…Two incidents dramatically illustrate Lenin’s efforts to free himself from libidinal ties. The first occurred around 1900 and involved Plekhanov, Lenin’s revered mentor in Marxism. In a power struggle over Iskra, the periodical inspired by Lenin, the younger man came to feel himself betrayed by the older, to whom he had given his devotion. We catch the falvor of Lenin’s feelings, even after many years, in an emotional account of the affair called “How The ‘Spark’ ( Iskra) Was Nearly Extinguished”:
“My ‘infatuation’ with Plekhanov disappeared as if by magic, and I felt offended and embittered to an unbelievable degree. Never, never in my life had I regarded any other man with such sincere respect and veneration, never had I stood before any man so ‘humbly’ and never before had I been so brutally ‘kicked’.”… We had received the most bitter lesson of our lives, a painfully bitter, painfully brutal lesson. Young comrades “court” an elder comrade out of the great love they bear for him – and suddenly he injects into this love an atmosphere of intrigue … An enamoured youth receives from the object of his love a bitter lesson – to regard all persons “without sentiment,” to keep a stone in one’s sling. Many more words of an equally bitter nature did we utter that night.”
—Bogdanov and Lenin play chess while Gorky is watching—click image for source…
As a defense against thwarted “great love,” Lenin turned to repression; henceforth, he would be “without sentiment.” Significantly, soon after this episode he began to sign his articles in Iskra with a pseudonym: the Ulyanov given to sentiment was replaced by the unloving and unyielding Lenin. Thereafter, he had no masters and no brothers. By 1903 he had stopped addressing Martov, the closest friend of his youth, in the familiar “thou” form and had announced, “Don’t look for Martov in the old way. The friendship has ended. Down with any softness.”
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…Although in my play I use a certain amount of dramatic licence, much of the following exchange, which took place in 1911 between Lenin and Yuli Martov, the leader of the Mensheviks, is verbatim.
LENIN: The only hope of making the revolution work is if it’s controlled by a centralised party, with terror as one of its principal weapons. Whereas you Mensheviks’ idea of a party, Martov, is just a flabby monster with saggy tits.
MARTOV: It’s senselessly utopian to try and violently impose socialism on an economically and culturally backward country like Russia, which is awash with peasants who are congenitally conservative, and will never countenance a revolution against their precious Tsar.
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