Lenin in Soviet politics, 1985–91

IN 1991 THE LENINIST PERIOD of Russian history ended with the suspension and subsequent abolition of the Communist Party and its ejection from power after seven decades in which it had ruled the country without serious challenge.1 It says much, however, for the complexity of Lenin that the overthrow followed changes carried out at his own, as it were, posthumous instigation. The perestroika reformers had rejected beliefs, attitudes and practices hitherto regarded as Leninist, but not of course the dominant position of Lenin's party, and they had aimed to ease the metamorphosis of an absolutist party into a democratically elected one by using the talismanic powers of Lenin. Democratising in the name of Lenin required, however, a fundamental re-evaluation of ideology and of Lenin himself, and the reformers' success in carrying this through was reflected in opinion surveys which suggested that most people saw democratisation as corresponding to Lenin's ideas and that among party workers Lenin now inspired reformist activity rather than acted as a deterrent to it.2 The later problems of perestroika should indeed not obscure the remarkable achievements of the leadership between 1985 and 1990. During this period the CPSU dictatorship was dissolved, an embryonic parliamentary democracy and multi-party system came into being, and Marxism-Leninism was displaced in all but name by a version of social democracy. Lenin's sanction was indispensable to all these achievements. He had always validated the policies of the current leadership, and his validation was all the more needed now for what was not only a change of course but an entire new strategic orientation. Yet if the reformers needed Lenin in order to set the country on a radical trajectory, they needed him just as much to ensure that the trajectory did not become so radical that it got out of control. If Lenin performed a liberating role in relation to the party's conservatives, his function in relation to a broad population now beginning to feel the effects of democratisation had, by contrast, to be a restraining and stabilising one. For the reformers faced a delicate task in wanting to repudiate half a century of misrule by the party without sacrificing its right to be regarded as the main, if not sole legitimate, expression of popular will. If exposure of the 'deformations' of socialism was not to undermine faith in socialism and its instrument, something unqualifiedly good had to replace what was being rejected, and that something could only be Leninist socialism and Lenin himself.3 Before the end of 1990, however, it had become clear that the attempt to transform Lenin's party into a party of the social-democratic type still benefiting from the charisma of Lenin was running into serious difficulty. Left-wing criticism that Lenin's democratic credentials were fictive-a fig-leaf with which the

Aesthetics · Communism · Democracy · Democratization · Dictatorship · Ideology · Period (music · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Law · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

• Political Symbolism and the Fall of the USSR

  Graeme Gill•Europe Asia Studies•2013

  Add to list

• The rites of rulers

  Christel Lane•The rites of rulers•1981

  Add to list

• The October Revolution

  Roy A Medvedev, Roy Medvedev et al.•October Revolution•1979

  Add to list

• Let History Judge

  John C Campbell, Roy Medvedev•Foreign Affairs•1989

  Add to list

• Tsar and People

  Marc Szeftel, Michael Cherniavsky•The American Historical Review•1962

  Add to list