Lenin and the Russian Revolution - Arthur Herman

good evening my name is Lukas Swenson I'm from Howard Lake Minnesota I'm setting political economy and German here at Hillsdale I'm a sophomore and today I have the pleasure of introducing Arthur Herman who's a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute he is a professor he has been a professor of history at Georgetown University Catholic University George Mason University and the University of the South he writes regularly for a commentary foreign policy the American interest mosaic nici Asian review and the Wall Street Journal he is the author of several books including Gandhi and Churchill the epic rivalry that destroyed an empire and forged our age which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 Douglas MacArthur American warrior and the forthcoming 1917 Lenin Wilson and the birth of the New World Disorder please join me in welcoming dr. art there [Applause] [Music] how are you it's good to see you I should say welcome to Hillsdale College but a lot of you are already here you another place this is actually my first visit I've done I've spoken had the pleasure and the privilege of speaking Hillsdale College cruises twice which I've enjoyed very much and so when Larry Arne said we want you to come and speak to our our Center on constructive alternatives about part of the subject 1/2 of your new book 19-7 his what lenin hath wrought over the last 100 years in 1917 of course is the watershed date when he becomes a world historical figure and i also want to talk about Lenin's legacy and I want to be sure to save some time to talk about that what I want to do in the first part of my lecture however is to dispel some myths about Lenin myths which were very prevalent when I went to college which was shortly after the Civil War myths that were very prevalent and are still very prevalent in our colleges universities today I want to talk to you about that and which I think have kind of glossed over who Lenin really was and what his real legacy was right up until today three myths I wanted to spell the first is that the the legend that he is the father of the Russian Revolution as you're going to find out he's not he cashes in on the Russian Revolution but he's not the father ever the real revolution takes place when these hundreds hundreds of miles away from the events and even ignorant of what happens until it tell it's over the second myth I'm going to dispel is that Lenin was a disciple of Karl Marx and of Marxism yeah I know I just saw some faces fall including by leading scholars in it but I'm going to explain that too that Lenin comes from a very different world in a very different way of understanding how human history works and what takes place and that has a huge impact on the legacy is going to have later on the third myth I'm going to dispel is the myth that Lenin was better than his successors that in other words that he was really a good guy who if it hadn't been for a series of strokes that debilitating him in 1923 and then finally killed him in January 1924 that that the direction he would have taken the Soviet Union and communism would have been very different from that of Joseph Stalin and that his and that if he had lived that the legacy of communism it very different from what it is today that again is a myth that was very prevalent and still is very prevalent and a number of very prodigiously and prestigious scholars and some of our leading universities have built their careers examining what if what if Lenin had lived what if Stalin had never come to power I'm gonna finish that off once and for all but before I get going let's take a quick look look let's think about Lenin Lenin as a person for a moment think about him as someone in his real time in place born in 1870 in the town of bisque in central Russia this is not someone who came from the kind of polished rising bourgeois world of st. Petersburg and Moscow someone who grew up in a kind of environment in which there was a sort of rising sense of Russia becoming part of what bracing Western ideas of becoming part of a larger Europe I talked about this in my new books I won't go into all the detail well we have to remember about Lenin is that he comes from a basically rough-and-tumble frontier town a town that sits on the border between Russia and what had been the Tartar Empire the Empire of tamerlane that his grandmother in fact was a Tartar woman he grew up in an area of constant ethnic conflict of a kind of latent violence sort of the Russian Wild West and so for Lenin the world of Enlightenment and ideas and so on is really in a sense something that's superimposed upon a world in which he grew up in which his family had heritage was based upon his father his father was a Russian civil servant very very very prestigious someone with very successful he was a state inspector of schools his mother came from a very comfortable family the great tragedy that shattered that family however came in 1887 when his beloved elder brother alexei Yulin off because that's the family name born Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin is a revolutionary pseudonym assumed later on during his during his during his career as a revolutionary and conspirator when his elder brother Julian are accidentally enough is found guilty of being involved in a plot to assassinate the Tsar and as executed destroys the family destroys them and for young Vladimir the experience is a watershed in the sense that not in the sense that he wasn't already radicalized and we know this from evidence that he'd already been exposed to some radical ideas where they were Marxist or not we don't know we don't know but he was certainly moving in that kind of a direction but the execution of his of his brother proved to him in his mind anyway that the only way in which any way in which Russia was really gonna change and was going to change for the better was through violence that violence was the answer that what his brother and his handful of hapless conspirators had tried to do needed to simply be better organized and carried out in a more in a more in a more direct in a more in a more efficient manner and so he becomes a revolutionary he becomes a revolutionary becomes someone who's going to spend almost three decades either doing a spot of bird in Siberia as the British would say or on the other hand being in exile in foreign countries and traveling around and traveling around avoiding secret police and the other experience other kinds of threats including from other revolutionaries that he was constantly exposed to and this is one of the other things that I want you to understand about Lenin Lenin the Exile Lenin the man on the run is that for him the real battle the battle he's engaged in a daily weekly basis his articles and his in his meetings and his discussions and forming his band of conspirators isn't against the Czar or the Czarist police they turn out to be unbelievably inept in terms of their being able to deal with the threat that goes with the exile it's with his fellow revolutionaries with the fellow radicals he's dealing with and his deep and abiding desire to emerge on top but this is the driving thing for Lenin is a