenin would cause political upheaval in Russia. I doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm even knew he existed.

4. Lenin's opposition to the Provisional Government made the Bolsheviks a likely refuge for all those opposed to its policies. An 'obvious home for the masses' reads as if it has been lifted straight out of the Thoughts of Chairman Mao.

5. The previous version on the dismissal of the Constituent Assembly was, as I have said possibly the worst piece of bias and political manipulation that I have ever read on Misplaced Pages. I have now merely left it that it was closed down by force because the Bolsheviks lost the elections, an historically exact statement. I have followed this, though, with a sentence emphasising that this marked the beginning of a process of political repression, again an accurate statement of the facts. The long and tedious quotes from Lenin do not serve to advance the position in any meaningful sense.

6. The left-wing opponents of Lenin, in particular the Social Revolutionaries, did not seek to 'overthrow the Soviet state' but to end the Bolshevik dictatorship. Lenin did not respond by 'shutting down their activities' (how does one shut down activities?), but by initiating widespread persecution of dissidents of all shades of opinion.

7. The Cheka was established to challenge not just 'counterrevolutionaries' but political opponents of all kinds.

8. Lenin started the Civil War first by seizing power in October 1917, and second by dismissing the democratically elected Constituent Assembly in January 1918. To talk of 'deliberate continution' of the Civil War by anti-Communist forces and the Allied Powers is politically biased nonsense, as is the 'Stalinist' suggestion that this was the cause of the 1921 famine, which reached its height after the war ended. The famine was caused, in large measure, by Bolshevik policy towards the peasantry, in particular forced grain requsitions.

9. I've given one detailed example of Lenin's support for Cheka excesses.

10. The White armies were not exclusively 'Tsarist' in composition.

11. The section on Lenin and imperialism concluded with this intellectual gem; This would allow these countries admittance into the Soviet Union rather than simply forcing them to become part of Russia as would be in imperialist practices. Excuse me? The people of Georgia and Armenia might have a different view on this question.

12. NEP for Lenin was at best a tactical retreat. There is no reason to suppose that he would not have approved of Stalin's reversal of the policy in 1928.

13. Lenin's statement on anti-semitism cannot be allowed to stand in some abstract Platonic sense without reference to the actual fate of Jewish people under early Soviet rule. Otherwise it is no more than vacant propaganda.

I have thus removed-or balanced out-some of the 'agitprop' elements of the previous version, though what remains is far from ideal. Much more needs to be said about Lenin's early political influences-not all Marxist-his relationship with-and treatment of-former comrades in the RSDP, and the growing dictatorial and terrorist tendency within Russian Communism under his guidance. Above all, it is important to understand that Lenin laid foundations built upon by Stalin, by far his greatest disciple. White Guard 08:10, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with much of this, but I think it is very wrong to say Lenin started the civil war. (Although he knew it would come and was preapared for it.) Lenin lead a revolution that came to power with the support of most of the people. After that, the counter-revolutionaries launched the civil war, which was a war they could not win (even wwith forign support), as the support for the revolutionon was much strunger than the counter revolution. Bronks 09:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Just imagine if in your own country-wherever that is-a particular party or group seized power in a military coup, proceeding to eliminate most of the opposition and the established and legitimate forms of rule and governance? Now imagine further if in subsequent elections this same party obtained only 24% of the national vote and then simply dismissed-again by force-the newly assembled parliament or congress? Do you imagine your fellow countrymen would simply accept this situation, offering no resistence whatsoever? If you are honest I think the answer has to be no, and the obvious result would be civil disobedience at a minimum level and civil war at a maximum. Well, this was the situation in Russia in 1918. So on an objective level Lenin's actions must be said to have started the Civil War. I think, if you will forgive me for saying so, your view of both the Revolution and the subsequent Civil War is a little old fashioned. The Bolsheviks may have had majority support among the industrial working class in 1917 and early 1918, but this is far from saying that they had the support of the 'people' in the widest sense. Most of the peasants-by far the biggest sector of the population-supported the Social Revolutionaries. The counter-revolutionaries, moreover, were not all 'Tsarist reactionaries', but made up of a wide variety of groups and interests, which largely accounts for their ultimate defeat. What was strongest in 1918 was the peasant desire for land-not socialism-and that was the chief factor in the whole process underway. The Bolshevik promise of land-which in the end was to prove to be a lie-combined with the fear that the landlords might return determined the immediate political shape of Russia. Allied intervention was both peripheral and of minimal impact. White Guard 22:39, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Editor's POV

I have removed this as it is both factually inaccurate, unreferenced and POV:

Terror and political coercion were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under Joseph Stalin.

