RIEGEL -Marxismo-Leninismo Como Una Religion Politica

8/13/2019 RIEGEL -Marxismo-Leninismo Como Una Religion Politica

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 6, No. 1, 97126, June 2005

Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion

KLAUS-GEORG RIEGEL

University of Trier, GermanyTaylorandFrancisLtdFTMP109961.sgm10.1080/14690760500099788Totalitarian Movementsand PoliticalReligions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)OriginalArticle2005Taylor&FrancisGroupLtd61000000Summer2005Klaus-GeorgRiegelDepartmentof SociologyUniversittsring [email protected]

ABSTRACT This article describes Lenins utopian design of a revolutionary communityof virtuosi as a typical political religion of an intelligentsialonging for an inner-worldlysalvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the

Russian backward society at the outskirts of the industrialised and modernised WesternEurope. The coup dtatof October 1917 accomplished the institutionalisation of a polit-ical religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently,the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals andstigmatised social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideologicalorthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as amessianic and numinous leader, a process of iconographic work in progress whichculminated after Lenins death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served asthe monumental centrepiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinistorthodoxy. Stalins invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism-Leninism qualified him as

the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallibleinterpretation of the holy scriptures, summarised in his own dogmatic performances. Inthis sense, Stalins Leninismbecame itself a religion dtat(B. Souvarine).

It is one of the paradoxes of the Western modernisation process that the politicalreligions of Fascism, National Socialism and Marxism-Leninism institutionalisedthe political centres as arenas for the pursuit of utopias of inner-worldly salva-tion. Quite in contrast to the pre-modern theocracies, the modern political reli-gions discovered the kingdom of politics as the central arena for the realisation of

their millennial dreams, ideologies and totalitarian aspirations. Furthermore, thepre-modern structural interdependence of politics and religion in Western societ-ies was re-established after the modernisation processes in these societies hadinitiated the structural differentiation of political power centres, and religiousconfessional cultures. As a result of the European religious wars of the seven-teenth century, the modern state had neutralised the religious demands andpower aspirations of Catholic and Protestant churches by claiming an absolutemonopoly of power, and binding decisions on secular, public domains withoutinterfering into the fields of religious beliefs and commitments. Religious confes-sions became a matter of private, individual conscience and decision. As far as the

Christian religions1

are concerned, they concentrated upon the interpretation of

C d Add Kl G Ri l U i itt T i D t f S i l U i itt i 15


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the ultimate experiences of human life, death and transcendental powers. In thisway, they emancipated themselves from legitimising state authorities and inter-fering in matters of scientific disputes examined by scientific communities. There-fore, religions in modern society are specialised in dealing with the contingenciesof human life.2 The salvationist regimes of modern political religions reversed

that structural differentiation of politics and religion by mobilising the civil dutiesas well as the religious consciences of their citizens for their own cause. Thus themodern political religions of Fascism, National Socialism and Marxism-Leninismintroduced a totally new structural and cultural figuration within the context ofWestern modernisation processes.

First of all, the institutionalisation of these political religions resulted in a rever-sal of formerly differentiated, functionally autonomous and institutionalisedspheres of action and thought. Especially with respect to Italy and Germany,modernised, industrialised and culturally differentiated societies experienced a

breakdown of modernisation.3In the context of a less differentiated institutional

framework, the sacralisation of politics initiated again a re-sacralisation of politi-cal centres formerly serving as secular arenas for the pursuit of power, prestigeand distribution of goods and services. The re-sacralisation of political centrestakes place when, as Emilio Gentile has impressively demonstrated in the case ofthe Italian Fascism,4

a political movement confers a sacred status on an earthly entity (thenation, the country, the state, humanity, society, race, proletariat, history,liberty, or revolution) and renders it an absolute principle of collectiveexistence, considers it the main source of values for individual and mass

behaviour, and exalts it as the supreme ethical precept of public life. Itthus becomes an object for veneration and dedication, even to the point ofself-sacrifice.5

In this sense, political religions6propagate (1) doctrines of inner-worldly salvation.They constitute autonomous spheres of ethical behaviour without being obligatedtoward transcendental sources of salvation. The leaders and ideologists of themovements invent an independent tradition of sacralisation of their utopianvision of reconstructing society and culture. Even though this invention of sacraltradition borrows selectively myths, rituals, ideologies and cosmologies from thecultural repertoire of Christian religions, political religions claim their own

mandate to salvation and aspire for self-perfection and self-deification. Themodern political religions emphasise (2) a total reconstruction of societyaccordingto their utopian visions. In their view, modern societies served as a laboratory forgigantic experiments of revolutionary transformations7 of their respectivestructures and cultures. Their belief in (3) the primacy of politics leads them toconquer and use the central political institutions as means for the revolutionaryreconstruction of the society. The political system becomes the central and sacra-lised arena for the self-salvation and self-sacrifice of revolutionaries striving toimplement the utopian designs which have to be realised in the present and onearth. The inner-worldly political arena becomes the heavenly city for self-salva-

tion from the sufferings and evils of human societies. The leaders and theirrespective followers of that inner-worldly political kingdom define themselves as(4) a moral lite as a community of self elected saints who are entitled to trans


