The statue referred to really is very nice.
Untimely Thoughts http://www.untimely-thoughts.com Vol 2 no 8 (57) Lenin January 22, 2004 By Peter Lavelle, plavelle at untimely-thoughts.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analysis: Lenin's re-invented legacy By Peter Lavelle Published on January 22, 2004 MOSCOW, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin died 80 years ago this week. Being the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, the founder of the Soviet Union, and the ideological force behind what would become "Marxist-Leninism," Lenin remains a major historical political figure influencing how many Russians understand the past and the country's future.
With the exception of some diehard Communists, it is not Lenin's politics or ideology that is remembered most today, not to speak of his theory of revolution. For many Russians, it is Lenin as a person that is appreciated. He is now remembered as a man of determination and discipline. And, for better or worse, he is remembered as a statesman who desired to make Russia a better, modern, and a strong country.
Walking the streets of Russia's major cities, towns, and villages, Vladimir Lenin is very much alive in a cultural sense. Monuments, street names and metro stations remind the population that the ever-repeated Soviet propaganda slogan "Lenin was, Lenin is, Lenin will be" still has currency.
The large square that hosts the huge statute of Lenin just off Moscow's Oktybrskaya metro station is a skateboarder's dream come true. This is the same place where pensioners protest anything the present government supports. The skateboarders and the protesters live in peaceful co-existence -- both are pleased in their own way that "Lenin was."
In many ways, it could be argued, there is a new way of remembering Lenin in the works. The "new" Lenin is being constructed as a modern statesman, stripped of as much ideological and historical baggage as possible. There is, of course, a small minority of Russians who believe that Lenin was evil incarnate. However, repackaging Lenin to suit the tastes of citizens with the slightest sense of Russian patriotism appears to be in vogue. To add credence to this interpretation, President Vladimir Putin's Kremlin has made it clear that it will not bury Lenin's corpse (contrary to Lenin's and his wife's wishes).
At the same time, Putin's Kremlin has gone out of its way to crush the Communist Party as a meaningful political force in Russian politics. The Kremlin has a sense of history and knows how it can be manipulated and eventually changed. Lenin's mausoleum, the centerpiece of Moscow's Red Square, will most likely remain for a very long to come. Slowly, but surely, it is not a mausoleum paying respect to a Communist revolutionary -- rather to a man who can be appreciated for his sense of law and order and Russian nationalism in the present.
Lenin, in many ways, is being let off the hook. Whatever is deemed negative about the old regime, that is the Soviet Union, is pinned on Joseph Stalin and his successors. Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia will not return to the past. What past he refers to has never been made clear, though it appears more often to the chaos of the President Boris Yeltsin years and not the excessive violation of human and civil rights millions of Soviet citizens experienced long after Lenin died.
Thus, it would seem, Lenin, the person, has nothing to do with the political system and policies of the system that he created. Many Russians polled about Lenin's legacy believe that his revolution was later hijacked, much to Russia's determent.
Reinventing Vladimir Lenin has something to do with defining Vladimir Putin. Lenin was a weak political theorist. He completely misunderstood the nature of political evolution of his time. The caliber of his political thinking, to paraphrase one academic, was akin to living in "a microscopic universe." However, Lenin's virtues then and now have little to do with ideas and ideology. The appeal of Lenin then and now is his concept of power. Capturing power and keeping it is Lenin's real historical legacy. Today's Kremlin does not only remember this -- it is also an historical lesson to be respected and emulated.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks recognized the weakness and corruption of the Czarist regime and sought to destroy it and succeeded. Putin and his security forces, a cadre of the former KGB, have done no different. Yeltsin weakened the state to the point of oblivion. Putin and Co. has resurrected the state in fashion that Lenin would be proud of.
The slogan "Lenin was, Lenin is, Lenin will be" continues to be relevant in Russia. Lenin in the "past" (even if it is imperfect) is a way for many Russians to live in the present. Skateboarders and pensioners appreciate his continue reverence.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, sees the revolutionary Lenin as a testament to its present drive to de-politicize Lenin's legacy to fit it own purposes of creating a non-political Russia.
Lenin was a rigid ideologue and determined to capture power in the name of revolution. Putin's Kremlin is simply interested in capturing power -- ideas legitimizing this are of little interest. Lenin's revolution ultimately failed, though his ideology of power lives on behind Kremlin walls. Whether or not Putin's interest in power will result much differently than Lenin's is still an open question.
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