Terror and political coercion did not grow in intensity over the years - there was a hiatus of some 10 years or so between the end of the Red Terror of the Civil War and Stalin's attacks on the kulaks (1930-32) and the Purges (1934-38), by which time Lenin was long dead. Colin4C 10:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

There was not a 'hiatus', as you put it, but an intensification in arrests, mass shootings, suppression of dissent, and the use of concentration camps-all features of the Lenin system. I have given one or two examples in the text, both of a specific and a general nature, but I could drown you in them if you wish. Colin, I'm sorry, but I really do have to question both your political agenda and your understanding of Soviet politics from 1922 to the declaration of the first Five Year Plan, as well as your obvious and unhistorical desire to portray Stalin as some kind of 'bogey-man' or 'mad dog', as you put it, in language ironically reminiscent of Vyshinsky and the Moscow Trails. I will argue this point by point, if you wish; but please have the courtesy to raise the matter here before you reject my contributions as 'POV'. I think I have given you enough grounds since I first entered this page to understand that I cannot be dismissed so lightly White Guard 23:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just been reading Chamberlin's standard History of the Russian Revolution which he wrote ::

whilst resident in Russia in the late 1920's. He was an American correspondant for the Christian Science Monitor and was able to research and write about the revolution, including Trotsky's role, totally unmolested by the authorities. He remarks in the intro how all that changed when Stalin came to power and the Soviet Union closed in on itself and became some sort of closed-in madhouse of repression and censorship. From what I have read about the subject the Real Revolution in Russia was the one Stalin launched from 1928 onwards. Lenin and co's 1917 revolution was just pussy-footing around compared with the immense transformation Russia experienced in the Stalin years. And if you think this is just my IMHO I can give you lots of references. Arguably Stalin combined some aspects of Marxist-Leninism with much older systems of Tsarist tyranny and Russian nationalism. Yes, maybe I was wrong to call Stalin a mad-dog, perhaps he should be given the credit due to his own Russian Revolution. Colin4C 18:32, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no fundamental disagreement with anything you have written here. You are absolutely correct-the real Russian Revolution, it might truly be argued, came in 1928, accompanied by even greater forms of terror than that which were ushered in by the events of 1917 and 1918. It was a transformation of economic and social relationships on a scale hitherto unprecedented in history. It was also, it has to be said, the very policy that the Left Opposition, headed by Trotsky and Zinoviev, had been arguing for in the mid-1920s, when Stalin was still allied with Bukharin and the 'NEP wing' of the Communist Party White Guard 01:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem here is an attempt at moral equivalence, on both sides of this debate. I have no doubt that Lenin was ultimately the founder of much of what Stalin took to the nth degree, but, at the same time, it's not neutral to use words like "terror" or "coercion", true or not. For example, if I changed around the above disputed sentence, and called it NPOV, I think some of you would disagree:

"Peace and political freedom were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under Joseph Stalin."

Now, that's an extreme example (and, for that matter, false), but you get my point. Those on the anti-Lenin side would not like that. And yet they still want it the other way. See, the words "peace" and "freedom" as just as much meaningless platitudes as "terror" and "coercion", especially when deconstucting a figure like Lenin. One man's repression is another man's socialist paradise. Did the Soviet Union under Lenin engage in foundless repression? I'd say yes, but that's my view. There are multiple sources and opinions. Try stating them without endorsing them. None of this "'Lenin is guitless!' 'No! He's a monster!'" business.

For example, the argument that "Lenin wasn't as bad as Stalin" is flawed. Whether or not you agree with his motives, the government he built did kill people, undeniably. So what if it was fewer than Stalin? Whether or not Lenin commited evil (and I think we can all agree killing is evil) in the name of good (as Robert Mcnamara would put it) is contentious, and not something up for debate on Misplaced Pages: we state the perceptions, not the "facts" (unfortunately or not). Someone will always cry foul of facts, no matter the source. This is about being objective, presenting more than one view (views from reputable sources, of course, but you get my point I hope). And you can't be that by saying someone implemented "terror" and leaving it at that.

