The unknown revolutionary

I posted a rather scathing review of this book five years ago, not because I assumed that Lenin was a good guy, but rather for the opposite reason. Of course Vladimir Ilyich wasn't an angel, so what's the big deal anyway with all the classified documents about mass terror, executions and foreign invasions?

But OK, five years later, I'm prepared to post a more objective review… :-)

Edited by Cold War gadfly Richard Pipes (who in an afterword cynically supports “social inequalities” and “the disproportionate influence of the rich”), “The Unknown Lenin” reprints a number of previously classified messages, letters and speeches by the Russian revolutionary leader. Most of them are, of course, unflattering. Some items stand out from the crowd.

In a secret speech at a Communist Party conference in 1920, Lenin admits that the Red Army is used as an instrument to export the revolution abroad. The speech was made after the failed attempt to invade and “Sovietize” Poland. In particular, Lenin bemoans the loss of Galicia, an area at the Polish-Ukrainian border, which he had hoped to use as a springboard to “Sovietize” Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. Lenin also states that a Soviet victory in Poland would have ripped apart the Versailles treaty and with it the entire post-World War I status quo.

The most peculiar part of Lenin's rambling and hard-to-interpret speech states that right-wing elements in Germany would have formed a “bloc” with the Communists in the event of a Soviet conquest of Poland, or perhaps that such a “bloc” already existed. This unnatural alliance would then have been turned against France and Britain. It's not entirely clear whether Lenin is actively calling for a Red-Brown Bloc, merely registering that a temporary convergence of interest exists, or even warning against a bloc (at one point he says that the right-wingers will deceive the workers). Pipes, who believes that Lenin was on the German payroll all along, opts for the first interpretation. If so, Lenin rather than Stalin, Strasser or Dugin “invented” the idea of a geopolitical Russo-German alliance.

Lenin's speech is remarkable for another reason, as well. He seems to have believed that a revolutionary situation was developing in Britain, and that the so-called Council of Action set up by the Labour Party and the TUC to protest British war moves against Soviet Russia was actually a soviet and heralded dual power á la February-October 1917 in Russia!

In another document, long rejected as a forgery, Lenin explicitly states that the famine of 1922 should be used to mercilessly crush the Russian Orthodox Church and its remaining influence over the peasantry. The Bolshevik regime had ordered all churches to hand over their sacred vessels and other valuable objects, so they could be sold and the money used to obtain food for the starving. The letter shows that Lenin's motives were somewhat broader than simply obtain ready cash. At one point, he even quotes Machiavelli.

The Bolsheviks liked to put themselves forward as champions of the oppressed Jews, but some of the documents in this collection tell a different story. When the Red Army conquered the Ukraine, Lenin proposed that the Jews be treated with an “iron rod” and excluded from all leadership positions in the new Soviet republic. In public, however, Lenin was more “polite” and would rather talk of “the Jewish petty bourgeoisie”! When the defeated Red Army withdrew from Poland, Soviet soldiers carried out pogroms against the Jewish population of several settlements along the way. There was also a general increase in banditism against Jewish villages. The Jewish Section of the Bolshevik Party urged Lenin to take action, but he seems to have brushed the matter aside, simply marking the secret telegrams “Into the archives”. Interestingly, the Jewish Bolsheviks reported that Zionist self-defense groups had aided the local Jews in the Polish-Ukrainian border region.

Finally, I could mention several documents about Lithuania, with which Soviet Russia had signed a peace treaty in 1920, to make sure that the Lithuanians remained neutral during the Red Army offensive on Poland. The “bourgeois” government of Lithuania had territorial disputes with Pilsudski's Poland, something Soviet diplomacy wanted to take advantage of. The Bolsheviks promised to capture Vilna (Vilnius), at the time under Polish control, and give it to Lithuania as a kind of peace offering. The secret correspondence in this book reveals (surprise!) that the real plan was to “Sovietize” Vilna and use it as a springboard to launch a revolution in Lithuania. Only after the Lithuanian government had been overthrown (i.e. the same government the Bolsheviks had recognized per the peace treaty) would Vilna be triumphantly given back to the (Red) Lithuanians…

Sounds familiar somehow, doesn't it?

“The Unknown Lenin” is, for the most part, a rather boring book, but if you are interested in the Russian revolution, it's probably worth looking into. Three stars.