ISTORY has already recog:
nized the little man from
3imbirsk, “a small man in work
clothes,”’ as a giant, one of the
greatest of all times.

Before 1917 only a few thous-
ands in the world outside Rus-
3ia had heard the name of Lenin.
After that year practically every-
body knew it. His name leaped
into the headlines in October
1917, when he led the Russian
people to a victorious revolution
shat established the first social-
jst state in history, a nation
where the working people ruled.

Until then, not even the U.S.
embassy in Moscow knew the
name. “An agitator named Len-
in,” Ambassador Francis secretly
wrote the U.S. State Department,
had appeared on the Russian.
scene. “Will deport opportune-
ly,” ‘he said.

But the Russian people had dif-
ferent ideas. They backed this
man Lenin and his Bolshevik pro-
gram of “Peace, bread, land.” The
majority in the factories and on
the land wholeheartedly support-
ed the Communist party which he
founded years before and which
many respected and supported.
And his country, known under the
Czar as “the prison house of na-
tions,” abolished man’s .exploita-
tion. of man.

Who was. Lenin? Millions to-
day should know who he. really
was, what he really did. Should
learn what Communists mean
when they say he extended the
findings of Marx and Engels into
the 20th century to plumb the
source’ stream of imperialism,
which he described as capitalism's
final stage. They must learn why
Communists say Lenin, Marx,
Engels, .Stalin-are_ the _ giants ot
all time. : “

Little, indeed, is known here of

Lenin outside of Marxist circles. —

And that little is falsified. Who
knows the simplicity of this giant,
his modesty, his warmth, his love
for mankind and its reflection in
his care for individuals? Who
knows the zest for life that en-
abled him to confront death, many
times in his 54 years, and face it
simply, without pose, no heroics.
Maxim Gorky was one of the
many who knew and loved him.
‘The great author wrote:

“T have never met a man
who could laugh so infectiously
as Vladimir Ilyich. It was
strange to see how such a stern
realist, a man who saw so well,
and felt so deeply the inevit-
ability of great social catas-
~trophes, irreconcilables, relent-
less in his hatred toward -the
capitalist world, laughing like
a child, till the tears came, till
he choked with laughter. ‘To
laugh like that one must have
the soundest and healthiest of
minds.”

That, all who knew him, agreed
‘on.

He was plain, had the look of
the plebian about him, the air
of the ordinary man. He was
fess than average height, stockily
‘puilt, and in his early years—as
an exile in Samara—he had a fresh,
ruddy face, a budding mustache,-
a small reddish beard, and slightly
curly reddish hair which he lost
early in life.

The most striking thing about
him was his large head, with its
noble, alert expression. His rather
small eyes [seemed perpetually
narrowed, as though he were for-
ever assessing what he saw, and
his glance was serious, thoughtful,
intent.

‘All, throughout his life, attest
to the joyous bouyancy of the

man. It never left him, in vic-

tory or defeat.. When his side
won he admonished his comrades:
“No gloating”; when they suffer-

Litt uy Lt 1 bill nen I ul H

‘ing till nfght he

prison term Lenin devoted himself
to study. Political prisoners at
that time, under Czar Nicholas,
had been able to wrest privileges
our “enlightened” capitalism does

not dream of granting. They

could read, study. ’

Stocks of books were brought
to Lenin in his cell. From morn-
sat studying
book of statistics, volumes on eco-
nomics. “He was preparing his

' great work,. The Development of

Capitalism in Russia. -He never
went to bed without exercising,
never rose without giving himseif
a cold rubdown. He planned to
stay healthy, keep alert, and do
a prodigious amount of work. He
did.

An earmark of his character
meticulous

Though

was his regard for
detail. he knew _ his
powers, had confidence in himself, -
he never regarded himself too big
to undertake the smallest project.
Genius, they say, is the capacity
for taking infinite pains. Lenin
had that quality and it served him
well.

For example: when unrest
broke out in the big Thornton
textile mills in St. Petersburg, in
1895, he got all the facts avail-

'

*

Lenin: The man

By JOSEPH
NORTH

ed setback he warned, “No snivell-
ing.” Forever he inspired them,
brought them to their fullest sta-
ture.

He loved people, sought them
out despite his lifetime of arduous
study, writing, speaking, organiz-
ing, leading, and the workers felt
this man, with the hearty laughi
and the tongue that asked friend-
ly but probing questions, belonged.

\

How different the truth is from
what they tell us in the press. This
man who led millions to overthrow
the autocracy and to _ establish
socialism in his country- loved
children, could spend thours with
them. Cruel? Fanatic? _ Listen
to this, from a may who knew
him as a friend: :

“Children loved Ilyich
for no one ever loved children
and enjoyed playing, romping
with them as he did, and every
visit Ilyich paid us he was a
treat for the children.”