The same problem arises in the debate over the White and Red army. They both, clearly, commited atrocities. It is not right to say one is worse than the other because one's body count is higher, regardless of motive. It's not your responsibility to moralize, especially in the "my guy(s) killed fewer so it's justified" way:

"Yes, there was terror, extensive and brutal; but that of the Whites was more than matched by that of the Reds, and not just against counter-revolutionaries but peope who had been their allies and comrades in the political underground..." -- White Guard

Is it worse that they betrayed their former comrades? Assuming it's true, yeah. But we're both moralising if we accept that as objectively truth. Matched is no excuse. The Whites were scum, too. Period. "Too" meaning "also". Terror is subjective, unfortunately, to a Western audience that doesn't know the meaning of the word some 90 years after the Russian civil war...so you just can't put it that way. I'd say the same if you were trying to say how great the USSR was.

Not that I'm suggesting that you're doing this on purpose, but I notice that each side has the habit of countering each others arguments in this fashion...or simply by claiming the other side doesn't understand. Hey, maybe you're not doing this, but it certainly comes off that way...

I don't mean to be harsh, but, clearly, none of this is getting you nowhere.

So how do you make this neutral? Haven't got a clue. I'm just saying what I think you're doing wrong. Cheers -- Yossarian 03:37, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

PS: On the whole Richard Pipes "thing": instead of giving him a title ("ultra conservative", "historian", etc.) why not just call him..."Richard Pipes". Let people look him up on their own.

Thank you for that, but I'm still not quite sure what your point is. That we should use no 'loaded' words in describing a particular political process, system or set of beliefs? That historical assessments should always be free of dynamic descriptive terms or any attempt at judgement? That bland euphemism should serve where possible bias may be suggested? That there was no 'Reign of Terror', merely the 'Reign of a very Large Number of State Sponsored Executions'? Fine it's an intellectual perspective, certainly, and a dare say an honest one; but it is not one that I find either meaningful or useful. I could not imagine writing about twentieth century dictatorships without using the word 'coercion'. And as for the use of the word 'terror', it was Lenin's regime that gave it both currency and legitimacy. So I do think the sentence quoted is useful and descriptive, focusing, as it does, on forms and modes of political practice. You may not happen to like it; but it is true notwithstanding.

The point I was making about the Red Terror in the above was intended for polemical effect, as part of an ongoing debate on these pages. This, I think, is where you will find the most 'loaded' terms, and I freely confess I vigorously countered each point in a deliberate attempt to undermine what I considered to be a particularly facile Lenin bias. The real point here was that the Terror could be justified against genuine political dangers faced by the Soviet regime, against those who would employ it to an equivalent or even higher degree. In this regard it could be perceived as a question of survival, a position being defended by my interlocutor. But could it also be justified against those who simply had a different point of view, who may not have been Bolsheviks but were still socialists and who represented no physical danger to the state? If not, then Terror was simply an end in itself, a part of a new political culture.

Oh yes, you can be as 'harsh' as you like: I welcome robust debate, and indeed let's search for objectivity. But what you can not do is reduce history to 'bloodless discourse' in pursuit of an elusive neutrality. For that, too, serves its own political purpose. White Guard 05:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that you can't be "bloodless". But my point was that I perceived you guys justifing the actions of one party by pointing out atrocities by the other. See, I don't think your method has been effective (the point by point business)...I mean, it just makes you sound like your defending the Whites over the Reds because you think they didn't kill as many people (the guy you're arguing with is sounding the same way, but in reverse). I know that's not what you mean, but it could sure be read that way. Certainly it's important to outline both sides of the issue, positive and negative, but it's not logical to suggest that you can counter another argument simply by offering a "your guy did the same thing...but it was worse" kind of argument.

