A fundamental source of Lenin’s strength and personal magnetism was the quality alluded to by Potresov—namely, the identification of his person with the cause: in him, the two became indistinguishable. This phenomenon was not unknown in socialist circles. In his study of political parties, Robert Michels has a chapter called “Le Parti c’est moi,” in which he describes similar attitudes among German Social-Democratic and trade-union leaders, including Bebel, Marx, and Lassalle. He quotes an admirer of Bebel’s who said that Bebel “always regards himself as the guardian of party interests and his personal adversaries as enemies of the party.”21 Potresov made a similar observation about the future leader of Bolshevism:
Within the framework of Social-Democracy or outside it, in the ranks of the general public movement directed against the autocracy, Lenin knew only two categories of people and phenomena, his own and not his own. His own, those which in one way or another came within the sphere of influence of his organization, and the others, which did not, and which by virtue of this fact alone he regarded as enemies. Between these polar opposites—comrade-friend and dissenter-enemy—for Lenin there existed no intermediate spectrum of social and personal human relations …22
Trotsky left an interesting example of this mentality. Recounting his visit with Lenin in London, he says that when showing him the sights Lenin invariably referred to them as “theirs,” by which he meant, according to Trotsky, not England’s, but “the enemy’s”: “This note was always present when Lenin spoke of any kind of cultural values or new achievements …
The normal “I/we—you/they” dichotomy, translated into the stark dualism “friend-enemy,” which in Lenin’s case went to uncompromising extremes, had two important historic consequences.
By thinking in this manner, Lenin was inevitably led to treat politics as warfare. He did not need Marx’s sociology to militarize politics and treat all disagreements as susceptible of resolution in one way only: by the dissenter’s physical annihilation. Lenin read Clausewitz late in life, but he was a Clausewitzian long before, intuitively, by virtue of his entire psychic makeup. Like the German strategist, he conceived war not as the antithesis of peace but as its dialectical corollary; like him, he was exclusively concerned with gaining victory, not with the uses to which to put it. His outlook on life was a mixture of Clausewitz and Social Darwinism: when, in a rare moment of candor, Lenin defined peace as a “breathing spell for war,” he inadvertently allowed an insight into the innermost recesses of his mind.24 This manner of thinking made him constitutionally incapable of compromise, except for tactical purposes. Once Lenin and his followers came to power in Russia, this attitude automatically permeated the new regime.
The other consequence of his psychological makeup was an inability to tolerate any dissent, whether in the form of organized opposition or even mere criticism. Given that he perceived any group or individuals not members of his party and not under his personal influence as ipso facto enemies, it followed that they had to be suppressed and silenced. That such actions were implicit in Lenin’s mentality, Trotsky noted as early as 1904. Comparing Lenin to Robespierre, he attributed to him the Jacobin’s dictum: “I know only two parties—that of good citizens and that of bad citizens.” “This political aphorism,” Trotsky concluded, “is engraved in the heart of Maximilian Lenin.”25 Here lay the germs of government by terror, of the totalitarian aspiration to complete control of public life and public opinion.
An attractive aspect of this quality was Lenin’s loyalty and generosity toward “good citizens,” a concept limited to his acolytes: it was the obverse side of hostility toward all outsiders. Much as he personalized disagreements with the latter, within his own ranks he displayed surprising tolerance of dissent. He did not purge dissenters but tried to persuade them; as the ultimate weapon he would use the threat of resignation.
