Lay Lenin Lay

In his latest attempt to reanimate one of the most famous corpses in history, academic It Boy Slavoj Zizek gives two thumbs up to the 20th century's version of Vlad the Impaler, hero of "formal freedom" (i.e., the freedom to do as Lenin tells you).

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died on January 21 1924, 80 years ago?does the embarrassed silence over his name mean that he died twice, that his legacy is also dead? His insensitivity toward personal freedoms is effectively foreign to our liberal-tolerant sensibility ? who, today, would not experience a shudder apropos his dismissive remarks against the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionaries? critique of the Bolshevik power in 1922?

?Indeed, the sermons which…the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries preach express their true nature: ?The revolution has gone too far. What you are saying now we have been saying all the time, permit us to say it again.? But we say in reply: ?Permit us to put you before a firing squad for saying that. Either you refrain from expressing your views, or, if you insist on expressing your political views publicly in the present circumstances, when our position is far more difficult than it was when the white guards were directly attacking us, then you will have only yourselves to blame if we treat you as the worst and most pernicious white guard elements.??

This dismissive attitude towards the ?liberal? notion of freedom accounts for Lenin?s bad reputation among liberals. Their case largely rests upon their rejection of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of ?formal? and ?actual? freedom, but as even ;eftist liberals like Claude Lefort emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion ?formal,? so that ?actual freedom? equals the lack of freedom. Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort ?Freedom - yes, but for whom? To do what?? For him, in the above-quoted case of the Mensheviks, their ?freedom? to criticize the Bolshevik government effectively amounted to the ?freedom? to undermine the workers? and peasants? government on behalf of the counterrevolution.

[Link via Arts & Letters Daily]

More fun with Lenin here.

Comments

[Jean Bart]

What's particularly ironic is that sans the Left SRs, the Bolsheviks would not have been able to be in power.

[Madog]

Lenin was lucky that Stalin came right after him....

[quaker120]

"Fully contextualized situations"? A self-described psychoanalyst?? This guy really is living in the 20th century!

I roll my eyes. Or, As Dr. Zizek might put it--I "roll" my "eyes."

[Umbriel]

So freedom really is slavery... Can the Orwell estate sue over this infringement?

[Jean Bart]

Madog,

Actually, Stalin was part of a group of leaders which followed Lenin; they were often referred to as "the Himalayas" - Stalin, Bukharin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Stalin eliminated - by banishment, arrest, etc. - each of these independent sources of power from Lenin's death until 1929, when he was able to kick Bukharin out of power.

Of the group, Bukharin was the most decent, and well, liberal. If you read the transcript of his "trial," you will find that though he admits to all the charges against him, he does so in such a way as to make a mockery of the court and Stalin.

[Shultz]

?Freedom - yes, but for whom? To do what??

This question seems to refernece some form of group freedom as opposed to individual liberty, does it not?

To me, it seems that the statement seems presupposes the impossibility of personal liberty.

The very definition of an evil bastard.

P.S. My little sister, as a high-school freshman, went on a Soviet sponsered tour of the USSR back before the wall fell. When she asked me what I'd like her to bring me back, I told her that all I wanted was a photograph of her flicking off Lenin's tomb.

It's among my most prized possessions.

[Jean Bart]

Shultz,

Upon re-entering West Berlin via "Checkpoint Charlie" in 1983, I yelled some nasty obscenities at the guards across the border. 🙂 This was sort of common though.

[Dope]

Yeah, but he and McCartney wrote some great tunes.

[Shultz]

The border guards were notorious.

I also have a picture of my girlfriend at Checkpoint Charlie in 1987. She was there with a group of our friends flicking off the guards after re-entering the west.

Once they got the picture back, they could see the guard flicking them off in return.

Us versus them issues were so much easier when it was so clearly good versus evil...clear to me anyway.

[Eric]

Why don't they just bury the dead SOB already?

[yelowd]

The freedom quote is right up there with "Work will set you free".
The only good thing lenin ever did was NEP. Too bad Stalin nixed that bad boy. Nothing like guising pseudo-capitalism with communist rhetoric.

But remember, they didn't follow marx to the letter, which is why they were evil and the soviets collapsed; and why marxism is still a viable option ;>

[JayD]

Shultz,

Any chance of you posting that baby?

[Jean Bart]

yelowd,

NEP was really Bukharin's idea; and it was something Bukharin supported the most of Soviet leaders at the time.

[Shultz]

JayD

These photos were taken way before the advent of digital photography. I'll see if I can scan 'em.

And I suppose I should talk to the relevent parties first.

I'll keep you posted. (No pun intended).

[Douglas Fletcher]

If only Ted Kennedy had been back there in that circle to moderate things a little, maybe the 20th century would have turned out different.