I mean, I agree about the Red Terror (despite a lot of misconceptions). The results of the Bolshevik revolution were tragic, and a blot on the reputation socialism from which it still hasn't recovered. But many of my fellow lefties might not agree. I hate Ronald Reagan (correction, I loathe Ronald Reagan with every ounce of being I can afford to waste upon him), but he was right about one thing: it was the evil empire. But that doesn't justify helping Contras, you know? My point is, there are those who could come up to us and say that the Bolshevik party was entirely justified in every execution (in the same way Anne Coulter can defend McCarthyism, a lesser form of the same evil, IMHO), and that calling it a terror (which it was) is intellectually dishonest. But you can call it the "Red Terror", because that's a name that some historians have given it. I should have been clearer: it's not that you can't say these things, it's that you have to say them through the mouths of others. Truthfully. The same goes for those that claim the positive. The trick is not to write it yourself (sorta), if you see what I mean. Think of yourself as a documentarian, taking all the interviews and compiling them. Don't worry about getting it "right". Just report it right. For better or for worse, Misplaced Pages is about presenting the views that constitute neutrality, regardless of what is truly, objectively correct, and of the editor's own view. Try writing something that's not "anti" Lenin once in a while. Something that doesn't get your hackles up. The blood is in the other, as Hegel might say, so you're not obligated to provide your own. Hope that clarifies it. Cheers --Yossarian

08:00, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to reply to one of your points, Yossarian, I am thinking, all things considered, that maybe an adjective to describe where a historian is coming from, politically, or in any other way, is not a bad thing, in the sense that a lot of history writing seems to me to be as much about the author's POV and spiritual autobiography as about what really happened in history in real reality. And maybe it is epistimologically or ontologically impossible, anyway, to describe what really happens in real reality, divorced from our perception of it, our cultural and class background our gender and ethnicity etc. As per some of us leftist's bug-bear Mr Pipes, I am thinking now that he probably does have the right to be called an historian, but that we could qualify that with 'conservative', 'ultra-conservative' or whatever. Similarly if an historian is of a Marxist bent we can call him a Marxist historian or whatever. Certain adjectives also have the beauty of not being absolute terms (which could be philosophically disagreable) but are relative to other terms: thus 'left' and 'right'. Thus I think it is fairly uncontroversial to describe Pipes as 'right-wing' and Trotsky as 'left-wing', even if by some miracle one of the other of them had somehow stumbled on absolute truth. Colin4C 11:49, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, "ultra-conservative" is a tad loaded...I mean, he is (a Reaganite, no?), but it's hard to justify saying that...just conservative would probaly be more apt. The problem is one of perception: if a leftist, for example, looks at "historian Richard Pipes" they might say "That Pipes is an ultra-conservative, and we need to show his bias." Which is what you're saying, I think. Fair enough. But if someone more conservatively minded comes along and sees that addition they might go "They're labelling him a conservative in order to discredit his opinion as pure bias." I don't think that's true at all, but this is about objectivity and consensus...so sometimes we can't do what we think is most right. Only what is right by will of the mob (okay, it's not that bad, but you get me). Anyway, if you're dead set on it, I'd go with an noun adjunct, rather than an adjective. Like, his position under Ronnie. Or whatever. That could bring up other issues, but it is an alternative.

Still, I think that it'll be a problem no matter what. Like, with your example on Trotsky. He was pretty unabashedly left-wing. When we talk about Trotsky we know what his political position is. It would be redundant to call Trotsky "left-wing" in an article like this (people would laugh). Pipes is a controversial figure in this case. Not merely because he is right wing (he IS), but because by stating that people will think there's an alterior motive. If we were using Trotsky in the same way as the Pipes reference, it's pretty clear why we're using him, and no descriptor is necessary. So why not treat Pipes the same? If people don't know who Leo is, they go to his article. If people don't know who Pipes is, they can go to his. If they know who he is, they already understand his bias, and probably need not be reminded. While, personally, I think that it would be fine to establish the historian's bias, in-article, I suspect others would read too much into it. Cheers--Yossarian

