Lenin and Twenty-five Interpreters: Uses and Abuses of Marxism

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) is one of the foremost revolutionary Marxists of the twentieth century. Naturally, in beginning to assess such a judgment, one must have some sense of Marxism’s essential elements, and of how this is matched by Lenin’s theoretical approach. The issues just touched on in this paragraph will be explored in Part I of this essay – but this will be preliminary to our exploration, in Part II, of how Lenin has been described and explained by others.

There have been hundreds upon hundreds of studies dealing with Lenin’s life, ideas, and impact. Among these, 1) some are (uncritically) inclined to embrace what they understand to be Lenin’s Marxism, 2) some are (uncritically) inclined to dismiss what they understand to be Lenin’s Marxism, and 3) some are (critically) inclined to take Lenin’s Marxism seriously. One can also find, among both self-identified Marxists and non-Marxists, (a) approaches that are closed and dogmatic and, on the other hand, (b) approaches that are fact-based, critical-minded, and innovative. An assumption of this essay is that approaches reflecting combined points 3) and (b) are apt to be most fruitful in shedding light on Lenin and the historical realities of which he was part.

This will be applied to a diverse set of twenty-five people who have produced studies dealing with Lenin’s life, ideas, and impact. In the concluding section of Part II, we will suggest how the use or abuse of Marxism has affected the understanding of Lenin, the understanding of history, and the well-being of humanity.

 

I. Foremost Marxist

 

In his 1936 classic Man’s Worldly Goods, Leo Huberman made a key point regarding Lenin’s relation to Marxism. Here’s what he said:

Seventeen years before the end of the nineteenth century Karl Marx died.

Seventeen years after the beginning of the twentieth century Karl Marx lived again.

What had been theory with Marx was put into practice by his disciples — Lenin and the other Russian Bolsheviks — in their seizure of power in 1917. Before that time the teachings of Marx had been familiar to a small group of devoted followers; after that time the teachings of Marx had the spotlight of the world focused on them … (Huberman, 1936: 205)

One could argue that this is oversimplified. After all, throughout Europe’s mass labor movement the teachings of Marx were embraced, in some form, by working-class activists and intellectuals well before 1917, with some spillover in North America and elsewhere. Yet there is validity to Huberman’s point on at least two levels.

First of all, the 1917 revolution which Lenin was central in helping to lead, and the consequent Communist International which Lenin was central in helping to organize, had a powerful global impact on all continents and among all peoples. It generated among many thousands and, ultimately, millions of people – those hostile as well as those sympathetic to the revolutionary upheaval – an awareness of, and for many an intensive engagement with, the multifaceted body of Marxist theory which Lenin and his comrades utilized and propagated.

Related to this, what Lenin represented and helped generate contributed to remarkable developments in Marxist theory and analyses not only in various parts of the world that had little or no previous experience with this body of thought, but it opened new pathways of Marxist thought in the early Soviet Republic of 1918-1930, and also throughout Europe, including the unfolding of what came to be tagged “Western Marxism” (whose foundational figures – George Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Korsch – emerged from the leadership of the early Communist movement, of which Lenin was a central reference point). (Foster, 2024: 16-21, 25-32; Anderson, 1976. See discussions of Lukács, Gramsci, and Korsch in Le Blanc, 2022: 76-118, 127-139.)

There were certainly creative innovations within Marxism, independent of Lenin, from the 1890s through to 1917 – but there was, at the same time, a powerful tendency toward convergence between the thought of such innovators and the thought of Lenin. Two outstanding examples can be found in the work of Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky. Although both of these outstanding revolutionary Marxists were in no way dependent on Lenin’s own contributions, and more than once became involved in heated polemical exchanges with him, over time Luxemburg and – even more – Trotsky were increasingly drawn into the Leninist orbit.

Qualities of Lenin’s Marxism

To adequately assess the distinctive qualities of Lenin’s Marxism, we must have a sense of the qualities of the Marxism that was prevalent as his own conceptualizations were crystallizing. In her 1903 essay “Stagnation and Progress of Marxism,” Rosa Luxemburg commented that Marx’s theoretical achievement “transcends the plain demands of the proletarian class struggle for whose purposes it was created,” and that “we have not yet learned how to make an adequate use of the most important mental weapons which we had taken out of the Marxist arsenal on account of our urgent need for them in the early stages of our struggle.” (Le Blanc and Scott, 2010: 79-80)

Essential to Marx’s outlook – labeled the materialist conception of history – was the understanding that the capitalist economy of our own epoch can be placed in a broad historical framework. Since the rise of civilization over 5000 years ago, human societies have been divided into powerful and wealthy elites and exploited majorities whose labor sustains the dominant upper-class minority. This laboring majority, over the millennia, has included slaves, peasants and peasant serfs, and (increasingly) wageworkers. Capitalism has proved to be the most dynamic of economic systems to have arisen in history, increasingly embracing all of humanity. Relentlessly driven by a voracious process of capital accumulation, it has proved to be both incredibly productive and incredibly destructive in multiple ways, more and more permeating all facets of life across all the varied regions of our planet. A key aspect of capitalist development has been the drive of capitalist businesses to squeeze as much wealth as possible out of the laborers it hires to create the commodities that it sells at the marketplace. This generates antagonisms and struggles – sometimes hidden, sometimes open, but always present – between the capitalist class and the working class. (See Le Blanc, 2016.)

“A rather summary version of Marxism” in this pre-Leninist period, as Ernest Mandel has explained, “boiled down to a few central ideas: the class struggle; the socialist goal of that struggle, through collective ownership of the major means of production and exchange; the conquest of political power to achieve that goal; and international solidarity of the workers.” Mandel notes that for masses of workers the political perspectives of Marxism combined a recognition of the need for “strong political organization and a general understanding of the need to combine trade-union action with class independence and political action.” Beyond this, Marxism imparted “a general feeling of ‘marching with history’; the feeling that capitalism was doomed and that socialism must succeed it.” The main weakness of this particular summary version of Marxism “lay in its narrow determinism, verging on fatalism, that saw the suppression of capitalism by socialism in a more or less inevitable fashion, occurring under the combined impact of economic evolution and socialist organization (for the workers).”  The result was a variant of Marxism that “failed to stress the political initiative and conscious action of the party and the masses.” (Mandel, 1996: 74-76)

Central to Lenin’s Marxism was precisely this stress on “the political initiative and conscious action of the party and the masses” – what Georg Lukács termed “the actuality of revolution” (Lukács, 2009: 11). Max Eastman – in seeking to define Lenin’s contribution in his 1926 study Marx, Lenin, and the Science of Revolution – insisted that essential to Leninism was a rejection of “people who talk revolution, and like to think about it, but do not ‘mean business’ … the people who talked revolution but did not intend to produce it.” This attitude was inseparable from Lenin’s approach to building a revolutionary party, described by Eastman in this way:

