Who Are You, Vladimir Lenin? - Great And Terrible

The glossy image of the great leader, lacquered over 70 years of Soviet power by statesmen, writers and artists beyond recognition, in the modern period begins to acquire vital features. One of the unexpected and carefully hidden sides of Lenin's personality - psychopathy - is revealed to us today in full

Mausoleum isolation

Volodya Ulyanov at the age of three

This "most humane person", in the words of Vladimir Mayakovsky, has been formed by a very peculiar personality in psychopathological terms since childhood. Vivid, realistic quotes from people from the close circle of Volodya Ulyanov give a clear idea of the pathological features of his personality.

Volodya grew up “disobedient, self-willed, noisy, hot-tempered. Learned to walk late and often fell. Falling, he cried and screamed at the top of his lungs. The child was prone to outbursts of rage, which often ended in an angry trick,”his sister Anna recalled. He “loved to break toys … There was always something evil in his character. He got along well with his younger brother Mitya, but often brought him to tears."

“The first tragedy of Russia is the birth of Lenin; the second is his death”(Winston Churchill)

Student comrade Aleksandra Ulyanov recalls how, after visiting the Ulyanov family, he discovered that “in no case can he get close to Vladimir. He was outraged by the unbearable polemical rudeness of Ulyanov, his boundless self-confidence, self-conceit, inflamed by the fact that (even then!) In his family he was considered a “genius””(Volkogonov D. A., 1994).

Biographers are puzzled by the hermit and, I would say, completely mausoleum isolation of our hero - not a single friend in all his childhood years. And then? ““Secretive, inattentive and even impolite,”the rector of Kazan University certifies the expelled student V. Ulyanov” (Weisskopf M., 1991).

Obsessed with an idea

Police photograph of V. I. Ulyanov, December 1895

The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev came to an unambiguous conclusion - the thinking of Vladimir Ulyanov was despotic. Associated with this is “straightforwardness, narrowness of his world outlook, concentration on one thing, poverty and asceticism of thought. An exclusive obsession with one idea led to a terrible narrowing of consciousness and to a moral rebirth”(Berdyaev N. A., 1990).

The public and political figure Pyotr Struve noted: “It was not his harshness that was unpleasant. There was something more … some kind of mockery, partly deliberate and partly uncontrollably spontaneous, bursting from the very depths of his being. In his attitude to people, Vladimir Lenin truly exuded coldness, contempt and cruelty."

Thanks to Lenin, a special style of party journalism and polemics arose - merciless, destructive, humiliating, insulting and cynical

“After take-off or a whole series of rushes of rage, a drop in energy began, a mental reaction, atony, a breakdown, fatigue knocking down. Lenin stopped eating and sleeping. Tormented by headaches. Fleeing from a severe depression, Lenin ran away to rest in some quiet, deserted place,”writes researcher Nikolai Valentinov.

First presumptive diagnoses

In addition to the above psychological and psychopathological characteristics, there are data that directly speak of the presence of a mental disorder in V. I. Lenin. Some biographers-doctors even dared to establish presumptive diagnoses. Let's quote some fragments from their memories.

“… during the second trip (emigration) on July 16, 1900, Lenin had with him the addresses of neuropathologists and psychiatrists living in Leipzig …” (A. A. Arutyunov)

“Lenin, at the request of other doctors, was treated with salvarsan (a drug against syphilis. - Ed.). But the patient, however, did not tolerate him well and reacted with epileptic seizures … Everyone ignored his childlessness; and to this day no one is surprised by the absence of microscopic analysis of Lenin's genitals. The possibility of a mixed infection (syphilis plus gonorrhea) and the associated infertility have successfully avoided any discussion, and none of Lenin's biographies refers to this fact”(Hesse G., 1997).

Temple of General Happiness

In stories about the great Lenin, his words are traditionally quoted: “We will destroy everything, and we will erect our church on the destroyed one. And it will be a temple of universal happiness! " The first part of the promise was fulfilled quickly, with the second there was a hitch. Although the leader knew what to do in this case. “The famous reading by Lenin“What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky was at the distant source of the inner decision, which he will make and will hold all his life - not to allow your conscience to rule you! " (Gefter M. Ya., 2015).

