THEY RAISED UP A GOD

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 273, 18 November 1936, Page 16

THEY RAISED UP A GOD

'Throughout Russia Lenin is celebrated in song and story. Scores of racial minority groups in the vast hinterland have constructed a body of legends revolving about his personality. Most of them have originated in the hot, dusty plateau of Middle Asia. Hero a simpler and more primitive people than lives on the Moscow steppe, has, with all the wealth and power of Oriental imagination, transformed the human revolutionary leader into a Titan. Wandering minstrels/ re-interpreting the events of the last 20 years in terms more familiar to their audiences than Marxian principles, have spread the lbgands far and wide among slant-eyed Uxbeks, Turkmenians, Tadjiks and Kirghiz. Lenin is pictured sometimes as. a giant and sometimes as a sage, sent by Allah to save his oppressed people.

“As the fat'monstrous bear,” be T gins one verse, “destroys the ant-hill, licking up thousands of ants, so war swept. . the , earth with destruction. ’ ’ Princes and landlords organised the war to enrich themselves, sending the peasants out to die, while they reaped the harvest of riches. “At last tho air of Heaven became foul with flame and smoke and Allah’s robe was drenched with blood, and his cup of patience ran over. Allah set before his counsellors a stone weighing ten tons. The man who could lift it would be the mart to bring peace back to the world, but all Allah’s counsellors failed.

“In desperation Allah descended to earth disguised as a peasant, to seek one would could life the stone. He looked long and-found none, until he came upop one man with a large forehea4».,w.hom he. decided, to try. „

Legends of Lenin’s Immortality

“The man’s arms were lean and his hands like straw, but he did not evon touch the stoue. Instead he placed a beam under tho corner of tho stone. Put a second beam over the first, pressed the second and raised the ten-ton rock without effort. The name of the man was Lenin. “Allah took him to his chamber for 40 days and 40 nights of instruction in heavenly wisdom, and then sent him to earth where he brought peace and brotherly love to all men.” The Soviet Government, which usually frowns on the mere thought of diety, has made uo effort to suppress such myths as these touching on the personality of Lenin and tending to make him the beloved idol.

The legends of Lenin circulate also in European Russia, though those collected in Western regions, in contradistinction to those of Soviet Central Asia, drop tho religious note, which is replaced by official Government and Communist teaching.

To-day, so goes a story, Lenin lies alive on the banks of the Moscow river under the Kremlin wall, and when something goes wrong anywhere in field or workshop, Lenin gets up, comes to the spot and gives the right advice. But Lenin cannot bo seen because a cloa kof invisibility conceals him from the people. Legends of Lenin's immortality are riot uncommon among the peasantry. His name, too, is often interwoven into the fabric of the old fairy tales of the “cap of darkness,” the “seven-league boots” and other supernatural powers. In recent folk tales, though, the name of Stalin is closely linked with that of Lenin.