Refuting Pipes

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Sat Sep 19 07:50:04 PDT 1998


As I am sure Justin is aware, Lou Godena, the Maoist-Stalinist and sole proprietor of the marxism-international list thinks quite highly of Pipes' work including especially his portrayal of Lenin. Godena agrees with Pipes that Lenin was ruthless, devious, brutal, deceitful etc. but unlike Pipes judges these attributes favorably given the politics of his time.

Jim Farmelant

On Sat, 19 Sep 1998 03:28:50 EDT JKSCHW at aol.com writes:
>There were a number of rather harsh reviews of it when it came out. I
>can try
>to search the web for them, but so can you. The bottom line is that
>Pipes has
>got some stuff that tends to show that Lenin (a) had an affair (gasp,
>horror,
>shock; _bourgeois_ politicians would never do such a thing), and (b)
>ordered
>the shooting of hostages in the civil war in rather harsh terms, to be
>condemned; but it doesn't show that he was particularly brutish as
>leaders,
>indeed, war leaders go. In fact Pipes' "revelations" don't amount to
>much that
>wasn't already known. It's rather like the glasnost relevations about
>Stalin,
>which shwoed that he was a tyrant and a butcher, something that I am
>sure came
>as a real surprise to everyone. Pipes was hoping that the relkevations
>about
>Lenin would show the same, but he was already convinced that the
>existing
>facts showed that, and if you didn't think so before, you wouldn't
>think so
>afterwards. Personally, I didn't think so before. Ans in what
>environment are
>you where people care to debate about Lenin? --jks
>

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