this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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To be clear, I have a lot of sympathy for the anarchist perspective. Nestor Makhno was a total badass, and I can understand taking his side.
However, calling Lenin a genocidal imperialist dictator is just plain wrong. Rather than criticize the ghost of the bourgeois myth, I challenge you to criticize what he actually was, what he and the Bolsheviks were up against and reckon with the fact that what they were trying to accomplish was impossible. The rule of the Bolsheviks was orders of magnitude less bloody and tragic than the rule of tsar Nicholas was, and would have been had it been allowed to persist. And the Bolsheviks were the only faction in Russia capable of seizing and holding power at the time of the Revolution. If it wasn't for the Bolsheviks, Makhno would have rotted away in prison and Ukraine would have been crushed even more harshly by the actual imperialists, the Austro-Germans. Bolshevik suppression of anarchists was undoubtedly mishandled, repressive, terrible. I can understand hating the man that led the faction that carried out this repression, but that still does not make him what he was not.
Honestly I think the man you should direct your ire toward, the man who vowed to cleanse Russia of anarchism "with an iron broom," is the leader of the Red army, Leon Trotsky. And while I'm a fan of much of Trotsky's writing and his leadership during the 1917 struggle, his treatment of anarchists that followed was despicable. So again, historical context actually matters.
To be clear, I never used the "genocidal" label, but imperialist dictator does apply. You yourself say he led "the faction" that carried out "repression", admit it was "terrible", but then in the next breath you act like he had no responsibility.
You also say:
That's like saying, "if it wasn't for the people who wanted to kill him and put him in prison, he would be in prison"; followed by:
"More" and "actual" don't really fit here. In the same breath, you admit they were imperialists, but then essentially argue they are not true imperialists because it could have been worse.
Your entire comment is essentially trying to take everything that was bad about the party and their rule and separate it away from Lenin - the leader of the party that was ruling - and act like it was all done by a separate faction existing in a different reality; specifically you try to pin it all on Trotsky, who Lenin wished to appoint as Vice-chairman, and who historians believe Lenin wanted as a successor.
Trotsky didn't become Lenin's successor! This was how much control Lenin had actually lost over those years. Stalin was appointing his own people to positions within the government, Lenin and Trotsky knew this. Stalin was even rewriting history to portray him as a hero of the revolution, which he had very little to do with, and even tried to stall. Lenin and Trotsky knew this, they knew he was setting himself up to take power, against Lenin's supposed wishes. The fact is, the party was in many ways independent of Lenin. He led it but he led it as an intellectual, not a dictator. Even Stalin had limited control over the party, the scariest thing about the Stalinist purges is how much democratic buy in there was for them. but that's not how we are supposed to think of history. History is actually good guys vs bad guys, with "great men" fully in control of all of these conditions. Which makes us, like you and me, completely inconsequential, just like the capitalist ruling class wants us to believe. Your understanding is so fundamentally flawed you contradict yourself. Your point actually disproves your own premise, which makes me believe that you want a narrative, when you should be seeking truth: messy, incomplete, deeply contradictory truth. "Imperialism" has an actual meaning, stop trying to change it to fit your narrative, it cheapens the word.
Admittedly, I only read the first couple of sentences, but that's because, intentionally or not, you're still avoiding and deflecting from my main point.
You admitted Trotsky was a bastard. You now basically admitted that Lenin supported Trotsky and wanted to be succeeded by him. But you refuse to admit that Lenin was a bastard and seem to want to paint him as some sort of martyr or misunderstood saint.
Do you do that same for people who support Netanyahu? After all, it's not them who are responsible for the horrible things done to Palestinians, it's Netanyahu! They just happen to support him.
Is it that hard to just say, "Lenin was a bastard"?
I think you're polemically correct to say that the flaw in my argument is that I attribute too little influence to Lenin over the Bolsheviks. However I stand by all of the points that I've made, and without having read the same books as each other, comparing notes and passages, etc., which I might be persuaded to do in good faith, I think we've exhausted our differences on this topic.
To be clear if I was alive in that place at that time, I probably would have been a victim of either violent repression of anarchists (I don't identify as one but I might have at that time, like I said I'm deeply sympathetic to them,) and if not I would have definitely been purged by the late 1930s at the height of the Stalinist purges. But where I am now and from the history I've studied diligently for years, the discussions I've had, and the realities of organizing that I've done, I'm afraid I can't see Lenin the way you do, and in fact I remain critical of your views on him. So yes it is hard to say, because I won't lie to myself. At one time I saw Lenin and the Bolsheviks as you seem to think I see them: untainted by avoidable tragedy and justified in all their transgressions. But i've grown since then, as I hope to continue to grow; and I hope your perspective expands as well.