LENINE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9692, 21 June 1917, Page 4

LENINE

REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIAN PROMINENT SOCIALIST FOR MANY YEARS. Dispatches from Russia, says Hie Now Y'orl: "Times,” have been full of a name new to American renders —Loninc. Me hear of Lenino travelling through Germany and receiving every sort of courtesy and aid from the German authorities: of Lenino haranguing a crowd from flio balcony of the Petrograd home of a famous Russian dancer; of adherents of Lenino driven from one of his lectures bv an infuriated mob of Russians as a protest against his pcaoe-at-any-prico exhortations; of a parade oi Russian soldiers, wounded in battle against the Germans, marching through the slrcciu of Petrograd with banners' bearing inscriptions advising "Lenine and Co.” to discontinue their pro-German agitation and "get back to William,” their boss. All his life Leuino has been "again tho Government.” Not only that—he comes of a family of chronic rebels. One brother, while a student at Petrograd, in 1887, was hanged, for complicity in a plot to assassinate Czar Alexander 11. The man who has now leaped into tho limelight as tho arch-troublemaker against the new democratic regime in Russia, has been promincait among the Socialists of his native land since the early nineties, lie is described as a man about 45 years old, one of the most fiery of all Russian orators, who chooses' the simplest of words and phrases in his speeches. Ills real name is Vladimir Hitch Ulianoff, and he hails from the district of Simbirsk in tba Volga region of Russia. He first came to the fore in 1895, when he wrote a book on economics strongly impregnated with revolutionary doctrines. That got him “in bad” right then and there with the Czarists. From that year onward he began to spend a. good part of his time away from Russia. Lcnino’s second book appeared in 1899, and is by far the best known of all bis works. It is entitled. '“The Development of Capitalism in Russia,” and placed its author in the forefront of the Russian Socialist Party. In 1901 Lenine bobbed up as editor oi tho Socialistic newspaper ‘lskar l.tue “Spark”). It was published m Paris, the desire of the Czar’s pobc© to la? hands on Lenine having become so pros sing ns to render Ids residence in Russia impossible. This payer had a big circulation in Russia in spite of the fact that anyone found-with a copy in tis 'possession was sent to prison forth:ln 1905 he became a candidate for thi Second Duma, from the District of Petrograd, but he was defeated. Ho was active in tho revolutionary movement or that year, which brought Red Monday, and was the most serious with which tho Czar’s regime had been confronted for a lonjf timo. When tho rebels had been downed Lenine again. found foreign countries more healthful and resided abroad continuously—at least he did-“officially' —until the 1 events which nave 1 ust brought him again into prominence. At the outbreak of thF” war he was in Cracow, capital of Austrian Poland, where he was promptly gaoled as an alien enemy. But ho was soon released by the Austrian authorities, ’ whereupon -he returned to his old haunts, Paris and Switzerland. , ■ T _ , “I am against him,” said a New York Russian, ■ “and so are most Russians hero; but lam convinced that he Is doing what ho is doing not for the Germans, hut for what ho thinks Are the interests of international Socialism. “The hulk of the Russian Socialists are for. the continuation of the war against' Germany. Lenino scornfully dubs these men ‘social patriots,'’ and declares that, because they do not want peace for the sake of tho development of, international Socialism, they are not real' Socialists at all. '“They 'retort bv calling him and his crowd ‘Porajentzi’—the people who want defeat. And they heap accusations on Lenine of complicity with the Germans, and ask him searching questions as' to how it happened that be. travelled across Germany by. special train and was made much of by the authorities there. “His adherents explain this away by asserting that when ho crossed Germany recently there happened to bo a special train bearing Russian prisoners of war who had been exchanged for Germans held in Russia, and that Lenino was allowed to ride on the train purely- as a matter of courtesy., “I think it safe to say that if Lenine were actually in the pav of tho Germans. or really doing German propaganda work, ho would have been arrested long ago ”