Word: lenin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...version of Marxist thought that eventually won out, because it achieved power, was Marxism-Leninism, after V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. According to Lenin, Marx's call for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" meant that a tightly organized Communist Party was to be the exclusive dominating force in transforming society. Among the millions attracted by this prescription were two young Chinese, named Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping, who saw in it a way to change their country from a weak, backward state pushed around by foreign powers to a mighty modern nation. Deng has remained...
...matters of economic organization, however, even Lenin was a backslider of sorts. In 1921, when his "war Communism" stirred dangerously strong opposition, he shifted to the New Economic Policy, which sounds almost like a preview of Deng's reforms. Under the N.E.P., the new Soviet state owned and operated only what Lenin called the "commanding heights" of the economy, that is, the basic industries. Peasants could grow and sell privately what they wished after paying a tax in produce to the state; small-scale private enterprise was permitted; foreign capital was invited...
...while Deng intends his reforms to be permanent, Lenin viewed the N.E.P. as a strategic retreat. Stalin put an end to it and launched the Soviet Union on a nearly total collectivization of agriculture and nationalization of industry. Stalin's system became the dominant version of Marxism, if only because the U.S.S.R. for decades was the sole significant officially Marxist state and remains its most powerful...
Karpov, on the other hand, is what a Swiss newspaper called Homo sovieticus: a culture hero with close ties to the late leader Leonid Brezhnev, recipient of the Order of Lenin and a strong voice in the inner circle of Soviet chess. Owner of an impressive collection of rare stamps, the chilly and distant Muscovite is a well-known ruble millionaire who is rumored to be a dollar one as well. Although he enjoys rare Soviet amenities like a mobile telephone in his car, Karpov does not ignite the imagination. "Style?" he once puzzled. "I have no style...
...that the Soviet Union would never start a war. But in the reprinted speeches, the General Secretary often lapses into eye-glazing Marxist clichés: "The time we live in will go down in history as a time of intense class struggle in the world arena," Gorbachev stated on Lenin's birthday in 1983. "Imperialist reaction can hide behind many masks, but it cannot hide the fact that its foreign course is dictated, even today, by narrowly selfish class interests...