Lenin won because he felt what millions want
Talk about October 1917 of the year will be incomplete without discussion of the figure of Vladimir UlyanovTalk about the October Revolution (KM TV film “October 1917: who was behind the curtains of the Russian revolution?” You can watch here), or, if you will, the October revolution (one does not contradict the other) will, of course, be incomplete without a discussion of the phenomenon of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin). Genius or villain ("the main political criminal of the twentieth century" in the terminology of Vladimir Zhirinovsky), the destroyer or the creator, the creator of the "world's first state of workers and peasants" or the bloody executioner - the forerunner of Stalin, a Jew and a freemason or the head of the World International - and these are just a few topics for eternal debates about the role of Vladimir Ilyich’s personality in stories. Discussions about him if they are inferior in intensity, then only disputes about Stalin. It is almost impossible to treat him indifferently. And this means that he left his mark in world history. What is this trail? Everyone has their own opinion. The political scientist Sergey Chernyakhovsky has one.
Lenin is, of course, the central figure of October 1917 of the year. Although not only him. With all the fluctuations of public opinion, his role and his personality and today cause a positive attitude among far more people than a negative one.
2012% of Russian citizens spoke of its positive role in the history of spring 48, and 30% spoke about the negative one. At that, only six years ago, the ratio was different: with the plus sign of Lenin, then 40% was evaluated, and with the minus sign - 36%. That is, his figure and his role is positively assessed not only by the majority, but by the growing majority of the population, while his opponents are not just a minority, but a decreasing one. According to the same Levada Center from 2011, when asked about how people will remember Lenin in 40-50 years, 68% of respondents predicted positive ratings, and only 24% - negative.
And all these figures, we note, are obtained in the present era, when not a single memorable date passes without the media filling out the broadcast with negative (to some extent) assessments of both its role and its personality.
As for how it is estimated in the world, according to the catalog of the Library of Congress, according to the number of monographs devoted to him, Lenin ranks third among historical figures. Only two people are ahead of him - Marx and Kant. Although, however, it is unlikely to fully reflect the impact that he himself had on the world.
The scale of his personality can hardly be in doubt for anyone who at least partially remains in positions of minimal sobriety of assessments. Hence all the curses in his address.
There are two main accusations against Lenin: the first is that he is a German spy, the second is the destroyer of the Russian traditional way of life.
The first statement is not only not intelligible confirmed and remains at the level of maxims in the spirit of NTV and "Echo of Moscow", but simply ridiculous. The role of the spy is too inconsistent with the scale of what was done by him - as that which was destroyed, as well as that which was created. The petty accusation only proves that those who hate him do not have the courage to say why they hate him, just as there are no arguments comparable to the scale of a person’s personality that predetermined the course of world history in 20 - and most likely in the 21 century. For some, he is the people's leader and the largest political theorist. For others - a hated villain.
If we move away from assessments caused by political sympathies or antipathies, then let us speculate: who Lenin is after all. What did he do and what could he do?
Lenin is undoubtedly the most successful political figure and 20 of the century, and most likely almost the entire history. He caught and realized the tendencies in the world in his era. He took power in a huge country, kept it with fierce resistance of those who are called "overthrown classes", created a new statehood, laid the foundations of a new economy and a new national and world project. And despite the fact that he really remained in power for a little more than four years.
Moreover, he really practically changed the world, because after October 1917, the world could no longer be what it was before. He destroyed the old, obviously outdated, device of the modern world to it - and opened the way to the search and construction of the new. Not only in Russia - all over the world. That is, he was undoubtedly the most successful and the most ambitious history political technologist.
He created a political organization so effective and so professional that it not only managed to defeat direct opponents - the security structures of the old empire - but also its competitors - other political parties of Russia of that time (far from being as amorphous as political parties of modern Russia). It is not even important that this party was able to overthrow the old government and keep the board in their hands. It is important that this party itself was created as a kind of proto-state structure, which could become the backbone of the new statehood after the old one had practically collapsed (and as soon as this structure was destroyed in 90-s, the state itself collapsed).
After the seizure of power, the main center and main focus of Lenin's activity was, despite unsubstantiated accusations, not the suppression and division, but the construction: the building of self-government, the building of the state, the building of production.
The electrification plan was adopted in 1920, but electrification became a priority of the revolutionary government during the years of the Civil War: in 1918, Lenin accepted the Graftio plan for the construction of the Volkhov hydropower station, and began building the Kashira power plant in 1919. In the spring of 1919, Lenin resumed the abandoned construction of the Shaturskaya TPP. And the listing of what 1917 began to create and build after October can be multiplied.