It is an organization of a kind which never existed before. It combines certain essential features of a political party, a professional association, a consecrated order, an army, a scientific society – and yet it is in no sense a sect. Instead of cherishing in its membership a sectarian psychology, it cherishes a certain relation to the predominant class forces of society as Marx defined them. And this relation was determined by Lenin, and progressively readjusted by him, with a subtlety of which Marx never dreamed. (Eastman, 1926: 150, 151, 159-160)

Lenin’s increasing immersion in Marxist thought, from the early 1890s onward, is captured in Trotsky’s account of the young Lenin, who would “follow the evolution of Marx’s thought,” experiencing “its irresistible force” and discovering “under introductory sentences or notes lateral galleries of conclusions,” profoundly impressed by their “aptness and depth.” Trotsky concludes: “Marx never had a better reader, one more penetrating or grateful, not a more attentive, congenial, or capable student.” He adds that Lenin “mistrusted in advance the attempts of self-satisfied ignoramuses and well-read mediocrities to replace Marxism with some other, more-portable theory.” (Trotsky, 1972: 187, 188)

Revolutionary Guide to Practical Action

For Lenin, Marxism was a revolutionary guide to practical action. In his 1927 dual biography of Marx and Engels, the outstanding Marx scholar David Riazanov emphasized the importance, for Lenin’s political orientation, of an 1850 address by Marx and Engels evaluating the revolutionary experience of 1848:

While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one (Marx and Engels).

Lenin knew these words by heart, according to Riazanov, and “used to delight in quoting from them.” Riazanov went on to emphasize the key points: “We must use every possible means to goad on the revolution, to make it permanent, and not to let it lapse … We cannot afford to be satisfied with immediate conquests. Each bit of conquered territory must serve as a step for further conquests.” (Riazanov, 1973: 100)

 

Against some comrades who preferred the purity of sectarian isolation, however, Lenin pushed for active participation by revolutionaries in mass organizations and struggles not under their control – social movements, trade unions, democratic councils (soviets), etc. Functioning intelligently, sharing their ideas, and helping to win victories in these broader contexts would enhance their influence and authority, contributing to an increasingly expansive class consciousness and revolutionary struggle. As his companion Nadezhda Krupskaya later explained, such things must be grounded in specific demands around urgent needs. Among factory workers this had not begun with demands of workers’ control of industry, but “with a campaign for tea service, for reducing working hours, and paying wages punctually.” Only in successful struggles for reforms, connecting with people’s actual levels of consciousness and enhancing their sense of dignity and their capacity to change things for the better, could the pathway to revolution be found. The political “impurities” and allegedly reformist capitulation were denounced by some of Lenin’s comrades. Krupskaya recounted:

A Bolshevik, they declared, should be hard and unyielding. Lenin considered this view fallacious. It would mean giving up all practical work, standing aside from the masses instead of organizing them on real-life issues. Prior to the Revolution of 1905 the Bolsheviks showed themselves capable of making good use of every legal possibility, of forging ahead and rallying the masses behind them under the most adverse conditions. Step by step, beginning with the campaign for tea service and ventilation, they had led the masses up to the national armed insurrection. The ability to adjust oneself to the most adverse conditions and at the same time to stand out and maintain one’s high-principled positions—such were the traditions of Leninism. (Krupskaya, 1970: 117, 167)

Lenin’s orientation emphasized the need to struggle against all forms of oppression, insisting in his classic pamphlet of 1902, What Is To Be Done?, that the socialist ideal “should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects.”  He stressed that this was essential in the struggle for a socialist transformation of society. A revolutionary tribune of the people is a person “who is able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small,” combining socialist convictions and democratic demands “in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.” (Le Blanc, 2008: 143)

As Krupskaya notes, for Lenin – amid the catastrophic First World War, on the eve of Russia’s 1917 revolution – “the role of democracy in the struggle for socialism could not be ignored.” He articulated a strategic orientation combining the struggle against capitalism with the struggle for revolutionary democracy (including a republic, a militia, election of government officials by the people, equal rights for women, self-determination of nations, etc.). Lenin stressed “basing ourselves on the democracy already achieved, and exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both for the abolition of the poverty of the masses and for the complete and all-round institution of all democratic reforms.” (Krupskaya, 1970: 328, 329)

Principles and Dialectics

An additional quality of Lenin’s political orientation involved his uncompromising attitude regarding how the revolutionary organization must function – which helped generate tensions and even splits, garnering for Lenin a reputation for factionalism, arrogance, and intolerance. Krupskaya saw things differently, explaining “the comrades grouped around Lenin were far more seriously committed to principles, which they wanted to see applied at all cost and pervading all practical work.” She described the significant numbers of comrades who sharply disagreed with this approach as having “more of the man-in-the-street mentality … given to compromise and concessions in principle” among diverse perspectives within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. They had, she said, “more regard for persons,” and were therefore more inclined to maintain a conciliatory ethos. (Krupskaya, 1970: 96)

Trotsky was among the most vehement and eloquent of such “conciliators,” leading to fierce polemics between him and Lenin over more than a decade. Yet when all was said and done, Lenin’s Bolsheviks proved to be a cohesive and effective revolutionary instrument, and the politically diverse conglomeration which Trotsky and others sought to maintain did not. As Trotsky later concluded:

A simple conciliation of factions is possible only along some sort of “middle” line. But where is the guarantee that this artificially drawn diagonal line will coincide with the needs of objective development? The task of scientific politics is to deduce a program and a tactic from an analysis of the struggle of classes, not from the [ever-shifting] parallelogram of such secondary and transitory forces as political factions. (Trotsky, 1967: 112)

Related to the disputes among Marxists was the fact that not all understood and utilized Marxism in the same way. Nikolai Bukharin, another of Lenin’s Bolshevik comrades, adds an essential element in understanding his approach to Marxism. One must embrace not “the entirety of ideas such as existed in the time of Marx,” but rather the general approach and “methodology of Marxism,” Bukharin argues, concluding: “It is clear that Leninist Marxism represents quite a particular form of ideological education, for the simple reason that it is itself a child of a somewhat different epoch. It cannot simply be a repetition of the Marxism of Marx, because the epoch in which we are living is not a simple repetition of the epoch in which Marx lived.” (Bukharin, 1925: 17-18, 23)

