Lenin is more alive than all the living

[Kshasty]

Vladimir Lenin, who was commonly described in Russia as "more alive than all the living," has been forgotten once and for all 140 years after his birth. His specter no longer haunts Russia, and Communist Party functionaries pay homage to him only out of a sense of duty.

No one will think to put up pictures of Lenin around town to commemorate his birthday on April 22. And even if some weirdo does, nobody will notice. Even the dispute over removing his body from the Mausoleum does not arouse as much passion as debates over the legacy of his successor, Joseph Stalin, even though it was Stalin himself who created the posthumous cult of Lenin and immortalized him in legend as the "leader of the international proletariat."

Lenin's real destiny is much more interesting than the legends about him. The myths cannot contain the man. Many revolutionaries dreamed of changing the world but few did. Lenin did the impossible. He fundamentally changed the course of human history.

Lenin's rise to supreme power is as remarkable as it is unexpected. His entire biography up till the 1917 October Revolution is a string of nearly endless defeats.

He was expelled from university for no good reason. All he did was stand silently at a student protest. But for the brother of Alexander Ulyanov, a would-be terrorist hanged by the tsar, this was enough. Surprisingly, the tsar's secret police proved less an obstacle to Lenin than his own party comrades, who would not elect him the sole leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP), as he desperately wanted. No one recognized his authority, and he quarreled with all the prominent Social Democrats.

Lenin and his Bolsheviks ("the majority" in Russian) broke off from the party, but they remained in the minority at nearly all the congresses. He was often alone even among the Bolsheviks. His closest allies spurned his ideas and initiatives. By the fall of 1917, he was ready to bypass the party's Central Committee and lead an uprising with a small but devoted band of comrades.

Ten years earlier, Lenin was caught off guard by the failed 1905 Revolution, as he would be later by the 1917 February Revolution. Lenin was overwhelmed by a sense of frustration - he had no money and not even the slightest chance of success.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20100422/158706963.html