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Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion 99

salvation, to the establishment of a new and better social and cultural order. Themoral avant-gardeof these salvationist movements promulgate doctrines of faithwhich are extremely intolerant of other commitments. Political religions represent(5) exclusive commitments to their holy cause. Alternative commitments weretreated as heretical challenges to their own monopoly of salvationist vision. They

are seen as objektive Gegner8

(objective enemies) who were persecuted andterrorised, deported to concentration camps and annihilated in mass-murdercampaigns. This claim to the exclusive mandate of salvation and of historicaltruth is closely related to an expansive and universal drive in a (6) world mission.The political religions evolve a universal and trans-national vision of their salva-tionist commitments. The absolute truth transcending the borders of primordialcollectivities has to be offered to everyone by an army of true believers whosewhole duty consists in universal proselytising and establishing mission centres tospread the holy gospel.

The Russian Revolutionary Tradition and Socialist Salvation

The Russian case of a political religion propagating the inner-worldly utopiandoctrine of a classless society without alienation and exploitation, does not fitexactly into the paradigm of a breakdown of modernisation. First of all, the politi-cal religion of Marxism-Leninism was institutionalised in Russia and China butnot in Western Europe, which served until this moment as a frame of reference formodernising societies. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 succeeded in theoutskirts of capitalism and stirred up the hopes and dreams for a messianiccoming of a salvationist, socialist world revolution. Thus the predominantlyagrarian societies of Russia and China situated at the periphery of modernisedWestern societies, emerged as the centres of socialist salvation. The Russiansocialist movement led by Leninist Bolshevism was considered a negative frameof reference by Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, which wereurged to reactive activism and defence against the threatening challenge of aBolshevik-Russian leadership on the battlefield of rivalling political religions. Theadvantages of the agrarian backwardness of Russia9were demonstrated by theseizure of salvationist power within the context of rivalling and conquering polit-ical religions on the Western battlefield. Russian socialism could compensate forthis backwardness by accepting a Western socialism easily coalescing with thesystem of agrarian value orientations with its emphasis on the worth of the

ploughmans labor and its rejection as sinful of activities which were not directlyconnected with tilling the soil.10In this way, the disadvantages of Russias back-wardness were transformed in a triumphant salvationist advantage of havingreached a combination of the communist paradise, of the obscinaconnected with agreat spurt of industrialisation at the same time. For example, Trotskys ideologi-cal concept of a permanent revolution on a world scale, initiated by the fires of theRussian revolution of 1917, reflected these hidden yearnings for representing notonly an original version of Russian socialism, but also for claiming a supremacyon the field of rivalling political religious utopias. In his prophetic messages, thedisadvantages of Russian backwardness should be compensated by the strategic

advantage of mobilising Russian proletarian masses exhibiting a revolutionaryenthusiasm11not yet known in history.Second the Russian socialist movement evolved within a context of modernisa


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secular power.12The Tsarist hierocracy a close affiliation of autocratic monar-chy and Orthodox Christianity represented a fusion of secular and sacral powertypical of the modern political religions to come. Even though the Russian social-ist movement was internally divided in different factions, social circles andparties, their members fought unanimously against a Tsarist hierocratic domina-

tion, considered by them to be symptomatic of Russian backwardness in laggingbehind the modernised and industrialised societies of Western Europe. Thus theRussian socialists acted as a modernising movement against a reactionary forceof feudal absolutism. Ironically after some time in power, the Stalinist hierocraticautocracy itself began to rediscover the rich Tsarist iconography of power as auseful means to legitimise their minority status when confronted with a societyfamiliar having an elective affinity with secular and sacral powers.

Third, at the same time, the Russian revolutionary socialist movement was alsosince its beginning a part of the Western European political messianism,13whosesocialist sacral tradition has provided an important contribution to the socialist

messianism deeply influencing the Russian socialist movement in the second halfof the nineteenth century. The French Revolution played the decisive historicalrole for engendering the prophets of totalitarian democracy,14 whose politicalmessianism was incorporated by the Bolsheviks in their own salvanionist heri-tage. The religion of Revolution embraced an enormous variety of interests,hopes, tendencies and expectations from nationalism to communism, fromevangelical poverty to industrial technocracy. They were all aware that they werean international confraternity.15 Furthermore, crucial decisions concerning thedirections of development, major themes of self-reflection, guiding ideologies andfounding myths of the Russian socialist movement were formulated and decidedwithin the confines of the socialist labour movements of Western Europe. Forexample, in 1881 Vera Zasulic asked Karl Marx, the prophet, founder andmanager of the sacral tradition of the communist movement, if all countries ofthe world had to pass all phases of the capitalist production; indeed, as Zasulicclaimed, it was a question of life and death.16 In the case of Russia, Marxanswered, the Russian socialists could jump directly to the communist phase, butonly under the condition that the Russian obscina, a supposedly agrarian paradise,served as starting point for initiating the longed-for revolutions in WesternEurope.17

