The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 30, 1924, Page 9

My h4 Lenin On God (NOTE OF EDITOR:—Below we re- produce a letter by Nicholas Lenin to Maxim Gorky (Alexey Peshkov) dated Nov, 14, 1913. It reveals to the Amer- ican worker an entirely new angle of Lenin’s soul and general attitude to- wards life. The question of God and religion 1s what Lenin concerns him- self with in this letter, which is one of a collection of 33 letters to Gorky shortly to be published in Russia.) To understand the spirit of this let- ter, one must be familiar with the state of mind of the Russian Intelli- gentzia about the time the letter was written. The social group had been for over 50 years the main source of inspiration and leadership in the revo- lutionary movement of Russia. © Cer- tain sections of the Intelligentzia have very early attached themselves to the labor movement, making the cause of the workers their own. And then came the big crash,’the un- successful revolution against Czarism in 1905. The defeat of the revolution had a shattering effect upoif the mo- rale and revolutionary integrity of the Intelligentzia. A wave of black des- pondensy and passivity overtook and conquered the minds of that social group. It developed later a concerted movement away from the “brutalities” of the class-struggle and onward to the serene spheres of God and religion. It was a period of “searching after God” its participants being known as “God Searchers.” At the time leading writers of the Russian Social-Democratic Party have. very effectively analyzed the economic background of this religious ‘‘wave,” which was shown to be a petty-bour- geois revolt against the working-class nature of the Russian revolution. Looking backward one can now see that the transformation of the Rus- sian Intelligentzia from a revolution- ary into a counter-revolutionary force had begun as early as 1906. The immediate cause of Lenin’s let- ter were two articles by Gorky pub- lished at that time in the “Russkoye Slovo” of Moscow and the “Retch” of Petrograd, as a protest against the production by the Moscow Art theatre of a dramatization of Dostoyevsky’s novel, “The Possessed.” The letter follows: * * * “Dear A. M. (Alexey Maximovitch): What are you doing? It is simply dreadful, indeed! “Yesterday I read in the Retch your answer to the ‘howl’ in defense of Dostoyevsky, and teday arrived the ‘liquidating’ newspaper in which ap- pears the paragraph which was not given in the Retch. “This paragraph reads as follows: “‘and it is necessary to put off the ‘searching after God” for a time (why for a time?) It is a useless occupa- tion; there is nothing to search where it cannot be found. Without sowing there is nothing to reap. You have no God, you have not yet (not yet!) cre- ated Him. Gods are not sought; they are created; life is not invented, it is created.’ “It appears, then, that you are against ‘searching after God’ only ‘for a time!’ Consequéntly you are against the search after God only for the sake of substituting it by creating God! “Well, is it not terrible that you give utterance to such a thought? “The search after God differs from creating God, from deification, no more than a yellow devil differs from a blue devil. To speak of the search- ing after God not for the purpose of speaking against all sorts of devils and gods, against all sorts of spir- itual decay (every little god is decay, it does not matter whether it is a clean, ideal, unsought-for little god or whether it is a created little god), but for the purpose of preferring the _blue devil to the yellow devil is a “hundredfold worse than not to say anything at all. “In the freest countries, in such “ countries where appeals ‘to thie democ- racy, to the people, to public opinion and to science’ are out of place, in such countries (America, Switzerland and so forth) the people, the working are assiduously stupefied by ete idea of a clean, spiritual, ere- ated little god. Just because every religious idea, every idea about all kinds of little gods, every coquetry even with a little goddess is a most in- expressible abomination, which is par- ticularly tolerated (and often even welcomed) by the democratic bour- geoisie—and just because of this it is the most dangerous abomination, the most hideous ‘pest.’ A million sing, abominations, violences and physical infections are far more easily disclos- ed by the crowd and therefore less dangerous than the refined, spiritual idea of a little god, attired in most festive ‘idealistic’ garb. “The priest who corrupts morality (of which I have just read in a Ger- man newspaper) is far less dangerous to this ‘democracy’ than the priest without a crude religion, the spiritual democratic priest who advocates the creation of the little god. . For the first priest can be easily exposed, convict- ed and driven out, while it is a thou- sand time8 harder to expose the other priest and not a single ‘frail and piti- fully weak’ inhabitant’ would consent to it. “And you, knowing ‘the frailty and pitiful weakness’ of (Russian—why Russian? Is the Italian better?) bour- geois residue, confounds its soul with poison, with the sweetest pofson, cov- ered with a sugar coating and wrapped with all sorts of particolored papers! “Enough of self-despising, which is substituted -among us for self-criti- cism, “Is not god-building the worst form of spitting at one’s self? Every person who occupies himself with god-build- ing or who even admits such building is spitting at himself in the worst way. Instead of occupying himself with deeds, he is devoting himself to self: contemplation and self-admiration, in which case he contemplates the bas- est, the dullest, the most servile traits of his ego, deified by god-building. “From the general,.and not from the personal viewpoint, every form of god- building is just this amorous self-con- templation of the dull bourgeoisie, of the frail public, of the dreamy self- contempt of the Philistines, of the ‘de- spairing and. exhausted (as you cor- rectly wrote of the soul—not the Rus- sian soul, but the bourgeois soul, for Jewish, Italian, English—it is all the same devil, the nasty bourgeoisie is equally contemptible, and the ‘demo- cratic bourgeoisie,’ occupied with de- cay, is especially contemptible). “Reading your article, endeavoring to discover whence such a slip came, aus perplexed. What is it? The rem- nants of your ‘Confession,’ which you yourself did not approve of? Or its echoes? “Or ig it something else—is it, for and Religion instance, an unsuccessful attempt at bending down to the viewpoint of the democratic elements instead of that of the proletariat? Perhaps, in talking to the ‘democratic elements in general’ you wanted to lisp as people lisp when they talk to children. Perhaps, for the sake of ‘popularization,’ you want- ed to admit to the people their preju- dices for a moment? “But that is a wrong method in every sense and every respect! “I said before that in’ democratic countries it would be out of place for a proletarian writer to appeal ‘to the democracy, to the people, to public opinion and to science.’ Well, and in Russia? Such an -appeal is not en- tirely adequate, for it also flatters the prejudices. of the people....°. . Why throw a democratic gauze before the reader instead of making a clear dis- tinction - between the bourgeoisie, (frail, pitifully weak, tired, despairing, self-contemplating, god-building, self- despised, senselessly anarchistic—a wonderful word) and the proletariat (who can be brave not in words only, who can distinguish between the bour- geois ‘science and public opinion’ and their own)? “Why do you do it? “It is devilishly painful. “Your “B. L. (V. ULYANOV) LENIN.” In Defense of Our Government By ROBIN ERNEST DUNBAR. RE are so many attacks on our E i government these days by. irres- ponsible people, lunatics, cranks, harum-scarums, I. W. W.’s, socialists, bolsheviks, foreigners, communists, and anarchists and other ill-natured elements, including ‘those opposed ‘to the American Legion’ and Ku Klux Klan, American Fascisti, Black Shirts, ete., that I do as a 100 Der cent Amer- ican and husband of a D! A. R: and ex- Justice of the Peace and candidate to the Detective Service of Wm. -H. Burns, that grand old man of Repub- licanism, Democracy and Junkerism, rise in my righteous indignation and come to the rescue of our sacred in- stitutions, including ‘the right to buy and sell oil on the market, to drink a medicinal quantity of liquor and to acquire wealth by supporting our hier- ups. Let us take up some of the more of- fensive charges by these pro-Germans and pacifists, and sift them to the bot- tom: 1. That our president should not be quite so much in hoc or in particeps criminis as we say in the justice courts with those who do not wish our institutions well. I answer plainly and hotly to that charge that our presi- dent knows his own private business, and that we must distinguish, er .. . differentiate ... er... draw a line between what he