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Author and presenter Vladimir Tolts

"Lenin lived, Lenin lives... - What's next?"

Voices of the program participants:

- “Lenin can never please the authorities... This is a truly revolutionary figure... Only the canonical attitude towards Lenin suited, say, Stalin and others. Somehow you began to turn to some real Lenin, everything began to shake the existing foundations.”

- “I didn’t do anything special; at that time I was far from criticizing Lenin’s teachings. Moreover, in 20 years I went through all the days of his life...”

“For me, it was no longer some kind of sacred figure with a halo and so on and so forth. Lenin for me, in general, was always an object of study.”

Vladimir Tolts:

Vladlen Loginov, Egor Yakovlev, Vladimir Buldakov - authors of studies, books, films about Lenin in the program "Lenin lived, Lenin lives... - What's next?"

I invited researchers of Lenin’s life and the consequences of his activities to the Moscow studio of Radio Liberty. This is a veteran of Soviet journalism, editor-in-chief of Obshchaya Gazeta Yegor Vladimirovich Yakovlev - author of books, articles and films about Lenin; Professor Vladlen Terentyevich Loginov, who has also written a lot about Ilyich (he is the director of the Center for Historical Research of the Gorbachev Foundation) and leading employee of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Prokhorovich Buldakov, a researcher of the so-called “Lenin period”, author of the already sensational monograph “The Red Troubles”.

So, three quarters of a century ago Lenin died. More than six decades after his death, generations of Soviet people were told: “Lenin lived, Lenin is alive, Lenin will live!” They studied, or rather more often memorized, his works and quotes from them.

Over these six-plus decades, the canonical image of Lenin (and canonization occurred immediately after the death of Vladimir Ilyich) was transformed and changed more than once: the Lenin who was remembered differently by his comrades was, along with them, forced out of memory (they, for the most part, were forcibly forced out of life). Lenin's works were edited, and some were classified. Even the images of Vladimir Ilyich were subjected to selection. Some photographs, for example, (or paintings and sculptures) were prohibited from display and were carefully hidden. And completely others multiplied and forcibly spread, in which Lenin looked less and less like himself, that active, dense, red-haired one, one of the many Russian emigrants who passionately argued for hours in the pubs of Munich and Zurich, and enthusiastically played cards (Lenin loved to play “aunt”), and that short-lived tough Kremlin politician, who argued no less passionately with his comrades in the conquest of the war-ravaged country, and dispassionately sent thousands of political opponents to death. And at that pathetic, helpless, paralyzed, isolated from life in Gorki, as he seemed to us at the end of his short, in general, life.

Instead, millions of images of the athlete frozen in an oratorical pose appeared (drunks of the time, when wine departments began selling from 11, dubbed this pose “half-eleven”). An athlete, with a pointing finger, a Socratic profile on money, remember metal rubles, for example, people called them “burrs.” False stories about Lenin for children and pathetic lies about him for adults proliferated.

At the same time, as a reaction to all this, which caused nausea, and to what was happening in life under the name of Lenin, the process of desacralization of Lenin’s image, the transformation of the myth about him, unfolded. Numerous anecdotes appeared about Lenin - a funny character in absurd situations. Ilyich, like Chapaev, turned into a true hero of the modern folk epic. And at the same time, his image looked less and less like the original.

So, here is the first group of questions that I address to the participants of our today’s program, who devoted a lot of their energy to studying the real Lenin: what does Lenin mean to you today? How has the so-called “Leninist legacy” transformed for you over the course of your life? How do the Lenin myth and those real facts about Lenin that you know now, thanks to the study of his life and work, compare in your mind?

Vladlen Loginov:

- You know, everything is a little more complicated here in the whole prehistory, because in addition to what you call some kind of official course aimed at deification and so on, there is also something that is much more important and much more significant.

The fact is that a revolution is always different in that during the period of revolution all idols, ideals collapse, old views, faith, and so on, so on, etc. collapse. But a holy place is never empty. And if we take some basic process, then this process of deification, if you like, in your language, it did not at all come from the fact that there were instructions and decisions from above on this matter.