confidence in the belief that he's got the answer he knows how this is going to be done and in the fight in the face of every frustration in the face of every defeat he keeps coming back because he is convinced that he knows the answer to what is coming and what's going to take place which is unleashing the power of class war I'm gonna come back to that and come back to that when I talk about the mist that's when it come back to the second myth but let's go forward to think about the first of the myths that we have to dispel especially in the shadow and the shadow the centenary of the Russian of the Russian Revolution of of October according to the old Russian calendar actually November according to the Gregorian calendar and this is the myth that surrounds him as being sort of the figurehead of the Russian Revolution what takes place what happens here presenting him is the great revolutionary leader it's not a truth of it the real revolution the real Russian Revolution had taken place months before months before the Russian Revolution that Lenin leads it takes place in March when the masses the crowds in the capital of Russia Petrograd have been renamed after the outbreak of World War one because saint-petersburg it was felt was - German - German eyes dand so it's renamed is Petrograd when they simply get fed up with the whole incompetence and the whole breakdown that had taken place with the Czarist government trying to mobilize for war it was a complete disaster and for the people even living in the capital food and the moat and the basic goods had become scarce impossible to find when they rise up spontaneously there was no organization to it there were groups who rise up to join and follow the the masses who rise up in order to to sort of say we're fed up we're done with this war we're done with this government we're done with the incompetence we need a change and so in March of night 19:17 a massive wave of spontaneous revolution sweeps through the capital at Petrograd topples the Tsar pushes it into abdicating and creates a new government a republican government a republican government led by a handful of men who were connected with the representative body that have been set up after the revolution of 1905 the duma basically Russia's parliament which up until then had basically been a collection of figureheads men who had been denied power by the tsar and by his government but now in the power vacuum step forward to take command to hold power and to reshape Russian a new direction to move it in a new direction and it began the process then of trying to create a modern democratic Russia on the bones and the and the ruins of the old Czarist imperialist Russia that the set that the First World War had shattered and destroyed well that the commitment that that government had in the fragile power that fighter hold on power that it held in in Petrograd and also in Moscow but Russia was the kind of country in which whoever holds power in the capital holds power throughout the country doesn't matter what happens elsewhere it's the capital that counts the crowds the streets the the riots the scenes that's the center of action that's the deaths center stage for power in Russia in 1917 March 1917 the government that comes to power is committed to two things to make a new Russia a modern democratic one that can integrate with the West and on the other side committed to keeping Russia in the war against Germany and Austria but mostly against Germany that was there their chief chief Ally and this was the commitment they had made as a way to unite Russia with its Western Democratic allies we're going to be a fellow democracy with you and we're going to fight against the power the forces of authority and tyranny embodied in the cotton Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany well while all this happens the German High Command is fascinated Russia's falling into chaos the capital in upheaval and so they consider it they begin to consider an idea how can we how can we help this process forward of making Russia fall deeper and deeper into a state of chaos into a deeper state of disorder and then one of the Ambassador or their ambassador in Switzerland has an idea he said you know I've got this guy over here in Zurich this obscure forty-five year old who's been writing article after article about you know radicalism and other kinds of things and he's been involved with all this what if we send him over there and get him to stir up the crowds and get things going and create some more sure of chaos maybe we can even drive Russia out of the war by spreading chaos and so a deal is struck by which the Germans will transport Lenin and his followers from Zurich across what was for a Russian enemy territory right through the heart of Germany Austria into into neutral Sweden and then across to and then across to to Russia in order to stir up trouble in Lenin it tells a lot about his character by the way he immediately says yes I'll do it that his willingness to not only accept the help from his country's enemy Germany but also to receive money from them I mean he was getting rigged his bank account set up his regularly being supplied with money for them to keep his revolutionary cause alive in Russia says a lot about what he believed was gonna happen he would by any means necessary you know that slogan right that's that's Lenin I'm going to bring revolution I'm gonna bring the leverage to Russia I don't care who helps me even the hated Germans you know the worst of the worst from the point of view of a Marxist standpoint even the worst of the worst I'll accept their help on SEP their connection and so the deal is struck and he and his family and his followers travel across in what comes to be called a sealed train it wasn't a sealed train the fact of the matter is is the Germans just made sure that he didn't step off the platform and go talk to others about rising alright the workers rising up to to fight against the repressors and things like that and they drop them off and he arrives therefore at the Finland station in in Petrograd on April 12 1917 in order to stir up trouble no one not even his own followers thought he could actually achieve anything that besides just based clearing up trouble the German authorities wanted to cause chaos that's what they wanted chaos that would in the end drive Russia into a state of anarchy in which it could no longer sustain the war effort Lenin goal was very different he wanted power and his goal was to achieve power however it was going to happen and he was the one person who believed he could and through a series of strange missteps through a combination of his own sheer fanatical willfulness and weakness on the part of the new fragile democratic government that had come into power he was able to achieve that achieve not just power but supreme power and by November of the 6th and 7th he's able to achieve it he tried in July a coup was attempted in order to topple the government but it failed especially when the newspapers leaked the information about his connections with the Germans and other Russian said oh my god this Lenin he's a traitor he's working for the Germans our enemies in this war here and he has to flee