Bury Lenin's Body And The Rest Of Communism: In Red Square He Lies In State, Mocking Humanity
MOSCOWRed Square remains one of the globes most iconic locales. Enter by walking past the statue of World War II general Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov on horseback. The Kremlin dominates on the right, GUM Department Store on the left, and St. Basils Cathedral looms in front. Before the Kremlin wall is a small, squat, pyramidal building: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov Lenins mausoleum.
The tomb may be most famous as the reviewing stand for Communist Party leaders. Studying who stood where was an important part of the game of Kremlinology. Who was to the General Secretarys right and left, who was moving up or down in the Kremlin power ladder? No where was the leadership symbolism more dramatic.
Kremlinology has disappeared as an occupation. But the mausoleum remains. Along with Lenins body. Dressed in a black suit, his face is grim and his right fist is clenched, as if he was ready to smite the capitalists who now dominate even his own nations economy.
Lenin is one of historys most consequential individuals. Without him there likely would have been no Bolshevik Revolution, slaughter of the Czarist royal family, and murderous civil war. No Joseph Stalin, brutal party purges, mass starvation in Ukraine, and Hitler-Stalin pact to fuel what became World War II. No post-conflict occupation of Eastern Europe and Cold War with the West. No Soviet support for Chinas revolution and a mix of dictatorship and insurgency in smaller states around the globe. No North Korea and Korean War. No Cuban missile crisis. No Berlin Wall to fall in 1989. No tens of millions of people murdered by what Ronald Reagan rightly called the Evil Empire.
Of course, without Lenin there still would have been a Bolshevik movement. But it would have lacked his intellect, tactical skills, and, most important, determination. He promoted Marxist revolution while imprisoned and in exile. He insisted on dictatorial leadership within the social democratic party, holding his Bolshevik (majority) faction together against the Menshevik (minority) members and even some of his own supporters angered by his intransigence. So feared was he by his enemies that he became Germanys secret weapon against Russia; in 1917 Berlin allowed him to travel in a sealed train from his exile in Zurich to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) in order to spread the bacillus of radical revolution. And he did, with devastating effect.
Lenin pushed the Bolsheviks toward power as the authority of the moderate Provisional Government, which had ousted the Czar, bled away. At the behest of Russias Entente allies the moderate revolutionaries continued the war, leaving the Bolsheviks to demand peace, land, and bread for millions of soldiers fighting in a meaningless conflict. In November came Lenins moment, the famous putsch (revolution) in Petrograd. Almost alone in his party Lenin then forced peace with Germany. He had contempt for the idiot Czar Nicholas who had been deposed and the windbag Aleksandr Kerensky, the last premier in the Provisional Government. But Lenin recognized that the German Army could end Communist rule. The Bolsheviks then fought a multi-year, multi-sided civil war from Archangel to Sebastopol to Vladivostok to consolidate power.
Lenin was no humanitarian whose dream was perverted by his successors. He likely ordered the murder of the deposed Czar and the latters entire family. Lenin insisted on solitary Bolshevik rule, brooked no dissent even within the party, established the Cheka secret police, employed terror against opponents, and led the victorious side, with the assistance of Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, and others, in one of historys most horrid civil wars.
As Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars he was the dominant power within a regime filled with murderous activists, such as Trotsky and Stalin. Despite his later complaint that the latter was rude, Lenin seemed unconcerned with Stalins equally brutal commitment to preserve power irrespective of human cost. Lenin created the institutions used by Stalin to wreak so much human havoc. Tens of millions of people ultimately died as slaughter became routine. Wrote social scientist R.J. Rummel: murder and arrest quotas did not work well. Where to find the enemies of the people they were to shoot was a particularly acute problem for the local NKVD, which had been diligent in uncovering plots. They had to resort to shooting those arrested for the most minor civil crimes, those previously arrested and released, and even mothers and wives who appeared at NKVD headquarters for information about their arrested loved ones. This is what Lenins Russia became.
Original post:
Bury Lenin's Body And The Rest Of Communism: In Red Square He Lies In State, Mocking Humanity