21:33, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Yossarian, I think, just think, we may be able to do business. You have an interesting and subtle mind, and a reasonable grasp of a few of the issues I have been trying to tackle-with limited effect, I have to confess-on this page. Read over what I have written above since the opening debate on the murder of Nicholas II. In particular I would ask you to pay close attention to the points I have been making in 'What is to be Done?', parts I-III. Then, I think, we might be able to talk in a little more detail. Also go back to the previous version of the main page before I became involved-if the bias does not leap up and slap you on the face I will be amazed. I must say, as a first reaction, that I simply do not agree, can not agree, with your perspective on the writing of history: without engagement it would be reduced to a meaningless and disconected set of facts. Now, take a history book down from your self, any history book, and then open it at any page. Inevitably the historian 'intrudes', defines, clarifies and describes. How else can you write history? If I write a monograph or a paper on the Red Terror I simply have to use the word 'terror'-outwith sourced context-in describing the operation of a given set of policies. You see I would have no problem with any attempt to justify the rate of execution under Lenin, because this would, for me at least, confirm a point-that mass execution became a part of the system, confirmed even by a 'positive' assessment of this process. I would then have to ask why and what purpose it served? History, all history, is engagement. Otherwise it becomes no more than 'listing', a form of second-rate chronology.

Now, you will find as you read over my stuff that I do become increasingly polemical; but that, quite frankly, was because I considerd much of the feed-back hysterical and second-rate. I think you have already detected this in the ill-informed and subjective comments about Richard Pipes. I do not mean to be unkind, but the 'debate' has become a little like a tutorial in forms of argument and presentation. It has improved as I have gone along, though there are still problems; amongst other things I am having to repeat the same points time and again because they appear not to have been understood (I'm now about to do it once again in the section below). You have been honest enough to declare your own politics, so I will declare mine, assuming you have not already deduced what they are: I belong to the conservative and libertarian right and have the same feelings about Lenin as you do about Ronald Reagan. However, as I have said before, I believe in simple historical truth, where this can be achieved, an would never knowingly twist the facts to suit my ends. But the facts, I repeat, have to be engaged critically and placed in context: otherwise all meaning and sense is lost. White Guard 00:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

See, I agree with that. History does need its blood...but the problem is, or as far as I can tell, that Misplaced Pages's neutrality policy puts the kibosh on how much you and I, personally, can put into this. Sometimes it really does come down to numbers. It doesn't really have to come off the page (it is an encyclopaedia, after all). But you're right. The business of reporting history through neutrality is dry. Very dry. But it's the task we've assigned ourselves.

Perusing this a tad more, your debate is really coming down to a historical debate. A debate of historical interpretation, I give you that, but a historical one nonetheless. For example, it is truly neutral to present both views of the Tsar's execution, rather than to merely say it is debated, or to favour one position over the other.

I think you both should focus more on compromise: obviously any strong, preconcieved views of Lenin are not going to change, so you're not getting anywhere with arguing history. What is true is not what has to be determined.

I don't think much of Lenin either way. Perhaps more negatively than positively...but the man was complex, so I'll give him credit where credit is due. To me he was just another intellectual (heck, an aristocrat...hero of the working class, indeed) cum commie trying to implement ideas he hadn't understood the gravity of, with people dying needlessly as a result (it gets more and more tragic as the years go on...Kim Il-sung, Pol Pot, etc.) Perhaps he was a man who had the well being of his people in mind with all he did, but it's something that can't be determined objectively. Too much blood. I mean, the Allies dropped firebombs on Dresden. Truman dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. These were great evils. But many say they were necessary. Are Truman and the Allies to be villified? They did defeat Hitler. But they did kill innocent people. As did the Bolsheviks. But were they not defending what they percieved as freedom? This is all just defending the ends with the means, which just doesn't work. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, you know? If we can call the Red Terror evil (which it was), then we can call the firebombing of Dresden evil (which it was). Well, we can't on Misplaced Pages. Misplaced Pages is really about neutrality. It's bloodless. It's the worst system...except for all the rest. We respect the views of others to a degree, whether they regard Lenin as a monster or Lenin as a blameless. Synthesis, gentlemen. Synthesis. I don't think the tone here has been one of respect. You guys need to lose the bile. I understand this is polarizing, but is arguing going to help? Cooperate. Collectivize, if you will.

But yeah, I think I could be safely catagorized as "ultra-left" (free health care, free education, free internet, free speech...I'd scare the hell out of so called "liberals" in the States...), but apologist for the USSR I am not. I just happen to think, aesthetically, hammers and sickles are snazzy...note the sig. So there's my bias.

