Ed,
However . . . All these people bought into an idea, or a series of ideas,
that they believed comprised a system of truth: Marxism as elaborated by
Lenin. They were "true believers" (as Eric Hoffer wrote about in his book
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements) Since Slezkine
parallels Christianity in so many of his assessments we should perhaps
expect him to produce something equivalent to the Holy Spirit (the
benefiting and cleansing effects of reading Lenin perhaps????) equipping
these men so that they can accomplish such things as mass killings without
having their consciences (I would say) or lack of background preparation
(you might say) destroy them, but Slezkine says nothing along these lines,
at least not as far as I've read. He merely reports the physical failures
of these people.
I mostly agree with your assessments, such statements as "Who wouldn't go to
pieces in such a place, especially those in a position to see unfold in all
its hellish clarity?" But Lenin and others were telling the "faithful" that
if they were true Communist revolutionaries they would be able to do what
was needed. The fact that failures were often sent off to a Gulag camp (if
not executed) no doubt encouraged the weak (in the Communist faith) to
disguise their weaknesses. Sanatorium time was apparently acceptable: time
off to recover from the mental fatigue of difficult work before coming back,
but Slezkine's narration describes these people as not "coming back," or
coming back only briefly and inadequately before going off some place to
curl up and die an early death.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Edward Farrell
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2020 10:52 AM
To: Lawrence Helm
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Revolution and Freud
Lawrence,
Maybe guilt, but certainly also stress. Until the revolution most of these
people were at the fringes of society, poor, angry, feeling disenfranchised,
unlistened to--committed to an ideal that may have well as come from Mars.
But now they are decision makers, or at least decision implementers, and at
the center of political life. Slezkine's portrayal indicates that very few
of them were temperamentally suited for such roles--children suddenly
required to become directors of state, and given responsibilities far beyond
anything they could have imagined let alone held. But even a strong,
centered man might crack under those unreal circumstances. As shitty as the
old world may have been, it was normal, predictable, accounted for. The new
world was--what? Still an idea, but now an idea without legs, which were in
the process of being chopped off on the theory that they supported the old
regime and had to go. But there was nothing to replace them. So the head of
the machine had no choice but to try to become the legs as well, which it
tried to do extemporaneously with administrative diktats and guns. But this
didn't close the distance to the new world, it just replaced the old world
with a world of complete uncertainty and hazard. Who wouldn't go to pieces
in such a place, especially those in a position to see unfold in all its
hellish clarity?
Ed
Tuesday, January 28, 2020, 6:42:56 AM, you wrote:
On page 220 Slezkine writes, "At the time of Lenin's death, Veronsky was
staying at a rest home (as was his friend and patron Trotsky, who was
suffering from a mysterious melancholy). Smilga and Arosev had recently
returned from sanatoria in Germany; Podvoisky was on his way to one there.
Orekhov would never return to active work (he was forty when he started
weeping); Lander would retire for health reasons within three years, at the
age of forty-four; and Kritsman would be judged too sick to teach in 1929,
when he was thirty-nine. Bukharin would remain active and energetic, but in
the words of his last wife, Anna Larina, 'his emotional constitution was
extraordinarily delicate, I would even say, morbidly frail.' On the day
Lenin died, most of the leader's disciples cried, 'but no one sobbed as much
as Bukharin.' Indeed, 'this trait - emotional fragility and acute
sensitivity - would often send him into a state of hysteria. He wept
easily.'"
When I was at least 13 I decided that my teachers weren't very responsible
or bright. I thought I could do better at the local library. At this
moment, I can only remember two authors from that time. One narrated a
motorcycle trip across Africa [One of my friends used to go into gales of
laughter whenever I'd say "tse tse fly"]. The other was Freud. I recall an
incident with a hanger in our closet. I snagged myself badly with it and
the first thought I had was that my superego was punishing me for not
honoring my mother.
I do still believe Freud in regard to that sort of thing. Unless we are a
sociopath, we have a conscience, and if we go against our conscience there
are repercussions - all the way from a nagging since of guilt up to the
sorts of things described in the Slezkine passage above. Maybe Lenin and
Sverdlov could decide it was right and proper to kill whole classes of
people in order to further the Revolution, but we as a species have not
evolved in such a way that we are okay with that. Maybe the "thou shalt not
kill" commandment was ignored with all the rest of the "opiate of the
people," but it is not normal (if we are normal) to kill other people, or if
we do, say, in a fit of rage we feel enormous guilt. I suspect those
mentioned in Slezkine's passage above had not managed to escape their human
natures and were weighed down by guilt.
Stalin on the other hand was probably a sociopath.
Lawrence
Edward W. Farrell
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