Now, if we, say, looked at a village in the 20s before the militant atheists began, then a very typical situation was, say, an icon was hanging, and on the table under the icon there was a portrait of Lenin or, then, Stalin, and so on. That is, in the popular consciousness he became a kind of symbol, an iconic figure, the embodiment of certain hopes, aspirations, and so on. And in this sense, he penetrated more deeply into the people’s consciousness than, say, some official instructions and so on could achieve. That's how he became such an iconic figure.

It is no coincidence that in the 60s the intelligentsia began to somehow express their oppositional sentiments and so on; Lenin became just one of the instruments of this struggle.

In general, we must very clearly distinguish between the scientific attitude towards Lenin as a historical figure, and Lenin as an object of political passions. And this is what happened in the 60s, in particular, when Yegor Vladimirovich Yakovlev wrote about this and so on, this attitude towards Lenin was used as a certain symbol. All this may or may not have anything to do with reality, it didn’t matter! It is important that this was a figure with the help of which it was possible to somehow fight with the existing regime.

Vladimir Tolts:

Thank you. Now, Yegor Vladimirovich, just in time for the question of that stage, which was later called “return to Lenin”... Vladlen Terentyevich, in my opinion, is absolutely right: at the turning points politically and ideologically in the development of Soviet power, this return to old idols, as if turning to “ideological origins,” all the time took place.

I remember that at the same time they began to contrast the young Marx with the late Marx, then they turned to the late Lenin, to his last works and began to find here the verbal, ideological difference that made it possible to influence the current moment.

And one of the very active figures, perhaps, was Yegor Vladimirovich...

Egor Yakovlev:

- The very appeal to Lenin is the development of public consciousness and attitude towards the party, towards politics, the very knowledge of the people.

I was born into the family of an old Bolshevik, I had a “Lenin corner” above my bed: there was a portrait of a very small Lenin, a larger one, and so on, and so on. (When I tell my children today, they don’t believe it, they look at me in horror.) It was completely normal. While the revolution was developing - bloodily, without blood, horribly or not horribly, collectivization, the terrible ruin of the peasantry - but this development was a revolution... And Lenin, in general, accompanied, his figure accompanied many people, their dreams and hopes.

It is very typical when this stopped, and there was a fight with Lenin (this happened, I believe, by the 70th year - on the 100th anniversary of Vladimir Ilyich), then those anecdotes that you are talking about appeared, and the attitude towards Lenin (“Two intelligent fish swim in the pool, and one says: “Why do you always say that there is no God? And who changes our water on Mondays?”), - approximately the same attitude towards Lenin, because he is the only one who changes our water on Mondays.

But the point is that, of course, for a certain group of journalists, in this case for me, Lenin was primarily a tool for breaking through the same wall, only each one sharpened and beat it from his own side.

I didn’t do anything special, I was far from criticizing Lenin’s teachings, but Lenin was mothballed, so to speak, as a bastion of totalitarianism, dictatorial power, so everything that could be picked out from there caused great joy. Moreover, this wall was guarded with incredible force.

Well, for example, I remember my last two scandals in one of the last films: I refused to insert Manyasha’s words in the film about his youth: “We will go a different way,” because Manyasha was 5 years old when his older brother died, she said these words allegedly after Lenin’s death, in some random speech. I said that this picture would not come out, but then these words were removed.

Or take another thing: Lenin ends up in Kazan University, naturally, he is followed by a trail, if you like, a halo of the brother of the man who tried to kill the tsar, he ends up in an absolutely Narodnaya Volya circle, completely, and obviously having left this circle, he would have done the same thing, he is saved by a student revolt and deportation to Kokushino - only this saved him from the Narodnaya Volya path. But it was impossible to even mention it.

I remember very well when I started working on paintings based on Lenin, I had the following conversation, he was an intelligent man, a very strange and a terrible dictator, but curious - this is Lapin, the chairman of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, and I tell him: “Sergei Georgievich, you know, I would like to do something about Lenin, somehow try in a human way, take a closer look at him,” that is, the usual desire of a journalist, writer... He looks at me: “Egor Vladimirovich, why? Look, Christ has existed for two thousand years, and no one is trying to humanize him.” He very accurately reflected that this mummy must be kept as it is.

Vladimir Tolts:

Thank you, Egor Vladimirovich!