Anyway, you can see where I'm coming from. Certainly this debate can find a middle ground. --Yossarian 04:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no disagreement on any of these issues, but I think, perhaps, that you may be in danger of confusing the somewhat partisan comments that may appear here with what I for one would consider appropriate for the article itself. I really have no fundamental problem with concepts of neutrality other than to say that the article itself must have stood in violation of every criterion of such a concept, though only those with detailed knowledge of the subject would understand this. Read what it said-before my edits-about the Bolsheviks and the Constituent Assembly. Quite frankly this, as I have said, was the worst piece of political bias I have ever read. It was for this and other reasons (all given above) that I put the POV tag on the page, though I had to fight for its retention. I would never, repeat never used adjectives like 'bad' or 'evil' or anything close to describe the actions of historical figures, no matter how much I believed this to be true; but there are other, more subtle ways of manipulating history without it being obvious to the uninitiated. The page on Lenin came close to nothing but manipulation, sad to say, and it is true of a great many others. I treat people as they treat me, though I never descend to personal insult and invective, so I am not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'lose the bile.' Please read again all my contributions in the above debate. I am a polemicist, yes; but before that, above that and after that I am a historian. White Guard 05:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

'The worst piece of political bias' you have ever read? Really? Have you ever looked at this one for instance?: White movement. No mention of White atrocities, White Terror, White genocide against the Jews. NOTHING. Colin4C 16:20, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Yet again I have to tell you that none of this is relevant to a page about Lenin. Please try to think coherently and take any concerns you have about these issues to the appropriate location. White Guard 22:05, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry...I should have said the bile is more the tone of the whole thing. Everyone's been fairly well behaved, but it could be a bit more civil (for example, coming in and proclaiming this article is all a bunch of propaganda won't win you many friends). I dunno. Maybe I'm just reading into it. There is a lot of bias in this piece, definitely. I'm seeing it from both sides, though. I think "He was very concerned about creating a free universal health care system for all, the emancipation of women, and teaching the illiterate Russian people to read and write" is one bias. Who says that? Lenin himself? The person who inserted it into the article? The interpretation of "terror and coercion" becoming part of the Soviet apparatus is another bias. No doubt terror and coercion were parts of the Soviet government, but this is where it gets tricky. It's very much you coming to that conclusion (one I'm inclined to believe, but that's not the point). Misplaced Pages has no problem with that interpretation if it comes from an independant (of Misplaced Pages) historian. Drawing conclusions on subjective historical events is a point of view. If it's written as the point of view of the editor of the article, then it becomes the article's point of view. The articles can't have a point of view. They have one of neutrality. Neutral is not saying the Soviets use terror. Neutral is not saying Lenin was undisputablely social progressivew when it came to women (I think he probably was pretty liberal that way, but it's not my place to state it as fact). You can say both those things without endorsing either.

As for your arguments, I think good points have been made (some are subjective to what the reader is ultimately inclined to believe, but so be it). However, history is never going to be truly precise, especially its interpretations. Those points are, indeed, polemical. Polemics are anethma to neutrality. Working toward consensus, rather than toward debate, is a more effective use of your time. White Guard, how can you work with Colin? Colin, how can you work with White Guard? You have to put aside what you are inclined to believe, and decide what vies should be expressed. Both the ones you are presenting are important. The debate (which I've read a great deal of) is pretty much repetitive at this point. You're beating a dead horse. You've both presented a lot of good information and sources. Why are you trying to reject some over the others? Why aren't you implementing them into this artice (which, might I add, is rather scant on sources)? It doesn't matter that you don't like Source, or you don't like Solzhenitsyn. Both have something to say, right or wrong. It's not fair to the reader to present only the view that Lenin was evil. It's not fair to the reader to present only the view that Lenin was good. People should be allowed to draw their own conclusions. Cheers, --Yossarian

02:34, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Hello again comrade Yossarian. Just to say that, though White Guard, has described me (in a Stalinist way) as a saboteur, I have removed his POV piece on post-Lenin terror because:

