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Lenin Rediscovered and Reloaded

A COMMON THEME OF THESE TWO BOOKS IS AN ATTEMPT to rescue the reputation of Lenin; in the case of Lenin Rediscovered it is by re-interpreting his ideas; in the case of Lenin Reloaded it is by showing his continuing relevance for the present day. Lars Lih’s book is an extensive commentary on Lenin’s What is to Be Done? (WITBD), together with a new translation of the work made by the author. Lih has chosen to focus on WITBD because it has been widely regarded as the founding document of Bolshevism and the one in which Lenin first revealed the essence of his outlook. However, because previous commentators on WITBD worked without the requisite knowledge of the book’s historical context in international social democracy and the polemical in-fighting among Russian social democrats in late 1901, Lenin’s work was misunderstood, and it is this misinterpretation of Lenin’s intention that has found its way into the textbooks. Lih intends his commentary and translation to put WITBD in its proper context and in this way to ‘rediscover’ a Lenin who is the very opposite of the one portrayed in the textbooks. When Lih talks about the textbook interpretation of Lenin he has a particular one in mind. This is what he calls the ‘worry about the workers’ (p. 13). He illustrates this by a quotation from Abraham Ascher to the effect that if the working class refused to be budged towards activism the revolution could never be made. Lenin’s WITBD was a pamphlet which analysed the masses’ political inertia and looked for ways to overcome it. To show that this interpretation is widespread Lih gives a long list of scholars including Leopold Haimson, Samuel Baron, Adam Ulam, Leonard Schapiro, Richard Pipes and others who have subscribed to this view. Throughout his book Lih EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 61, No. 3, May 2009, 535–544