Re: 25 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

Scott Dorsey wrote:

William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

>
Didn't the Bolsheviks follow the same pattern?

>
I don't think Lenin ever demanded mere toleration.  He did a pretty good
job of oppressing even when he was in the minority.

 I think Lenin believed in democracy and in his slogan of "All power to
the soviets" but things didn't work out quite the way he expected and
running a country was much harder than he had thought it would be.
He started out with a lot more toleration than Kerensky but then it all
went pear-shaped.

That is really not the impression I have of him.  He was a man of incredible intellectual arrogance, utterly convinced that he was right, and that he alone knew what was to be done and that no sacrifice was too costly to eliminate what he considered to be the ultimate evil.
To be fair he sacrificed a lot himself.  He hated disputation, he hated the lies, distortions, and character assassinations that he knowingly used in arguments - anything for the cause although it cost him every friend he had.  After a period of such disputation he became unable to sleep, barely ate, developed an unhealthy look - I suspect his blood pressure was up.  His wife would take him to the countryside, where he would hike and swim until his health was restored.
Democracy was fine provided people voted the right way - consider the example of Georgia I gave an another post.
There was one time he expressed doubt.  He was in the UK during the series of very serious strikes in the early 1900s.  He said that perhaps the British working class had found the right way to gain a decent life, but also said that any such attempt in Russia would be futile.

 Some of his associates, though, were very open about wanting to replace
the old oppressor and become a new one.

It is true that, unlike the rest, Lenin lived modestly in a small suite of rooms in the Kremlin after gaining power, mostly eating his wife's cooking.  He had to be persuaded that the leader needed a dacha, so he took a small one while his subordinates had large estates.
   Stay away from people like that.

They are not good to be around.

One one occasion in the civil war Stalin had executed many "opponents" in a given area and thought he had done enough.  He said as much to Lenin who told him to keep on killing.  Unlike Stalin, Lenin took no pleasure in killing, but he could be more ruthless.
William Hyde