1 - It was stuck in the middle of the article: thus violating chronology. If we follow this logic we would be putting stuff about Maggie's war in the Falklands in the middle of the Winston Churchill article, because, arguably, she was following his agenda. IF we have to include controversial claims by whatever historian about Lenin's legacy vis-a-vis Terror or whatever (and why not the Health Service as well?) they would best be put at the end of the article.
2 - He has still not proven (what is in fact false) that Terror was 'growing in intensity', but has rather elided the Terror of the Civil War with Stalin's Terror and joined up the middle with some isolated acts of Terror in the 1920's. In reality in the late 1920's Terror diminished in intensity and then in the 1930's rose in intensity and post-1938 diminished in intensity again and after Stalin died was abandoned as a bad idea by Krushchev who dismantled Stalin's police state. Cheers, Colin Colin4C 11:28, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

More Terror

Could we have some comments about the relevence of this latest piece from White Guard....(which I haven't cut, merely copied...):

Terror and political coercion were thus to become an established feature of the Soviet system, growing in intensity over the years, reaching an apex in the late 1930s under Joseph Stalin. Some early examples of this process may suffice. In August 1924 there was a rising in Georgia against which was suppressed with considerable brutality, the Soviet press later admitting to some 4000 executions. (Vera Brodio, Lenin and the Mensheviks, Aldershot, 1987, p. 155). In Petrograd-now Leningrad-a state of emergency was declared in December 1924, during which several hundred people were arrested, sometimes from the street. The suppression of dissent was also to reach deep within the ranks of the Communist Party itself. Lenin's resolution at the tenth party congress to outlaw 'factions', was used against any view contrary to the established political line. In September 1923 many of the remaining members of the Workers' Opposition were arrested and imprisoned in various labour camps, where most were later to be executed. The anti-faction resolution was also to be used successively against senior party figures, from Trotsky downwards, creating a widespread atmosphere of fear and intimidation throughout the 1920s.

As for myself I just like to say that:

1, All these events happened after Lenin was dead, or non-compis-mentis so arguably have no place in a bio of Lenin. I have certainly never seen them cited in any bio of Lenin I have seen.
2, They don't prove that the terror and coercion was 'growing in intensity', just that there were certain acts of terror and coercion between the time of the Civil War and the assault on the kulaks and the Purges by Stalin.
3, As for the Georgian killings, do I detect the hand of comrade Stalin? The same Stalin who was criticised by Lenin for his heavy-handed behavior in that same region when the latter was alive.
4, If we are to include such comments in a bio of Lenin, then maybe they should be put in a final section called 'Lenin's Legacy' or some such. Colin4C 12:23, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Colin, you know very well that I put these details in to counter your assertion that there had been a ten year 'hiatus', as you put it between the end of the Red Terror and the beginning of Stalin's attack on the kulaks. You see, what I have been arguing for all along is that Lenin and Stalin belong to the same political process; that Lenin defined the system and Stalin built upon his foundations. Stalin is not an aberration, a 'mad-dog', or a Martian; he belongs to Russian history; he belongs to Bolshevism and, ultimately, he belongs to Lenin. Here is a quote from at least one 'bio' of Lenin that you have clearly not read; "Lenin had transformed the dicatatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the Party, and Stalin went further by making the dictatorship of the party into the dictatorship of one man...Stalin finished building Lenin's totalitarian pyramid, and under him the Politburo came to resemble the court of the Inqusition." (Dimitri Volkogonov, pp. 313-4). And still further, "Even when he was seriously ill, Lenin never lost sight of his obsession with 'cleansing Russia for a long time', and he continued to give Stalin instructions to carry out his punitive orders through the Cheka. Stalin was still following Lenin's advice in the 1930s, although in his own original way...he had learned much from Lenin. From the moment in May 1918 when Lenin had signed the order appointing Stalin to control food production in the south of Russia, and had vested him with extraordinary powers, Stalin had become accustomed to making decisions without regrad to justice, to morals, elementary human feeling or mercy." (p.269)

I have already said to you-though once again you seem blind to the point-that I could drown you in references to Soviet state terror prior to Collectivisation if you so wish.

Stalin was not in Georgia in August 1924. You seem to detect the hand of Stalin in every enormity of the Bolshevik state, quite in keeping with the Manichaean position you have taken on this all along. Please try to resist the attempt to view these questions devoid of historical context.

The page is not simply a 'bio' of Lenin but a description of the political culture arising from his writings and actions; so it is both relevant and meaningful to make reference to outcomes and consequences in the course of the article.

