How Did Lenin, Trotsky Etc. Support Themselves

[Year: 1]

Were they dependent on expropriations or on family members? Stalin helped the party by robbing banks, right?

[Janus]

Lenin probably got support from Armand, I think she was quite well-off. Also, there were his books and publications so I'm sure he did whatever he could to scrape by.

Trotsky got a lot of jobs with different newspapers and most of them were successful so he most likely got by on that.

[Enragé]

pretty petty bourgeois isnt it (they wouldnt have been able to join the communist league :lol: )

[Janus]

Since the CL has a workers only membership requirement, they wouldn't have been able to join if that's what you meant by that statement.

I'm not a Lenin or Trotsky expert so I was simply trying to conjecture how they made his money.

[southernmissfan]

I remember reading somewhere that Lenin was willing to basically take money from anywhere to fund the Bolshevik movement, including robbing banks and getting donations from rich "leftists".

[Janus]

Yeah, contributions by well-off backers is definitely one source.

[Axel1917]

I am not sure on this. I have not really looked into this. The newspaper part and certain backers were probably true. I don't really know anything else in this aspect.

[Year: 1]

Yeah I was researching Trotsky's life today and he made his living writing articles. When he was exiled from the USSR The Saturday Evening Post gave him $40,000 to serialize one of his books The Revolution Betrayed or The History of the Russian Revolution, I forget which.

[Severian]

The bank robberies were never the source of all that much money - what money the Bolshevik party abroad did receive, they had trouble laundering. That was only done for a brief time after the 1905 revolution anyway.

They did receive money from some wealthy donors from time to time - but the steady basis of the Bolshevik budget was workers' contributions. This isn't so glamorous as bank robberies, but it's essential not only financially but politically. "He who pays the piper, calls the tune".

Lenin wrote, edited and worked for the party organization; Trotsky lived on writing and editing as others have said.

How that makes 'em not workers, I'm not sure; they worked full-time for the working-class movement.

The great curse of middle-class misleadership - at that time and today - has always been those "leaders" who refuse to give everything for the movement. They pursue their comfortable middle-class careers during the week and come out to give a speech on the weekend.

Any number of social-democratic leaders then; Ernest Mandel for example more recently.

[Revolution67]

American capitalist John D Rockefeller was also one of the sources, who funded the Bolshevik Revolution. Lenin had promised to Rockefeller that he would grant him the rights to explore and drill and extract oil from the Caucas region. However, after the revolution, Lenin went back on his words :P

[rebelworker]

Working for a party or social organisation is not the same thing as "being a worker".

I used to be a full time union organiser, and have friends who still are, we mostly agree its a different thing.

[bezdomni]

They were funded by the Rothschilds. :P

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 4 2006, 11:28 AM
Working for a party or social organisation is not the same thing as "being a worker".

I used to be a full time union organiser, and have friends who still are, we mostly agree its a different thing.
Well yeah, the union bureaucracy is a privileged layer. Its social function is to ensure class collaboration.

Being on the chronically underpaid full-time staff of a revolutionary party, on the other hand....is a wholly different thing.

****

I know CPA's post is a joke...and I hope Rudra's was. People do seriously claim things like that, and they are all BS.

What else? The old "German gold" business. I've noticed bourgeois historians are lately starting to repeat that slander, though there's no new evidence for it. It started with forged documents, and continues through innuendo.

[rebelworker]

Originally posted by Seve[email protected] 5 2006, 07:07 AM


Being on the chronically underpaid full-time staff of a revolutionary party, on the other hand....is a wholly different thing.

****
Yah but did they work real jobs before they "worked tierlessly for the working class"?

Far too often the paid organisers are the people who didnt have to work bofore they got the job with the party.