This brings us to the centrality of dialectics in Lenin’s political orientation. In his 1914 summary of Marx’s life and ideas for Granat encyclopedia, Lenin did something unusual for Marxists of that time – placing an explication of dialectical philosophy (rather than historical materialism or economic analysis) at the beginning of his discussion of Marx’s thought:

In our times, the idea of development, of evolution, has almost completely penetrated social consciousness, only in other ways, and not through Hegelian philosophy. Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel’s philosophy, is far more comprehensive and far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats them in a different way, on a higher basis (“the negation of the negation”), a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; “breaks in continuity”; the transformation of quantity into quality; inner impulses towards development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; the interdependence and the closest and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon (history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws – these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development that is richer than the conventional one. (Lenin, 1974a: 54-55)

Lenin more than once complains that many calling themselves Marxists have a “conception of Marxism [that] is impossibly pedantic. They have completely failed to understand what is decisive in Marxism, namely, its revolutionary dialectics. They have even failed absolutely to understand Marx’s plain statements that in times of revolution the utmost flexibility is demanded.” Marx’s dynamic approach to revolution was something they “walk around and about … like a cat around a bowl of hot porridge.” (Lenin, 1973: 476)

Applying this both to historical analysis and practical tactics, Lenin complained that many Marxists of his time saw “capitalism and bourgeois democracy in Western Europe following a definite path of development” and projected this as a universal model. “Certain amendments,” he insisted, are required: “While the development of world history as a whole follows general laws it is by no means precluded, but, on the contrary, presumed, that certain periods of development may display peculiarities in either the form or the sequence of this development.” (Lenin, 1973: 477)

For example, “because Russia stands on the borderline” between European and non-European countries, she was “bound to reveal certain distinguishing features; although these, of course, are in keeping with the general line of world development, they distinguish her revolution from those which took place in the West European countries and introduce certain partial innovations as the revolution moves on to the countries of the East.” (Lenin, 1973: 478)

Related to this reality were other key elements in Lenin’s political orientation. The predominance of the peasantry in such countries as Russia, combining with the “open Marxism” inseparable from the dialectical approach, contributed to Lenin’s conceptualization of a worker-peasant alliance so central to his strategic orientation. Lenin’s revolutionary internationalism – more intensive than was the case with many Marxists – was entwined with the dialectical necessities involved in making a proletarian revolution in economically backward Russia.

This dovetailed with an essential resistance to the complex dynamics of imperialism – in the form it took as a keystone of the tsarist system, making Russia a “prison house of nations,” as well as in the form it took through the voracious global capital accumulation process at the heart of the modern capitalism. Such imperialist realities engulfed a majority of the world’s peoples, oppressed by competing and contending elites of the so-called “Great Powers.” This raised, for Lenin and his co-thinkers, the need to support struggles for national self-determination among oppressed peoples, while fighting against the nationalism of oppressor nations. (See Le Blanc, 2008: 232-248; Anderson, 2023; Pokrovsky, 1970: 95-130; Shanin, 1983; Mandel, 2020; Magdoff, 1978; Mayer, 1969)

Summing Up

Lenin summed up his approach to Marxism, more than once, with succinct clarity:

“Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action,” Marx and Engels always said, rightly ridiculing the mere memorizing and repetition of “formulas,” that are capable of marking out only general tasks, which are necessarily modifiable by the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period of the historical process. (Lenin, 1974b: 43).

Based on the qualities we have noted, eight components seem essential to Lenin’s Marxism:

1. A belief in what Lukács called “the actuality of revolution” – or as Eastman put it, a rejection of “the people who talked revolution but did not intend to produce it.”

2. A commitment to utilizing Marxist theory dialectically, not as dogma, but as a guide to action, understanding that general theoretical perspectives must be modified through application to “the concrete economic and political conditions of each particular period of the historical process.”

3. Building up an organization of class-conscious workers combined with radical intellectuals – operating as a revolutionary collective, both democratic and disciplined – capable of utilizing Marxist theory to mobilize insurgencies to replace the tyrannies of Tsarism and capitalism with democracy and socialism.

4. An approach to the interplay of reform struggles with the longer-range revolutionary struggle, permeated by several qualities – (a) a refusal to bow to the oppressive and exploitative powers-that-be, (b) a refusal to submit to the transitory “realism” of mainstream politics, (c) a measuring of all activity by how it would help build the working-class consciousness, the mass workers’ movement, and the revolutionary organization that will be necessary to overturn capitalism and lead to a socialist future.

5. An insistence that the revolutionary party must function as “a tribune of the people,” combining working-class struggles with systematic struggles against all forms of oppression, regardless of which class was affected – deepening and extending into the centrality of a workers’ and peasants’ alliance in the anti-Tsarist struggle.

6. A strategic orientation combining the struggle against capitalism with the struggle for revolutionary democracy.

7. Characterizing global capitalism as having entered an imperialist stage, involving economic expansion beyond national boundaries for the purpose of securing markets, raw materials and investment opportunities, embracing all countries in our epoch, with a majority of the world’s peoples oppressed by competing and contending elites of the so-called “Great Powers.”

8. A consistent, unrelenting revolutionary internationalism: understanding that capitalism is a global system, seeing struggles against exploitation, oppression, and tyranny that global solidarity and global organization are essential to socialist revolution.

 

II. On Commentary and Commentators

 

In considering a twenty-five-person sampling of analysts and commentators who have considered Lenin’s life, ideas, and actions, it will be impossible here to provide thoroughgoing evaluations – which would result in a book-length text. What we can do is offer an initial summary evaluation. This will inevitably tend to be subjective, perhaps telling us more about the author’s biases and point of view than about the objective value of the works in question.

In reaching for objective guidelines, we are entitled to ask whether the analyst or commentator is taking Lenin seriously or is making superficial use of him. To make superficial use of Lenin could be termed a form of abuse. In this sense, abuse would be defined (according to Wikipedia) as “the improper usage or treatment of a person or thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit.” This could involve telling lies or hiding truths or propagating distortions about Lenin –to win others to one’s own particular prejudices and outlook (whether anti-Lenin or pro-Lenin) or to secure payment or privileges from powerful elites wanting to sway public opinion in a particular direction. It could be added that not only is an abuse of the truth and of the person or thing being lied about, but it is also abusive of those who are being lied to.

Taking Lenin Seriously

But what would it mean to “take Lenin seriously”? An initial response could involve a list of ten approaches. Not all of these need to be employed in order to take Lenin seriously, but at least some of them must be present in any serious discussion of Lenin. Obviously, giving “serious attention” to something cannot be based on gossip or speculation or ungrounded assertions to “prove” a preconceived point – it must involve engaging with actual sources.