Before continuing our conversation, an explanation for those who are not so skilled in their knowledge of Lenin’s biography: Manyasha, mentioned by Yegor Vladimirovich, is the younger sister of Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin, Maria Ilyinichna, and the phrase that she attributed to her brother: “We will go a different way,” for many years wandered through artistic and non-artistic writings about Lenin, became a theme painting and is still repeated in different ways in the already mentioned anecdotes on the same topic.

And now I want to ask a question to Vladimir Prokhorovich Buldakov:

- You are a person of a different generation than our respected interlocutors, with a non-party background, unlike them, and (unlike them), studying the Leninist period of Russian history as a scientist, and not as a publicist.

What does this Lenin mean to you yesterday and today?

Vladimir Buldakov:

- Well, first of all, I would like to note this point: when I was studying at the university, you can even say when I entered the university, this was the year 1962, we already told jokes about Lenin, quite harmless. And in general, somehow it turned out that for me Lenin, the attitude towards Lenin was always quite even. That is, for me it was no longer some kind of sacred figure with a halo and so on and so forth... This is on the one hand.

On the other hand, Lenin, in general, has always been an object of research for me, not directly, but, let’s say: somewhere, somehow, I tried to understand the history of that period through Lenin. And let’s say in my book I have everything in context: leaders - a view from the crowd. That is, Lenin was interesting to me in this sense.

And here I must say, I completely agree with Loginov, a very curious phenomenon occurs with the image of Lenin, and by the way, during his lifetime (I mean the last years), and especially, what is extremely curious, Lenin’s death produced something like a turn or even, perhaps, a revolution in consciousness. There is already talk among the Red Army soldiers that Lenin cannot be buried as an ordinary person. Another curious detail: immediately after his death, official propaganda began to introduce the so-called “red corners” or “Lenin’s corners,” and there, by the way, there was such a plan or something, and there was a special section “Lenin’s Illness” and “Lenin’s Death” for some reason.

And this idea of ​​“eternally alive” , on the one hand - dead, on the other hand - seemingly alive, it really somehow immediately stuck in the mass consciousness. What is this - for me it is of course extremely curious. In this case, I am already abstracting from specific Lenin, this is what Lenin represented in the mass consciousness, this is extremely interesting. And this process, by the way, is still going on.

Vladlen Loginov:

You know, a very curious thing is happening (this also has something to do with Stalin): the fact is that Lenin can never arrange for the authorities as such. This is such a figure, this is the figure of a revolutionary, a shaker of some foundations, that only a canonical attitude towards Lenin suited, say, Stalin and others. Because, indeed, as soon as someone started turning to some real Lenin , it all began to shake the existing foundations, you know.

And in this sense, if we talk about the future and so on, I can say that this will not suit many today.

So we, a group of people who once published Lenin’s “Collected Works,” decided to release the last volume of Lenin’s “Collected Works,” where all these documents that were the subject of speculation in our journalism will be collected. This is approximately 400 documents. Because they were all published with monstrous distortions and, most importantly, with a lack of understanding of the essence of these documents. And we collected these more than 400 documents and prepared them for printing, and so on, and so on.

Naturally, immediately the problem of financing this business arose at the publishing house, we found some sponsors, and finally, at the final stage, when the book was already ready, there was not enough (today it sounds comical!), and still is not enough to this day, 10 thousand rubles. 10 thousand rubles! I understand that for many this is a generally ridiculous amount, but still this is the amount, this is the amount that needs to be paid for certain technical processes and so on.

And we, naturally, believing that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is obviously most interested in this, turned to them with a request; We spoke to the faction in the State Duma, they adopted a resolution, passed their decision through the Central Committee - we did not receive a penny. Because this is by no means a priority concern for them today. None of today's politicians! (There, even after the meeting, one came up: “What would Lenin say about our parliamentary tactics?” I answered him, what would Lenin say about our parliamentary tactics , and I think this also influenced the fact that we did not receive a penny.)

Vladimir Tolts:

Well, it seems that the modern all-Russian default kicked dead Lenin. Like alive...

Phonogram (Seraphim Tulikov and choir):

Lenin is always alive
Lenin is always with you
In grief, hope and joy...

