(This is my first time reviewing this podcast on this blog--or at least, reviewing it as a whole. So, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)
Sorry, I know this video wasn't very good. File this under: 1) The dangers of doing unscripted videos, and
2) I'm always sleepy when I film videos, because I have to wait for the kids to go to bed before I can film.
There were several things I had planned to talk about that I just forgot to mention. And there were a few thins I mentioned that I wish I hadn't. (e.g. My mentioning of Mike Duncan's mixing up of some of the names in the last few episodes--mentioning that was a pedantic nit-pick.)
Links to stuff mentioned:
* My review of Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
As I mentioned in my started post, half of this series I had already reviewed on my blog.
For my thoughts on the first 8 episodes (the prologue about Marx and Bakunin), see HERE.
I also started reviewing this podcast episode by episode from episode 63 (partly as a way to alleviate boredom during the Covid lockdown). The links to those min-reviews below
What recommends this book in particular is how well it’s written. Helen Rappaport is one of those rare historians who makes history sound like a story.
I’ll just quote a couple paragraphs to illustrate this. In this chapter, Lenin is travelling across Finland, and being housed along the way by the Finnish underground railroad for Russian politicals. He was supposed to get off the train at Abo railway station, where he would be met by the Borg family. However when he didn’t show up, the Borg family assumed he had been picked up by the political police.
By 2.00 a.m. there was only one logical conclusion that could regretfully be reached: the gendarmes had picked him [Lenin] up en route. And then, suddenly, came a soft thud at the window. Down below, standing in the soft white glow of the snow, stood a lonely figure, clutching a small suitcase. Lenin, fearful of knocking at the front door at this time of night, had thrown a snowball up at Borg’s window to attract his attention. He had indeed almost fallen into the hands of the Okhrana [Tsarist Police]. Leaving Helsingfors by train he soon spotted that he was being tailed by two agents. When he got off the train at Karis to have some supper in the station buffet the men followed and watched him closely. He had to get away from them; they would arrest him the minute he got off the train at Abo, the end of the line. So, as the train gathered speed out of the tiny station of Littois (Littoinene), the last before, Abo, he slipped out on to the running board, threw his suitcase ahead of him and leaped from the train. Luckily, a deep snowdrift broke his fall. The two agents decided it was not worth risking their necks to follow, and as he watched the red of the train’s tail lights disappear into the night, Lenin heaved a sigh of relief. He picked himself up and trudged off in the crackling frost the seven miles of country road into Abo, his only point of reference in the dark, looming pine forest on all sides. At Borg’s apartment, seeing that he was frozen, hungry and exhausted, the Finns removed Lenin’s coat and boots. As he lay on the divan to recover, Borg’s wife Ida fed him hot milk with cognac and rubbed spirit on his hands and feet to get the circulation going. By now extremely agitated at the thought of being captured, as soon as Lenin heard there was still a chance of catching the Bore I [the ship], he insisted on being found a sledge so that he could leave straight away. Ludwig Lindstrom, who was to be his guide, told him that it would be very hard finding the way in the snow and the dark and they would have to wait till morning. Lenin was hysterical that the spooks would catch up with him before then. “I’ve already been in Siberia and I don’t want to end up there again!” he exclaimed. If Lindstrom wasn’t prepared to take him, he would set off on foot, alone and head north for the Gulf of Bothnia. He’d walk all the way to the northern border with Sweden at Torneo if he had to: “I’ve walked further distances in Siberia.”
That wonderful storytelling alone is enough reason to just lose yourself in this book for hours at your local coffee shop.
The subject material of this book is fascinating as well. Rappaport makes the decision to cover the beginning of Lenin’s life only very briefly, and to skip the end of his life when he was in power. As the title suggests, Rappaport focuses only on his years as a political exile in Europe.
This was a wise decision. Not only is this the period usually neglected by other writers, but it’s arguably the most fascinating part of Lenin’s life. The games of cat and mouse with the police, the fierce political squabbling among the exiled Russian community in Europe, and the idealistic pre-revolution socialist community in Western Europe are all fascinating.
Although Lenin is the most well-known of the Russian socialists, in some ways his story is the least interesting, and Rappaport will sometimes use Lenin’s life as a jumping off point to describe some of the various adventures of the Russian socialist community at the time (dodging police while smuggling in illegal literature or gun running).
Rappaport is particularly interested in highlighting some of the women in the Russian underground, who have largely been left out of history, but about whom she has fascinating stories to tell.
As for Lenin himself:
For the amateur historian, it’s hard to get an accurate picture of a polarizing figure like Lenin. Every book I’ve read on Lenin has given me a completely different picture of the man than the one before it, to the point where I’m not sure what to believe.
In this book, he is portrayed as an obsessive intellectual who spends hours in the library everyday, and who sometimes ignores the political events in the real world around him because he is so obsessed with working out his theories. (Rappaport writes that both the 1905 Revolution and the 1917 Revolution caught Lenin off-guard).
In today’s world, where politicians are thought of as almost anti-intellectual, it is surprising to think that Lenin, so obsessed with books and having such poor social skills, was able to manipulate his way into being the leader of a large country.
