Lenin's Last Struggle

224 Pages·2005·7.74 MB·English

by  Prof. Moshe Lewin

LENIN'S
LAST
STRUGGLE
Ann Arbor Paperbacks for the Study of
Russian and Soviet History and Politics
Ronald Grigor Suny,Series Editor
The series publishes classic and out-of-print works
in Russian history and politics,presenting them with
new prefaces in which prominent experts assess the books’
continued importance to the field and make their value clear
to a new generation of students and scholars. The works to be
included will span the entire period of modern Russian and
Soviet history and demonstrate the variety of approaches
and interpretations that have long made the study of
Russia’s past an integral part of our
understanding of ourselves.
Karamzin’s Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia
Richard Pipes
Lenin’s Last Struggle
Moshe Lewin
LENIN'S
LAST
STRUGGLE
MOSHELEWIN
TRANSLATED BY
A. M. SHERIDAN SMITH
With a New Introduction
-
III
I~I
III
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
Ann Arbor
Copyright ©by the University of Michigan 2005
Translation of Le dernier combat de Lénine.First published
in 1968 by Random House under the Pantheon Books imprint,
and reprinted by Monthly Review Press,1978.
All rights reserved
Published in the United States of America by
The University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
2008 2007 2006 2005 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic,mechanical,
or otherwise,without the written permission of the publisher.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewin,Moshe,1921–
[Dernier combat de Lénine. English]
Lenin’s last struggle / Moshé Lewin ; translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith,
with a new introduction.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-472-03052-3 (pbk. :alk. paper)
1. Soviet Union—Politics and government—1917–1936. 2. Lenin,Vladimir
Il‘ich,1870–1924. I. Title.
DK266.5.L4513 2005
947.084’1’092—dc22 2004065834
ISBN13 978-0-472-03052-1 (paper)
ISBN13 978-0-472-02667-8 (electronic)
The worst thing that can befall the leader of an
extreme party is to be compelled to take over a gov
ernment in an epoch when the movement is not yet
ripe for the domination of the class which he repre
sents, and for the realization of the measures which
that domination implies . ... Thus he necessarily finds
himself in an insolvable dilemma. What he can do
contradicts all his previous actions, principles and im
mediate interests of his party, and what he ought to do
cannot be done . ... Whoever is put into this awkward
position is irrevocably doomed.
-F. ENGELS, The Peasant War in Germany
Those Communists are doomed who imagine that it is
possible to finish such an epoch-making undertaking
as completing the foundations of socialist economy
(particularly in a small-peasant country) without
making mistakes, without retreats, without numerous
alterations to what is unfinished or wrongly done.
Communists who have no illusions, who do not give
way to despondency, and who preserve their strength
and flexibility "to begin from the beginning" over and
over again in approaching an extremely difficult task,
are not doomed (and in all probability will not perish).
-v. 1. LENIN, "Notes of a Publicist"

CONTENTS
Preface
IX
Glossary of Russian Terms XVIl
Chronology of Events
XIX
The Lenin-Stalin Imbroglio: Introduction to
the New Edition xxv
1. A Dictatorship in the Void 3
2. The NEP: An Enigma 21
3. The Eclipse of Lenin 31
4. Stalin, Trotsky and the Georgians 43
5. The Sick Man and the Watcher 65
6. Lenin's "Testament" 77
7. "The Clandestine Affair" 91
8. Russia Between West and East 105
9. The Reform of the Governmental Structures 117
10. If Lenin Had Lived... 129
Appendixes 143
Biographical Notes 177
Index 181

PREFACE
A considerable number of left-wing dictatorships have ap
peared on the international political scene since World War
II, the only precedent for states of this type being the Soviet
Union, which is now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. These
fifty years of socialist experience could no doubt be very
useful to the new states if they took the trouble to acquire a
thorough knowledge of them and to reflect on the vicissitudes
of the first proletarian dictatorship. Thus the failure of the
"agroindustrial combines" created in the USSR in 1929-
1930 foreshadowed that of the communes of the People's
China, and Nikita Khrushchev was a victim of the same
megalomania when he tried to launch his agrogoroda in
1950. However, apart from a small number of Soviet writers,
it is largely the English-speaking specialists who have pointed
out how singularly rich in economic and social lessons is the
period of the New Economic Policy, and it is they who have
least to gain from such knowledge. Many other periods and
other aspects of Soviet history remain, to a greater or lesser
degree, in obscurity, illuminated here and there by the re
searches of a few scholars. It is unlikely that the governing
elite of the USSR knows the history of its country-apart
from what each individual has experienced at first hand-