for the border and he goes into hiding in Finland for a few months but then again the government loses control of the situation its hold on power is precarious and Lenin in in in October realizes the time is right to try again in fact he probably would not have even tried again if it hadn't been for the support of one person and that's Leon Trotsky if you if anyone is responsible for the revolution that topples the the Duma the government the provisional government that held power since March the real Russian Revolution who was Leon Trotsky he's the one who mobilizes the troops he's the one who mobilizes the sailors to march from Kronstadt naval base down to the down to the duma palace in order to force a change of government lenin simply cashes in follows in the slipstream behind what Trotsky is achieved but he manages to hold power he manages to grab power in the process so the real story behind Lenin the real star be environment Lenin is not the father revolution but the destroyer the Russian Revolution he's the man who topples it through a coup a coup d'etat at the time in which he and his Bolshevik followers including Trotsky and Stalin seized power from a government which was too weak and too feeble and we have to sort of say to and lack the confidence to hold power in the face of those who are willing to use force and violence in order to grab it now that brings us to our second myth the second myth the second myth is about that that that that Lenin is in some ways a disciple of Marxism or that Leninism is it comes to be called is an outgrowth or an offshoot of Marxism read a lot of the textbooks and they talk about this no let's be clear Lenin is heavily influenced by Marx's theory his exposure to Marx's works have a huge impact on him and on his thinking and his radicalization what's interesting by the way as I explained in the book was interesting about this is that is that while living in Russia is that Lenin and even in exile in Siberia that Lenin has very little trouble getting hold of text by Karl Marx while living in Czarist Russia this is one of the strange things about this is that the Czarist police of course were fiercely censorious of any kind of foreign writings especially anything that could be viewed as subversive we're completely focused on writings by indigenous russian socialists in agrarian revolutionaries this was their focus on that so Marx completely slipped past their radar screen gives us an idea how completely inept the zyra's police were in many ways that you can go ahead and read the communist manifesto read us copy Toliver not at all difficult to get hold of but anything by one of the like Chomsky or any of the other Russian agrarian socialist revolutionaries and someone a copy of that is found in your in your briefcase or found in your rooms off to Siberia you go there's no doubt Lenin's effect very much affected by Marx's ideas and that it plays an important role in his thought but his thought Lenin's approaches it break from Marx Marx's idea what is Marx's idea Marx's idea is that the march of history is one leading to dictatorship of the proletariat that the working class will take over the means of production and create a whole new classless society that this is built into the fabric of history as we would say I suppose today that it is encoded in the nature of history that the working class will take over and that they'll sort of say to themselves one day they wake up and they'll sort of say we're being exploited these people are appropriating our work our labor our value is all being taken away and they're they're using it the capitalist class let's get rid of them let's overthrow them and let's take control of our lives take control of our society now Marx had no doubt that the revolution that would ensue would be violent that the revolution that ensued would be one in which lots of people would be killed he was hoping a lot of capitalists would die he had no doubts about this you read Marx's work about you know the future revolution it's apocalyptic he's got bodies hanging from lampposts and these other kinds of things clearly clearly it was something which he foresaw with great relish in the future but this was in the future in his own mind the moat the time that it would take the way in which this would happen was that the working class would come to realize they've been exposed they you know they'd read and Karl Marx they would read Frederick Engels they would come to understand there's position and society that is far from being the slaves of the capitalist production they're the real masters they've got to take control of the situation and that the new society would arise but this was in the future this would take years maybe even decades even in the most advanced industrialized countries because industrialization but built a working-class Germany Britain this is a long way off before all this sort of thing happens it's inevitable it's coming but it's a long way off and the idea that it could happen in an undisclosed country even a country like Russia for which Marx had enormous contempt as a country as a society as a culture does he say about Russian peasants he said it's like a sack of potatoes you know each each one each one is is is different and yet they're all like the idea it's a country like this which have you know just beginning that no real industrial revolution underway to take place the revolutions ridiculous Lenin's view is the opposite it's precisely at least industrialized countries the one in which capitalism is just beginning to take shape here and beginning to shake the foundations of the traditional state and traditional institutions that's precisely where a handful of men a handful of dedicated men who understand power who understand how they can seize power in the name of the working-class and overthrow the existing institutions that's the society in which the opportunity to create a dictatorship of the proletariat is most likely the opportunity will be there the opportunity what we today call a failed state failed States is where power is waiting to be assumed by a revolutionary elite for Lenin that was Russia Russia was a state in a state of collapse especially after the war broke out especially as the mobilization for war led to increasing breakdown in in Russian society and government's control over the provinces even its control over the capital here is the moment in which a dedicated revolutionary elite can seize power and and and grab it and what's the point of such an exercise is it to create a dictatorship of the proletariat in Lenin's view that's the phraseology but his view expanded far greater than that his view was that the result would be a massive uprising a massive uprising which would sweep Europe and sweep the globe as the working class and their leadership and their elite leadership would now rise up against the existing status quo and generate massive class war and that's really the end for the end game for Lenin for Lenin it is the unleashing of violence in all of its forms in all of its directions even in the name of national liberation even the name of national determination this is what he had in mind here's a letter that he writes and this is 17th of