Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Introduction

In the history of Marxism, Lenin (1870–1924) was the first to attempt to transform doctrines into practice. And while the cruel use of law to enforce political interests may have accompanied the history of mankind, Lenin was nevertheless one of the most conscious thinkers to experiment and, so to speak, theorize revolutionary legislation, the application of law to not par excellence legal purposes (Varga 1982), as well as ultimate directness by which practical targets should be reached via law – a denaturation that necessarily destroys any moral support to legal action. From the point of view of Bolshevism, Leninʼs position brought success, but from the point of view of the development of mankind, it all became an experience of terror, of denial of rights. What is more, from the perspective of the logic of Russiaʼs history, the fact that the tsarist past was continued by Leninist Bolshevism has made it impossible that trust in the law as a precondition for any functioning...