LENIN

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10296, 3 June 1919, Page 10

LENIN

A HEREDITARY NOBLE THE CREATOR, OF BOLSHEVISM.. ; Of articles on Bolshevism there is no , end, but in the labyrinth of conflicting rumours nad reports with which he is confronted the impartial reader frequently finds it hard to pick his way. Difficult as it is for him to conjure' up before his eyes even the vaguest picture of Bolshevism as a political philosophy, he is completely nonplussed when he attempts to form an estimate of the character and personality of the man who is its creator and its chief exponet.

The truth of tlio. matter is that Lenin is by,no means an easy man to know (writes a ■ correspondent 1 in the London ‘‘Times’’!. For years he has enveloped himself in a veil of mystery—a . policy dictated as much by personal inclination as by political , motives, and outside his own §mall circle of disciples and admirers there are not only very few Russi ans who may be said to know him intimately, but oven comparatively few have cv'or seen him. If, therefore,: he appears to the average Englishman as ,a- red-shirted, high-booted pirate chief; the fault is chiefly of his own making.i His all-absorbing passion Is the gospel of, world r revolution. Bom at Simbri'sk bn April 10th, 1870, Vladimir Llitch Ulinnoff, alias “Lenin,” “Hitch,” “Din,” “Tylin,” is a hereditary noble, and the son of a State Councillor. ' His mother had a small estate in the Kazan Government, and after her husband’s death was in receipt of a State pension. Lenin’s two sisters and bis brother Dmitri were at one time all under police supervision, while his brother. Alexander was executed in 1887 for complicity in a terrorist plot against the life of Alexander 111. Brought up in the Orthodox faith, Lenin is one of the few genuine Russians to bo found, among the Bolshevist leaders. After completing his course at the Simbrisk Gymnasium. in 1887, he entered the Kazan University, only to be expelled and banished from Kazan a few months later for participating in on anti-Govern-ment students’ riot; In 1891. however, we find him attending the University of Petrograd, where he studied law and economics. In 1895 he made his first _ journey abroad .to Germany, returning in the same year to Petrograd, where he was again arrested on account of his Socialist activities. . EXILED FOB THREE YEARS. .

On this occasion h© was exiled for three years to the village of Sushenskbc, "|n Eastern Siberia', being forbidden on the expiration of his sentence to reside in any of the big cities, factory centres, or _ university towns ■of Russia. After his release in 1900 he again went abroad. From this period begins his real career as a Socialist J loader, and the next 17 years are a long circle of Socialist Congresses abroad, j culminating in the ZimmCrwald* Con- 1 ferences in 1915 and his dramatic return to Russia in the notorious “sealed” wagon. ■ During this period ho visited many countries, .including England and made the acquaintance of all the revolutionary elements in Europe. His favourite residence, how. ever, wns nt Poronin,. in Galicia, from which point of vantage ha was able, to maintain a close contact with there- , volutibnary movement in Russia. | PERSONAL APPEARANCE. J

Is Lenin a genius? 1 .Many .Russians ‘ have denied it, aud certainly there is nolnjng m Ins personal appearance to suggest even faintly a resemblance to the superman. Snort of stature, rather plump, with short, thick neck, broad shoulders, round, red face, nose slightly turned up, brownish moustache, and short, stubby beard, ho looks at first glance mono' like a, provincial Officer tnan a leader of men. And yet, on second thoughts, there is something m those steely grey’ eyes,’ that arrests, the | attention, something in that quizzing,' haif-contemptuous, half-smiling loos which speaks of boundless seif-confi-dence aud conscious superiority. His knowledge of languages is above tho average. Hs is a proficient German scholar, while he writes and speaks English wi.h toler-' able accuracy. Ho is certainly by far 1 the greatest intellectual force which the. Russian revolution has yet brought to light. , It is not, however, to his inielleotnal powers that he owes his predominating position inside his own party. The almost fanatical respect..with which lie i is regarded by the men who are his colleagues, and who are at least as jealous of each other as politicians in other countries, is due to other qualities than mere intellectual capacity. Chief of these are his iron courage, his grim, relentless determination, and his complete lack of all self-interest. In his creed; of world-revolution he is as unscrupulous and ,as uncompromising as a 'Jesuit, and in his code, of political ethics the end to be attained is a justification for the. employment of any weapon. To him capital is tho fiend incarnate, and with such an enemy he neither gives nor asks for mercy. A FRANK STATEMENT.

Yet as an individual he is not without certain virtues. In the many attacks, both justified and unjustified, which have been made against him, no breath of scandal ' has ever touched his private life. He is married —according to all accounts singularly happily married—and, in a country where corruption has now reached its apogee, he stands out head and shoulders above all his colleagues as the. one man who it above suspicion. To Lenin the stories of Bolshevist orgies and carousals hare no relation. His own worldly needs are more than frugal, and his personal budget is probably tho most modest of all the Bolshevist Commissaries. Dishonest, treacherous, guilty of the worst forms of secret displomacy as the Bolshevists have been in all their public dealings. Lenin himself, on tho rare occasions on which he has consented to see a foreign- journalist or a foreign official; has always been extraordinarily frank. “Personally. I have nothing noninst you. Polit’cally. however, you are roy enemy, and I must nso every weapon I think fit for ronr dc-trnetion. v our Government does the same against us.’’ twhe-p Trotsky and o'hor Bolshevist* have pursued their enemies with a hitter. vor'onal hatred Lenin in certain cases, where the individual has been of little account, has even been jrniltv of acts of rVuienoy. But where Trotsky ought shrink throueh fear of the conseonenoc.s from ohoo* : oe io r-nfl men in en'-d tdord Lenin, .altho-'-'t he is not one of the chief advocates of the feernr. would assu-edlv not hesitate : f he thought such an action were essential to the advancement of his cause.