Vladimir Tolts:

In the program dedicated to the 75th anniversary of Lenin’s death, experts in his biography and epistolary, as well as political heritage, participate with me: Egor Yakovlev, Vladlen Loginov, Vladimir Buldakov.

Until now, we have talked mainly about the Lenin myth yesterday and today , but here’s to the already raised question about the real Lenin : for many years, - 6-7 decades since the death of Vladimir Ilyich, - much of what he wrote (the same 400-odd documents that Vladlen Terentyevich Loginov already mentioned) was carefully hidden even from Lenin’s admirers.

But now a new era has come, a time in which many Leninists suddenly turned into avid anti-Leninists, yesterday's communists into today's democrats, enemies of communist censorship, and so on.

There is no communist censorship anymore... (And the fact that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation does not give ten thousand for the publication of the last and final volume of Vladimir Ilyich’s works, so they apparently have more important things to do... And money is tight for everyone.) Another thing is important: with the abolition of the previous taboos on the Leninist theme, the image of Ilyich has once again transformed in the popular consciousness. The image of the kind grandfather Lenin, arranging Christmas trees for children in Gorki, is supplanted by the image of the villain, the organizer of the Gulag, who mercilessly ordered mass executions and the deportation of the flower of the nation abroad.

With great delay, Lenin’s “Shuya letter”, published earlier in the West, about his plan to persecute the Russian Orthodox Church, also reached Russia. Solzhenitsyn’s portrait of Ilyich, and many, literally execution lines, of Lenin himself were published in Russia. And it is clear why many of those who previously memorized Lenin’s quotes as lines from the Holy Scriptures, who treated Lenin as a saint, suddenly saw in him a bloody executioner and murderer.

The children and grandchildren of these people, as sociological surveys show (I remember reading the results of one of them in Arguments and Facts), generally no longer know who Lenin is. I remember being amazed by the following answers: “This used to be the boss of Moscow”; “Lenin is a great ruler, and there is a monument to him”; "This is the king of socialism"; “This is who Chubais used to be”; “This is Yeltsin’s grandfather” and even: “This is a stone house that is guarded on Red Square.”

And so I have two questions for the distinguished participants in our program today: firstly, what is “Lenin Today” for the widest public in Russia? And, secondly, what do you think Lenin experts will mean tomorrow?

Egor Yakovlev:

- It makes sense to evaluate the path we have traveled in 7 years, from 1992, from the complete collapse of, practically, censorship, to today in understanding the figure of Lenin. This question is very important and very relevant.

Naturally, in a country where it was possible to make a God out of Lenin, in this country it is easy to tell jokes about him or say that there was a double of him or there was not, any inventions. Nevertheless, what I experienced myself: you see, jokes about Lenin were told by those, and easily told, who simply did not know.

Suppose I, who studied it a lot, I did not tell jokes about it, but I always reproached myself that my head is imperfect, I cannot seriously criticize the teachings that I have studied enough. Then I realized that it’s not in the head, it’s in those hoops that were around before the early 90s, and therefore the thinking itself was limited.

Today we have liberated ourselves, today we can engage in very serious criticism of Lenin’s teaching, if we treat it as a teaching, as a Leninist legacy. Unfortunately, we don't do this. It is impossible to say that we have made serious progress. We have made serious progress in the fact that everyone says that revolution is bullshit, there shouldn’t be a revolution. History doesn’t change because of these spells, as you understand, because, say, I don’t want a revolution, it won’t ask me.

Serious study of Lenin, as the forerunner of the bloody twentieth century, and as an absolutely objective phenomenon of the development of human thinking - it seems to me that we have made almost no progress since 1992. (I’m afraid to say here, I’m a non-historian, and I don’t follow today’s literature that way.) But I have the feeling that I haven’t made any discoveries for myself in this regard. And there are discoveries at the level of Yura Karyakin, who speaks at the Congress of People's Deputies, he said: “I read how Lenin ordered the execution of priests, and therefore I began to hate him.” One could read about Lenin’s attitude towards priests in the main publication and not look for any other facts; about his attitude towards executions - the same thing...

