Lewin Moshe - Lenins Last Struggle

LENINS
LAST
STRUGGLE

A NN A RBOR P APERBACKS FOR THE S TUDY OF
R USSIAN AND S OVIET H ISTORY AND P OLITICS

Ronald Grigor Suny, Series Editor

The series publishes classic and out-of-print works
in Russian history and politics, presenting them with
new prefaces in which prominent experts assess the books
continued importance to the field and make their value clear
to a new generation of students and scholars. The works to be
included will span the entire period of modern Russian and
Soviet history and demonstrate the variety of approaches
and interpretations that have long made the study of
Russias past an integral part of our
understanding of ourselves.

Karamzins Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia
Richard Pipes

Lenins Last Struggle
Moshe Lewin

MOSHE LEWIN

TRANSLATED BY
A. M. SHERIDAN SMITH

With a New Introduction

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor

Copyright by the University of Michigan 2005

Translation of Le dernier combat de Lnine. First published

in 1968 by Random House under the Pantheon Books imprint,

and reprinted by Monthly Review Press, 1978.

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America by

The University of Michigan Press

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed on acid-free paper

2008 2007 2006 2005 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lewin, Moshe, 1921

[Dernier combat de Lnine. English]

Lenins last struggle / Mosh Lewin ; translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith, with a new introduction.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-472-03052-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Soviet UnionPolitics and government19171936. 2. Lenin, Vladimir

Ilich, 18701924. I. Title.

DK266.5.L4513 2005

ISBN13 978-0-472-03052-1 (paper)

ISBN13 978-0-472-02667-8 (electronic)

The worst thing that can befall the leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents, and for the realization of the measures which that domination implies.... Thus he necessarily finds himself in an insolvable dilemma. What he can do contradicts all his previous actions, principles and immediate interests of his party, and what he ought to do cannot be done.... Whoever is put into this awkward position is irrevocably doomed.

F. E NGELS , The Peasant War in Germany

Those Communists are doomed who imagine that it is possible to finish such an epoch-making undertaking as completing the foundations of socialist economy (particularly in a small-peasant country) without making mistakes, without retreats, without numerous alterations to what is unfinished or wrongly done. Communists who have no illusions, who do not give way to despondency, and who preserve their strength and flexibility to begin from the beginning over and over again in approaching an extremely difficult task, are not doomed (and in all probability will not perish).

V. I. L ENIN , Notes of a Publicist

A considerable number of left-wing dictatorships have appeared on the international political scene since World War II, the only precedent for states of this type being the Soviet Union, which is now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. These fifty years of socialist experience could no doubt be very useful to the new states if they took the trouble to acquire a thorough knowledge of them and to reflect on the vicissitudes of the first proletarian dictatorship. Thus the failure of the agroindustrial combines created in the USSR in 19291930 foreshadowed that of the communes of the Peoples China, and Nikita Khrushchev was a victim of the same megalomania when he tried to launch his agrogoroda in 1950. However, apart from a small number of Soviet writers, it is largely the English-speaking specialists who have pointed out how singularly rich in economic and social lessons is the period of the New Economic Policy, and it is they who have least to gain from such knowledge. Many other periods and other aspects of Soviet history remain, to a greater or lesser degree, in obscurity, illuminated here and there by the researches of a few scholars. It is unlikely that the governing elite of the USSR knows the history of its countryapart from what each individual has experienced at first handfor Marxist countries, for some peculiar reason, tend to treat their history as a state secret. The leaders seem to believe that knowledge of an often tragic past acts as a discouragement for those whose duty it is to build the future; whereas in fact ignorance of history destroys any forward-looking attitude far more surely than its divulgence and analysis. But as long as history can be publicized only with official permission it will remain obscure, for it is the scientific discipline most likely to be vitiated by state monopoly.

This study of Lenin and of his thought during his last year is not, of course, entirely new. A good deal was learned on this subject from Trotskys revelations in the 1920s, and again from the repercussions of the affair of Lenins testament, set in train by the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU. But recent Soviet publications have enabled us to take up this subject again and to attempt a more accurate and more detailed reconstruction of the relations that emerged among the top Party leaders at the time of Lenins illness. We hope at the same time to extend the analysis of Lenins testament, that is, of his political thinking during this last period, and to offer on occasion a new interpretation of it.

Among the documents from which our source material has been taken, three are of exceptional importance: first, the latest edition of Lenins Worksthe fifth editionnot only more complete than previous ones but accompanied by an important body of notes and commentary; second, the memoirs of Fotieva, one of Lenins personal secretaries; and third, the Journal of Lenins Secretaries, working notes made between November 21, 1922, and March 6, 1923, and published for the first time in 1963 by a Soviet historical review.peculiar in form. They are in the form of a four-columned notebook showing the date, the secretarys name, instructions given, and notes on how they were carried out; the last column also contains notes on the days events in the office of the chairman of the Sovnarkom, the Council of Peoples Commissars. Accounts are given, sometimes day by day, of the chairmans appointments, his correspondence, and even his slightest actions and gestures. This information is enlightening as to Lenins working methods, but at the outset it provides no particularly startling revelation. It soon becomes obvious, however, that Lenin is slowing down the pace of his work; he no longer comes to his office regularly, but often prefers to send for one of the secretaries and dictate in his private apartment. His health was already failing and his doctors had ordered him to work less, to take frequent rests in the country, and to miss certain meetings of the Council of Commissars or of the Politburo. On December 13, 1922, the day after an important meeting with Dzerzhinsky, Lenin had two serious attacks and was forced at last to obey the orders of his doctors to postpone his work and take to his bed. At this point the Journal begins to be quite fascinating. When Lenin sends for his secretaries, in order to give them instructions or to dictate, they observe him with scrupulous attention, and hang on his every word and movement, which they note down in the Journal. Lenin was confined to his bed in a small room of his Kremlin apartment, his right hand and right leg paralyzed, almost completely isolated from the outside world and, apparently, cut off from all government activity. The doctors orders were strict on this matter and they were reinforced by a decision of the Politburo.