1. Give serious attention to Lenin’s complexity, contradictory qualities, and evolution. As a human being, Lenin has a certain complexity, has certain contradictory qualities, and evolves. A failure to allow for this in one’s commentary or analysis violates Lenin’s humanity as well as what we know of reality.

2. Make serious use of diverse sources (and make these known to the reader). As we have already noted, much has been written about Lenin. Some has been written by his contemporaries and people who knew him, some by people who have studied him, in certain cases by those who reject him and in other cases by others who embrace him. Scholarly differences and debates must also be accounted for. A failure to reflect this can create barriers to our understanding.

3. Give serious attention to Lenin’s relationships. People are largely shaped by networks of family and friendships – without any knowledge of this, there is a gap in what we know about a person.

4. Give serious attention to Lenin’s writings. His collected works consist of over forty thick volumes, making it obvious that writing was very important to Lenin and was part of who he was, reflecting what he thought and what he did. It is possible to write something serious about Lenin while giving only perfunctory attention to his writings, but a serious acquaintance with what he wrote enhances the seriousness of what one has to say about Lenin. All too many have settled for giving abusive (dishonest, pretentious, distorted, fake) accounts of what Lenin wrote.

5. Give serious attention to Marxist theory. As we have indicated, Lenin was a Marxist for most of his life – and without some understanding of Marxism, it will be impossible to make sense of him. Many who write about Lenin have had only a perfunctory acquaintance with Marxism, but a serious engagement with Marxism is a prerequisite for fully understanding Lenin. Here too, some have indulged in providing abusive (dishonest, distorted) accounts of Marxism. On the other hand, the apt comments of Isaiah Berlin – provided below – should be considered regarding this particular matter.

6. Give serious attention to the social-economic context within which Lenin functioned – in particular, the tsarist system of the Russian empire, the global capitalist system, the overlapping social classes associated with each, and Lenin’s place within this constellation.

7. Give serious attention to broad historical context within which Lenin existed: the spread and intensification of industrial capitalism, the development of the labor and socialist movements and a variety of social struggles, the rise and conflict of empires, the machinations and dynamics associated with world politics, etc.

8. Give serious attention to the immediate political context: governmental policies, wars, assassinations, strikes, uprisings, revolutionary upheavals, invasions, etc.

9. Give serious attention to Lenin’s organizational context – the socialist and labor movement, the Socialist International and Communist International, the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, the Bolshevik faction (later, the Bolshevik party), etc.

10. Give serious attention to Lenin’s political comrades (who are all too often presented as cyphers or spear holders or automatons – not actual, self-acting human beings). Just as people are largely shaped by networks of family and friendships, so political activists are defined by their interplay with political comrades. Without any knowledge of this, there is a gap in what we are able to know about a person such as Lenin.

Among the thousands of accounts of Lenin, there are some that treat him as either a Benevolent Genius or an Evil Genius in a cosmic morality play, with minimal consideration of the ten approaches just listed. Especially during the Cold War power struggle engulfing the world from 1946 to 1990, the power elites of both sides engaged in enormous efforts to influence the perceptions of millions of people along the lines of one or another version of such a morality play. Independently of (and preceding) that Cold War rivalry, there were at least two other dynamics at play which naturally introduced distortions: 1) accounts and analyses by partisans of the status quo, horrified by and in uncompromising opposition to the revolutionary struggles and goals of Lenin and his comrades (and who consequently developed a narrative designed to turn people against such struggles and goals); 2) accounts and analyses by those representing a bureaucratic elite which came to control Soviet Russia and the world Communist movement after Lenin’s death (and who consequently developed a narrative designed to justify the power and policies of that elite).

Included among our diverse set of twenty-five people producing studies dealing with Lenin, there are several who basically fit into one of the negative categories indicated in the previous paragraph. These deserve to be approached – at the very least – with extreme caution and a robust skepticism. Among the other, more positively assessed authors, some have been influenced one way or the other by the powerful and prevalent morality play narratives, but they rise above that through their serious engagement with at least some of the ten approaches listed earlier. (For my own efforts to apply this approach, see: Le Blanc, 2015, and Le Blanc, 2023.)

Who Are These People?

At this point, it makes sense to list (in alphabetical order) the twenty-five, with reference to major works examined here. This will be followed by initial and brief commentary on the commentators. It should be emphasized that this is merely a sampling, not an honor role. There are authors of outstanding works not included in this list – and some in this list have not, in my opinion, produced outstanding works. (For more on such matters, see Le Blanc, 2014: 7-23, 53-75, and Le Blanc, 2022: 1-26.)

1. Tariq Ali, originally from Pakistan, has been an important figure on the British and international left for well over fifty years. Long associated with Verso Books and New Left Review, among his most recent works is The Dilemmas of Lenin: Terrorism, War, Empire, Love Revolution (2017).

2. Nikolai Bukharin, was a prolific writer and popular figure in the Bolshevik party and the early Communist movement. From 1924 to 1929 he was closely allied with Joseph Stalin, then broke with him over the brutal “revolution from above” policies, and was arrested, subjected to a public trial, and executed in 1938. The work under consideration here is Lenin as a Marxist (1925).

3. H. Carr was a British historian and international relations theorist, who had served in the British foreign office, then wrote editorials for the London Times. During the Second World War, his politics tilted dramatically to the left, and in retirement he composed a remarkable 14-volume History of Soviet Russia (1950-1978), covering the years 1917 to 1929, as well as a slim summary volume The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin, 1917–1929 (1979).

4. Ronald W. Clark, a British journalist and professional writer who authored sixty-six books including substantial biographies ofCharles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Sigmund Freud,  B. S. Haldane, and Bertrand Russell. His last book was published a year after his death – Lenin, A Biography (1988).

5. Robert Conquest, a British-American historian, poet, and novelist – briefly a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and later focusing on combatting Communism through the British Foreign Office and, later, as a long-term research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution – produced a number of works, most prominently the massive study The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s (1968) as well as a slim biography entitled I. Lenin (1972).

6. Isaac Deutscher, a refugee from Poland who became a British journalist, writing on the Soviet Union and Communist Bloc for The Economist and other publications, had been an activist in the Communist and Trotskyist movements. By the late 1940s to the early 1960s, as an independent Marxist, he produced substantial biographies of Stalin and Trotsky, containing much material on Lenin, on whose biography he was working at the time of his death.

