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Leonard Schapiro and the Russian Revolutions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
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‘MORALITY’, LENIN TOLD THE 529 APPRENTICE APPARATCHIKI gathered at the Third Congress of the Communist Youth League in October 1920, ‘is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building a new, a communist society… We do not believe in an eternal moralit and we expose the falseness of all fables about morality.’ Lenin's rapt young listeners learned the lesson well: for some it paved the way to high office in Stalin's party, state and police machines, across the corpses of Lenin's own comrades ‘objectively’ become ‘enemies of the people’; many were to perish as they lived by it. The goal was sublime: the ‘true‘ freedom and unity natural to Man, but thwarted till now by class division and exploitation. For such a goal all expedient instruments and methods were fitting. To spurn vile means where these advanced ‘communism’ was the true immorality.
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References
1 Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., vol. 41, Moscow 1963, pp. 311, 313.Google Scholar
2 Schapiro, Leonard, 1917. The Russian Revolutions and the Origins of Present‐Day Communism, London, Maurice Temple‐Smith, 1984.Google Scholar
3 The Origin of the Communist Autocracy. Political Opposition in the Soviet State. First Phase 1917–1922, London, G. Bell & Sons, Ltd, 1954.
4 The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, p. v.
5 1917, p. 219.
6 Turgenev — His Life and Times, New York, Random House, 1978. See also his translation of Turgenev’s Spring Torrents, London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1972.
7 Schapiro, Leonard, Rationalism and Nationalism in Russian Nineteenth Century Political Thought, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1967, pp. 167–8.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., p. 167.
9 1917, p. 13.
10 Ibid., p. 14.
11 Ibid., p. 94.
12 Ibid., p. 95.
13 Ibid., p. 214.
14 Ibid., p. 184.
15 1917, p. 210. Apart from Schapiro’s important contributions to understanding the thought and actions of Lenin embedded in his larger works, he left several illuminating essays on ‘this strange and troubled genius’. See especially his ‘Lenin after Fifty Years’, in Schapiro, Leonard and Reddaway, Peter, eds, Lenin. The Man, the Theorist, the Leader, A Reappraisal, London, Pall Mall Press, 1967;Google Scholar ‘Lenin’s Contribution to Politics’, Political Quarterly, xxxv, no. 1, 1964, pp. 9–22; and ‘Lenin’s Heritage’, Encounter, July 1970, pp. 57–9.
16 Original edition New York, Random House and London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960; second ed., revised and enlarged, New York, Random House and London, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970.
17 Original edition London, Hutchinson, 1965; several subsequent editions.
18 For details, see my ‘Leonard Schapiro as student of Soviet Politics’, in Rigby, T. H., Archie Brown and Peter Reddaway, eds, Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR. Essays dedicated to Leonard Schapiro, London, Macmillan, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 1917, p. 213.
20 Ibid., p. 216.
21 The best discussion of the issues here is still Friedrich, Carl J., Michael Curtis and Benjamin Barber, Totalitarianism in Perspective: Three Views, New York, Praeger, 1969.Google Scholar
22 See Schapiro, Leonard, Totalitarianism, London, Pall Mall, 1972;Google Scholar ‘The Nature of Total Power’, Political Quarterly, XIX (1958), pp. 105–113; ‘Reflections on the Changing Role of the Party in the Totalitarian Polity’, Studies in Comparative Communism, II, no. 2, April 1969, pp. 1–13; ‘The Roles of the Monolithic Party under the Totalitarian Leader’ (with Lewis), in Wilson Lewis, John, ed., Party Leadership and Revolutionary Change in China, Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1970, pp. 114–148;Google Scholar ‘Totalitarianism in Foreign Policy’, in Kurt London, ed., The Soviet Impact on World Politics, New York, Hawthorn, 1974; and ‘Totalitarianism’, in Marxism, Communism and Western Society, VIII, 1973, pp. 188–201.