Propounder of Red Terror: Why it is necessary to demystify and demythify Lenin

“I told you so” declared a quote on one of my ex-students’ t-shirt with a daunting image of Lenin - his customary unforgiving look was unmissable. But what did Lenin tell, I quizzed him out of curiosity.    That the world is filled with the oppressors and unless we take matters in our own hands, we cannot make it a better place, he responded. Of course, this paraphrased response of his is not an attributable quote to Lenin, but the sentiment which his response conveyed was a well-rehearsed myth that has been sold to generations about Lenin. A myth that Lenin was a benign leader who fought injustice to show an alternate solution is possible.  A simple question to that could really challenge the myth – so did Lenin really make a better place to live when he got a chance? The glorification of Vladimir Lenin, the leader who led the first ‘communist revolution’ is not an uncommon phenomenon. University spaces, academic literature and even in the popular media, Lenin’s projection reflects a deification of a peculiar kind. Often packaged as an exemplary revolutionary leader who provided the philosophy and praxis to the oppressed classes to move towards a new political order, his influence on the academia and the popular imagination can hardly be over-emphasised. Credited for establishing the first state with explicit socialist program and objectives – his ideals and strategies reverberated in the imaginations of similar revolutionary movements in the then contemporary societies who were fighting similar, if not exactly the same, oppressive regimes or foreign occupation. That he fought an imperialist power made him an instant icon for a few in the Indian freedom struggle as well. Curiously, his glorification invites no discomfort that is sometimes associated with the glorification of his protégé and successor Stalin who led one of the worst totalitarian regimes in modern history – comparable only to the brutalities of Hitler or Mussolini. This is fascinating, since for all practical reasons the emergence of a totalitarian state under Stalin unmistakably has roots in Lenin’s structuring of the post-revolution socialist Russia.   Yet, this is conveniently overlooked, often consciously, to somehow retain the legitimacy of the Bolsheviks revolution. It being the first ever communist revolution, left has toiled hard to project its benignity and also inevitability. A careful and objective study of the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath however exposes the disaster it wrecked on people in Russia. More importantly, it is necessary to speak of the consequences of the post-revolution political processes and institutions consciously created by Lenin and his comrade, that laid down the foundation of the totalitarian ideas which were replicated in other countries as well. It is therefore imperative to declutter the layers of heroism attributed to a man, who used power and brute violence– ostensibly to provide a new world free of oppression and suffering – but ended up laying the foundation of one of the worst oppressive states in modern history. And in doing so, Lenin practised a conscious use of ‘terror’ as a state policy as his most potent weapon. “It is necessary secretly—and urgently—to prepare the terror”, so wrote Lenin on 3 September 1918 (or 4 September by some accounts) to N. N. Krestinsky who was then the secretary of the Party, which was to ensure the revolutionary dream to come true. The dust from the October revolution- which overthrew the provisional government set after the apparently bloodless February revolution – was yet to settle as the Russian society stared at the devastating civil war which followed the Bolsheviks revolution.  The civil war got defined by the Red Terror – a phase of disproportionate violence, arbitrary executions and mass killings of the ‘class enemies’ or ‘counter-revolutionaries’ mercilessly supervised by the Cheka – the notorious secret police under Lenin’s Russia. Lenin’s telegram to Krestinsky is now seen as one of the critical documents that initiated the Red Terror – a declared state policy of using mass terror to respond to the White Terror ­– Whites included everyone from revolutionary socialists who opposed the Bolsheviks to the members and the supporters of the imperial army. Practically, it meant everyone who opposed the Bolsheviks.     The backdrop of the telegram is too important to be missed – a few days back, Lenin had narrowly survived the assassination attempt by a socialist revolutionary, Fanny Kaplan who saw the Bolshevik revolution and the emergence of a new state in Russia as a betrayal of the ideals of socialism. She was summarily executed by the Cheka immediately after being charged with Lenin’s assassination attempt. But while Lenin survived, Moisei Uritsky, the head of Cheka was not equally fortunate who was assassinated days before the attempt was made on Lenin. The two high profile attacks and numerous oppositions to the way Bolsheviks emerged at the helm suggests that by no means the Bolshevik version was truly an accepted one or even a popular one.   Indeed, the loss of Bolsheviks in the Assembly elections just after the revolution was a decisive blow to the purported universality and acceptability of the Bolsheviks which was touted by Lenin when he said “not a shadow of hesitation in the masses of Petrograd, Moscow and the rest of Russia in accepting Bolshevik rule”.   But then, propaganda has always been Lenin’s forte which he put to use quite craftily. The revolution was portrayed as the solution not only to the Russian but also to the global problems of similar kind. Sustaining this revolution thus becomes an over-riding concern. Lenin then supervises brutal mechanisms to ensure that people submit to the new ‘state power’ - in other words to the will of the Bolsheviks. Any contrarian voice was to be ruthlessly supressed, and Lenin personally directed that this ‘suppression’ must reach every dissenter who dares to question the revolution thereby instilling ‘terror’ in them. Take for instance Lenin’s directive to the communist authorities in the Penza, a city in Russia where local peasantry had revolted against the forcible confiscations of grains. “The uprising of the five kulak (peasants) districts should be mercilessly suppressed” writes Lenin to his comrades in charge of Penza and further directs the authorities to “Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.” This hanging should happen, Lenin wants the authorities to ensure, “in such a way that for hundreds of versts (kilometres) around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks.”    