7. Max Eastman, poet and longtime socialist close to radical journalist John Reed, was associated with political-cultural journals The Masses and The Liberator. After living and studying in the Soviet Union, he produced Marx, Lenin and the Science of Revolution (1926). He later translated into English Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution (1932) and The Revolution Betrayed (1937). Breaking from Marxism and socialism in 1940 and shifting rightward, his earlier experience is detailed in the memoir Love and Revolution (1964).

8. Carter Elwood was a Professor of History at Carleton University, long associated Canadian Slavic studies. Among other works, he was author of Inessa Armand: Revolutionary and Feminist(1992), and his influential essays from 1966 to 2010 are gathered in The Non-Geometric Lenin: Essays on the Development of the Bolshevik Party 1910–1914 (2011).

9. Neil Harding, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Russian Studies at University College, Swansea, is the author of a two-volume study, Lenin’s Political Thought, and a highly critical evaluation entitled Leninism. He is also editor of an important collection, Marxism in Russia: Key Documents, 1879-1906.

10. Nadezhda Krupskaya was a teacher who was among the founding activists of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, later serving for almost 15 years as general secretary of the Bolshevik organization headed by her lifelong companion, Lenin. Her Memories of Lenin (also known as Reminiscences of Lenin), first translated into English in 1930 and reproduced in revised versions in later years, provides a detailed account of Lenin’s political life and thought as he led the Bolsheviks from 1903 to 1919.

11. Isaac Don Levine was born into a family of Russian Jews that emigrated to the United States in 1911 and became a journalist for the New York Tribune – producing, before the Bolsheviks came to power, an account of the overthrow of the tsar entitled The Russian Revolution (June 1917). In 1924 he published a critical but balanced biography, The Man Lenin (1924). From the 1930s through the 1960s he was among the most prominent anti-Communist writers – touched on in Eyewitness to History: Memoirs and Reflections of a Foreign Correspondent for Half a Century (1973), in which he felt no need to repudiate his earlier judgments of the Russian Revolution and Lenin.

12. Moshe Lewin was a Polish Jew who fled Nazi invasion for relative safety in the Soviet Union, where he labored on a collective farm, then as a blast furnaceoperator in a metallurgical factory, finally serving in the Soviet Red Army during World War II. He later lived in Poland, Paris, Israel, and the United States, and academically was affiliated with the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His books include Lenin’s Last Struggle (1968), The Making of the Soviet System (1995), and The Soviet Century (2005).

13. Marcel Liebman, a Belgian historian of political sociology and theory, was associated with the Université libre de Bruxellesand Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and also, from 1962 to 1967, editor of the weekly La Gauche (The Left). Among his books translated into English are The Russian Revolution (1972) and the highly influential Leninism under Lenin (1973).

14. Lars Lih – after receiving degrees from Yale, Oxford and Princeton Universities, and working for six years in the office of U.S. Representative Ron Dellums (D-California) – taught at Duke University and Wellesley College. He then moved to Montreal, Quebec, going on to write extensively on Russian and socialist history as an independent scholar. His books include: Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (1990); Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (2006); a succinct biography Lenin (2011); and a collection of essays, What Was Bolshevism? (2023).

15. Arno J. Mayer, whose family fled to the United States as Nazism and war engulfed Europe (including their native Luxemburg), after serving in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, worked as a professor of history at Wesleyan University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Princeton University. Among his many books, three were particularly relevant to Lenin studies: Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919(1967); Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (1959), which also has the title Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917-1918; and The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (2001).

16. Richard Pipes entered the United States with his family at the age of 16, fleeing from Nazi-occupied Poland. Teaching Russian history for many years at Harvard University, he also became an influential advisor to the U.S. government – including on the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan, and with the Central Intelligence Agency. Among his most influential works were massive volumes The Russian Revolution (1990) and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924 (1993), as well as two brief popularizations – A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (1995) and Communism, A History (2001).

17. Stefan Possony, fleeing the Nazi take-over of Austria, found refuge in the United States, with positions at Princeton University, Georgetown University, and as Senior Fellow and director of International Studies at the conservative Hoover Institution. His writings include: a study on inherent inequality based on race and class, entitled The Geography of Intellect (1961, with Nathaniel Weyl); A Century of Conflict: Communist Techniques of World Revolution (1963); and Lenin: The Compulsive Revolutionary (1964).

18. Christopher Read has been a lecturer and professor of history at Britain’s University of Warwick, with a focus on Russia and the Soviet Union. Among his writings are From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian People and their Revolution (1996) and The Making and Breaking of the Soviet System: an Interpretation (2001), plus two distinct volumes on Lenin — Lenin: A Revolutionary Life(2005) and Lenin Lives? (2023).

19. Victor Sebestyen was born into a family of Hungarian refugees seeking asylum in Britain in the wake of the 1956 Soviet invasion. A journalist for such conservative papers as The Evening Standard and Daily Mail, he authored Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (2006), Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (2009), and Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror (2017).

20. Robert Service, a British historian, began his teaching career at Keele University, went on to teach at the University College of London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, the joined the faculty of Oxford University as well as becoming a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s conservative bastion, the Hoover Institution. From 1986 to 1995, a published a three-volume study of Lenin, also producing several works of general history on 20^th century Russia, as well as three major biographies: Lenin (2000), Stalin (2004), and Trotsky (2009).

21. Joseph Stalin had a reputation as a capable organizer in the Bolshevik party, and consequently– as Lenin was in decline – was able to rise to a powerful position in the Russian Communist Party and the early Communist movement. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, in the modest of a so-called “revolution from above” to modernize the Soviet Union, he oversaw the destruction of thousands of Lenin’s comrades, including many who were particularly close to him, in the name of “Leninism.” His pamphlet Foundations of Leninism (1924) and a book which he helped to shape entitled History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks, Short Course (1938) played essential roles in how millions of people (Communist and non-Communist alike) came to understand Lenin’s perspectives.

22. Ronald G. Suny, a prominent historian and political scientist whose teaching career began at Oberlin College, followed by many decades at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan, was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in 2005. His many books include: The Baku Commune, 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution (1972); The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States(1998, 2011); two collections of essays, Red Flag Unfurled: History, Historians and the Russian Revolution (2017), and Red Flag Wounded: Stalinism and the Fate of the Soviet Experiment (2020); and a massive biographical account of Stalin, taking the story up to 1917, providing considerable detail on Lenin’s Bolshevik organization – Stalin: Passage to Revolution (2020).

23. Leon Trotsky was, next to Lenin, considered the outstanding figure in the Bolshevik party and the early Communist movement – overseeing the Bolshevik insurrection of 1917 and leading the forces of the newly-composed Red Army to victory during the Russian Civil War. Beginning in the mid-1920s, he became the most prominent opponent of the ideology and policies of the Stalin regime. Among his writings dealing with Lenin are: the collection On Lenin: Notes Toward a Biography (1924); My Life, An Attempt at Autobiography (1930); The History of the Russian Revolution (1932); Stalin, An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence (1941); and part of an unfinished biography, The Young Lenin, unpublished until 1972.

