Russell's 1920 primer on Bolshevism, (re-issued in toto except for
the exclusion of a chapter, not written by him anyway), has long
been one of those ??eminal studies every Marxist and Russian
Revolution expert either dips into or learns about from other
experts who have. A curiously luminous heirloom, (just think of the
involuted commentaries spawned in the '40's and '50's), its
interest remains, however, largely historical, a case of betting on
the right horse. For when so many Western apologists, often
disingenuously, heralded the New Jerusalem, Russell after a month's
stay said- with more sorrow than anger-Nyet. He found the Soviet
worker had "no sense whatever of having been liberated from a
tyranny," that love of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite
as great a source of injustice, ?? love of money," and that-
forward looking- Kremlinmania would evolve from "mere
self-preservation, into a policy of imperialism." of course Russell
was then and is still a socialist; therefore postures to the effect
that "the existing capitalist system is doomed" are as prevalent as
the flaw-spotting vis-a-vis economic determinism, class warfare,
the Soviet Constitution and so forth. Essentially Russell ??eared
the movement's messianism, its doled-out dogmas, its belief in
human transformation through force- in short, the means, not the
ends, though even there-in the ??best chapters- he disowns much of
Marx's philosophy, really it's Hegelianism, always ??Russell bete
noire. Short, suggestive notes on Lenin, Trotsky, Gorki. (Kirkus
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