does as Chief Exe- cutive and what he does as a private citizen and operator on the stock mar- ket. There is no man from Grover Cleve- land down so big but that he watches the ticker a part of his time, while fishing on Decoration Day, or yachting with his friend Benedict Arnold, or whatever his name was off the 4-mile limit. It now seems to be circulated by insidious poison propaganda that no president should enrich himself by standing in with the fight promoters, film distributors, rum-runners, oil operators, or others of our rich and highly respected citizenry. The ques- tion occurs, “What did we make the World Safe for Democracy for” if it wasn’t that our president could choose his friends from Wall Street; where the money grows on derricks, or’ on fillums, or on cases of Scotch, or from whatever other place he sees fit, including Washington Court House, Ohio? ee ‘BATTLESHIPS AT ANCHOR By JAMES H. DOLSEN The battleships rest quietly at anchor in the bay; Their long guns gleaming in the sun,— Sleek monsters of destruction, Polished reminders of the butchery that is war. The flaring-wide white-trousered sailor lads, Scrubbing the decks and polishing the guns, Laugh gaily at their tasks and sing Ribald refrains from rag-time melodies. No thought today of world-encircling wars Thrusts its black shadow o’er their simple minds. A seeming peace envelops land and sea. Men go about their work with little heed Or that thin cloud which gathers on the sky And makes its way by imperceptible degrees There to the waiting shops where it may tell Portentious secrets to the guns, and rouse . The shells and powder from their restless sleep. _ If those great guns should wake! If they should ‘speak In thunders crash ing o’er the seas, - Would it be prelude to another war,— White against Yellow for the mastery Of wakening China’s stores of hidden wealth? Above the battleships the seagulls fly In restless, circling, hungry flocks; Knowing no more than men and caring less What hellish séhemes the guns are brooding o’er, IGHT here I want to say I defend that grand old man, Mr. Denby, as I do Albert Fall, Daugherty, Jess Smith, Col. House, Harry Sinclair, Henry Ford, Doheny, McAdoo, The Chicago Post and Albuquerque Press and Denver Rocky Mt. News and all them other members of the govern- ment. “I say it is a shame to attack them surreptiously and seditiously by all them charges before commissions illegally organized, and which have no power to force witnesses to answer questions. Roxie Stinson oughter to be in jail by rights, and I’d put her there, if I hadn’t lost my constable badge to a poker sharp from Daugh- erty’s shack last nite. I say vaugherty never shét Jess Smith; it was Silent Cal, who shot him on account of a woman, just as any Ku Kluxer has a right to do, to protect the honor of our wives, and darters, and school children, and old maid school teachers. With me it is liberty or dath; and I'll take mine straight, without any — pleze. The next charge is that Daugherty is a hi jacker, and beats his way on the freights between his shack in Washington Court House, and the House on K St., with the Green Shud- ders. Also that he and Burns carry theirs. about in satchels, just like Al- bert Fall. I say it is all a democratic lie; if you don’t believe me, ask Burns himself, or any other smart man in the employ of Wall St., Morgan, Rock- feller, Gaston Means, McLean, or The Nation Magazine. Ask the Smart Set- ters themselves; One Eyed Nathan, or Booze Nosed Mencken; they knows everything and then some. Or if you can’t reach ’em, ask J. Bascom Slemp, that pure eyed son of a biscuit eater, who goes to Florida where the sub- poenaes won’t reach him, and takes his salt with his employers, Daugh- erty, Burns, and McLean, and then like a coward he is, runs back to his paw in Washington, D. C., and coughs it all up. Such fellers ought to be shot, and that’s why we got the Koo Kluckers in this country, and their nite gowns at $4 each, half price to women and children. Morons? I'll say they are! All of ‘em, who are agin wearing ’em, in bed or out! ... It makes me tired. Sometimes I think I'll go out of politics entirely with all this complainin’ going about our free institutions, and $4 nities. I’m agin unmasking too, you can put that down in your note book. How’d we hev hung Frank Little without masks? Or cut off the privates of Wesley Everest? Or broke up the strike at Herrin? Sum people is that unreasonable they would have this government run by in- fants and sissies.