The blurb on the inside jacket cover of the Unknown Lenin quotes two passages, presumably chosen because of their particularly damning character.
"It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the utmost savagery and merciless energy... to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles." letter to Politburo, March 1922.
The argumenation behind this letter seems to me to be self evident.
The first passage is quoted as
"Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed... Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks." August 1918
Of course it may be said that there is not much space on the inside jacket cover, but the passages omitted make clear what may not be apparent to a casual western reader: the class nature of the kulaks in question and what they are doing. With that, the passage is consistent with Lenin's arguments in favour at times of terror.
In full, letter of 11th August 1918 to Communists in Penza:
"Comrades! The uprising of the five kulak districts should be *mercilessly* suppressed. The interests of the *entire* revolution require this, because now 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is under way *everywhere*. One must give an example.
1. Hang (hang without fail, so *the people see*) *no fewer than one hundred* known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. [note the words omitted from the jacket cover - CB]
2. Publish their names.
3. Take from them *all* grain.
4. Designate hostages - as per yesterday's telegram.
Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: *they are strangling* and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks.
Telegraph receipt and *implementation*.
Yours, Lenin
Find some truly hard people."
The class nature of this terror and the practical arguments for it are clear, whether you agree with them or not.
Elsewhere Lenin writes to mitigate unecessary brutality, and Pipes has the grace to quote him:
Coded Telegram to the Chairman, Yekaterinburg Province Cheka, November 1920.
"Receipts received of an abnormal regimen of confinement for former White officers transported from Moscow. For example guards take bribes for kettle of hot water stop Urgently conduct investigation report results after taking measures to eliminate above stop No 38667 24 November Necessary to soften regimen."
The jacket cover also states:
Edited and introduced by the eminent scholar Richard Pipes, the documents date from 1886 through the end of Lenin's life. They reveal, among other things, that:
- Lenin's purpose in invading Poland in 1920 was not merely to sovietize that country but to use it as a springboard for the invasion of Germany and England.
- Lenin took money from the Germans (here we have the first incontrovertible evidence for this);
- in 1919 Lenin issued instructions to the Communist authorities in the Ukraine not to accept Jews in the Soviet government of that republic;
- as late as 1922 Lenin believed in the imminence of social revolution in the West, and he planned subversion in Finland, Turkey, Lithuania, and other countries;
- Lenin had little regard for Trotsky's judgement on important matters and relied heavily on Stalin;
- Lenin assiduously tracked dissident intellectuals and urged repressive action of deportation;
- Lenin launched a political offensive against the Orthodox Church, ordering that priests who resisted seizure of church property be shot - 'the more the better'"
Chris Burford
London