Isn't there a hyperbole here? Let's try to check. In a letter dated March 19, 1922, Vladimir Lenin categorically, in a lawyerly eloquent manner, insists and even instills: “It is now, when people are being eaten in hungry areas and hundreds, if not thousands of corpses are lying on the roads (the consequences of an unprecedented famine for Russia in the Volga region in 1921 year - Ed.), we can … with the most frantic and merciless energy … secure a fund of several hundred million gold rubles "(Bozhko S. V., 2015).

“We will destroy everything and build our temple on the destroyed one! And it will be a temple of universal happiness! " (Vladimir Lenin)

During a relatively "healthy" period of mentally, this "giant of thought", according to Krupskaya and his former comrades, suffered from headaches and insomnia, fell into a narcoleptic state and depressive crises. He suffered from manic attacks called "violent" by Krupskaya, which, along with other factors, determined the split in Russian social democracy "(Hesse G., 1997).

Abnormality caricature

Adventurism alone was not enough for building a new state. And from the very first post-revolutionary days, Lenin “often broke into a cry; its causticity, and so close to the threshold power, drove the arrow to the very edge of the red zone; caricature excitement, far beyond the boundaries of ordinary eccentricity, “abnormality,” albeit with humor, is shown even in “Lenin in October””(Danilkin L. A., 2017).

Lenin at the parade of units of the General Education in Moscow, May 25, 1919

Shoot and send

“The word“shoot”became so familiar to him that it almost lost its meaning. Shooting everyone or such and such was the same to him as ordering to kill the flies.

He himself was terribly afraid of death, the process of decay, and so much so that he did not order to put flowers in his office - he did not want to see them wither

But death is abstract, somewhere far away, at the other end of the telegraph wires could even please him. He so famously deduced “shoot and expel”, without thinking about the fact that it was nonsense: who should be expelled? Shot? " (Payne R., 2003).

Power - huge, uncontrolled, immense - aggravated the morbidly pathological manifestations in Lenin's psyche

Hero's sunset

“Since the end of May 1921, Lenin's health has deteriorated sharply … Intellect begins to fade … But what does he think and decide during increasingly rare and short intervals of enlightenment (who can guarantee that he is not delirious or half delirious)? … All the same - the task of the Cheka to track down, catch and expel philosophers and scientists”(Karjakin Yu. F., 2011).

Psychopathic violations in Lenin's personality played a sad role not only in his own destiny, but also reflected on the peculiarities of state and political activity

Lenin's contemporaries describe Lenin as an emotionally unstable person, whose mood fluctuated (possibly within the framework of cyclothymia) from "a state of rage, rage, fury" to "obvious wilting and depression."

These affective violations could well have served as the reason for both the "split of the Russian Social-Democracy" and the decrees distinguished by excessive cruelty and mercilessness in the first revolutionary years

Causes of emotional disorders

What led to the emotional disorders of the leader's psyche? Among the reasons are aggravated heredity, psychopathological personality structure and progressive organic brain damage.

If Lenin's psyche were not so peculiar, the rivers of history of different countries would continue to flow along their traditional channels

In terms of the number of professional revolutionaries and terrorists, Russia has no equal among other states. Therefore, Lenin's slogan about the temple is quite "natural", a typical aspiration of a revolutionary-destructor, which he succeeds only at the first stage of "destruction".

The wrangler turns into a tyrant

Lenin's cyclothymic personality, followed by a rapidly growing plaque of organic (vascular) brain damage, turned him from a gambling debater into a cruel and emotionally cold tyrant.

Hypomania can still be creative and positive, but the change in personality according to the "organic type" does not end with anything other than unproductive dementia.

Dictate Ideas or Diseases?

Lenin's casus is notable for the fact that in his texts and actions the researcher is sometimes unable to separate with confidence the two principles: purely ideological, ideological conviction and the dictates of illness.

Which of these two factors more strongly prompted Lenin to transgression (going beyond, the limits of cultural norms)? Or did their presence create a synergistic effect? It is difficult to answer these questions unambiguously.

Lenin's methods of action, which paved the way for the radicals to power in Russia and ensured them a monopoly on it, turned out to be a double-edged instrument. It is known how much effort Stalin and his assistants put in, without shuddering, ridding the party of the notorious Leninist guard.

It is significant that even during Lenin's lifetime, a new generation of communists began to treat him without the reverence that, in his self-esteem, he deserved. The death of Lenin, with which many pinned their hopes for change, in reality did not change anything.

Based on the book by A. V. Shuvalov, B. N. Poizner “The disease of communism. Fundamentals of the Psychopathology of Power”. M.: KURS, 2017.

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