October 1917 shortly before the Bolsheviks seized power the letter he writes to his friend Alexander slip yup snip off knock off the least bad thing that could happen in the short term would be the defeat of Czar ISM in the war the essence of our work which must be persistent systematic and it perhaps extremely long term he was wrong about that it actually turned out really less than a month is to aim for the transformation of the war into a civil war what will happen there's another question as is not yet clear we must wait for the moment to ripen and systematically force it to ripen violence civil war war across the board this is what this is what his great goal this is what his great aim is in in what is unleashed and what's going to take place in his mind here this is a very different view from Marx for Marx it's the unfolding of history that leads to these events for Lenin it's the unfolding of a revolutionary league dedicated to the goal who will bring about violence and bring about the collapse of the existing society what does mark say he says everything exists deserves to be destroyed right it's a quotation actually from the devil from from if a star flees from goethe's faust lenin agreed but he said we don't have to wait for that we can do it right now and that's where we're going that's what we're gonna do and we can enlist the various movements of violence the various movements they're involved in and and that we can take and assume in the process here that can take place and this include national liberation movements around the world not just in Europe and in colonial areas he says in one of his one of his letters to his friends he says to imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe with all their prejudices is to repudiate the idea of social revolution the Bolsheviks will be very poor revolutionaries if in the proletariat's great war for liberation for socialism we do not know how to utilize every popular movement whether it's outside or Russia or whether it's in Ireland the Easter rebellion in 1916 in which everywhere all his fellow Bolsheviks were appalled that this is a terrible what are they doing he's loved it he thought this was perfect this is exactly the kinds of people you would want to enlist and involved with a group like Isis today Lenin would embrace them this is exactly who the kind of kind of group we need to be with people who are creating chaos people who are creating disorder because out of that failure the collapse of existing since institutions we can seize power we can grab we can grab what others have lost the grip on when you think about Lenin versus Marx believe me Lenin becomes almost sort of quaint thinker it's like a real 19th century thinker almost antiquated in his belief in his waiting for history to move to move the dials of events and the new dials of human history forward Lenin doesn't care where history is going what he cares about is being on the right side of the gun and that mouths famous motto right power comes from the barrel of a gun Lenin never said it but that sees the one who believed and he's the one who put that idea motion and it's one which all of his great followers especially in the world outside of Russia especially in the world outside of Russia will get worse stalin less so Stalin was very suspicious about third world nationalists Andrey liberation movements even Mao made him very nervous he was not happy this Asiatic guy he was not into it and things like that Lenin would have embraced Mao at once realized this is my guy this is the kind of person I want to be connected with and that's why by the way one of his closest followers will become Ho Chi Min Ho Chi Min Ho Chi Minh who goes to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 right in a rented tuxedo he's working as a waiter did you know that his working as a waiter one of the Paris hotels and he goes to the ghosts of the conference and a rented tuxedo talked about the rights of the Vietnamese people you know and then of course he's like pushed you know Wilson the rest don't want to listen to this guy talk about these things so he's deeply disappointed he goes back to his hos back to his his small flat and there he picks up a year later he picks up Lenin's one of his Lenin seminal texts by the way which is his theses on the National and colonial questions which is about precisely the ability of what we call the third world to unleash the forces of violence that will topple not just imperialism but will topple the whole edifice on which booze wah capitalism and democracy rests and he reads them and he says this is this is Ho Chi Minh I'm quoting her Chi Minh now in his memoirs he says Lenin's theses roused me to great emotion great enthusiasm great faith and helped me to see the problem clearly my joy was so great that at times I was reduced to tears alone in my room I would cry out as though standing before a great crowd my beloved downtrodden luckless compatriots this is what we need this is our road to freedom after that I put all of my trust in Lenin and the Third International Vietnam China North Korea they all spring not from Stalin not from Stalin they spring from Lenin Lenin is the source of that laning is the source he's the one who like Osama bin Laden comes to see failed States as the breeding ground for revolution the breeding ground for class war and for transformation and all that takes place with that so is Lenin a disciple of Marx in an intellectual sense in a genealogy of ideas way yes of course there's no denying that but Lenin's view Lenin's view world view is not a political philosophy it's a program for revolutionary action it's a program set up for translating violence into creating destroying an old order and creating a new order from it now as for the nature of that new order let's think about that for a second let's think about in this week now we come to our third our third topic and that is Lenin's order what he would if he had lived longer would have descend into Stalin's tyranny I think there's absolutely no doubt about that everything you know if you read my book and you read the steps he took immediately after after the seizing power in November of 1917 you come to realize this is a man who has one thing on his mind and that is to shed as much blood as possible in order to wipe away the old order in order to create a new one which would be dominated by him and his party elite by the Bolshevik Party elite there's no doubt about that at all every step of the way the creation of a secret police the creation of the of the original gulags the creation of the Red Terror all of these things all of these things bring naught from Stalin they don't even spring from Trotsky who was in his own way a kind of revolutionary fanatic they spring from they spring from Lenin and his apolar proach to these subjects and what takes place let me just read to you for example a telegram you sent off to the Central Executive Committee this is in 1918 this is less than a year after taking power if you want to see the real Lenin here's the real Lenin speaking to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet in Penza comrades the Kulak uprising in your five districts be crushed without pity for those