Colin, I rather though I would have heard from you long since on some of these points. I have also been surprised somewhat by your rather more sober assessment of Russian history in your post on Stalin prior to the above. I suspect Yossarian has given fresh impetus to the old you, arising Dracula style from the crypt. Do not be deceived. White Guard 01:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey, I think he's been as wrong in going about this as you have, so don't blame me! ;) --Yossarian

05:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

You may have bamboozled comrade Yossarion, White Guard, but I am not so easily fooled by your incoherent rhetoric and illogicality. For instance I still don't understand your claim that the terror after the Civil War was 'growing in intensity'. Do you honestly expect us to believe that there was more terror after the Civil War than during it? This is simply not true and is just an indication of your right-wing POV - which we know about already. Colin4C 16:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Incoherent rhetoric and illogicality? Illogicality-wonderfull! I would have though everything I said in the above was both clear-and logical-but if you would like further clarification on any specific point-or more information-please ask. Alas, one step forward and two steps back. I have told you before, Colin, that I am immune to childish invective. It's regrettable that you have descended once again to foot-stamping frustration; it serves no useful purpose, merely demonstrating a certain incapacity for mature debate. More important, it's not worthy of you; for I know you can do better. I'm sorry also you have resorted to removing sourced statements-a new tactic on your part-which must be contrary to Misplaced Pages policy. What I have been trying to tell you, repeatedly so, is that terror under Lenin was an established part of the Soviet system, which did indeed grow both in refinement and sophistiction over the years. I also put forward examples to counter an unhistorical and unsourced statement on your part. I freely confess that my politics are conservative-I have never made any secret of that; but as I have also stressed time and again-most recently in the above-I would never allow this to corrupt the historical record. I will be happy to continue discussion with you on the activities of the Cheka and the uses of state terror in the 1920s in relation to the polity established by Lenin, if you so wish. But I urge you not to sabotage the development of this article, and to remove statements simply because you do not like them. White Guard 22:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Some statements may be sourced, but they are irrelevent to Lenin's career, as they happened after his death, as I pointed out before. And you still haven't given a reference for the untrue statement that terror was 'growing in intensity' in the later 1920's. Objecting to your insertion of controversial right-wing Povs in the middle of the article is not 'sabotage', to use your own 'childish invective' (and didn't Stalin accuse political oppenents he disagreed with as 'saboteurs' I seem to recall.....?).Colin4C 10:39, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Lenin's Theoretical Work

How is there only a single sentence on Lenin's literary productions?! Scarcely any mention of things like "Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism," which continues to be discussed in academic circles today. Lenin, whatever else may be said about him, contributed a serious body of intellectual work on imperialism and Marxist theory, which should be noted in this article. Nicolasdz 11:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

When a politician and an important historical figure also produces a body of theoretical work the problem then arises of what to include and what to leave out. A life of Marx, for instance, could focus on theoretical work to the exclusion of all else; that of Lenin clearly could not. Ultimately, its a question of proper balance and, above all, ensuring that the whole thing does not become too unwieldy. There is, I think, some mention of Lenin's theoretical work; but by all means work in some more specific references-or a dedicated section-where you feel this is appropriate. White Guard 22:41, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Cultural depictions of Vladimir Lenin

I've started an approach that may apply to Misplaced Pages's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 17:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Anti-Semitism

This section does not belong here. More improtantly, it is devoid of any scholarly, objective sources. Seems that there has been Zionist inflitration of this page. It will be removed because if Lenin's stance on Jews is to be vividly described, then there should be equal emphasis given to other nationalities.

Those Zionists. I tell ya. They have their hands in everything! Incorrigable scamps! 9/11? The Jews. The Holocaust? The Jews (for some reason). Your mom's hernia? Masons. But them Jews must have had a hand in it. I'm surprised they aren't draining your precious bodily fluids as we speak...MEIN FUHRER! I CAN WALK! --Yossarian

04:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

"The Mensheviks' Political Comeback - The elections to the provincial soviets in spring 1918: Vladimir Brovkin". Russian Review. 42. 1983. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help) 1-50
Stephane, Courtois (1999). The Black Book of Communism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

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