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