#Lenin Versus #Putin – AI Generated Comparison – Vladimir Lenin and Vladimir Putin are two significant figures in Russian history, with Lenin being the founder of the Soviet Union and Putin being the current President of Russia. While both have had considerable influence on Russia, their approaches and ideologies differ significantly. Lenin was a Marxist revolutionary who led the Bolshevik Party and established the Soviet Union in 1917. He implemented policies such as nationalization of industries, land redistribution, and centralized economic planning. On the other hand, Putin, who came to power in 1999, has focused on strengthening Russia’s economy, military, and global influence. He has also been accused of suppressing political opposition and promoting nationalism. — (Leaves out Putin being a member of the Communist Party of Russia until he was past forty years old. Putin worked for the Soviet Union until the implosion and dissolution of the USSR. Putin never publicly criticized Stalinism or the system openly. )
…………….
Machine Translate
#Ленин против #Путина – Сравнение ИИ – Владимир Ленин и Владимир Путин — две важные фигуры в российской истории: Ленин — основатель Советского Союза, а Путин — нынешний президент России. Хотя оба они оказали значительное влияние на Россию, их подходы и идеологии существенно различаются. Ленин был революционером-марксистом, который возглавил большевистскую партию и основал Советский Союз в 1917 году. Он проводил такую политику, как национализация промышленности, перераспределение земли и централизованное экономическое планирование. С другой стороны, Путин, пришедший к власти в 1999 году, сосредоточил усилия на укреплении экономики, военного и глобального влияния России. Его также обвиняли в подавлении политической оппозиции и пропаганде национализма. — (Не учитывается, что Путин был членом Коммунистической партии России до тех пор, пока ему не исполнилось сорок лет. Путин работал на Советский Союз до распада и распада СССР. Путин никогда публично не критиковал сталинизм или систему публично.)
That was the question poised by Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin in his 1902 political pamphlet, entitled “Что делать?” in Russian. What is to be Done runs 137 pages long; today we’d call it a book, complain that it’s too long, and ask for the TLDR, but the men of the early 20th century had better-fed minds that could distinguish a short work from a long one.
In his pamphlet, Lenin argued that a disciplined revolutionary party based on sound theory was necessary to lead the proletariat towards socialist revolution:
We shall have occasion further on to deal with the political and organizational duties which the task of emancipating the whole people from the yoke of autocracy imposes upon us. At this point, we wish to state only that the role of vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory…
Engels recognizes, not two forms of the great struggle of Social Democracy (political and economic), as is the fashion among us, but three, placing the theoretical struggle on a par with the first two.
The man with the goatee goes on to lambast the existing “social democratic” organizations of his day for being fragmented, amateurish, and incapable of the great task ahead.
According to What is to be Done, three things were necessary for a revolution:
An advanced theory of revolution must have been formulated by a revolutionary political party;
The revolutionary political party must have created vanguard fighters guided by this advanced theory; and
The social and economic conditions of late-stage capitalism must deteriorated to the point that the working class is ready to led by the vanguard fighters.
Lenin developed the first and built the second, and when the third came along he was the Man with the Plan. The pamphlet became famous because Lenin was proven right. His work shaped the ideology and organizational principles of the Bolshevik movement, which later lead the October Revolution and established Soviet rule.
But when Vladimir Lenin wrote What is to be Done in 1902, was he anyone that mattered?
No, he was not. His father was a deceased schoolteacher. His brother was an executed criminal. He himself was a felon — but not a cool, dangerous, inspiring one, no.
23-year-old Vladimir was part of a crowd handing out pamphlets in a protest in St. Petersburg in 1896. He was arrested by the tsarist government for sedition, kept in jail for a year, then sentenced without trial. The government deemed him to be of such little consequence or threat that, unlike his brother who was executed, Lenin was just given three year’s exile in Siberia. After completing his exile, he moved to Munich, where in 1901 he raised funds from private donors to create Spark, a newspaper devoted to socialist causes. He adopted a pseudonym based on an obscure geographical reference and joined an underground political party, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), but it was fractious and divided on ideological issues. It was at this point that he published his pamphlet, calling for organizational unity to create a vanguard.
