Lenin

Author's Preface

npHIS book has two purposes in view. * It studies on the one hand a very strong and a very curious personality. No man, not even Peter the Great, has had more influence on the destiny of my country than Lenin. No man, not even Nicholas II, has done it more harm. In speaking of a despot it is natural that I should look for comparisons among men of his own kind!

Eussia has given the world great geniuses and profound thinkers. In their effect on the Western world not one of them has had an influence at all comparable to that of this doctrinaire who is perhaps not even very intelligent. For this disconcerting situation to become a fact, two world calamities were necessary : the war and the social revolution. They paved the way for the destroyers — the Ludendorfs and the Lenins.

On the other hand, this book is meant to be a study in social philosophy. The idea of a communist revolution is its principal concern. A search for the origins of Bolshevist doctrine leads us back to the theories of Karl Marx, Michael Bakunin and Georges Sorel, who today, after the vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE

"acid test" of 1914-1919, stand revealed in a new light.

At the very beginning, I want particularly and frankly to forewarn the reader of the general standpoint from which my book is written; so that he may read it or lay it aside according to the character and the strength of his political convictions.

The anthor of this study is a socialist 1 who is, at the same time, a counter-revolutionist and an anti-militarist. These two words are used here not in the factitious and artificial sense in which they circulate in soap-box oratory, but in their strictly literal and precise meaning. One can be an anti-militarist without insisting that the flag be relegated to the dung-heap. One can be a counter-revolutionist without sharing the political ideals of Stolypin. What these words really mean is this :

We do not want wars or revolutions, either today or in the future. We have seen them close at hand and have had enough of them. These

1 The author belongs to the labor party led by Miakotine and Pechekhonof, former colleagues of Mikhailovsky, and of Tchaikovsky, the present head of the government at Archangel. This party is probably the only one in Russia which has stuck to its original platform, the main planks of which are: national defense, free from all chauvinism and all imperialistic policies; fidelity to alliances; the democratic "bill of rights"; a constituent assembly; a union of all forces recognizing the sovereignty of universal suffrage; the most far-reaching social reforms brought about in a legal manner. This is also the party which took the initiative in the conferences leading to the Union for the Rejuvenation of Russia (Revolutionary Socialists, Social-Laborites, Social-Democrats and Cadets of the Left).

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two phenomena are about equal in value whether considered from the point of view of morals or from that of human progress. They are as alike as two peas. We consider them the worst calamities that can befall free peoples.

All countries of Europe except Eussia have institutions which permit of the conflict of ideas without resort to barricades and machine guns. That is why we hope that the revolution destined eventually to upset Bolshevist tyranny will be the last one. If this is a mistaken hope, so much the worse for Eussia!

In another book, Armageddon, written during the years 1914-1917 (in Eussian), I tried to show that the World War meant a terrible crisis (and perhaps ruin) for certain principles which guided the partisans as well as the adversaries of the social order of the old civilization. I was glad to find a similar idea expressed in a recent article by Guglielmo Ferrero. 1 The well-known historian draws a parallel between the crisis of today and that of the third century of our era brought about by the civil wars which followed the death of Alexander Severus and which led to the overthrow of the authority of the Eoman Senate. Ancient civilization did not survive that crisis. Will ours have a better fate? Has it, or will it find, a principle on which to base a stable social order? This is the problem with which we are faced. It is

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certain that one wonld look in vain for such a saving principle among the men who are responsible for the late war, as well as among those who wonld now plnnge us into the abyss of universal Bolshevism.

The nightmare which started in 1914 is not yet over. The wine is drawn and we mnst drink. Nothing trner or sadder than this was ever said ! Yes, we must drink the wine that others have drawn. We mnst drink it to the dregs!

Contents

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