[lbo-talk] Lunacharsky, "Lenin is much more of an opportunist"

[Chuck Grimes]

> At the same time Lenin is much more of an opportunist, in the profoundest
> sense of the word. This may again sound odd - was not Trotsky once
> associated with the Mensheviks, those notorious opportunists? But the
> Mensheviks' opportunism was simply the political flabbiness of a
> petty-bourgeois party. I am not referring to this sort of opportunism; I 
> am
> referring to that sense of reality which leads one now and then to alter
> one's tactics, to that tremendous sensitivity to the demands of the time
> which prompts Lenin at one moment to sharpen both edges of his sword, at
> another to place it in its sheath.
>
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/lunachar/works/silhouet/trotsky.htm

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This is an excellent sketch. I read through it since it was short. In 
Trotsky's own works you can find something very close to or by implicaton 
what follows on the relationship between the two.

``It would be wrong to imagine, however, that the second great leader of the 
Russian revolution is inferior to his colleague in everything: there are, 
for instance, aspects in which Trotsky incontestably surpasses him - he is 
more brilliant, he is clearer, he is more active. Lenin is fitted as no one 
else to take the chair at the Council of Peoples' Commissars and to guide 
the world revolution with the touch of genius, but he could never have coped 
with the titanic mission [21] which Trotsky took upon his own shoulders, 
with those lightning moves from place to place, those astounding speeches, 
those fanfares of on the spot orders, that role of being the unceasing 
electrifier of a weakening army, now at one spot, now at another. There is 
not a man on earth who could have replaced Trotsky in that respect.
Whenever a truly great revolution occurs, a great people will always find 
the right actor to play every part and one of the signs of greatness in our 
revolution is the fact that the Communist Party has produced from its own 
ranks or has borrowed from other parties and incorporated into its own 
organism sufficient outstanding personalities who were suited as no others 
to fulfil whatever political function was called for.

And two of the strongest of the strong, totally identified with their roles, 
are Lenin and Trotsky.''

(from a footnote: `Lunacharsky wrote this profile in late 1918.')

CG

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