24. Dmitri Volkoganov, a Red Army colonel general heading the Soviet military’s psychological warfare department, was also a historian who was a committed Stalinist and Marxist-Leninist for most of his career. His orientation underwent significant shifts that mirrored dramatic changes in the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian regimes, and his biographies of Stalin (1988) and Lenin (1991) and Trotsky (1992) – while enhanced by his access to secret materials in Soviet archives – reflected the changing climate. In his last decade Volkoganov completely repudiated earlier beliefs. “Lenin was the antichrist,” he now asserted. “All Russia’s great troubles stemmed from Lenin.”

25. James D. White, Reader in Russian and East European Historyat the University of Glasgow, has written a number of widely consulted essays and books, among the latter: Karl Marx and the Intellectual Origins of Dialectical Materialism (1996), Lenin: The Practice and Theory of Revolution (2017), Marx and Russia, The Fate of a Doctrine (2018), and the study of a prominent Bolshevik comrade and opponent of Lenin, Red Hamlet: The Life and Ideas of Alexander Bogdanov (2019).

III. Digging Deeper

It may be useful to identify those in the list of twenty-five who appear to have self-identified (at least at the time they produced their key works) as Marxists: Tariq Ali, Nikolai Bukharin, Isaac Deutscher, the younger Max Eastman, the younger Neil Harding, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Moshe Lewin, Marcel Liebman, Arno Mayer, Joseph Stalin, Ronald G. Suny, Leon Trotsky. Among the others in the list are some who appear to have some sympathetic knowledge of Marxism, and among these are some who may consider themselves to be Marxists. In addition, some contributions under consideration are the product of some who once considered themselves to be Marxists (Robert Conquest and Dmitri Volkoganov being the best known of these).

We must pause here to acknowledging that Joseph Stalin is in a league of his own.

Of course, he had many thousands of enablers, supporters, and defenders. One was Vyacheslav Molotov, who explained: “No one understood Leninism better than Stalin.” (Molotov, 1993: 133) In contrast to this judgment, what makes Stalin special among those on our list of twenty-five is the fact that he was a Bolshevik comrade of Lenin who – unlike Bukharin, Krupskaya, and Trotsky (as well as such comrades as Lev Kamenev, Gregory Zinoviev, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Karl Radek, etc.) – turned his back on all ten approaches we have identified as necessary for taking Lenin seriously. Instead, as Bolshevik critic M. N. Ryutin and his co-thinkers noted in the early 1930s, “Stalin is killing Leninism under the banner of Leninism.” (Datta Gupta, 2010: 138).

Such assertions are rejected by such latter-day defenders of Stalin as Grover Furr (who from 2011 to 2023 published 13 separate books to make his case) and Dominico Losurdo, who insist that what the late Vadim Rogovin termed “political genocide” – the repression and slaughter of many thousands of the “wrong kinds” of Leninists (among others) – was all for the best. Defending Stalin with earnest passion, and with meticulous arguments reminiscent of such Holocaust deniers as David Irving, they have found few serious scholars inclined to engage with them, exceptions being Jean-Jacques Marie and Douglas Greene. (Furr, 2015; Furr 2018; Losurdo, 2023; Rogovin, 2009; Marie, 2024; Greene 2023. Furr’s argument is further undermined by Lenoe, 2010. On Holocaust denial, see Evans, 2002.)

Lenin’s Comrades and Sympathizers

As already noted (and setting aside the special case of Stalin), the actual comrades of Lenin in our list of twenty-five (Krupskaya, Bukharin, Trotsky) not only embraced Lenin, but took him seriously. As suggested in the discussion of Lenin that opened this essay, they did this in ways that advance our understanding of who he was, what he did, and what he thought. Similar qualities can be found in the work of other scholars on the list who are in sympathy with Lenin and in whom we can find the ten approaches of taking him seriously.

Perhaps more than the others, Tariq Ali innovatively stretches his explorations to include an enlightening comparative consideration of more contemporary realities (recent anarchist stirrings, Islamic fundamentalism, the so-called “war on terror”). Isaac Deutscher has introduced more than one generation to the complexities and vibrancy of the social and intellectual contexts within which Lenin and his comrades made some kind of sense, and to an understanding of Marxism as a way of thinking not only about the past but also about present realities and future possibilities. Focusing attention on fluidity and evolution in Lenin’s thought, Marcel Liebman suggests ways in which fluctuating contexts of struggle helped shape changes in Lenin’s thought. Moshe Lewin adds multiple dimensions and elements of the contexts within which the thinking and actions of Lenin and his comrades unfolded, what they were reaching for, and reasons why they failed. Following similar pathways, Ronald Suny has added an incredibly detailed account of the development of Stalin’s activism and perspectives – within the larger, developing context of Bolshevik experience and perspectives. Arno Mayer has focused attention on high politics and counter-revolutionary “peace” plans in the wake of the First World War, then on the residual cultural-political impact of old feudal structures and norms on modernizing capitalist Europe, then offering a magisterial comparative analysis of violence and terror in the French and Russian Revolutions – in all of this opening multiple realms of understanding.

Then there are those who turned away from Marxism – Max Eastman and Neil Harding. (The older Eastman and the older Harding might be shifted to the next category of commentators.) Eastman’s clearly-written, succinct, and engaging account of “the science of revolution,” places Marx and Lenin in a larger context of socialist and revolutionary thought, providing valuable insights. Like his friend John Reed, whose Ten Days That Shook the World vividly described the Bolshevik Revolution, Eastman saw Lenin as an ideal revolutionary who transcended less scientific predecessors. By 1940, after a decade of horrific Stalinist experience in Soviet Russia, Eastman concluded that the failure of “the socialist experiment” indicated both the impossibility of socialism and an unscientific flaw in his revolutionary hero’s outlook. He did not conclude that Lenin was a duplicitous monster – his earlier assessment remained largely intact, and in a 1954 poetry collection he reprinted his 1918 tribute “To Lenin.”

Men that have stood like mountains in the flood

Of change that runs like ruin through the earth,

When murder takes the sanctity of birth,

When food is fire and harvest-treasure blood,

Men that like fixed eternal stars have stood,

Their faith clear-shining sadly, and their mind

Unmaddened by the madness of their kind,

They were the godlike, they the great and good.

