====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Re Lou P's posting -- what Putin is saying is very similar to the latter-period Solzhenitsyn, who also considered that Lenin was a traitor to Russia because of his defeatist line during the First World War. Lenin and Bolshevism have always posed a problem for Russian nationalists within or emerging from the Soviet apparatus. Back in the 1970s, the Young Guard elements within the Soviet youth movement were becoming very nationalistic in their viewpoint and ended up evolving a line that implicitly meant that, in their eyes, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had a treasonous attitude towards Russia during the First World War. The party big-wigs realised the dangerous position into which a section of the party youth was going, and waved the big stick at them. Putin, although a product of the Soviet state and despite carrying on with various Stalinist practices, can, as a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, be more free in promoting this view. But because the Russia of today is so obviously a product of the Soviet era, rejecting Lenin and branding him a traitor could alienate him from those who still base their Russian nationalism at least partly upon the Soviet experience. Paul F ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
