The USSR and Lenin: Counting the Costs and Devastation of a Careless Life
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
Beginning with Lenin, the influences of atheism, moral relativism, and materialism run deep. One important influence, his brother Alexander, was politically over heated.[1] Having rejected religion, Alexander fell in with a group with a Marxist outlook.[2] He became involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the ruler of Russia and was subsequently executed.[3] Lenin was 17 years old when this occurred. Following the execution, Lenin dove deeper into the thoughts of Marx and other revolutionary writers with the goal of becoming a revolutionary himself.[4] One particular novel which influenced Lenin was entitled, What Is To Be Done.” It expressed many of the radical political, sexual, and economic ideas of the day in one novel.[5] Radical ideas frequently run together because they grow out of certain assumptions about reality and human nature.[6] These assumptions logically lead individuals down a given path if they are attempting to be consistent. Given his interest in these writers, who advocated moral relativism and materialism, it should come as no surprise that Lenin rejected the Christian idea of God. He said of such ideas:
Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness ... Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence ... Are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of God ... Every defense or justification of God, even the most refined, the best intentioned is a justification of reaction.[7]
His contempt for the idea of God led him to assume that what other people honored and worshipped was mere illusion. “Religion is a kind of spiritual gin in which the slaves of capital drown their human shape and their claims to any decent human life.”[8] As such, his own personal view on what had to be done to religion was as follows, “The fight against religion must not be limited nor reduced to abstract, ideological preaching. This struggle must be linked up with the concrete practical class movement; its aim must be to eliminate the social roots of religion.”[9]
His beliefs about God affected how he viewed his neighbors. Lenin was freed from the idea of God and sin, but what were the consequences of Lenin’s atheism? How did his beliefs play out before he came to political power? He often spoke of caring about the people, but several examples tell us otherwise. During a famine, Lenin refused to join in relief efforts and instead criticized the soup kitchens being formed to save the people.[10] His reasoning was simple. By starvation, the Russian peasants would be moved closer to supporting his revolutionary cause. His atheism left him with contempt for even the beautiful things that fellow human beings made. A writer of that era related that Lenin said, “he refused to listen to music often because ‘it makes you want to say stupid, nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. And now you mustn’t stroke anyone’s head—you might get your hand bitten off.”[11] “You have to hit them over the head without any Mercy. Our duty is infernally hard.”[12] This sad remark reveals much about the inner darkness of a man who is too often portrayed as a friend of humanity. Chesterton notes “that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.”[13]
Lenin’s thoughts on God led naturally to moral relativism as well.[14]. Since religion was not true, no moral rules could come from it:
In what sense do we deny ethics, morals? In the sense … which deduces these morals from God’s commandments. Of course, we say that we do not believe in God. We know perfectly well that the clergy, the landlords, and the bourgeoisie all claimed to speak in the name of God, in order to protect their own interests as exploiters. We deny all morality taken from super-human … concepts. We say that this is a deception, a swindle … of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landlords and capitalists.[15]
Lenin saw good and evil in political terms. He always claimed to speak for “the people.” Thus, regarding what was moral he said, “Everything that is done in the… [people’s] cause is honest.”[16] This standard made his morality very flexible. Obtaining power to fix whatever he deemed unequal or unfair became the sole principle. That would mean using force and violence to achieve and stay in power. Lenin’s wife noted that his model for the communist revolution was based on similar events that had occurred in Paris in the 1850s. Lenin’s diagnosis for why the earlier Paris revolution had failed was “the mild attitude of the workers and … the workers’ government towards their manifest enemies.”[17] He described how one should treat political enemies this way, “one should push such people up against the wall, and if they still don’t give in, trample them into the mud.”[18] Once in power, he described his own government as, “power based upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship … is power won and maintained by the violence of the proletariat [the poor people] against the bourgeoisie [the rich]—power that is unrestricted by any laws.”[19]
It has been said, “wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” This is exactly what would happen when Lenin obtained power. One of Lenin’s followers characterized their attitude in this manner, “the Communist Party is based on the principle of coercion which doesn’t recognize any limitations or inhibitions. And the central idea of this principle of boundless coercion is not coercion by itself but the absence of any limitation whatsoever—moral, political and even physical ... Such a Party is capable of achieving miracles.”[20] Lenin and his followers believed they could bend all, “moral, political and even physical” reality to their will as if they were God. The miracle they would produce was to be heaven on earth,[21] a government dedicated to creating a society where people shared everything in common and everyone would be equal, even if that meant forcing equality on others. The justification for all this was that “Socialism was … the product of ‘profound scientific knowledge.”[22] And those who possessed the needed knowledge were the wise and intelligent people, such as Lenin himself.[23]