With light and mountain steadiness of power,

And faith like theirs in this all-fluid hour,

You to the dreadful depth of change descend,

And with you its motion, moving it, you blend

Your conquering purpose as blue rivers roll

Through all the ocean’s waters toward the pole.

In an accompanying note, Eastman explained: “This sonnet was written in 1918 when Lenin lay stricken, perhaps fatally, by the bullet of a member of the opposing party of Socialist Revolutionaries, an extreme idealist too, but of the old dogmatic type that I believed Lenin had superseded.” (Eastman, 1954: 53)

Harding’s shift is no less interesting. In his two-volume study Lenin’s Political Thought, he effectively challenged the common assertions (1) that Lenin’s orientation involved a conscious break from Marx’s presumed theory that a socialist revolution could only be made in an industrially advanced capitalist country, not a backward one like Russia, and (2) that Lenin’s strategic orientation and vision of socialism involved a rejection of democracy in favor of despotic rule by the Communist Party. In his later disillusioned work Leninism, Harding maintained much from his earlier views – but with a twist. Before the First World War, Lenin was simply a consistent revolutionary Marxist, but with the eruption of the war impacted on this revolutionary Marxism in a way that introduced a new militancy, crystallizing into a distinctive “Leninism.” The “passion and commitment” of this Leninism “derived from the insistence that, in all essentials, Marx was right” – and it became essential, in fierce opposition to all others who claimed to be socialists and Marxists, “to restore the immediacy and actuality of the revolutionary essence of Marxism.” This, in turn, made it impossible for Leninism to adjust itself to “the precepts and practices of democracy,” paving the way (despite Lenin’s intentions) for the rise of Stalinism. (Harding, 1996: 17-18, 271, 272, 278, 262)

Neutrals and Hostiles

Five other commentators might be grouped under the heading of “Neutral or Mixed.” E. H. Carr appears to be, in fact, entirely sympathetic (certainly not “mixed”) in his treatment of Lenin – but he was persistent in his personal rejection of the “Marxist” label, also maintaining an impeccably scholarly, non-activist stance. Contributing greatly to Lenin Studies through his meticulous and detailed study of Lenin’s interplay with a variety of socio-economic, political, and organizational contexts, Carr also is in harmony with others in this category in taking Lenin seriously, through the ten approaches listed above. All of this also tends to be the case with Lars Lih, whose rich contributions have flowed from an iconoclastic inclination to challenge accepted interpretations, and to draw into his efforts newly translated material, often from figures not as well known in English-language contexts. Ronald Clark – far from being a consistent Lenin scholar – belongs in this category because his substantial and informative biography reaches for objectivity and includes a balance of positive and negative assessments. Christopher Read, on the other hand, is definitely engaged (by no means neutral!), but his mixed assessment of Lenin has an open and tentative quality. Isaac Don Levine’s portrait of Lenin is also mixed –the work of a journalist seeking to “get it right,” having a genuine “feel” for what he is writing about: familiar with a number of facts and contexts, unafraid to emphasize Lenin’s admirable qualities, capable of conveying Lenin’s perspectives, and also unafraid to state his own fundamental disagreement with those perspectives.

Three commentators could be grouped as “Highly Critical” – unabashed regarding their critical view (in fact, their rejection) of Lenin, but also seeming to tilt toward the ten approaches of taking him seriously, and inclined to engage in serious research which is not necessarily designed to make a case against Lenin. This is most certainly the case with R. Carter Elwood, who has added much to our understanding of Bolshevism and to Lenin’s personal life. James White has provided a useful survey of existing research about Lenin, a splendid biography of Alexander Bogdanov who – with Lenin – led the Bolsheviks from 1904 to 1907 before the two angrily broke from each other, and a capable study focused on Marxism in pre-revolutionary Russia. The younger Robert Service produced an impressive, though quite critical, three-volume political biography; he seems to have combed through all of Lenin’s collected works – which, he tells us, made him more critical of Lenin than he was initially inclined to be.

“Hostile” is the final category of commentators. Without question, this includes Richard Pipes, Stefan Possony, and Dmitri Volkoganov (as we’ve noted, tagging Lenin as “the antichrist”). But we can also include Robert Conquest, the older Robert Service, and Victor Sebestyen.

This group is militantly anti-Communist, inclined to see violence and despotism as the essence of Communism under Lenin as well as Stalin. There is a tendency among them to pretend that they (and others on the right end of the political spectrum) are the only ones who openly spoke about such violence and despotism. In fact, as early as 1921, an observant sympathizer of the Russian Revolution Albert Rhys Williams wrote:

“Repressions, tyranny, violence,” cry the enemies. “They have abolished free speech, free press, free assembly. They have imposed drastic military conscription and compulsory labor. They have been incompetent in government, inefficient in industry. They have subordinated the soviets to the Communist Party. They have lowered their Communist ideals, changed and shifted their program and compromised with the capitalists.” Some of these charges are exaggerated. Many can be explained. But they cannot all be explained away. Friends of the Soviet grieve over them. Their enemies have summoned the world to shudder and protest against them. (Williams, 1921: 276-277)

Through the 1920s and 1930s, a variety of left-wing figures were criticizing and exposing such things: anarchists, various socialists, veteran Communists (including Leon Trotsky and Victor Serge). For many, it was troubling that such things could be happening in the presumed homeland of socialism – a fact crying out for explanation. (See Trotsky, 1937; Serge,1937; Serge, 2012; van der Linden, 2009; Le Blanc, 2017.)

For Stefan Possony, the story is largely defined by the fact that Lenin was simply no damn good:

Self-righteous, rude, demanding, ruthless, despotic, formalistic, bureaucratic, disciplined, cunning, intolerant, stubborn, one-sided, suspicious, distant, asocial, cold-blooded, ambitious, purposive, vindictive, spiteful, a grudge holder, a coward who was able to face danger only when he deemed it unavoidable—Lenin was a complete law unto himself, and he was entirely serene about it. (Possony, 1964: 392)

Richard Pipes seems at one with Possony in seeing Lenin as bad news from head to heels. “Communism was not a good idea that went wrong, it was a bad idea,” he assures us, and this inevitably led to Lenin’s own bestiality:

“As long as they wanted to stay in power, the Communists had to rule despotically and violently; they could never afford to relax their authority … Lenin realized this and felt no qualms about imposing a ruthless despotism … Violence – total and merciless (one of his favorite adjectives) – had to clear the ground for the new order.” (Pipes, 2001: 147, 39-40)