Which is not to say Lenin wasn’t a politician. The Lenin in this book is a Machiavellian type personality who uses all sorts of dirty political tricks to get his way. He splits the Russian Socialist movement into two parts—Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, then fights bitterly to make sure his Bolshevik faction gets into control. He demands total obedience from those in his faction, and won’t tolerate any views dissenting from his own. Based on the picture Helen Rappaport paints of him, it’s not hard to see how this would be the same Lenin who would go on to create a very authoritarian regime. At one point in the book Lenin is having a talk with a constitutional democrat, and he ends by saying, “Someday we’ll be hanging people like you off of the lampposts.”
Rappaport also highlights the women in Lenin’s life such as his long suffering wife and mother-in-law (who accompanied Lenin on his travels all over Europe) and a woman Lenin appears to have had an affair with—Inessa Armand. Rappaport tries to counter decades of hagiography which make Lenin into some sort of asexual revolutionary monk and instead portrays him as a man with sexual desires who might well have looked for satisfaction outside of his marriage.
A very well-written book, well worth checking out.
Lenin is to say the least, a very controversial figure. He’s also the arguably the most influential person in the 20th Century.
…In fact, we did argue about. Shortly before the turn of the century, Time magazine announced that they were going to choose the man of the 20th century, and, just for fun, the question was put out on the history students’ listserve at Calvin. Our musings didn't have any effect on the editorial process at Time magazine, but just for fun we debated it back and forth. Many of us, myself included, argued that if you had to pick one person who had the greatest influence on the events of the 20th Century, it would have to be Lenin. The revolution he engineered in Russia inspired communist Revolutions in China, Cuba, etcetera, until it went on to include half the world. And Lenin was also responsible for creating the Cold War which dominated most of the 20th Century. Plus, if you include the rise of fascism as partly a reaction against the communist revolutions, than you've got to throw in World War II, and all the baggage from that conflict.
The Calvin conservatives on the listserve were appalled by our choice, and enraged that a “thug” like Lenin who merely “inspired other groups of thugs” around the world could be considered person of the Century. They in turn nominated the standard conservative heroes like Winston Churchill, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, etcetera. Those of us who had chosen Lenin tried to explain to them that the “man of the Century” was supposed to be the most influential person, not necessarily the best person. They showed a remarkable inability to understand this concept, and the debate on the listserve went on for weeks.
Proof that Lenin still has the ability to inspire controversy even today.
I’m far from an expert, but I have read a bit about Lenin over the years, and I’m always amazed at how I come away with a completely different picture of him each time. Sometimes he emerges as a brutal godless communist. Sometimes he comes across as a good guy whose ideas were all corrupted by Stalin. Even within the left, perspectives of Lenin seem to vary depending on whether the author is orthodox communist, Trotskyist, democratic socialist, or anarchist. When reading different analysis about Lenin, sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m reading about the same person.
Bork who, as far as I remember used to share my ambivalence about Lenin’s legacy, read up on it a bit when he was in his internship in Russia and came back fiercely anti Bolshevik and anti-Lenin. But you’d have to talk to him to get his perspective.
This book, while not extremely detailed, makes an effort to try and balance the facts out. I found it surprisingly fair considering it was written during the Reagan administration and is a young adult book that is clearly designed to adorn the shelves of school libraries.
The book very clearly explains who Lenin was and what his goals were. And it shows the many faults of both the Tsarist regime or the Kerensky government that preceded Lenin. However the book also portrays Lenin as a bit of a bully and autocrat even in the years before the Revolution. Lenin would engage in all sorts of questionable politicking and undemocratic practices to get his way within the party.
The book even quotes a section from historian Betram D. Wolfe who: ‘gives an account of a conversation between Akselrod and a member of the International Socialist Bureau—the Second International’s coordinating body—that captures the essence of the gulf that separated Lenin from all Social Democrats, excepting his own followers. The official asked: “Do you mean to say that all these splits and quarrels are the work of one man? But how can one man be so effective and so dangerous?” Akselrod replied: “Because there is not another man who for twenty-four hours of the day is taken up with the revolution, who has no other thoughts but thoughts of the revolution, and who, even in his sleep, dreams of nothing but revolution. Just try and handle such a fellow.”’
The book does not gloss over the political violence that Lenin and the Bolsheviks committed once they were in power. And yet at the same time it does try and put things in perspective. For example when writing about the Red Terror, the author states:
“It is estimated that by October 1922, when it was replaced by the State Political Administration (GPU), the Cheka had killed approximately 140,000 people by execution, and another 140,000 while putting down uprisings. “Many historians have analyzed the Red Terror in great detail while failing to deal with is corollary—the “White Terror”. Some perspective on this troubled issue may, perhaps, be gained from the following single fact: In Finland, which proclaimed independence from Russia in July 1917, White forces under Carl Gustaf Von Mannerheim, a former lieutenant-general in the Imperial Army, killed almost 100,000 workers, or roughly 25 percent of the entire Finnish Proletariat, in just two months—April and May—in 1918.”
At the end of the book I think the author does a good job of summing up the ambivalence surrounding Lenin’s legacy:
“Many historians have claimed that Leninism and Stalinism were essentially the same or, at least, that Stalinism can be viewed as a logical development of Leninism. Whereas others, including many non-leftists, have rejected the idea. Lenin was undoubtedly one of the greatest leaders, most effective revolutionaries, and most powerful minds of his time. His ultimate aim was always the realization of a true producers’ democracy, an egalitarian socioeconomic order promising real social harmony. As he himself stressed repeatedly, the worldwide realization of the kind of society that was at the heart of his vision would mean an end to war and an end to the exploitation of man by man. Men have seized power for worse ends than this.”