of you who know kulaks meant rich peasants basically meant anyone who resisted the revolutionary and what the Bolsheviks were going anyone who did counted now is a Kulak the interests of the whole revolution demands such actions for the final struggle with the kulaks has now begun you must make an example of these people one hang I mean hang publicly so people see it at least 100 kulaks rich bastards and known bloodsuckers too published their names now why would he say that so their families are also then become targets so their families also become targets for revolutionary revenge three seals all of their grain and I'll come back to that point in a second single out for single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram do all this so that for miles around people see it all understand it all tremble and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty coax and that will continue to do so and you don't want to be a Kulak was the basic rule with this of course unspoken reply saying you have received and carry out these instructions yours linen PS find tougher people those who are carrying out my orders aren't tough enough aren't ruthless enough we need we need those who are willing to do this without hesitation so the old idea the old idea that was there was that that I learned when I studied Russian history in college and so on that somehow Lenin's death and his premature fall from power just six years after after the after coming coming to power in November of 1917 that somehow this opened the door to Stalin to make things worse to create a realm of Terror the realm of Terror was already there the ring of Terror was already there understood under Lenin Stalin if anything in many ways regularized it systematized it in a way in which in Lenin's case had sprung from a deep and abiding fascination with violence a fascination with bloodshed a fascination with the idea of a war that would spread from Russia across and burn through the rest of the globe through to every country and every every class in society through it now I want to finish up with the three legacies the three legacies that I see from Lenin here I mean legacies that live on today the legacies that we see today and that are part of Lenin's overall overall contribution of that's the word for it a contribution to making the world more more chaotic and more horrible then then one could imagine here in fact I think if only there's one single person who has done that in the broadest possible sense in the last 100 years that has to be Lenin three three legacies the first is the idea of the total of total control state the total control state and this sprang from the very first legislation that came from the Bolshevik a seizure of power in November and that was legislation that put all distribution of food within the capitol of Petrograd within the hands of the government nobody could get any food unless they'd have been authorized by the government and from Petrograd that then spreads to Moscow to the other cities and then to the surrounding areas we all know the history the terrible history that follows from all that what Lenin understood was that if you want to grab control of people grab control their food right the basic lesson that the Bolshevik Revolution put in place from the very beginning and by the 1818 in 1919 had become standard standard part of government practice by Lenin's regime was it if you if you don't obey you won't eat that's very powerful very powerful tool especially in the country which we have to say is a result of World War one in which food supplies have broken down and become very difficult to get control get food to get act and so the government taking control in one sense was justified on the other hand it was justified not in a way to give food but to deny it to deny it to those who didn't obey who didn't go along who didn't become part of it part of the system part the government and this is an important principle which Lenin has left on and is allowed to continue on if you control people physically right control their destiny physically it's very very difficult for them to disobey to disobey break away from the government whether it's a question of food where's your question of control of their healthcare whether it's a confessional control of their livelihood the welfare state the welfare state whatever else we can say about its origins you know it's good intentions and so on it becomes in a very short period of time a tool a tool for control a tool to sort of say you know you don't want those payments to stop do you you don't want us to cut off the supply of health care your ability to get those kind of so you have to go along you have to become part of the system and what follows through all this that's Lenin that's Lenin the regime who put that into place and set it up there the second legacy is the total surveillance state because you can't have total control if you don't have if you're not keeping track of what people are doing every single day in every aspects of their lives together with control over the food supply the government control over who gets food and who doesn't Lenin's want to let his first steps is to create a secret police the military Revolutionary Committee I talked about all this in the book by the way when it comes out in November and then read all the details about it is very the the revolutionary militia that he's used to seize power very quickly becomes a secret police by which to enforce and control what takes place in the country and to make sure again in the guise of hunting for traitors actually hunting for dissenters anyone who does stands in the way other government stands in the way of the regime that's also part of it too that the and and the growth of this total surveillance state with its secret police with its use of informants I mean you look at the history of not just the Soviet Union but also everywhere where the Soviets went and the Iron Curtain the conversion of a substantial part of the population to becoming informants to the police right which is a way it's a double it's it's a double win if you're a totalitarian it's a double win because in the one hand you get to find out everything that's happening because people are constantly informing you on your neighbor or your family members and so on what they're doing that goes against the the views of the the regime right what they're supposed to believe but it also soothes see those the seeds of a distrust that runs and corrupts the whole fabric of society because you never know who you're sitting with in a cafe who you're sitting with on a train who you're sitting with and you're you're talking with on Facebook who's not a police spy right you know no you don't know and so you hold it in you don't say what you really think you toe the line you set it up to toe the line and in a country like for example now in Russia this has improved Putin's Russia and it's reached its culmination in the whole total surveillance system that the regime is set up called sort of Moe didn't we know about Sorum I wrote an article about a year and a half ago and commentary about it sorum is the the successors to the KGB the FSB a creator system in which they are able