Lenin’s path to power is the best example of how his belief in no God affected his neighbors.[24] Previously we have discussed the modern belief that words have no meaning and the tendency for this belief to coincide with moral relativism. It should not be surprising that Lenin’s relativistic morality meant he would also see words as arbitrary limitations on power. He thus manipulated words in attempts to gain power. Whether it was laws, words, or morals, Lenin could not tolerate anything that stood in the way of his power. We have a revealing example from when Lenin was at a meeting of Russian revolutionaries in 1904. Many disagreements led to two separate parties forming.[25] Several groups combined against Lenin. He and his allies were in the minority. However, this did not stop Lenin from calling his followers “the Bolsheviks.” In Russian this means “the majority.” Any who opposed him were called “the Mensheviks.”[26] meaning minority. As one author, has said, these “words … were themselves crystallized lies, since the Mensheviks (minority) in fact composed the majority.”[27] Humpty Dumpty cannot help but come to mind, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Lenin’s manipulation of words was only a sign of darker actions to come. “Language is one of a dying society’s first organs to be infected, as Confucius clearly saw. Asked to name the single most important one of his many social principles of reform, he answered, “The restoration of language, calling things by their proper names.”[28]
[1] Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 761, Kindle Edition. [2] Ibid, loc 761. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Alfred K Knopf, 2007), pg 167, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [3]W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 59, Kindle Edition. [4] Ibid, pg 59. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 914, Kindle Edition. Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 112, Kindle Edition. [5] Ibid, loc 1872. Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2008), pg 13, Kindle Edition. [6] Lenin had an oversized human skull in his office to remind him of Darwin. See Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 650 /882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [7] Robert Conquest, Dragons of Expectations (New York: WW Norton an Co, 2005), pg 150. Many of Lenin’s contemporaries felt that he had substituted Marxism as his new faith. “Marxism was not a conviction for Lenin but a religion “ Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 221/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [8] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 179, Kindle Edition. [9] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 181, Kindle Edition. [10] Robert Conquest, Dragons of Expectations (New York: WW Norton an Co, 2005), pg 96. “Lenin’s real attitude to humanity… is well illustrated by his comment on the 1891-92 famine in Russia, when students and others threw themselves into relief work, that “psychologically, this talk of feeding the starving masses is nothing but the expression of… sentimentality characteristic of the intelligentsia. “ “. Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 119/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [11] Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York: Harper Collins,2010), location 1175, Kindle Edition. [12] Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 234/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [13] Rossetti is who says the quote and Chesterton cites it. The quote opens with “Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth… “ G.K. Chesterton, St Francis of Assisi and St Thomas Aquinas (Business and Leadership Publishing, 2015) location 904, Kindle Edition. [14] Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 3790, Kindle Edition. [15] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 33, Kindle Edition.Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 281/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [16] Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pg 115. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 896, Kindle Edition. W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 180, Kindle Edition. Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 281/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [17] Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 881, Kindle Edition. [18] Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 2685, Kindle Edition. [19] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 182, Kindle Edition. Corroboration of this quote: Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 30, Kindle Edition. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 948, Kindle Edition. Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 713/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [20] Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 115, Kindle Edition. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pg 113. [21] Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 115, Kindle Edition. [22] Source [23] Paul Johnson, Modern Times (New York: Harper Collins,2010), location 1195, 2147 Kindle Edition. [24] Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), pg 288/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [25] Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Alfred K Knopf, 2007), pg 33, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [26] W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Communist (Salt Lake City: Izzard Ink Publishing, 2015), pg 61, Kindle Edition. Publishing. Kindle Edition. Simon Sebag Montefiore, Young Stalin (New York: Alfred K Knopf, 2007), pg 210, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [27] Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), loc 327, Kindle edition. Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York: Free Press,1994), loc 1474, Kindle Edition. For a very nice telling of the origin of the Bolshevik in Mensheviks split please see Victor Sebestyen, Lenin (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017) pg 230/882, ebook (purchased through ebooks.com). [28] Peter Kreeft, How to Win the Culture War (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002), location 423, Kindle Edition.
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