Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - Lenin, The Great Strategist of the Class War - tr. Alexander Bittleman (1924).pdf/20



ENIN was a foremost statesman. What does this mean? According to his own definition a statesman is one who understands how to manoeuver with millions of people, who is capable of estimating correctly the mutual relations of social classes, who can detect the weak spots in his enemy's armor and who knows how to make effective the strongest side of his own class.

In this respect Lenin possessed extraordinary gifts. He knew above all how to determine the line of demarcation between classes and to create a concrete and practical program of action calculated to bring together the working class with its temporary ally, the peasantry. He based his judgment of political conditions, not on superficial appearances, not upon the so-called public opinion, but upon the deep processes that are taking place within the working class. His mind always pierced thru to the very vitals of a situation. He studied the make-up of social life in order to find for himself a starting point, and then he continued to base his activities on the dynamics of the class struggle.

These traits of Lenin's character made him the most dangerous to, and at the same time the most hated by, the class enemies of the proletariat, whom he always managed to hit at the softest spot. He was a realer politiker (of course, realistic not in the reformist sense, for whom realism means adaptation to the bourgeoisie) in the sense that he based his revolutionary activities on the correlation of forces in the class struggle. The reformists of all countries declared Lenin to be a Utopian, an "irrational" statesman, because he always busied himself with the problem of revolution, and themselves they consider realists because they advocate the idea of gradually transforming bourgeois society along the lines of evolution. But these "great realists" became tools in the hands of the bourgeois politicians after the war, while Lenin the "irrational statesman" became the most dangerous opponent of the bourgeoisie and the leader of millions of toilers who have risen against their m.asters.

Immediately after the October revolution Lenin was charged by all petty bourgeois socialists with being an adventurer. But this "adventurer" proved by his deeds which side the real power was on. The "realists" among the Social-Revolutionists and Mensheviks have simply missed the importance of the great change that has taken place in human life. They have even failed to notice that the masses have turned their backs on them. Lenin