to not only find out everything that you're saying on the internet and watching on the internet and everything that you're everyone you're talking to on the telephone or through social media and everything that you're involved with a daily basis and so on but they're able to take that information and integrate it integrate it with the surveillance cameras that are set up all across the capital all across Russia to monitor parking lots and workplaces and subways and everything else so it becomes possible to keep track of what you're doing and what you're doing every single moment of the day and if you happen to sort of fall within the purview of the government is being sort of suspicious character which is actually not that difficult in a regime like Putin's Russia or President Xi's China and so on you are under surveillance every single second and we'll keep track of it doesn't mean you're in big trouble right doesn't mean you're gonna be arrested any second but it does mean that they know what you're up to and then sometimes even know what you're up to before you do right right and that's a total surveillance state that's your real dream if you want to be a secret chief of secret police which I hope none of you do but that's the most important role of all is to have that power to know what others are going to do before they do because of the total surveillance network the total surveillance system then created and then the third one this is where I'm going to finish up the third legacy is the total information state we call it propaganda but that's not even touching the real issue here the total information state that there is only one view point allowed on every issue in every question and the regime and all the power of the state is there to reinforce it and to enforce that one single view it's interesting when the Soviets came in when the Soviets came into the Iron Curtain countries after the collapse of the Nazis right at the end of World War two what was the first thing that they did well the bus they brought the secret police no question but the second thing that they did was they brought their radio broadcasts and radio network in personnel and and personnel to set up pro-soviet radio networks in all those countries Hungary Poland Czechoslovakia Romania you name it because they knew who controls the information controls power to broadcast constantly a pro-soviet view a pro-soviet worldview to everyone there who had drowned out every other point of view every other view about issues about life about existence itself and of course when you've got the secret police calling out everybody else who does have that alternate view this becomes very easy to do to create such a single monolithic view of the view of life one dictated by the party what comes to be called the party line the party line but the party line is more than just something you support in public it's something in which there's no alternative there's no alternative and it's a public view which is in a sense reinforced by not just by describing things but scribing things that haven't happened right disinformation this is disinformation as we call we've run into that now with Putin's Russia they're masters of this but the Masters of it because they learned it from the Soviet regime xavi regime was built upon disinformation the the very the very cool that Lenin carried out as explained in the book was a coup not against the government was to protect the Russian people from the government the idea was that they were about to arrest Lenin and hand over power to the two to the bourgeois and so on and Lenin his group had to act had to act to prevent something really terrible happening disinformation it goes back to the very origins of the regime it extends all the way through Stalin all the way through the Cold War and extends down to extends down down to to today's today's Putin but what's important to remember when we talk about disinformation and about Putin and his Facebook antics which are very serious by the way don't misunderstand they're very serious because I Hudson Institute we've done a lot of work with a big data analytics company and you wouldn't believe the tens of thousands of Russian trolls who were interfering with the election it's no myth it's no myth but bear in mind that disinformation and political correctness are two sides of the same coin the goal is to create one single view of the world from which dissent is not possible in which dissent is in fact in fact dangerous it's racist it's white supremacists it's whatever else that comes with it it's direct with it here and in which freedom is finally in the end what the freedom is left is the freedom to agree with the consensus the freedom to agree with that one single view that takes place here now this is what I find rather scary about the whole situation is that Lenin's legacy which has come to us via the new left and through ooh tenured radicals it's a great title for a book by the way someone should write such a book sometime is Roger Kimball here is he in the room by any chance that that that Lenin's legacy here has come now to take fruit and to bear fruit in today's colleges and universities with the notable exception of Hillsdale of course and a few others and we see it we see it in sub anyways with the emphasis on the PC the emphasis upon the idea that language the language of those who who descent from the one view right the one accepted view constitutes violence and therefore it has to be responded to with violence it's very Lenin is straight out of Lenin it's exactly the approach that Lenin took to these kinds of things together with which I have noticed over the last decade has been an increasingly revisionist view of communism itself a view that really communism when we look at it in the longest circle of you listen to really that bad surely no worse than capitalism right probably better in some ways because after all its intentions were better it wanted to you know make people's lives better and make them more equal and things like this books like antonio negret 'is empire which was a best-seller came out just before 9/11 as a matter of fact but its impact is there its impact is palpable these kinds of books in this approach to it and this is what we have to remember it constantly remind ourselves is that what Lenin when you look at linen look at what his life in his writings and so on what you see is the raw truth about communism if I may paraphrase a certain president in his speech at the UN very recently what we see we look at a country like North Korea it's not the failure to implement Koppel communism it's the implement it's the faithful implementation of communism the fire end of it here and it's important for us all of us here to keep bear that in mind and to look at the young people around you right look at them it's the fruit of a generation but remember that each one of them for all of them they're under the age of 30 anyway the fall the Berlin Wall its history they've no memory it's something that happened long ago in their minds from their perspective here very important to bear that in mind about this for we all have been Berlin Wall was the end of a process it was the end of a finish it was