Let’s re-imagine the 20th century left-wing revolutionary Vladimir Lenin as a 21st century American right-wing dissident.
In our re-imagining, 23-year-old Chadimir was among the crowd that entered the Capitol Building on January 6th 2021. He was arrested for insurrection and kept in jail for 12 months before being sentenced to three years in a federal correctional facility in North Dakota. When his sentence was over, he re-located to Moscow, where he ran a successful GoFundMe campaign to launch Spark.com on the Substack platform. He adopted a pseudonym based on an obscure pop culture reference and joined an underground Telegram group, but it was fractious and divided on ideological issues. It was at this point that he published a series of long-form essays calling for organizational unity to create the vanguard.
Chadimir recently posted this on his Instagram:
Imagine stumbling on a link to Chadimir’s blog on Unz.com. Would you think, “Ah, clearly, this is one of the world-historical figures of our day, a man who will re-shape the course of human history!”? Or would you think “just another glowie, grifter, or LARPer!”?
It’s a rhetorical question. I already know the answer.
I mean, I haven’t ever written a 137-page pamphlet calling for a revolutionary vanguard to strike down the tsar… But I did recently make a post in a Telegram group stating that I thought maybe the dissident right on Substack should work on a coherent ideology and plan of action. And it went about as you’d expect – I was told that anyone without resources recommending such a course of action was engaging in mental masturbation or LARPing while anyone with resources was already co-opted.
Now, that criticism isn’t wrong. The resources of the right really have been co-opted and misdirected, and anyone thinking they can make a difference really is engaging in mental masturbation.
But so what? Masturbation might be a sin against nature, but mental masturbation is a prerequisite for achievement.
Every rock star began as a long-haired freak in a garage with a dream of a record deal and groupies. Every best-selling author began as a would-be writer being told that no one buys books. Every successful entrepreneur began by faking it until he made it. Every revolutionary began as a nobody. None of them had the odds on their side. Victory wasn’t assured; it wasn’t even plausible; it was so unlikely as to seem impossible! It was all a LARP… until it wasn’t.1
The reason so many successful actors, musicians, and politicians are narcissists is that in order to become a highly successful actor, musician, or politician, you have to take long shots against long odds. Often the only people who take long shots against long odds are the people who are self-deluded enough to think they’re better than all the others who tried and failed.
People like Lenin.
Lenin was a self-deluded nobody. He was a loser. He had accomplished virtually nothing with his life except a stint in the gulag. He was nowhere near as influential as the well-established figures who currently are prominent among the dissident right. He wasn’t even… Nick Fuentes.
But Lenin he changed the world. Sure, he changed it for the worse — but he changed it. And so could we.2
It’s often said that politics is the art of the possible. But that’s not true. Conventional politics might be just the art of the possible, but dissident politics is the art of the impossible. It’s the art of orchestrating butterfly effects until they cause a hurricane.
Today, we have the butterflies, but they’re an improvisational jazz band, and not an orchestra. Maybe we need a… monarch butterfly…. to show us where to fly.
Contemplate the punishment I have just inflicted on the Tree of Woe.
Contemplations on the Tree of Woe is written by a confirmed megalomaniac with a grandiose sense of self-worth; tragically the grandiose self-confidence is limited to the narrow field of simulationist tabletop RPGs rather than, say, tyrannical subjugation of all who oppose him, and thus can do no more than call on other people to step up their megalo-game. That said, to receive new posts and support the work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“Submission to the pressure of bourgeois society has repeatedly thrust nominally Marxist currents towards revisionism, the process of ruling out Marxism’s essential conclusions.” —“Declaration of Principles of the Spartacist League,” adopted by the founding conference of the Spartacist League, September 1966
The latest issue of Spartacist marks a watershed moment in the sad history of the International Communist League (ICL). Formally junking the core of its program and political heritage going back to its founding—a tradition it denounces as “centrist” at best—the ICL now frames its raison d’être as the fight against “liberalism.”
An IBT comrade intervened at a public forum of the Trotskyist League, Canadian section of the ICL, held in Toronto on 30 September to introduce the new approach. He pointed out that this orientation is precisely towards a kind of liberalism: bourgeois nationalism. The ICL claims that it previously opposed “bourgeois nationalism in oppressed nations based on sectarian class purity” (“The ICL’s Post-Soviet Revisionism,” Spartacist No.68).