Contrast that with the picture
of the hard, cold, embittered Bol-
shevik the press tells you he was.
Fanatic? Narrow? Why the man
had the culture of the world as
his own. He loved literature and
in his spare moments eagerly re-
read the Russian classics, Push-
kin, Nekrassoyv, Tolstoy. He could
quote Shakespeare,Heine, Moliere.
Krupskaya, his wife, writes that
the last story he read as his life
ebbed away was one of Jack Lon-
don’s. Like Marx and Engels, he
knew the classic Greeks and Ro-
mans: Aeschylus, Plato, Socrates,
Virgil. .

Music, painting, drama, all at-
tracted him. Beethoven was his
favorite composer, and lie liked
to hear music, sang himself, and
when a group of his comrades got
together on an evening he en-
thusiastically led in the singing.

His love of life was inexhaust-
ible. Though the man as revolu-
tionary . leader, scholar, thinker,

surpassed: all in history, he knew

cycle, to climb mountains.

- acteristic of the man.

Be

Excursionists in the park near the house where Lénin spent the last
days of his life and where he died. .

the ' outdoors. He hunted when
in exile, hiked, loved to swim, to
three years in Siberi ae
hree iberia often saw
him in the fields, talking to peas-
ants, _ helping them, listening to
them, forever taking mental notes,
sharing their life, enjoying it.

To live life to the fullest he
found the need to organize his
time. That- he did, deliberately,
in that painstaking way so char-
s System,
organization, was in his fibre.
You find it in accounts of his
prison life, for example.

‘He was no man the Czar could
bury alive. While in his first

able about everything, from de-

“tails on piece rates, the fines lev-

ied on the workers, to the partic-

_ulars about the different kinds of

cloth. The teaflets he drew up
made excellent use of this know-

ledge and led to victories in the
strikes. that helped lay the basis
for a mass workers’ movement in

Russia.

You found it in his attention
to the newspaper Pravda, which
he founded. He went over every
article, every phrase himself,
Later, when in exile, he turned
first to the column that announc-
ed the contributors from the vari-
ous factories, jotted down their
names. for he regarded their pen-

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JANUARY 23, 1953 — P.

1

1

7

nies as political acts of prime im-
portance.
@

Wherever men were shackled,
there Lenin was. ‘This genius of
the working class, “a mountain
eagle,” as Stalin called him, was
forever preoccupied with real
people.

The revolutionary leader could be.
no pendarit, no liberator rushing .
from a library. His personal re-
lations were forever warm, simple, _
direct. Though he could castigate
a co-worker for mistakes when it
was necessary, he behaved always
as an “older comrade,” never
‘humiliated” them.

After the establishment of the
socialist state, in the midst of the
civil war and the intervention,
haggard with work, driving him-
self day and night, he wrote notes
to his secretary to get rooms for
a foreign Communist, warm cloth-
ing for the child of a dead com~
rade. And he personally check-
ed to see if it was done .

_Karpinsky, an associate, says:

“Among the human_ traits,
rarely encountered, which pul
Vladimir Ilyich head and should- ,
ers above other people,’ weré
his extraordinary consideration,
sympathy, tact, simplicity and
modesty, not only in his atti-
tude toward comrades—wheth-
er members of the central com-
mittee. or rank and filers—but -
to people in general. whether
celebrities or scrubwomen.” \

This trait is remarkably illus
trated in his characteristic reaction

to the subbotniks — the workers
Who volunteered, in 1920, to work

“without pay, in their spare times

to help the socialist state.

Lenin exulted in this iniative by
the Moscow railroad workers, 1
garded it “as the source of strengt!
and a guarantee of the inevitable
and complete triumph of commu”
ism.” He saw in it the essence
of all he had strived for in his
lifetime. Men were working fF
others; not merely for. themselves:
but for their fellows. He wrot®

“Communism begins when the
rank and file of workers begia
to display self-sacrificing ¢0™
cern that overcomes all obstacles
for increasing the productivity
of labor, for husbanding eveTy
pood of grain, coal, iron and
other products, which do 19% |
accrue to the workers perso™”
ally, or to their ‘close’ kith and
kin, ‘but to their ‘remote’ kith
and kin; i.e., to society 45 e
WHOlE Rae &

And this episode is more T® *
vealing, perhaps, than all: de
stress the paramount importance
of this voluntary workers’ mov@
ment, to spur it on, Lenin helped
clear the Kremlin Square of rub
bish left by the Civil War. He
turned out*to work with studen’
of ‘the Kremlin military schoo!
One of them tells the story:

“We noticed a small man ee
work clothes, standing 0? oF
right near the school banne
It was Lenin. Together be
cleared the Kremlin Square °
all the rubbish. Ilyich car™@
logs- on this shoulders, YoX®
himself to a car and drags®
stones.” :

It seems to me an epitaph bY
the man’s life, the refutation ae
his libellers, those who call “1p
tyrant, despot. He yoked ni ie
to the needs of history, t?
requirements of man’s
and to win it the man wh
ed the Communist party f
paralleled burdens. ‘They ae +m,
ramparts a Bolshevik can’t 8”
he said. And he won. :

GE 10