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V.I. Lenin died 100 years ago
PUBLIUS SPECIAL GUEST: Rainer Zitelmann, author of UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT: Rising Above All Odds and In Defense of Capitalism
The Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, died on 21 January 1924 — 100 years ago. Even if hardly anyone defends Stalin (Lenin’s successor) today, there are still plenty of leading politicians from left-wing parties who revere Lenin and Trotsky. They may speak of ‘Stalinism’ with disdain, but will then go on to profess their support for Lenin and Trotsky. One such example is John McDonnell, until a few years ago one of the leading figures in the British Labour Party. He cited his most significant intellectual influences as “Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.” Janine Wissler, leader of Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party, was also a member of the Trotskyist Marx21 group until her election as the party’s leader in February 2021.
One of the most respected contemporary leftist philosophers, the Slovenian Slavoj Žižek, unabashedly argues for a “new communism” in his 2021 book A Left that Dares Speak Its Name. Žižek extols “Lenin’s greatness,” which lay in the fact that, after the Bolsheviks seized power, he held steadfast to his socialist principles, even though the conditions did not exist for an actual “construction of socialism.”
According to Trotskyists, the socialist Soviet Union was at its best when Lenin and Trotsky shaped policy, but bad times followed under Stalin after Lenin’s death.
In fact, however, the crimes of communism began as soon as the Bolsheviks seized power and started their war against a majority of the Russian people.
It began with the struggle against the bourgeoisie, against the rich. In December 1917, Lenin demanded that extreme force be used against “this offal of humanity, these hopelessly decayed and atrophied limbs, this contagion, this plague, this ulcer,” specifically “the rich and their hangers-on,” and the bourgeois intellectuals. His aim was “to purge the land of Russia of all vermin,” the rich and other rogues. How this should be done, he explained in drastic words: “In one place half a score of rich, a dozen rogues, half a dozen workers who shirk their work … will be put in prison. In another place they will be put to cleaning latrines … In a fourth place, one out of every ten idlers will be shot on the spot.”
In December 1917, the Bolsheviks nationalized land and real estate. In all cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, property owners were expropriated. In February 1918, the Bolsheviks began to evict affluent families from their apartments to house unemployed proletarians and soldiers. “Housing Committees,” appointed by councils, registered property owners and threw them out of their lodgings.
READ: https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/01/22/v-i-lenin-died-100-years-ago-1429891/
PLUG BOOK: UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT: Rising Above All Odds
BIO: Rainer Zitelmann, author of UNBREAKABLE SPIRIT: Rising Above All Odds, is a German historian, sociologist and multiple bestselling author, whose books include “In Defense of Capitalism” and “Hitler’s National Socialism.” He published 27 books. His books have been translated into 30 languages around the world. In recent years, he has written articles and been the subject of interviews in leading media such as Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Le Monde, Corriere della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and numerous media in Latin America and Asia.
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