Bertrand Russel on Lenin

[red eck]

When I was reading wikipedia's page on Russell Bertrand, I noticed this fact:


In August 1920, Russell traveled to Russia as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the Russain Revolution.[20] He met Lenin and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin rather disappointing, and that he sensed an "impish cruelty" in him.Now, having not read Bertrand's autobiography, I have no idea what they talked about. But my guess would be that they talked about about philosophy as Bertrand was one of the founders of analytical philosophy and Lenin the ardent dialectician. Assuming this was the case, I would then expect Lenin to have defended dialectics against Bertrand's attacks in the usual impertinent manner typical of dialecticians, thus leaving Bertrand with a poor impression of Lenin.

Of course, they may have talked about something completely different instead.

[Junius]

From memory, Bertrand merely interviewed him.

Yes, see here (http://www.thenation.com/doc/19200731/russia) (Russell's account of interview).

[ComradeOm]

I did read up on this many years ago and my impression was that Russell's poor opinion stemmed not from any philosophical differences, at least not directly. The fundamental conflict was that Lenin was a revolutionary, with all the fire and fanaticism that this entails, whereas Russell was really the epitome of the genteel academic intellectual. To reference LeftCommunist's link above, this was a long running source of friction between Lenin and Gorky as well - no matter how friendly they may have attempted to be, these were simply different people on a fundamental level

[red eck]

Having read the link provided by LeftCommunist, I've some thoughts from Russell's article:


Indeed, the whole tendency of Marxism is against psychological imagination, since it attributes everything in politics to purely material causes.

hmm....This says more about Russell than it does Lenin. Was Russell any good on history or did he hold more romantic views? Just that Russell seems to allude to a Thomas Carlyle 'great man' approach to history.


Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with wholehearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the skeptical temper of the Western world. I went to Russia believing myself a communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not only of communism, but of every creed so firmly held that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery. So after one meeting with Lenin, Russell's hopes for Communism were dashed. I find the absence of more straightforward objections to be somewhat lacking on Russell's part.

But yes, it appears they never had any arguments about philosophy.