a closure on a certain historical era and a historical conflict but for them it's a part of history not much more than that and if we don't make explain the context to them it will fade into insignificance in the process you know there's a Anne Applebaum is one is a historian and some of you may know her she's written books on gulag she's written books on Iron Curtain she has a new book she's recently published on Stalin's Great Famine really depressing subjects to talk about and discuss but at a conference wants someone asked her they said to Ann she said you know you work on all this stuff you write all these books is it because you're worried that someday this will happen again and she said no she said because I know it will happen again and it seems to me that in the end and one of the reasons I wrote this book is in and the responsibility every one of us in this room sitting here carries is to make sure that her protection never comes true I'm done thank you now I'm told that the young people with the Barca phones are gonna find the ones asking questions so I can't play favorites so I'm just gonna sit here and let them pick out the ones who who have questions but I see somebody's arm way up in the back I can't resist Thank You dr. Herman please raise your hand and a microphone will be brought to you what are your comments about the recent revelation about the Communists graduating from West Point well we all have we all have our histories right I mean you look nude on it you don't know what my history was due oh my I I haven't told them he told many people about this but when I was in fourth grade I was passing out copies of the communist manifesto to my fellow students and Jefferson School in Stevens Point Wisconsin I was a thorough radical I grew up in a very left-left family so I know how these histories go and what takes place I think though and don't forget I've on the other side of us here in the biography of Joseph McCarthy right which was I think a lot of people felt maybe too sympathetic to McCarthy in terms of his views about issues about loyalty right the questions of loyalty to one's country the question about what communism represents as an ideology but also as a as a as the antithesis antithesis for what America stands for and what it represents and I think we've slid very much very much in the wrong direction with regard to that and there's a kind of tolerance that communism you know it's a period it's sudden it's a period kids go through and things like that or what history has gone through and we're over it we're not we are not compared to the threat of neo communism I think the threat of neo Nazism that you know that bedevils the media today is minimal compared to the threat of neo communism because it it comes in so many pervasive ways it comes in so many pervasive ways in the way in which in a way in which extremist ideologies on the right in this country simply cannot and cannot gain purchase here so you know when you're when you're 11 years old handing out copies of Communist Manifesto I think you can forgive that can't you you can forget but at West Point I don't think it's a great you know I think it's a great thing well solid where does Saul Alinsky fit into the into the framework well I mentioned the new left and of course I was thinking not only of Saul Alinsky but also of the whole cohort who came and who who came to came of age in the 1960s and who translated many of the Leninist pro-russia Helena's program into a program for transforming America and if they couldn't do it through revolution on the streets then they would do it through revolution in academia what comes to be called the long march through the institution's yeah but well I think what's important again from an historical genealogy of ideas point of view is that who is Saul Alinsky's hero who is his Roma its Lenin it's not Stalin the new left despised stone they hated the old line communists who had you know follow the Stalinist line through the nazi-soviet pact and even you know adhere to it after Khrushchev secret speech talking about all the terrible things that Stalin had done and had carried out here as well and so we overlooked the fact that Lenin Lenin is the culprit here he's he's the hateful that awful as Stalin is Lenin's impact I think is more global frankly and more important in terms of in terms of where we are and what has happened over the last hundred years his influences this is more far-reaching and at least as destructive that answer your question I think good okay thank you for coming to you to give us a great lecture my name is Doyle and my question is that had the Communists taken the approach of Marx in terms of running history unfold in implementing communism do you think they would have ever been successful still how do you think they would still have ever been successful in implementing implementing the dangerous ideology it's an interesting kind of at what if well I think they would have been a very at a very interesting discussion group you know up through the 1920s and 1930s look the turn that Lenin took was not just his alone there was there was in Russia a number of other Marxist thinkers who likewise the argument was twofold one was Marx was wrong Russia is much more industrialized than he ever us than he ever realized and in fact Lenin's first important published work which is really his only work of economic analysis is a study of the growing industrialization of Russia which really sort of says hey we actually are becoming a blues-rock capitalist country therefore by Marx's own standards we should be right for revolution and ready to go and that was a widely accepted view among other Russian Marxist at the time I mean if you're gonna be a Marxist you want to be revolutionary you don't want to be sort of saying well well get-get back to me in 50 years and most her to see what's gonna happen right well we're ready for revolution yet that's not that's not how you justify what you're doing but but what Lenin did was to was to take the next move and that was is that is that we don't have to wait for a critical mass of working class that once you've got a Revell professional revolutionary elite who know how to take power and know how to manipulate power then the working class will come along and if a working class doesn't that's too bad for them we're doing it for them and if they don't appreciate it then then it's a bullet in the head and this is of course what what in fact happened to them in the process so the waiting waiting for Marx is waiting for Marx waiting for godot the you know these are processes that extend out far being on the horizon and European socialism had taken that turn under Edward Bernstein you know we'll take it a slow we'll take a slow approach to transformation of Europe into socialism right that was Edward Bernstein it's one that Lenin excoriated it's one that he is despised than in many ways you could argue that his radical activist position that I talked about here was in direct opposition to the Bernstein incrementalist socialist approach that the other European socialist parties have taken it becomes the the break the break that comes between your mainstream socialist parties and then the