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On #Lenin's 150th birthday, in addition to typical #readlenin overtures, I want to share something less often said abt the revolutionary leader: the person I found beneath the towering edifice of his legacy, when I was a grad school researcher combing thru his notes #Lenin150 1/
I studied ( @UofGlasgow) Soviet counterinsurgency & national self-determination in Central Asia during/after the Civil War, which I compared to the Tambov rebellion. This required reading dispatches b/w Moscow and local leaders/commanders, including #Lenin. 2/
In one telegram after another, I saw the #Lenin I knew: the man who cut the wrong (don't laugh!) down to size, whose analytical eye always saw thru the chaff to grasp the wheat. But as the Soviet gov came to a nuanced understanding of these rebellions, a new Lenin emerged. 3/
Here was the real leader. After tearing them down he built them back up again. This #Lenin believed ppl could be better, if only they were guided to betterness. He didn't simply replace them w/an effective person, he taught them how to be better & gave them a chance to do it. 4/
"You must do this; you must speak w/this person who's an expert on this; you must adopt a new approach to your thinking abt problems xyz." More than that, #Lenin listened to local experts who knew the subject best, the ppl who lived it, & changed his thinking to compensate. 5/
Perhaps this is what 25 years of struggle to forge a party capable of leading revolution turns a man into, but I think #Lenin couldn't have gotten that far w/o being able to turn thousands of eager organizers into seasoned self-confident leaders & evolve himself along the way. 6/
I think we as organizers today have to learn these lessons, too. Hot takes & callouts may be fun & get shares, but they don't build revolutions. If you think being "epic own" machines made #Lenin et al leaders you couldn't be more wrong - they were patient teachers & learners. 7/
The internal culture of the Russian Social-Democratic Party was very masculine (Kollontai hated it), where ppl were routinely rough w/ oneanother in arguments, & #Lenin's berating of wrong ppl has to be seen in this context. Emulating w/o understanding isn't Marxist. 8/
"Do not copy our tactics, but analyse the reasons for their peculiar features, the conditions that gave rise to them, and their results; go beyond the letter, and apply the spirit, the essence and the lessons of the 1917-21 experience." - #Lenin 9/ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/14.htm
Finally here, have a photo of pre-transition me posing like #Lenin in the All-Russian Exhibition Center (VDNKh) in Moscow in 2009 end/