The lessons to be learned here seem rather limited: it is necessary to oppose and fight against such Forces of Evil, there being few other reasons for taking Lenin seriously. This one-note emphasis in more than one way flattens the narrative. In refreshing contrast, Robert Conquest offers more to sink one’s teeth into. For example, in his slim and beautifully written biography of Lenin, seeming to take issue with Marx’s historical materialism, he suggests the validity of an individualistic “great man” theory of history. Mounting this interesting challenge, Conquest at the same time knowledgably swirls through historical specifics of Lenin’s life:

If Lenin had died young, the tightly centralized Bolshevik Party could scarcely have emerged. If he had dropped dead in Zurich in March 1917, the Bolsheviks would not have moved into a position of total hostility to the other socialist and democratic parties. If he had died in July or August 1917, they would not have seized power. If he had died in early 1918, they would not have signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and would have fallen. If he had died under Fanny Kaplan’s bullets in August 1918, they would most probably have lost the Civil War. But for his insistence they would almost certainly not have switched to the New Economic Policy in 1921, and this would probably have meant their collapse. But for his survival to introduce the surprise resolution at the Tenth Party Congress suppressing organized opposition in the Party, Russia might not have been thrown into the hands of Stalin and the Party apparatus. And, but for his insistence, the Communist International might not have been formed and, if it had been, would at any rate scarcely have been turned (by the “Twenty-one Conditions”) into a centralized array of parties on the precise Bolshevik model. (Conquest, 1972: 2)

There is an exaggerated sweep to Conquest’s account. For example, in the early 1920s how could the various parties affiliating with the Communist International “precisely” duplicate the Bolshevik model? The specifics of what this “model” actually consisted of might also be difficult to determine, as Lars Lih and others have indicated. (See, for example, Studer, 2023.) On the other hand, one cannot deny that Conquest demonstrates a thoughtfulness and attention to complex historical facts not so apparent in Possony’s description or in Pipes’ discussion of Lenin. Such qualities, plus his graceful prose, raise his efforts to a higher level, which one also sees in the writings of Victor Sebestyen and Robert Service – both of whom cite Conquest as a mentor. There is also his oft-noted sense of humor, facilitating the composition of his widely quoted limerick (Brown, 2003):

There was an old Marxist called Lenin
Did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in,
That Grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.

Regardless of when he composed this limerick, however, it is obvious that it was precisely this point of view which Conquest sought to convey (with grace and sophistication, to be sure) as he composed his biography of Lenin. Nor is there any indication of disagreement with the points being made by Possony and Pipes. For all of them, the prime source of despotism, violence, suffering, and duplicity in the world was the Communism flowing from what Lenin thought and said and did.

The Struggle Continues

There has long been a different, and much more long-standing, source of despotism, violence, suffering, and duplicity in the world – the global capitalist economy, with all of the inhumanity, exploitation, slavery, corruption, colonialism, and imperialism accompanying it from the very beginning. (See Baptist, 2014; Newsinger, 2013; Davis, 2017; Nearing and Freeman, 1966; Katz, 2022; Hochschild, 2011); Blum, 2023; Bevins, 2020); Yates, 2018; and Yates, 2022)

Nor is it possible to ignore the environmental catastrophes which seem to flow from the very nature of the capitalist system. (See Klein, 2015; Löwy, 2015; Klein, 2019; Magdoff and Williams, 2017; Malm, 2020; Neale, 2021; Huber, 2022; Foster, 2024.)

The bottom-line for the political right, however, seems to be something like this: SHUT UP. Ignore the negative and murderous aspects of capitalism, assume that the existing order is more or less okay, and focus all critical attention on past, present, and future malcontents opposing those negative and murderous aspects.

Honoring such a conservative restriction limits our understanding of reality. More to the point, it serves to block efforts for positive change that might benefit the diverse working-class majority. Such change might threaten the power, the privileges, and the interests of wealthy and powerful elites that dominate our social order, which the conservatives seek to conserve. It would appear that the desire to conserve a livable environment with liberty and justice for all pushes in a revolutionary direction.

In our opening remarks, we comment that “the use or abuse of Marxism has affected the understanding of Lenin, the understanding of history, and the well-being of humanity.” We have noted that one form of abuse can come from some who purport to be using Marxism – for example, as was the case of Stalin, who adapted it in dogmatic ways for authoritarian and murderous purposes. A different form of abuse comes from conservatives who conflate Marxism with Stalinism for the purpose of shooing people away from the revolutionary qualities of Marxism.

But it is worth factoring into our considerations the perceptive comments of the decidedly non-Marxist Isaiah Berlin.

The true father of modern economic history, and, indeed, of modern sociology, in so far as any one man may be called that, is Karl Marx. If to have turned into truisms what had previously been paradoxes is a mark of genius, Marx was richly endowed with it. His achievements in this sphere are necessarily unnoticed in proportion as their effects have become part of the permanent background of civilized thought.

Berlin added that Marx transformed the already existing notion of “war between classes” into an approach that “has created new tools of criticism and research the use of which altered the nature and direction of the social sciences in our generation,” concluding:

Not only conflicting classes and groups and movements and their leaders in every country, but historians and sociologists, psychologists and political scientists, critics and creative artists, so far as they try to analyze the changing quality of the life of their society, owe the form of their ideas in large part to the work of Karl Marx. (Berlin, 1978: 116, 207-208; on Berlin and his contradictions, see Caute, 2013.)

This being the case, it naturally follows that a mindful use of Marxism – rather than the blinkering and inertia prescribed by conservative intellectuals – is on the agenda, in order to defend, extend, and deepen democracy, liberty, and justice for all and humanity’s well-being. If that is so, then those seeking to engage critically with and learn from Lenin’s Marxism and example will be well served as they seek to advance the understanding of history and the cause of human liberation.

Conclusions

Asked to summarize what is presented here, I would offer the following points.

Lenin was a serious Marxist who was absolutely committed to helping bring about a global revolution that would replace what he saw as the tyranny and oppressiveness of capitalism with the economic democracy of socialism with liberty and justice for all.

After summarizing Lenin’s understanding and application of Marxism, I turn my attention to a sampling of twenty-five prominent analysts and commentators who have considered Lenin’s life, ideas, and actions. A distinction is made between taking Lenin seriously and dealing with him superficially (or even abusively), and attention is given to a range of approaches involved in taking him seriously. A further distinction if made between those sympathetic to Lenin’s political orientation and goals, those who are more or less neutral, and those who are hostile.

It is suggested that taking Marxism seriously (whether or not one embraces it) is a precondition for taking Lenin seriously and providing an adequate understanding of Lenin. It is also suggested that taking both Marxism and Lenin seriously can, more generally, be helpful in the comprehension of history and in efforts to create a positive future.

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Paul Le Blanc