What is the “sectarian class purity” that supposedly undermined the ICL’s fight for revolution? While the recent issue of Spartacist leaves many questions unanswered, it provides a good sense of where the ICL is heading. Rejecting as “social-democratic” their founder James Robertson’s orthodox Trotskyist defense of permanent revolution, the ICL now projects “national liberation as the fundamental lever for proletarian revolution” (“In Defense of the Second and Fourth Comintern Congresses,” Spartacist No.68). Instead of viewing class struggle as the “fundamental lever for proletarian revolution” in the neocolonial world—the central idea of Trotsky’s permanent revolution—the ICL resurrects the concept of the “anti-imperialist united front” with the national bourgeoisie of oppressed countries. It goes so far as to suggest that rejecting the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry,” which Lenin himself abandoned as outdated over a century ago, means renouncing “the alliance between workers and peasants” and even the early Soviet government (Ibid.).
To be sure, the ICL still pays lip service to proletarian independence and the struggle against the influence of nationalist ideology—revisionists have always been careful to have “orthodox”-sounding formulations to confuse people. But in promoting the fight against national oppression as the “fundamental” mechanism for revolution; advocating “anti-imperialist” alliances with the national bourgeoisie; and drawing an equals sign between the struggle for a two-class “democratic dictatorship” and permanent revolution, the ICL has finally embraced the Pabloite revisionism that the founders of the Spartacist League fought against. Indeed, according to the ICL, only “sectarians” (or is it “social democrats”?) “denounce bourgeois nationalism in oppressed countries as simply reactionary” (Ibid.). Ernest Mandel would be pleased.
“What was the point of your group for the past half century?” our comrade asked the Trotskyist League. “Was it all a waste of time? Did it ever mean anything?”
The painful truth is that it once meant everything. The Spartacist League was founded to restore the revolutionary Marxist program, to ensure continuity with Trotsky’s Fourth International, destroyed by a Pabloite revisionism that sought other “fundamental levers” for socialist transformation, whether in Stalinist, social-democratic or bourgeois-nationalist parties. From its founding until its political degeneration in the late 1970s/early 1980s, the international Spartacist tendency embodied the Trotskyist program. Even after its degeneration, it was able to hold onto its core programmatic ideas at least in a formal sense, despite notable deviations in practice. The SL was distinguished from the Pabloites on a range of important political questions, from Northern Ireland to Israel/Palestine, from the Iranian Revolution to the Malvinas/Falklands War, from Mexico to Quebec and beyond. All of that has now been erased.
The chair clearly did not much like this critique and cut our representative off before the allotted time was up. But ICL comrades who are not exhausted, not demoralized, not resigned, not cynical, who are committed to advancing Trotskyism instead of neo-Pabloism must stop and ask themselves: “How did we get here?” Answering that question means taking seriously the IBT’s critique of a process of degeneration over the last four decades.
There are few figures in Russian history that are as controversial as the figure of Vladimir Lenin. For some, he is a hero, a luminary of progress. Among supporters of democracy in Russia, he is seen as a symbol of totalitarianism and a direct predecessor to the modern Russian dictatorship.
He is often perceived as a symbol of the error of the Soviet experiment, which some argue should be forgotten as a tragic chapter of history. They see Lenin as the perpetrator of atrocities and the cause of the suffering of millions. But erasing such a hugely influential figure from history would be a mistake.
Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been closely linked to European cultural discourse. The works of Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Tchaikovsky, developed naturally and harmoniously from the European cultural tradition. Russia also received scientific and philosophical concepts, including Marxism, from outside. The Russian intellectual and creative elite existed purely within the orbit of European culture, enriching but not going beyond it.
The October Revolution, which changed the course of the twentieth century, was a new development. It was the most daring attempt in history to create paradise on Earth and build a new classless society. Lenin and his associates sought to implement Marxist ideas in what they believed to be Russia’s monstrously unjust society with a fanatical conviction in their rightness and unwillingness to negotiate with anyone. The Russian opposition movement behaves similarly today.