Issues of organization of production - this is what was in the center of attention and what its activities were directed at. To organize a new production meant to make Russia a technically advanced country in the world. Not to mention the fact that simultaneously with the work on solving these tasks, he was able to first reflect the external military intervention (aggression) of a dozen powers, including the most powerful, and then force the leaders of the Western world who won the World War to accept the conditions of existence dictated leader of the Russian revolution.
Why did it succeed, what was its strength? In colossal empathy - and social, and historical, and political.
Lenin turned out to be intellectually stronger than the Russian liberals and Russian Westernizers, having managed to find the forces and the path that could solve the modernization tasks without destroying the basic value features of the country's task: managing to preserve the traditional priority of justice over rationality. He turned out to be intellectually stronger than the Slavophiles, managing to understand that it is impossible to ensure the preservation of the priorities of justice without combining them with rationality and technocracy.
He turned out to be intellectually stronger than the Russian dogmatic Marxists, who believed that a socialist revolution was impossible in Russia, since its basic class — the workers — were a minority, and they viewed the Russian peasantry as a “continuous reactionary mass”. Lenin was able to understand the revolutionary and creative potential of the Russian peasantry and understand what was his main concern: concern for the Earth.
The question of the Earth in general must be solved not by a socialist, but also by a bourgeois revolution. In France, the allotment of land to peasants was carried out by the revolution of the year 1789-93 and Napoleon. Theoretically, if the imperial power was responsible and adequate, it could and should have solved this problem long before 1917. And even more so this task was to be solved by the first Provisional Government immediately after the February Revolution. And all the more so, the Kerensky government had to decide it, because the resolution of the agrarian question was the main demand of his party. As he will say later, in October Lenin: “What kind of party is that which had to be overthrown in order to carry out its own program?”
Lenin won because all the time he felt what millions want. He knew that the distribution of land to the peasants was not a socialist revolution, but the most radical development of capitalism in the countryside. But he knew that the Russian peasants wanted it - and therefore it must be done, because its main strength is in their support, and because it is much more progressive than what it was in Russia before. By the way, even Stolypin, who is now fashionable, he reproached not so much for the direction of his actions - but for their inconsistency. And he wrote that he was leading Russia along a progressive path, but in the most reactionary way.
Why did the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Kerensky fail to solve the question of land and execute their own program, but could it? Not only because the first did not have enough determination. And because they always offered to wait. Wait until elections to the Constituent Assembly are held (which they themselves were detaining as much as possible), wait until it passes the necessary laws, wait until the land cadastre is drawn up, wait until the required number of cadre surveyors are prepared and so on ad infinitum. Lenin knew that to behave this way towards the peasants was to mock them and arouse their hatred. And he made it easier - he adopted a decree in which he declared: “The earth is yours in perpetual use. Buybacks are canceled. Get organized and take it into your own hands. ”
Those who accuse him of enmity towards everything Russian and of destroying the Russian way of life simply cannot clearly say what they mean by this, or they mean only the world of the possessing estates and autocratic courtiers. Although it was in them that by this time there was already a minimum of Russian. The Russian world, the Russian way of life and the Russian mentality lived in those who worked - in the peasants, workers, Russian engineers. And with all the accusations of closing churches and persecuting priests, it was the alienation of the latter from the Russian people that caused their alienation from them.
Actually, Lenin was the leader of the Russian national revolution, the leader of the uprising of the Russian people against the property class that had lost its national roots. And in this respect, he would today have to be the idol of not only the Communists, but also, no less, consistent nationalists.
It can be said that Lenin broke into this world from the future in order, like Peter the Great, to reintroduce not only Russia, but the whole of humanity. It is possible, with no less justification, to assert that this world itself, faced with its own inability to solve its problems, spawned and called on Lenin to rise to a new stage of development with his help. In any case, it is clear that the impact they had on the world and modern civilization is colossal and almost incomparable with the influence of any other politician. Boris Strugatsky once clearly defined the role of Lenin, saying that he practically created a new world.
As long as there are people who abuse and hate Lenin, this only means that they fear and hate him. Some - by virtue of fear for the privileges assigned to them. Others - because they feel unattainable for them his personal superiority. Hatred of Lenin is only a manifestation of a sense of self psychological complexion. And the envy of those who feel unable to stand with him.
Yes, and also: the first Russian Constitution was given to the people in 1918 after all by Lenin too.
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