Vladimir Tolts:

It is probably necessary to explain who Yura Karyakin mentioned by Yegor Vladimirovich is, although I think today’s adults remember him much better than their grandchildren Lenin.

So, Yuri Fedorovich Karyakin is a famous literary critic, Dostoevsky specialist, deputy of the Supreme Council, former member of the presidential council under Yeltsin. He is one of the most prominent publicists of the perestroika period, one of its foremen . It was Karyakin who was one of the first to publicly come up with a proposal to bury Lenin according to Christian rites and customs, while referring to the will of the deceased himself. (True, it seems that none of the current Lenin scholars are able to document this expression of Ilyich’s will...)

Vladlen Loginov:

With this insight , of course, there are also a lot of funny things, because when the same Volkogonov writes that when he read the telegram to Penza, “the last bastion of Leninism in his soul collapsed,” I once even asked him: “Tell me, right there, from the very beginning, exactly the same telegram was published to another city, only a week later, the same words: “hang the instigators...” and so on.

The lack of professionalism of all those who wrote was monstrous. For example, when Lenin writes: “For disrupting the work of monumental propaganda, Lunacharsky must be hanged,” or when he writes to Bogdanov: “We all, and the communists first of all, must be hanged on stinking ropes,” no one ran to wash the ropes - people do not understand this environment where these notes, letters, and so on are exchanged. This is a completely different environment!.. Well, okay, in Penza - hang, well, take an interest in whether anyone was hanged or not. "Burn Baku!" - So, did they burn Baku or not? "Shoot!" - So, were they shot or not?

Vladimir Tolts:

- Vladlen Terentyevich, allow me a brief remark: but after all, they hanged and burned, absolutely, they created concentration camps, hanged, burned - after all, that was what happened!..

Vladlen Loginov:

- Now, if I now start talking about the concentration camps that existed at that time - everything was published, it was published by the Social Revolutionaries, by anyone - You won’t believe what Solovki was like before the year 23 or what the concentration camp that was here not far from the Shipka monument was like - these are completely different concepts.

Or take: who created the first concentration camps? They were created by the British during the Anglo-Burg War...

Vladimir Tolts:

- But it wasn’t the British who created the Gulag!

(By the way, concentration camps, as I remember, arose even earlier, at the end of the 19th century during the war in Cuba). However, this does not detract from Lenin’s priority in creating a concentration camp system on the scale of his own country.

Well, as for the thesis about misunderstanding the meaning of Lenin’s punitive vocabulary, I remember that when in 1991 the historian Anatoly Latyshev published Lenin’s previously unknown telegram about the burning of Baku, this thesis had already been put forward. Let our listeners judge for themselves how thorough it is.

Regarding the departure to Baku of the Chairman of the Cheka of the Baku Council of People's Commissars, Ter-Gabrielyan, Ilyich telegraphed on July 3, 1818:

“Can you also tell Theroux to prepare everything for the complete burning of Baku in the event of an invasion, and to announce this in print in Baku?”

Then the weekly Glasnost sternly reprimanded the historian: one must understand that Ilyich did not mean burning the entire city, but only the oil fields. To confirm this, they reprinted Lenin’s telegram again, but for some reason they left out the word “completely”. Well, Latyshev replied that there was no need to make an idiot out of Lenin, he understood perfectly well what oil fields were. In confirmation, another menacing telegram from Lenin was published:

“Smilga and Ordzhonikidze. We desperately need oil. Consider a manifesto to the population that we will slaughter everyone if oil and oil fields are burned and ruined, and vice versa, we will give life to everyone if Maikop and especially Grozny are handed over intact.”

Of course, we need to study what the brutality of Lenin’s vocabulary means. But like a word from a song, there is no need to throw out words from his works. And it is also worth remembering not only that Lunacharsky was not hanged, but also how many were hanged, shot, and deported by order of Ilyich.

To understand the mechanics of the emergence of the Lenin myth, it is important for us to realize now that Lenin’s contemporaries knew all this, or much of it, but this terrible knowledge did not at all prevent them from creating for themselves and their descendants some sublime and sugar-coated legend about a kind, intelligent and wonderful leader, if not God, then certainly something more than just a man.

