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Lenin - Personality Cult

In the Soviet Union, "Leninist modesty" was included in proverbs. Infinitely busy and business-like to the core, Lenin, probably, was really quite indifferent to the Byzantine incense, if only because he did not have the leisure to enjoy it. The desire to glorify Lenin, to give him some supernatural qualities, was already apparent during his life and was caused by many factors of an objective and subjective order. Among them were the cult syndrome of the 300-year reign of the Romanov dynasty, the low political culture of the society, and the absence of strong democratic traditions in the country.

Love for Lenin sometimes took forms close to the deification of his image. The facts also indicate that Lenin sharply opposed this practice. The realization that he was dealing not with isolated facts but with a social phenomenon came to Lenin already in the beginning of the autumn of 1918. Thus, in September 1918, in a conversation with a number of leading workers, he declared: "With great displeasure, I notice that my personality begins to exalt. It's vexing and harmful. We all know that it is not a matter of personality. I myself would be inconvenient to forbid this kind of phenomenon ... But you should gradually apply the brake on the whole story".

However, the process of exaltation of the personality of Lenin continued beyond his will, which was reflected in the press. Numerous materials devoted to him, addresses, greetings, etc. were published in newspapers and magazines, etc. Remaining true to himself, Lenin tried to deal with these facts.

" what do they write in the newspapers? .. It's embarrassing to read. They write about me that I'm so, so, everyone exaggerates, they call me a genius, some kind of special person, but here is some kind of mysticism ... "

Attempts to elevate Lenin to the pedestal of the cult were also observed among intellectuals. It suffices to recall the article by A.M.Gorky entitled "Vladimir Ilyich Lenin," published in 1920 in the journal Kommunist Internatsional. In this article Gorky compared Lenin with Peter the Great, called him "the legendary person," ... "the man who stands in the center and above all else," believed that "in the epoch of predominance of religious sentiments, Lenin would be considered a saint," emphasized that Vladimir Ilyich "possesses the gift of foresight, the ingenious intuition of the thinker-experimenter," etc.

The spread of the cult moods was also facilitated by the rapidly growing Soviet bureaucracy, for which, like for any other bureaucracy, the deification of authority is its way of thinking. The desire to exalt Lenin could also be observed among the leaders of the Party and the Soviet state.

In these conditions, the danger of the cult of Lenin's personality was quite real. The only one who uncompromisingly and consistently struggled with it was Vladimir Ilyich himself. And while he was alive, he still managed to restrain the universal campaign of raising and praising his personality. However, after his death, this barrier was lifted, which was used by Stalin. While exalting Lenin, he sought to exalt himself by introducing into the mass consciousness of people the false notion that he, Stalin, was the only faithful disciple of Lenin and the continuer of his work.

It is noteworthy that, perhaps, one of the first to understand the development of cult phenomena understood NK Krupskaya. On the mourning days of 1924 she addressed the working people with the following words: "I have a big request to you: do not let your sorrow over Ilyich go to the external veneration of his personality. Do not arrange him with monuments, palaces of his name, magnificent celebrations in his memory, etc., he attached so little importance to his life, so much was burdened by all this. Remember how much more poverty, turmoil in our country. Do you want to honor the name of Vladimir Ilyich - arrange nurseries, kindergartens, homes, schools, libraries, outpatient clinics, hospitals, homes for disabled people, etc., and most importantly, let's carry out his covenants in everything." But in practice much was done just the opposite.

It would seem that after Lenin's death there was absolutely no need to fan his cult, especially since Stalin, who thanks to Lenin's paralysis and death only stayed at the position of the General Secretary of the Central Committee, felt nothing but his usual poisonous hatred for the deceased. And yet, it was after Lenin's death that the cult of his personality began to blossom.

Stalin immediately acted as the chief interpreter of Leninism, which he defined as "the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolutions." Later, when the powerful chorus of flattering voices bawled about the "great Stalin", he modestly commemorated Lenin and even once proclaimed an original toast: "For the health of Lenin and Leninism!"

On Lenin's death day, January 22 of each year, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow hosted a solemn mourning meeting, where the report was made under the stereotyped name "(for so many years) without Lenin under the leadership of Stalin along the Leninist path."

Favorably overlooked by censorship, the newspapers printed a myth that, before resolving difficult questions, Comrade Stalin at night descends alone in the Mausoleum "to consult with Ilyich." After Comrade Stalin descended to the Mausoleum for a longer period, the cult of Lenin sharply increased. This was not prevented by the reasoning of the Malenkov period "about the role of the individual in history", nor the "exposure of the personality cult" of Stalin that followed Khrushchev.

This is primarily a recognition of the real role of Lenin and the desire to raise the one next to which they turned from the leaders of a small illegal party into people who had enormous power, wide popularity and popularity. Glorifying Lenin, they thereby exalted themselves, because they were considered his companions and disciples.

So the cult of Lenin flourished especially after Khrushchev. Decisions and speeches, books, pamphlets, articles, lectures, movies, radio and television programs, meetings and conferences, memorial plaques and complexes, posters, portraits and busts of Lenin - all these products of the propaganda machine of the nomenclature quickly passed a narrow line separating, according to Napoleon, great from the funny.

It seems that, really, if Lenin could hear shameless panegyrics in the Soviet press in his honor, he would feel a sharp disgust. This feeling has engulfed the inhabitants of the Soviet Union. The people expressed this feeling, as usual, with anecdotes. Even under Stalin, there were jokes about his cult. The anecdote about the contest for the best monument to Pushkin: the third prize is the monument "Lenin reads Pushkin", the second one - "Pushkin reads Lenin", the first one - "Lenin".

But no matter how the people mock the Leninist cult, this cult was diligently supported by the nomenclatura. Gorbachev paid his tribute. The goal is to inculcate the people and constantly support the cult of the leader in it. The head of the party, especially if he is also the head of the government, occupies the same posts that were occupied by Lenin in his time.

If Lenin could become after the death of Marx and Engels a kind of living god of Marxism, it was only natural that after Lenin's death someone should occupy this place. In his book about Stalin, Henri Barbousse found a successful formula for this phenomenon: "Stalin is Lenin today." In such an ideal case, the cult of the living leader overshadowed the cult of the one resting in the Mausoleum, and vice versa, the further the living leader was from the apex of deification, the more actively the cult of Lenin was propagated.