However, as we know, instead of the equality and freedom the Bolsheviks promised, a totalitarian system emerged. This was the natural result of an attempt to implement Marxist ideas in conditions that were unsuitable for a successful proletarian revolution. Although Russia was undergoing industrialization, its proletariat – the driving force of the revolution – was still very small. The workers – yesterday’s peasants – largely retained peasant views of the world and social order, which were very far from the ideals of the industrial proletariat.
Obviously, it was much more difficult to build communism under such conditions, which were very different from those described by Marx. Russia had to improvise by trying to create an industrial base and proletariat, which eventually destroyed the peasantry during the collectivization of agriculture.
The Bolsheviks’ brutality and their desire to impose their vision on the country at all costs, leading to enormous losses of life, was nothing new in Russia’s history. On the contrary, Lenin and his comrades were following the old tradition of the state monopoly of power that had existed in Russia for centuries. Peter the Great, whom the great Russian poet Maximilian Voloshin aptly called “the first Bolshevik,” was similarly uncompromising in his methods of reforming Russia.
What the Bolsheviks did was raise the bar of state violence to a new height. They probably saw this as logical in light of the ruthless class struggle against reactionary social strata.
At that time, Europe tried to respond to new social challenges not from the left, as the Communists did, but by experimenting with fascism. It is not without reason that fascism draws inspiration from a fictionalized past. Adolf Hitler weaponized images of Germanic mythology and Wagnerian fantasies, while Benito Mussolini exploited the legacy of Rome. Their ideological successor, President Vladimir Putin, also constantly refers to the past, namely the victory in the Great Patriotic War, looking there for grounds to legitimize his policies.
Meanwhile, Russia sought to shake off the ashes of the old world and cut a window into the beautiful world of the future. It was truly daring and innovative, though doomed to failure. In 1917, hardly anyone foresaw what the idea of building the kingdom of God on earth would really entail.
It would be categorically wrong to erase Lenin from history by declaring the entire Soviet period to have been one big mistake.
First, for the simple reason that it is part of our history. Pretending that it has nothing to do with us is yet another symptom of the forgetfulness that has afflicted Russian society. To be ashamed of one’s history is a sign of a shallow mind. Recognizing one’s history and drawing lessons from it is what allows society to overcome the past and move forward. Germany, which refuses to forget the lessons of the Third Reich, can serve as a good example.
Lenin’s Wife
Second, Lenin is Russia’s most recognizable brand. The huge number of countries affected by Lenin’s legacy is an asset to Putin, allowing him to seek allies among the countries of the Global South that still have sympathy for the Soviet Union. This asset can and should be used even after Putin’s departure to develop the new Russia’s relations with these states. The Leninist brand and its instant recognizability can be useful tools of foreign policy and soft power regardless of who sits in the Kremlin.
Second, Lenin is Russia’s most recognizable brand. The huge number of countries affected by Lenin’s legacy is an asset to Putin, allowing him to seek allies among the countries of the Global South that still have sympathy for the Soviet Union. This asset can and should be used even after Putin’s departure to develop the new Russia’s relations with these states. The Leninist brand and its instant recognizability can be useful tools of foreign policy and soft power regardless of who sits in the Kremlin.
It is both a reminder that nothing in politics is impossible for people united by
It is both a reminder that nothing in politics is impossible for people united by common goals who are ready to fight for them and proof that those who believe in nothing and call on others to do nothing because “nothing will ever work” will sooner or later be shamed.
Lenin is rightly regarded as one of the greatest figures in political history because he possessed a phenomenal flair and tactical genius. He boldly changed his policies without hesitation when the old ones became irrelevant without ever losing sight of his strategic goal. This one of Lenin’s traits could be of great use to the Russian politicians of today.
Finally, the Soviet experiment is Russia’s unique gift to humanity. Lenin’s legacy serves as a warning to the world about the dangers of pursuing utopian aspirations at any cost, regardless of circumstances, resources, and people’s fates.
It is also a warning to all political elites. If you cling to your power and privileges, ignoring the public demand for change, change will still happen, you will have to pay for your short-sightedness. And the longer those in power resist those challenges, the more costly they will be.
xenagoguevicene 