Venerating Lenin

Abstract

Lenin’s veneration is the topic of this chapter, although that veneration is occasionally and unfortunately called the Lenin “cult.” Thereby, I make a slight shift from a detailed focus on Lenin’s works to the veneration visited upon him after his death. Yet, even here, careful attention to his written material is needed, for a number of currents in that material—at the intersection between the conscious and the subconscious—turn out to have a bearing on his veneration. The importance of revisiting the veneration of Lenin lies not merely in its significance for the question of Lenin and theology, insofar as theological matters emerge from a close engagement with Lenin, but also because the sustained veneration of Lenin became the prototype for later revolutionary communist leaders. Stalin of course comes to mind, although his embalmed body was soon enough removed from the mausoleum and buried, as well as Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Min, and even Kim Jong-Il (plans for the preservation of his body are underway as I write). One may list other revolutionary heroes, from Che to Chavez, but those I have mentioned were also embalmed and revered to a much greater extent after their deaths. These processes have been the sources of fascination, derision, and much facile analysis, most notably in terms of a quasi-religion, albeit with a hint of assumed “backwardness”—you think you are atheists, but you superstitious people have created merely another, secular religion. By focusing on the veneration of Lenin, I hope to provide at least some steps toward a more in-depth analysis of the crucial role such veneration played in the new communist situation in Russia (at that time still the RSFSR).

Lenin is always alive.

Whether you laugh or cry,

Lenin is (in) your spring;

He is (in) every great thing.

Lenin is within thee,

As he is within me.

Tulikov and Oshanin 1955¹