Volume 40, Number 14 · August 12, 1993
Comrades
By John Bayley
Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
by David Remnick
Random House, 576 pp., $25.00
In 1910 a fortuneteller in Berlin told Nikolai Bukharin, then a young and dedicated henchman of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, 'You will one day be executed in your own country.' The art of fortunetelling, no doubt, like that of political commentators, is to make a shrewd guess at what might be going to happen to an individual in certain circumstances; and this particular prophecy was no more prescient than those which other persons of political common sense might have made at the time. Rosa Luxembourg herself foretold disaster, tyranny, and the loss of freedom if the Bolsheviks behaved like a Mafia of professional political terrorists, and her knowledge of Lenin made her fear that might happen.
Review, 3006 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |