conclusion that anyone within his party who opposed his policies was also objectively an enemy of mankind. But he showed his genius by following not the logic of his position but the needs of successful organization. He displayed great aptitude in using and winning for his purposes those in his own ranks who disagreed with him. He could work with people who without him could not work with each other. It was left to Stalin to draw the logical conclusion, and to convict any opponent on any matter of being an enemy of humanity. But that was when Lenin’s party did not have to make a revolution.
In contrast to the entire field of his rivals in the period from February to October, Lenin knew what he wanted—power. In contrast to them, he knew how important a political army was and how it could best be deployed to achieve power. And in contrast to them once more, he dared all on his programme and on himself. Like the good dialectical materialist he was, his faith was nothing short of cosmic. Compared to Lenin with his deep belief in himself as an instrument of historic necessity, Cromwell who inwardly trembled lest his soul be lost, appears like an character out of a pre-revolutionary Russian novel.
Karl Kautsky once characterised Lenin as the Russian Bismarck. In calling attention to the masterly game of revolutionary Real-Politik Lenin played, the comparison is apt. But Junker that he was, Bismarck was a divided character. He had no more religion than Napoleon and fancied himself as a kind of Norse hero wresting an empire from the designs of a malignant Fate. Lenin was all of a piece. He created an empire as if it were on order and pretended sincerely that he was merely following out a recipe laid down by Marx and Engels, his holy authorities. A story circulated among the Bolsheviks after his death would have pleased his pious heart. Lenin appeared before the Gates of St. Peter and knocked for admission. “Who are you?” asked St. Peter. To which, instead of giving his name, Lenin modestly replied: “I am the interest on Marx’s Capital.”[1]
The sense of his historic mission freed Lenin from any shame, embarrassment, and regret in revising his course or in zigzagging from one position to another. He accepted practical responsibility, but in his own mind history absolved him from
- ↑ I give for whatever it is worth an emendation of this story that circulated among the democratic socialists of the West. To St. Peter’s question, Lenin replies: “I am the interest on Marx’s Capital. Marx is below, and has slammed the gates of Hell in my face.”