No one – not even the peasants, were spared of terror if they went against the ‘new political order’.      Institutions like Cheka were specifically tasked with identifying and neutralising the ‘counter-revolutionaries’ – a task which Cheka tirelessly dedicated itself to. For instance, barely a month after the decree of Red Terror was approved, Gleb Boky – successor of Uritsky in Cheka - proudly reported the killing of 800 alleged counterrevolutionaries and the arrest of another 6,000 prisoners.  In the name of ‘safe-guarding a new revolution’ Cheka unleashed an atmosphere of violence and terror that laid down the foundation on which Stalin was to build his empire of fear. All this happened with an overall supervision of Lenin who betrayed an inhuman indifference to the sufferings of the people. In fact, he put to devious use the chaos and anarchy caused by the civil war and economic depredation caused by his mindless ‘war communism’ to advance his narrow ideological and political gains. His notorious telegram to Comrade Molotov to exploit the famine conditions in Shuia, a textile centre in Russia, in their fight against the ‘reactionary forces’ like orthodox church is a case in point. Lenin’s direct application of militant atheism in post revolution Russia meant a direct confrontation with the Church. It took the form of confiscation of Church lands and its ‘wealth’ which was to be used for ‘economic reconstruction’ of Russia. This led to an open confrontation with the Church and to ensure Bolsheviks have upper hand in it, Lenin was not hesitant to exploit even tragedies like that of the famine. To be precise, this is what Lenin wrote, “It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy, not stopping [short of] crushing any resistance”.    The orthodox church and other Christian institutions had vehemently opposed the Bolsheviks and were therefore at the receiving end of the Bolsheviks’ wrath. But in this fight, exploiting a famine like situation is a ‘good strategy’ since according to Lenin, “if it is necessary to resort to certain brutalities for the sake of realizing a certain political goal, they must be carried out in the most energetic fashion and in the briefest possible time because the masses will not tolerate prolonged application of brutality”.    So much for sustaining the revolution, alas! This and numerous other instances speak volumes about Lenin’s conception and application of power and violence in ensuring a communist political order, whatever that is! The apologists have tried hard to gloss over the reality by justifying the war communism and Red Terror as just emergency measures during the civil war, that the Lenin’ conception of terror and violence had specific context and particularistic application.   But, does that take away the brutalities that came along with it? Lenin and his Red Army came out victorious in the civil war with the unqualified and inhuman use of violence but did it really result in a state that was to remain free from subjugation or oppression after the civil war. The civil war itself claimed lives of at least a million and thousands among those died because of the targeted execution by the state under the direct control of Lenin. Is this the cost of a revolution? Who was to benefit out of it? And what were the consequences of such a revolution to the state that Lenin built? These are the troubling questions which have been very conveniently pushed under the table and an image of Lenin is projected of a revolutionary who fought injustice and oppression to create an alternative political order. But with the benefit of new research and insight into Lenin’s life, his politics and strategies for survival – there is hardly anything that can be cherished of his ideas, his revolution and its consequences. In fact, he ended up creating an equally oppressive, brutish state - the kind of state that he apparently fought to overthrow. Only difference with Lenin was that the oppression was done under an ostensibly benign ideology of socialism. And only to retain the legitimacy of this ideology, he is sold to us as a revolutionary by filtering his devious excesses and the realities of his political action. The left has laboured hard to cover up the excesses of Lenin and his dictatorial regime since it was the first attempted revolution on the communistic lines. Discrediting that would be an existential dilemma to the theory and praxis of a revolution which the left hold so dear to them.   Thus, distancing Lenin from Stalin becomes a clever strategy to purify the communist revolution of apparently unrelated, ‘un-socialistic’ excess committed by Stalin. Blaming Stalin is relatively easy since with that, one can get away by arguing that ‘Stalin betrayed the revolution and ideals’ which Lenin stood for.   But, if one was to objectively look into the processes of the state oppression that were the hallmark of Stalinist Russia, the roots of it undoubtedly lie in the ‘innovations in state action’ by Lenin, the only purpose of which was safeguarding the ideologically driven revolution.   Distancing Lenin from Stalin then becomes a necessity to uphold the ideas of revolution and rescue it from its unsettling realities which were very much part of Lenin’s Russia as well. But the reality is just too hard to ignore and it is important that Lenin is spoken with objectivity and the hard reality of his political action which are completely disjoint from his purported ideals.   Afterall, it’s not what one does to seek power and who one fights with, but what one does with that power once attained, really determines the true worth of that individual. To idolise Lenin is to idolise the brute use of power and consequent suffering of people which Lenin caused for generations. The author is Assistant Professor (Politics and International Relation) at Symbiosis International University. He is also Founder and Director of Research Forum, Mimamsa Foundation for Indic Studies. Views are personal.  Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .