Thinking about Lenin
- Pakistani writer Tariq Ali says that after Lenin's death, the Soviet political bureau opted for mummification, with an absolute family renunciation. Stalin wanted to use Lenin’s figure to point out the historical and political continuity between the two. Once dead, it is possible to manipulate, use arbitrarily and distort the person's heritage. What cannot be done is to eliminate the importance and greatness of the person a hundred years ago who died.
In the mainstream media this year a lot will be written about the historical character. What is most likely to be heard is the resonance of the Soviet Revolution and the Stalin government that will follow. “A big but controversial figure,” is expected to be an in-depth message from the mainstream media. Less will be heard of what Lenin thought of his rich political and ideological contribution, his socialism and his democracy, his state and his revolution, his admiration for the community of Paris or his philosophy. And much less will surely be heard from the founder of the Soviet education system Nadia Krúpskaya and Lenin's wife, who took care of her illness in her recent years. However, no one will deny that Lenin was one of the great figures of the 20th century, as one of the leading leaders of the 1917 revolution that would change the world.
Having said that, Lenin is probably the most cited and studied thinker after Marx in the historical tradition of the left. And it's easy to intuit that the risks of making up-to-date readings of these kinds of historical characters are enormous. On the one hand, Lenin is now widely used to justify the worldview and political choices of many political traditions. Nobody is foreign to it, including the one who writes. On the other hand, as Stalin did, attempts to mummify Lenin’s contributions are constant: defending what he said “of truth” from deviant readings. Because the tradition on the left is to seek in theological debates the comfort of their failures.
As a legacy that left us that what seemed impossible can be possible
Some are interested in the philosopher Lenin, others the entrepreneur; some are interested in the Lenin of youth, others in the adult age; some were pragmatic, others the radical revolutionary; some are the critic of the children’s left, others are the bait of the bourgeoisie; some are the activist against the world war; others are the critic of pacifism; some are the strong advocate of the principle of international self-determination. What's the real Lenin? Neither one nor the other, and all at once. Because all we can't do is rescue Lenin that interests us and use it to justify our choices and decisions today, making an anachronistic gesture.
On the contrary, the best tribute to great thinkers and entrepreneurs like Lenin is not to literally apply what they said to current reality. The best tribute is for everyone to carry out processes of transformation in their country and in their context, because Lenin thought and made the revolution from where he was, starting and responding to the circumstances that existed. His theories, philosophy (empiriocriticism and dialectical materialism) and practice are children of the time. It cannot be otherwise. But there is something, without time, that is at the heart of all Lenin's contributions: his ability to listen, decipher and transform society's heartbeat.
After a century we have to claim Vladimir Ilich Ulianov Lenin as a great thinker and entrepreneur of the tradition of the left. And it claims its heritage: the hope and belief of change, or in other words, the person who taught us that what seemed impossible can be possible.
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