communist parties that develop under the under the third international what else giving what you've told us why the antipathy between Lenin and Stalin especially after that second stroke where he says what are we do don't make him hit well this is this is a question that requires a tiny little bit of background for those who aren't familiar with the Lenin Stalin dynamic Stalin of course was a was a loyal follower from early days of the revolution who began to gain more and more power as head of the head of the party in assuming war more bureaucratic control over the party especially after Lenin's the separate his assassination attempt and then his first stroke in in in 1922 I think a lot of his antipathy ran to Stalin had less to do with where where Stalin was going to take the party and more about the way in which he felt that Stalin's control was one dedicated not towards advancing revolution but advancing Stalin and I think what he saw in Stalin was someone who was not up to the real job that Lenin wanted which was the ongoing spread of the revolution out beyond the soap beyond Soviet borders Stalin in the end becomes after all the man who embraces socialism in one country and who curtailed the if I say the sort of the the zeal with which Lenin saw the war spreading the way in which class violence and war would spread across Europe and Stalin was somebody who instinctively repelled the rebelled against that view his view is the view of a bureaucrat from a desk it's not from a revolutionary with a rifle he's not Che Guevara in other words Che Guevara is the kind of person that Lenin would have wanted Trotsky would have been would have been a good pick from his point of view I think would have been the ideal pick with it but Stalin represented the victory of bureaucracy over charisma in his mind and this is not the way that that not the future of path for the revolution from Lenin's from Lenin's mind and in many ways it was true and as I mentioned the embrace of revolution in the third world Stalin stays away from that kind of thing Stalin develops more normal relations and looks to normal relations with West with the Europe for example in Western Europe and sort of brings Russia back into the I won't say a community of nations that's absurd but makes establishes more sort of normal relations with the other parts other great powers of Europe here turns away from the third world the man who does who picks that up of course is Khrushchev Chris Jeff is the one who then realizes there's in the post-colonial world the post imperialist world there's all these opportunities to spread net it through national liberation movements to spread the the power of of the Soviet Union through the gospel of communism and so he revise including places like Cuba yeah Lenin would be very much in favor of that kind of an approach Stalin stated steers clear from that kind of thing so Stalin I think in many ways you can sort of say is too much of a moderate for from Lennon's point of view if you can believe that if you can believe that we now have time for one more question hi my name is Conrad when I was born was pretty much when the wall was going down and I was fortunate enough when I was younger to live in Berlin and there's a really fascinating history in that city I think anyone that's been there you can see the scars of what socialism did there but in our contemporaries you know kids the people my age if you go to Berlin you know they can be standing next to shrapnel scars from World War two and they have this deep antipathy towards anything has to do with communism like they don't care or they're even Pro communists or in some way just reliving the entire revolution again and one of the things that I fear is like that happening in America and I think that's something everyone here probably shares so as someone who's younger and who's dealing with contemporaries who are falling back into these ideas how would you suggest that we could go about inoculating ourselves and our generation from these ideas taking hold again well no I'm not gonna sort of say read my book I think that to be that's too self-serving I'm not gonna go quite that far although that's actually probably a good idea that's probably good but I think also simply having a true and frank accounting of what takes place you know the with the Holocaust right the expressions never forget and we don't forget we're constantly reminded we're constantly looking at and thinking about what happened the human cost the ideologies that underlay it right and the kinds of crimes but also the kinds of personalities who are drawn to that terrible terrible episode in history and I think we need to keep doing that with with Soviet Union as well and I think one of the ways in which to do it I just put my finger on as they think about it is the issue of personalities focus on style and focus on Lenin focus on Trotsky who also gets a pass because you know he ends up becoming you know Stalin's great nemesis and leads a whole series of Investigations in committees challenging the truth the in the Moscow trials which he was right to do in his supporters her right to do but trustees know better than the other two I mean he's even in some ways you could say worse here or the men who surrounded who and who worked with Stalin you know all of these figures who are you know Kaganovich and Virage Salaf and bay area and Molotov and so on what's important to realize is and this is sometimes obscured in the way in which we read about them in the history books but needs to be emphasized these guys never lost the faith one of the reasons they were willing to commit the crimes that they did was because they believed that this was the way in which they were going to create a better society a better society the way Marx had pointed the direction the way Lenin had pointed the direction here these were leftists in power we have to always remember about these men in been left us in power with absolute power and that they exercised in the name of an ideology not just personal power not just for the sake of the greater Russia or whatever kinds of other sorts of motivations or that we can late lay out lay at their feet that the the ideological dimension to what the Soviet Union did even under Stalin here must never be forgotten must be constantly emphasized here so that those who venture into that territory just as we do with neo-nazis right you see the swastika you know exactly there's a history behind that there's an ideology behind that likewise with the hammer and sickle huh don't you think well it was a hammer and sickle there should be a similar moral equivalence in the minds of those who are engaged in and that I think is a powerful powerful pedagogical mission that means to be embarked on in thinking about these events and where they have taken in the last taken us all in the last 100 years and the price we've all paid for it you guys have been great thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 40,347

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Keywords: cca, hillsdale, liberal arts, russia, soviet communism, communism

Id: jlxpCNu6WGo

Length: 66min 26sec (3986 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 01 2017