HISTORIC ENIGMA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 8 August 1924, Page 10

HISTORIC ENIGMA.

CRIMINAL OR GENIUS? RUSSIAN AUTHOR’S REMARKABLE NOTE OX LENIN. The following remarkable article on Renin bv Mikhail Petrovitch Artzybasheff, translated by Erida Strindberg, appears in the June number'of the I orlnightiy Review A man lias died, whom some considered -the greatest genius and some the greatest criminal of our time. While be was alive one could praise him, curse him, cover him with flattery, or threats. Over his grave all this lias become futile*. It maters not; not one word will reach the terrible distance .whither his red shacie has passed. He no longer hears the curses of hired mourners—he is dead. His corpse lies in a red grave—this corpse which decayed even during his life, just as crumbled the entire venture to which lie had given his strength. No one will ever again see or hear him who was the dictator of Russia and the leader of the revolution. Years will pass, new people will live, .j,\ere will be new wars and revolutions; new ideas, leaders and prophets will arise, life will assume new forms of which we aie not granted to know anything. “■Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” and the memory of man'will not keep the living image of our revolution and of its leader. Only the 'laborious historian rummaging in* dusty archives among half putrid documents of the past will read in clumsy, antiquated .lettering the name of Lenin and uig out the bloody story of our days. And ho will ponder heavily over the historic enigma. Who was this man? By what deeds did he immortalise his name, what poweg lay hidden in his round, bald skull—because of which millions of people with passion and despair rushed to destroy their homeland, plunder and kill each other? Was his the mind of a genius, unerringly foreseeing future fate ?

No. True, he calculated the moment; he knew how to use it for the seizure of power ; he told beforehand that war would call forth a we volution in Russia. He was able to organise a party and tc. mould it with iron discipline. He stirred the masses to follow him agid made them submit to his will and destroy the age-old shelters of millions of people. But genius and destruction are -irreconcilable concepts. Genius is a creative force, and he —created nothing. He only destroyed. His genius achieved nothing save ‘‘follies and mistakes” which he himself had the courage to publicly confess. AH his calculations and prophecies proved to be one wholesale error, a deadly crime against sanity. . . . The Communist State revealed itself as an impossibility under contemporary conditions, and collapsed completely. \\ as fie a fiery fanatic, kindling hearts by the power of his tragic pathos? No. There was not in him that exaltation which forces on and up to the end, regardless of all. He was tricky; he recreated; lie turned back; lie sought breathing spaces and compromises. Was he “the greatest criminal?” . Objectively, yes. No man ever caused humanity so much suffering, and he was the inciter to all the crimes perpetrated by the Bolsheviks, and the dark masses of the people.. It was at his word that they plundered, violated —he knew it, wanted it. But subjectively he was not a. criminal. Personally he killed no one, robbed no one, and would hairdly have been capable of that. But Lenin’s sin was worse than “the pitiful sin of ignorance.” Precisely Lenin was the soul of Bolshevisun the living personification ol its horrors. In his brain were born those ideas which destroyed life and iinman beings. Thus, not a “genius,” not a fanatic, not a hero, not a demon, and not a seeker of honours —what then, was he? Wherein lay the secret of liis fatal power? Con temporary science is not able to establish definite boundaries between “genius” and “pshvchic abnormality.” But the autopsy of Lenin established beyond doubt that he had been pshvehloallv abnormal long before he became openly insane. He was on the direct way to complete madness, and only the deviation of the process on to the direction of the inotory centres, putting an end to his life, saved him from idiocy. Always with the fixed, sly, malicious smile of the lunatic, his brain seething with diseased ideas, uncontrolled like a demon, and wily like a beast, came Lenin. Alone and solely in the fact that his mania coincided with the dark instincts ol the Masses and the secret desires of their leaders lies the whole secret of l.is success and witchery. Without setting dates or foretelling the manlier, 1 can affirm the following: Bolshevism and Lenin were one and the same thing. Bolshevism, is merely destruction. The death of Lenin is an event of decisive .significance, as it took Hie ground from under the Soviet nower by disclosing the banki nptev of its ideals. The result'of it must be the complete break-up of the Communist ParLy into three principal groups; reascuahle men who. shaking off the hypnosis, understand the necessity for a complete break with the Communist past, and the need for reestablishing a norma! order; extreme

Utopians who see salvation in the re-.’tnj-n to the methods of belligerent C'ombnnnism: and finally, adventurers, who only want to seize the power fallen from the' dead hands of the leader. The struggle between these groups must sooner or later end in armed encounters. si nee their differences are irreconcilable. In this struggle, conseouentlv and naturally, must be involved at first the rank and file of the party, then the Red Army. and. finally, the masses of the people. Whoever will prove the victor in this struggle, the result will he the fall of the Soviet nower. and the destruction of Rnlslievi sm. Rut the process will he difficult and painful. There will he street disturbances. plunder and murder. The re will lie mass arrests and executions. The executioners, sensing their ruin, will try to destroy in advance all those in whom they see their possible rivals and avengers for the blood-stained nast, and the lowest masses will celebrate with pillage and plunder the last Red Days of dying Bolshevism.