[some guy]

Geez, I must have been lucky - I NEVER had a bad time with either East German or Soviet border guards. But going through Belarus twice in 2000 taught me what the bad old days must have been like. Either way, Lenin was a squirrel and should be left to rot on the heap of historical refuse already piled so high.

[Andrew]

JB

Although i don't really have strong feelings about him (I know Koestler and Merleau-Ponty seemed to like him) I never much admired Bukarin...sort of think of him as Stalin's king-maker during all those power struggles. That's what Trotsky thought (but that could be sour grapes).

Everybody likes Tariq Aziz...and then there is Saddam, Uday, Qusay. I would like to see Aziz get a trial, like Saddam.

On some of the British blogs there has been an attempt to define Evil...which has focused a lot on conscious sadism. It fits pretty easily on Saddam and Stalin. Maybe Mao and Castro.

Lenin-- though he could muster an armchair warrior's ferocity at times-- seems a more bloodless type...kind of like a 17th Century Witch-Finder General-- a dangerous guy if you give him a theory. Robespierre was of the same ilk. Hitler a weird cross of one and two.

(BTW Augustin, Maximilian's (Robespierre) brother, appears to have been a very modest and likeable chap, with an amateur's gift for the military art. Does he get ANY recognition in the contemporary French military?)

[Mick]

Yer kidding, right, Andrew?

[Andrew]

Mick

About Augustin Robespierre? He was astonishingly competent and, without any particular training, created a French army out of scratch (most of the officers in the previous regime were aristocrats) which proved very formidable in the critical year 1793. He had an eye for talent, and pops up in a lot of bios because he especially favored a young artillery officer named Buonaparte.

Augustin's brother Max, was a handsome lawyer, a rather driven theorist, and a formidable orator...and the famed Terrorist. Augustin had a game leg, and a retiring personality-- so he was put in charge of military supply, and showed such a genius for it that he effectively created the army.

Both were executed during the Thermidor.

JB would know more about the story. Considering the continuity since, I would have figured something at St. Cyr or whatever would be named for him?

[joe]

A notre ami, et son nom-de-blog:

"The Jean Bart - France's newest dreadnought, with turrets heavy as a frigate - was still unfinished: she could not leave her slip. A sixteen-inch shell from Massachusetts" Massachusetts, baby! "burrowed through the battleship's forward turret's armored apron, immobilizing the guns. After firing just seven rounds, Jean Bart fell silent." yeah, right, he's usually good for a lot more than seven.

From "An Army at Dawn"

[Ted]

I thought that Rothbard coverted Lenin's dead corpse to the Church of Offical Libertarianism. Isn't he a secret libertarian?

[Jean Bart]

joe,

You are celebrating a victory over a large, stationary target that could not manuever; yet one of its main defenses at sea is the ability to manuever? That is an unfinished ship stuck in her slip? 🙂

[Dave Potts]

When my father was in the army in Berlin in the 1960's, he and my mother never had a terribly difficult time with the East German guards and soldiers. He has told me they could always be appeased with copies of Playboy, so many of the Western soldiers would display them on their dashboards if they were driving through the East. The East German soldiers would often trade bits and pieces of their uniform insignia for the nudie mags. Trade is the path to peace, I guess. I'll still never forget being five years old and looking over into East Berlin and seeing the grayness and depression, even on a bright summer afternoon, and wondering why there were guards and dogs and barbed wire.
I love the statue of Lenin that now sits in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. Somebody apparently imported it from overseas after the collapse. When I lived there, I wanted to deface it so badly, but then I thought it says enough that there's an uprooted statue of the monster in the middle of a neighborhood full of shops and restaurants. Unfortunately, knowing the political leanings of most in that neighborhood makes me wonder if people there see the statue in the same light.

[buck smith]

Actually I found a picture of it here:

http://www.kolvir.com/esoteric/?item=LENIN

I would love to put a copy of a mutual fund statement for V I Lenin into one of hish hands;)

[Clearly Clueless]

One of my 45s says "McCartney/Lenin."
I am suspicious.
Over...

[David Tomlin]

He may have been buried a long time ago. It's long been rumored the one on display is made of wax.

[joe]

No, JB, just noting the coincidence of the Jean Bart gamely lobbing volley after volley despite the overwhelming numbers of Americans.

[buck smith]

Dave Potts,

Great anaecdote about the Lenin statue in Seattle. If you know of a picture on the web, please point me to it.

Given that Seattle is the home of Microsoft, and numerous other spin-off high tech companies, the statue might be seesn as a primitive and barbaric display of the impaled corpse of a vanquished enemy. I like it.

[Jon H]

"Why don't they just bury the dead SOB already?"

Hey, the taxidermists are keeping their skills honed.

That'll come in handy when Reagan dies and he's embalmed and placed in a crystal sarcophagus on the Mall in D.C.

Or at Grover Norquist's house. Either way.

[Figueroa Grace]

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