Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 16:14:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Louis Godena and Richard Pipes




On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Louis Proyect wrote:

> 
> Louis Godena:
> And, yes, Carr is my favorite historian, and one with whom I feel the most
> empathy in matters political.  Paradoxically, I am much closer to Richard
> Pipes, Martin Malia, and Orlando Figues on the general outlines of the
> Bolshevik revolution than I am to the historians of the Left like Stephen
> Cohen.  The Russian revolution *was* more of a coup d'etat than a
> revolution; The Bolsheviks *did* lack working-class support (which probably
> partly accounted for their success); Lenin *was* ruthless and underhanded,
> and, above all else, craved power, qualities which were central to the
> Communists taking power.  And, of course, Stalinism *was* the logical
> successor to Leninism, without which, as Carr points out, Lenin's
> revolution would have "run out into the sand".  
> 

The fanatical Richard Pipes, to whom Louis Godena claims to be close, is
a right-wing intellectual whose sole purpose in life seems to be
demonizing the person of Vladimir Lenin. There was praise for the
book "The Unknown Lenin" (edited by Pipes) by the conservative journalist
George Will in 'Newsweek' last year. Will had high praise for Pipes and,
following Pipes, made Lenin the originator of genocides
of the 20th century. That is, Lenin is made responsible for Hitler and
even Saddam Hussein. 

In one broad historical sweep, communism is made resposnible and
equivalent to fascism and captalism (in crisis), the real birth-mother of
Hitler, is left scot-free. What a remarkable achievement! This equating
of socialism and fascism is common in right-wing parlance among the
immigrant Eastern European intellectuals and reactionary people like
Patrick Buchannan. But the very evidence of history refutes the myths
which Pipes and company propagate. It was the socialists and communists
in Germany who first tried to resist Hitler and were slaughtered by
the Nazis. Then it was more than 20 million Soviet workers and peasants
who gave up their lives to defeat Hitler. The hatred and animosity towards
socialists and communists is evident in all the religious-fundamentalist
and fascist-type parties all over the world (besides the major
capitalist parties). Just read their party programs and it will become
clear.

That Louis Godena should admire people like Pipes and Company, who are
the ideological frontmen of the capitalist assault on the "life,
liberty and pursuit of happiness" of the masses, is very sad. That he
repeats the bourgeois slander of Lenin being "ruthless" and "underhanded"
and "craved power" is even sadder. These qualities of "ruthlessness"
and "underhandedeness" are the characteristics of the bourgeois
politicians who plunder and kill in order to assauge their thirst for
personal power, money and their wealthy constituencies (e.g., Fujimori,
Suharto, Nixon, Reagan, Indira Gandhi, Thatcher, Golda Meir, Netanyahu,
Somoza, etc.). To confuse and essentially equate the leaders of the great
revolutions of the proletariat with people like this is a great
mistake. People like Lenin, Chairman Mao, Che, and others were of
a completely different quality than the capitalist leaders. There is
an interesting essay about this topic written by Christopher Caudwell
in the 1930s.

Louis G also asserts that the Russian Revolution was something like a
coup d'etat and the Bolsheviks lacked worker support. Well, there is
a book by Jonathan Sanders which is full of pictures of the year
1917 month by month. Looking at these pictures, it becomes clear that
there were thousands upon thousands of people in the cities that
participated in the revolution no matter what some historians or
intellectual who were not present on the scene say. When one looks
at the faces of those people, long departed, faces shining with hope and
full of faith in the future, dedication, spirit of self-sacrifice for
the coming generations, faces illuminated by the visions of the
future society to come (which most of them they would not see) and
whose dreams were cruelly betrayed (by internal and external agents);
words like "coup d'etat", which convey a false picture of those
tumultous times, sound very cynical and fall like a sledge-hammer
especially when uttered by someone who claims to be a Marxist. 

Sid

 

 
  

 





     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---