Lenin is a symbol of Russian globalism: what can he give to the world today?

In my opinion, not a single person has influenced human history and the development of human society as strongly as Lenin. The state conceived and created by him became an alternative to all previous history, showed a completely new line of development of mankind. Yes, it was based on the age-old desire of peoples for social justice, for a better life and a beautiful future, but no one before Lenin had been able to put such a project into practice.

Thanks to the new incarnation of Russia – the USSR, the 20th century became the Russian century, the century of Russia, and our country became the initiator of the entire historical process for almost a century. The initiative came from us, we set the movement, we were leaders, and even if we were not the first by some parameters, the gap was rapidly closing. In my youth, one of my favorite books was (and still is) Mess Mend by Marietta Shahinyan. If you haven’t read this book, you should definitely read it. We are talking about Soviet Russia, which had just emerged from the Civil War and intervention, and had just begun to recover from collapse and devastation. But the society described in the book was a society of truly unlimited possibilities. These people had the belief that they could do anything. And then, without modern communication technologies, they perceived the world as a single whole, in which it is only necessary to begin the liberation of working people, and a fair, new, bright society will be built throughout the Earth.

Lenin built a state of avant-garde consciousness, global, offensive (in a good sense of the word) in its essence, the most advanced. The energy of this society was amazing, transcendent, charging all of humanity. The center of the world, the center of development, the center of the universe was in Russia. To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, one could say that “God was in Moscow.” Lenin and the Bolsheviks were then extremely attractive. The best people in all parts of the globe believed in us. Being on the left and sympathizing with Soviet Russia was then almost universally accepted, both for workers and peasants, and for sophisticated artists and intellectuals.

There is a famous episode in the world history of art that symbolizes the freedom of creativity. The first time I heard this story was in the Wachowski brothers’ series The Eighth Sense, but it is also on Wikipedia, and in almost all official biographies of the famous, or, as they say now, cult communist artist Diego Rivera. In The Eighth Sense, one positive protagonist tells it to another, also positive, and tells it with obvious sympathy.

In 1932-1933, Rivera created the Man at the Crossroads mural commissioned by the Rockefeller Center in New York. Actually, it was not just a fresco, but a huge painting with an area of ​​tens of square meters. The theme of capitalism as the world of exploitation of man by man was a red thread in it, and the answer to it was the world of socialism, bright in every sense, the world of the victorious working people. Relatively speaking, the dark world is located on the left side of the picture, and the light world is in the center and on the right side. In the very center, a man in a suit like a spacesuit holds the controls of some grandiose machine in his hands. A little to the right of him, one of the main places is occupied by the image of Lenin joining the hands of the workers, and demonstrations on Red Square in Moscow. Nelson Rockefeller was furious and demanded that Lenin be painted over. Rivera refused to do so. Then, by decision of the board of the Rockefeller Center (which was officially announced by the center), in 1934 the unique fresco, an outstanding work of art, was completely destroyed, and Rockefeller did not even pay the artist a fee.

However, Diego Rivera, realizing what was going on, asked his comrades to re-photograph the painting and, using a black-and-white photograph, recreated it in Mexico City at the Palace of Fine Arts with the image of Lenin, where it is now. I must say that to the original idea of ​​Diego Rivera, a man who is clearly not devoid of a sense of humor, added Nelson Rockefeller on the left side, playing cards with women of easy virtue. Actually, this is how this Rockefeller went down in history. And the epic canvas received a new and clearly more appropriate name – “The Man Controlling the Universe.”

That’s right: people wanted no more, no less, how to manage the universe, rebuild it on the basis of progress, kindness and justice. And Lenin gave hope for this to working people all over the world! Gave hope that man can rebuild the entire universe and even overcome physical death! The state built by Lenin was recognized by the people as their own. Therefore, they defended it with such fury and rebuilt it with such energy. I found only late Soviet times, but even I remember this amazing feeling of our rightness, strength and confidence. We felt that we live in the best, most humane state and at the same time the strongest and most confident, not giving offense to ourselves, our friends, or the forces of good around the world in general.

Soviet people, especially at the beginning of the USSR, literally looked at the stars. They lived in the future. Lenin, for the first time in the history of mankind, laid down a state in which everyone, and not just the rich and noble, received the right to be a person. Lenin discovered such forces in the people that the country abruptly rushed forward.

Moreover, all the peoples of the world felt these forces in themselves then, especially those who had been oppressed for centuries and even realized their oppressed position, but were unable to change it. And suddenly it turned out that it is possible! We can say that, as on the Emblem of the USSR, the Sun has risen over the whole world. I would like to quote a wonderful, tear-jerking poem by the American Negro activist Langston Hughes, “My Russian Comrade Lenin.” The poem is written on the physical death of Lenin, but just emphasizes his ideological immortality:

“My Russian comrade Lenin, / You are in a marble coffin. / Let me lie down instead of you, / And you continue the fight. /

I am Ivan, a peasant, / My boots are in clay. / How can I continue to fight! / Get up, explain, help! /

My Russian comrade Lenin, / You, as if alive, are in a coffin. / Let me lie down instead of you, / And you lead us to the fight. /

I am Chico, I am sultry in Africa / I cut sugar cane. / You threw a ray of hope / On our black mainland. /

I am Chang. I am a simple Chinese / I am not famous for anything. / I was on strike in Shanghai / I was starving and killed. /

My Russian comrade Lenin, / There is no place for you in a coffin. / Let me lie down instead of you, / You stand up and call to fight. /

Russian comrade Lenin / Stands up, breaking granite: / – I am on guard with all the fighters / Borders without borders!

To whom else in history could such lines be dedicated? Only a list of great people who appreciated Lenin could take up a whole article. But I will still quote one quote: “I honor in Lenin a man who, with complete self-sacrifice, gave all his strength to the cause of social justice. I think his method is appropriate. But one thing is indisputable: people like him are the guardians and renewers of the conscience of mankind. Albert Einstein said it.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who at that time, according to all observers, were the most educated government in the world, set the main goal of development, participation in a common cause, building the future as the goal of life. And what could be better? A person is afraid of death, and he has only two alternatives – the eternal afterlife that religions promise, or life in a common cause that continues even if someone leaves.

With the departure of the USSR, our country and the whole world for some time lost an alternative and an image of the future. Look: somewhere they live materially worse, somewhere materially better. But almost nowhere now they live happily. The world is at an impasse. The world is getting uglier. Moreover, this process took on such a purposeful character precisely after the destruction of the USSR and precisely because of its absence. Russia, having returned to History, is looking for its place in this new world. Unlike Western philosophy, for which a person is a constant, and it is useless to correct him, we believed and believe: a person placed in the right conditions, brought up by humanistic and progressive pedagogy, changes himself and changes the whole world, the whole Universe for the better.

Now it is obvious that if there are no serious changes in the world towards humanism, kindness, justice, very unpleasant events await us, perhaps even incompatible with life on Earth. And in this sense, Lenin is a unique means of communication between Russia and the world, Lenin is known everywhere, anywhere in the world, and everywhere he is understood. Lenin is a Russian man and at the same time an absolutely universal figure, a symbol of Russian messianism and globalism, the opposite of the globalism of transnational corporations. Lenin is the man who changed the universe!