Vladimir Buldakov:

To remember what the newspapers wrote, what kind of poems poets wrote, responses to Lenin’s death - this is something absolutely fantastic. I must say that, as a rule, if you take magazines, there are double issues - the second and third, the 24th year. Well, there is a lot of interesting stuff there, for example, the famous poet Mikhail Svetlov composed poems like this: “In our factory workshop, the largest blast furnace collapsed...” And, by the way, he was not alone with this very image, someone else composed it. Then, well, Mayakovsky, everyone probably knows this, this spell: “Death, don’t you dare!”, even this happened, someone wrote about the fact that Lenin died: “And the sad cry of the wintering rooks was heard..” What “wintering rooks” are, I still can’t understand!...

Well, these are such strange associations with this very death. That is, some kind of new era...

Vladimir Tolts:

And if those who saw him live wrote about Lenin like that, what can we say about those who replaced them. They could at least several times go through the constantly changing pages of Lenin’s works with the next publication and remain as if deaf and blind to Lenin’s orders like:

“From now on, the chairmen of the emergency commissions to combat counter-revolution will themselves be subject to immediate arrest if in the future they do not arrest those responsible for implementing the resolution of the Defense Council on combating snow drifts.”

This is from a resolution of the Defense Council written by Lenin - a threat no longer to mere mortals, but to comrades-in-arms, high-ranking security officers. But after Lenin, so many of them were imprisoned and shot!.. But the next generations of Lenin’s readers did not seem to see these lines.

Or, for example, the year 18: Lenin writes in the main provisions on the food dictatorship:

“It is more powerful to emphasize the main idea about the need to save from hunger to introduce and carry out a merciless and terrorist struggle and war against the peasant and other bourgeoisie who keep surplus grain. It is precisely to define that the owners of grain who have surplus grain and do not take it to stations and places of collection and dumping are declared enemies of the people and are subject to imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years, confiscation of all property and expulsion forever from their community.”

Let us return, however, to the discussions of the participants in our program about the movement in the field of studying and evaluating Lenin.

Vladlen Loginov:

We have made progress in one thing (in particular, when Vladimir Prokhorovich released his book), we are finally beginning to understand what people understood at the very beginning of the century: human free will, the ability to move history somewhere at his own discretion, and so on, it is minimal.

Now, if you read “The Red Troubles”, which Buldakov wrote, you will see in this (regardless of the will of the author) that a person acts in specific circumstances in the way that pushes the course of the historical process. This understanding that Lenin lived in a certain era, acted in certain circumstances, is gradually beginning to make its way into historical literature. And this is perhaps the most important thing.

Vladimir Buldakov:

If we talk about the problem “Lenin and mass consciousness”, there can only be one conclusion: mass consciousness is always mythological, if we talk specifically about our Russian mass consciousness of the twentieth century, then we can call this mythology the mythology of savages , in the full sense of the word, I am not exaggerating at all.

To a large extent, here, of course, communist propaganda succeeded, and in general, we are still experiencing the consequences of this communist propaganda in introducing this very image of Lenin into the brains. Because throwing Lenin off his pedestal is, of course, real savagery.

It is extremely difficult to say what will happen next, but we can say with confidence that in this very vacuum, when they do not know who Lenin was, a new wave of even wilder myth-making may arise.

There is no need to think that we are entering the 21st century with some kind of enlightened brains, nothing like that. Here, I think, the most incredible surprises await us.

And I think the figure of Lenin can still play a role here. That is, during his lifetime Lenin was surrounded by a certain myth, and his life after death is also, in general, indicative in this regard, and after the era or period of desacralization, any surprises are possible, in my opinion.

Egor Yakovlev:

I agree with you, although in general I understand that without a serious ideological boost, the figure of Lenin cannot exist in the mass consciousness. And I am inclined to think that it will simply fade away, remaining for scientific work and for understanding and preventing mistakes in the 21st century.

But, on the other hand, I contradict myself. My grandmother never regretted Nicholas II, she madly regretted the cook - she did not know that the cook remained alive - and she regretted that the cook boy was shot, and Nicholas II did not exist for the intelligentsia (my grandmother was from such a native Moscow intelligentsia). And today we have revived the figure of an insignificant person, in general, we have revived it to an incredible level; the same thing can happen to Lenin.