week 35

Illogical route of history is always given some semblance of shape by the logic of those who are determined to succeed. The son of a drunken Georgian cobbler is hardly the kind of man we expect to make history. This unlikely figure with bad teeth and pock marked face came from the people. It was what Lenin required and he had plenty of middle class intellectuals already. Lenin was looking for one, preferably not just a peasant or a worker but someone with a modicum of education. Thus in 1912 V.I Lenin picked out Koba Jugashvili to become one 10 members the Bolshevik Central Committee.
Fortune also smiled on Koba the Georgian, while he just made tentative steps on the stage of world history.
Lenin needed someone to expound the correct Marxist view (or rather his own views) on the question of Nationality problem. He felt a Pole or a Jew would take an extreme point of view while he himself as a Russian might not sound convincing to the rank and file among revolutionaries. Lenin thus chose ‘Koba’ one from the oppressed nationalities of the empire. In 1913 he wrote a treatise ‘Marxism and The National Question’ and it earned him the aura of a theorist. His authorship of an authoritative Bolshevik exposition on a very crucial issue was to decisively affect his future and that of Russia.
Was it chance that pitch forked him to the stage of world history? In any case we may with certainty vouch for his staying power. Till his death in 1953 he was the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union. In his ability to have beat back every opposition with the ruthlessness that we find parallel among those who wielded the destiny of Russia only in Ivan the Terrible, we see the logic of ambition straightening illogical twists inherent in luck. He later came to be known as Joseph Stalin.
Tailpiece: Those who cut corners under the mistaken notion of economy ought to be making both ends meet instead.
benny