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Lenin's Utopianism: State and Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Rodney Barfield
Rodney Barfield*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Extract

General histories give little credence to the Utopian side of Lenin's revolutionary thought, especially in relation to his only formal Utopian work, State and Revolution. Most histories pass off that book as an “intellectual deviation” resulting from Lenin's “revolutionary fever” of 1917 or as a piece of political opportunism, while offering What Is To Be Done? as the statement of orthodox Leninism. In keeping with the tone of What Is To Be Done? Lenin is generally portrayed as the political realist par excellence, a pragmatist of the first order, a “hard-nosed” strategist confined by neither intellectual theories (not even Marxism) nor human emotions. This neat and simple formula is most convenient in attributing the success of the November Revolution to Lenin's talents for organization and political astuteness.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 45 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1971

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References

1. Robert V., Daniels, “The State and Revolution: A Case Study in the Genesis and Transformation of Communist Ideology,” American Slavic and East European Review 12, no. 1 (February 1953): 22–43.Google Scholar

2. Leon, Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, trans. Eastman, Max, 3 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1957), 3: 126.Google Scholar

3. Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1958), 33: 26 Google Scholar. Subsequent references in the text will be to this edition.

4. Hunt, R. N. Carew, The Theory and Practice of Communism (Baltimore, 1950), p. 171.Google Scholar

5. Daniels, “The State and Revolution,” p. 22.

6. Louis, Fischer, The Life of Lenin (New York, 1964), p. 122.Google Scholar

7. Volume 33. For an example of a comparison between Lenin's “prerevolutionary period” notes and the finished product see page 181 in “Marxism on the State” and page 89 in State and Revolution; also compare pages 173-87 of “Marxism on the State“ and chapter 5 of State and Revolution.

8. Haimson, Leopold H., The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Boston, 1955), p. 98–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 97; also Nikolay, Valentinov, Encounters with Lenin (London, New York, and Toronto, 1968), pp. 63–76.Google Scholar

10. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, 3: 126.

11. “Nachalo revoliutsii v Rossii” (9: 204); “Revoliutsionnaia arrniia i revoliutsionnoe pravitel'stvo” (10: 344); “Dve taktiki Sotsial-Demokratii v demokraticheskoi revoliutsii“ (11: 103-4); “O reorganizatsii partii” (12: 86); “Doklad o revoliutsii 1905 goda” (30: 310-12); “O zadachakh proletariata v dannoi revoliutsii” (31: 115); “Groziashchaia katastrofa i kak s nei borot'sia” (34: 192-93); “Uderzhat li Bol'sheviki gosudarstvennuiu vlast1?” (34: 305-8); “Kak organizovat’ sorevnovanie?” (35: 200-203); “K naseleniiu” (35: 66).

12. Chamberlin, William Henry, The Russian Revolution, 2 vols. (New York, 1965), 1: 118–19.Google Scholar