The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 10
X. The "Ideology" Apologetics and Policy of Bolshevism.
We all know that the central idea of the Bolshevik "ideology" is internationalism and communism. Agricultural Russia was selected as the scene of an experiment in economic and social theory which had its birth-place in industrial Germany. The psychology of the Russian would favour the attempt, for unlike the Teuton and the Saxon, the Slav attempts to realize his ideas in action. But these international forces did not emerge till after the overthrow of the first Revolution. It is important that we should clearly realize the three-cornered nature of the struggle. The first Revolution saw the bourgeois-socialists and the commercial interests overthrowing the war-weakened and disorganized government of officials and native aristocracy which stood in the way of the full commercialization and capitalization of the whole country. It must not be thought that at this stage the internationalists and communists took no part. They had long been maturing their plans and they were content to keep out of sight to start with; at the same time aiding by every means in their power the initial phase of the first Revolution, which must inevitably precede the introduction of their own régime. The commercialists and bourgeois-socialists of the Kerensky régime were used as an indispensable weapon for the attainment of their ends. Lenin, as a Marxian socialist, had, for a great number of years, realized that Russia must first be commercialized before she could be destroyed, as all states must be destroyed in the interests of "internationalism." As far back as 1894, in spite of other differences, he agreed with the constitutional social-democrat (Cadet) Struve, on the "necessity, the inevitability, and the progressive function of Russian capitalism." It was only through the industrialization of Russia that she could be made ripe for his communistic schemes, or rather it was through the partial and incomplete industrialization of the country that she could be made vulnerable at all.
As Lenin represents the very small but energetic group of theoretical international-communists, and who is further distinguished by being one of the few who is actually a Russian (by birth, though not in sentiment), and also one of the ablest of them, it will be as well to relate his origin.
According to his biographer and great admirer, Zinoviev, (the Bolshevik Minister, a Jew, whose former name was Apfelbaum), Lenin, whose real name is Vladimer Iliitch Oulianov, was born in 1870 at Simbirsk, and was the son of a councillor of state, belonging to a family of hereditary nobility. His brother was executed for the attempted assassination of Alexander III. in 1887. Vladimer Lenin's whole life was spent in exile, organizing revolutionary schemes.
He has always had a perfectly clear and consistent idea as to the means to be adopted to attain his ends, and the end itself. The end was, of course, the dictatorship of Lenin, and a subservient executive, over the masses from whom all possible rival leaders had been removed. Trotsky, his right-hand man and chief lieutenant (also a Jew) has said of him, "To him the rule of social democracy means martial law, the rule of Lenin over social democracy. He has taken upon himself the rôle of the incorruptible Robespierre." The idea is, of course, the very essence of communism, which necessarily implies a dead level equality of the masses without individual possessions, or ambitions, in complete subjection to the will of a despot. In primitive communities this can, of course, be realized. It was this ideal which was never distant from the mind of Karl Marx. In his "Capital" (p. 351) he thus describes the primitive organization of Indian village communities. "Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the "chief inhabitant," who is judge, police and tax-gatherer in one; the book-keeper who keeps the accounts of the village, the Bramin, water-overseer and other officials exercising authority."