[lbo-talk] Cast of "Reds"

[andie_nachgeborenen]

The term cult of personality was an old commonplace in radical discourse, farolder thn Khushchev. Marx uses it, Bakunin used it about Marx. Whatever you want to call what the Soviets and other Stalinists did with Lenin, it was a lot like a cult of personality. Lenin himself was well aware of the dangers, which was why he made it quite clear while he was alive that he did not want to be an object of veneration while dead. Which, unfortunately, he was. I didn't make up the slogan Lenin Lives! When he was living, no such slogan was necessary. Stalin wrapped himself in Lenin's mantel; Trotsky fought for it and lost. And the living person, or institution, need not be the object of veneration worshiped in the cult. A living person, like Stalin, who of course had his own cult, or an institution, like a state or party, can use the cult of the dead with very harmful effect. I used to have a whole drawer of pins of Lenin, not one of which was made during his life. I like the modernist monument in Red Square as a piece of architecture, but found the mummy grotesque and pathetic. Lenin, alive, unequivocally said he rejected any ancestor worship, any worship of himself at all, alive or dead. He viewed the Revolution and Soviet state he knew as his monument. 

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On Sep 5, 2012, at 7:55 PM, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:


> [lbo-talk]
> 
> andie_nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
> 
> 
> 
> Of course, the idea of being mummified, put on display, and made into
> the object of a cult of personality ("Lenin Lives!") horrified him.
> 
> ^^^^
> CB: In my opinion the cult of the personality concept as Khruschev
> used it in his speech denouncing Stalin, is not correctly applied to a
> dead person. The harms of the cult can only be exercised by a living
> person.    Visiting Lenin's mummy was one of my favorite parts of the
> trip. Special respect for
> 
> I actually asked a question on this in my party classes on a trip to
> the SU in 1985. But later I answered my own question.  Marx , Engels
> and Lenin...Darwin are appropriately revered.  Ancestor "worship" is
> the rational kernel of religion.
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