Volume 28, Number 14 · September 24, 1981
Scaffolding of Lies
By Leonard Schapiro
The Rise of the Gulag: Intellectual Origins of Leninism
by Alain Besançon, translated by Sarah Matthews
Continuum Books, 329 pp., $19.50
How does one set about establishing the intellectual origins of the doctrine which has come to be known as 'Leninism'? The accepted way in the past has been to trace those ideas or doctrines with which it can be demonstrated Lenin was acquainted, and to argue from the similarity that his ideas bear to those preceding them that they influenced him. By this method one can establish the debt that Lenin owed to traditional Russian ideas before he became acquainted with the works of Marx—those of the populists, and especially of that lone and troubled genius Tkachev and of Chernyshevsky (whose novel, What Is to Be Done?, in Lenin's own words, 'turned me inside out'). Research of this kind established beyond doubt the vital fact that Lenin, who became a revolutionary in 1887, was a traditional Russian revolutionary for several years before he read Capital in 1900 or 1901. One can trace by similar means the influences on Lenin after he felt the impact of Marx: Clausewitz is one; another is Kautsky, who influenced Lenin until 1912 when, as a trustee for a fund claimed by both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, he decided against Lenin and was thereafter abused for his alleged theoretical heresies in the most vulgar terms.
Review, 2374 words
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