Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
wsws.org
concocted all three March letters. Perhaps she first mouthed the words to
Lenin and he mouthed them back. Perhaps he mumbled versions of them
himself. We shall likely never know [491]. The one scenario that Kotkin
will not consider is that Lenin dictated them coherently.
Kotkin leans, however, to a much wider conspiracy: Lenins alleged
Notes were dated December 30 31, 1922 The existing evidence
strongly points to a maneuver by Krupskaya, and the staff in Lenins
secretariat, to forge what they interpreted as Lenins will. They knew he
was exercised over the Georgian affair; indeed, they egged him on over it.
Trotsky might also have been complicit by this point [493-494].
Unfortunately for Kotkin, the existing evidence does not exist. Why,
then, does he engage in such speculation and outright lying?
If one follows carefully the content of Lenins last letters, articles and
dictations, it would be impossible to conclude that Stalin is Lenins true
heir and most devoted pupil. But that is precisely what Kotkin is trying to
prove throughout this whole volume. He would probably rather fall down
dead than admit that Lenin and Trotsky collaborated ever more closely
during Lenins last months of political life.
Much to this reviewers surprise, some of Lenins most embittered
critics have expressed their dissatisfaction with Kotkins presentation of
Lenins last documents. None other than Richard Pipes quotes from
Lenins Testament:
Stalin is too rude and this shortcoming, fully tolerable within our
midst and in our relations as Communists, becomes intolerable in the
post of General Secretary. For this reason I suggest that the comrades
consider how to transfer Stalin from this post and replace him with
someone who in all other respects enjoys over Comrade Stalin only
one advantage, namely greater patience, greater loyalty, greater
courtesy and attentiveness to comrades, less capriciousness, etc. (
endnote 22)
Pipes refers to Stalins verbal abuse of Krupskaya and then quotes from
Lenins article on the nationality question in which he called Stalin a
crude Great-Russian Derzhimorda [thuggish police type]. Pipes
concludes:
Kotkin does not cite this document either but simply dismisses it as
a blatant forgery, although it has been accepted by all historians of
the period of whom I am aware as well as the editors of Lenin's
Collected Works.
It is difficult to explain Kotkin's skepticism of Lenin's late
anti-Stalin diatribes except perhaps by his unwillingness to concede
that, supportive as Lenin had been of Stalin until his fatal illness, by
the end of his life he had turned resolutely against him.