This close incorporation of Russian socialism into the sacral tradition andpolicy of the headquarters of socialist-communist parties in Western Europe

applied to Leninist Bolshevism too. Lenin and his companions undertook a longjourney through almost all West European centres of socialist agitation, wereinitiated into the learned code of interpreting the dogmas and canons of the sacraltradition, and internalised the behaviour and language of professional politiciansin exile. For example, the decisive schism of 1902 between Mensheviks andBolsheviks took place in London and the central Marxist think tank at that time,the Liberation of Labour (188083), was working in Geneva, where Lenin met theleading Russian Marxists like Plekanov, Akselrod and Sasulic for the first time.Lenins complicated affiliation with German socialism, whose organisationaldiscipline and power he admired, deserves special consideration.18The first issue

of Lenins Iskra appeared on 11 December 1900 in Leipzig, after which it waspublished in Munich, and later in London and Geneva. A clandestine distributionsystem of the Iskra to Russia was directed by Lenin and managed by his wife


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Fourth, the long years of political exile in Western Europe had familiarisedLenin with the sacral tradition of Western socialism, and Marxism did notprevent him from searching for an organisational weapon19 adapted to thespecific Russian conditions and suited to overthrowing the mighty Tsarist powersof secret police, bureaucracy, army and legitimising Orthodox state-church.

Borrowing selectively from the class struggle experiences of Western socialistmovements and from the Russian revolutionary underground tradition, Lenininvented his salvationist conception of a professional revolutionary, an ascetic ofrevolutionary work and self-sacrifice.20Lenins revolutionary catechism, What isto be done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (1902), reminded his readers ofChernyshevskys novel, What is to be done? or Tales of the New People (1863),21

which cultivated the new ascetic, self-sacrificing hero, Rakhmetov, believing inscience and a rational socialist order. Indeed, Lenin continued the long Russiantradition of underground revolutionary asceticism.22Pestels Decembrist Revolu-tionary Welfare Association,23 the revolutionary Catechism of Necaev,24 The

Programme for Revolutionary Actionsof Tkachev,25

and Isutins guidelines for hisOrganization26were attempts to organise and discipline the messianic belief of therevolutionary intelligentsia. These organisational patterns of disciplining andintroducing a brotherly and collective control of each other,27 as Bakuninadmonished his companion Necaev,28represented typically religious communi-ties of virtuosi,29small groups of intellectuals longing for salvation for themselvesand their respective societies. The Russian Jacobins30cultivated an intellectuallyand morally developed minority that was to seize power and, thereafter, retaincontrol of the state during the long period of transitions to the earthly utopia.That Russian intellectual minority should not be confused with intellectuals onlyproducing and debating ideas, utopian designs or provocative criticism. TheRussian intelligentsia formed an order pursuing its own cause, a secular priest-hood disseminating a certain attitude to life like a gospel.31

The Leninist Revolutionary Community of Virtuosi

Lenins revolutionary minority, organised as a conspiracy of disciplined andobedient men and women ready to destroy primordial commitments and recon-struct new loyalties and beliefs, demonstrates very clearly the transfer of sacral,transcendental powers to an inner-worldly asceticism of revolutionary action and

belief. The revolutionary, inner-worldly and secular vocation (Gesinnungsethik) is

no longer driven by the search for the other-worldly certitudo salutis. However, itfollows the secular calling of the revolutionary commitments; that is, to realisethe utopias of moral self-perfection and the total reconstruction of societies andcultures. Like the Puritan virtuoso, the Leninist professional revolutionary is asoldier whose battles are fought in the self before they are fought in society itis the acting out of a new identity, painfully won.32 The party of professionalrevolutionaries required the unreserved devotion of the virtuoso cadre to therevolutionary, salvationist principles and articles of faith of the movement. Inorder to get the organisation of revolutionaries we must have people who willdevote themselves exclusively to Social-Democratic activities, and that such

people must train themselves patiently and steadfastly to be professional revolu-tionaries.33Lenins organisational imperatives of the strictest secrecy, the strict-est selection of members and the training of professional revolutionaries34 can


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of Benthams panopticon.36 More especially, Lenins proposition of a complete,comradely, mutual confidence among revolutionaries37 stimulated the vigilanteyes of informal social control to discover the secrets of the hidden actions,thoughts and sins of comrades-in-arms. In Lenins conception, a permanentstruggle for the best theory, strategy and tactics within the party secures the

necessary lines of demarcation with heretical seductions, and purifies thecommunity from the contagious poison of rightist or leftist manoeuvres. Partystruggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a partys weak-ness is its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomesstronger by purging itself.38 The permanent search and fight against real orinvented internal enemies resulted in both the endless self-purificationcampaigns confirming the exclusiveness of the party and in the strengtheningof internal cohesion. The whole self-purification machinery worked as a selectionprocedure to train true believers in systematic obedience, to expel heretics, tosearch out dissenters and to fight against renegades.

The Leninist body of discipline, the party of professional revolutionaries, usesthe advantages of continuous training, correcting, monitoring, supervising andstigmatising to form a salvationist organisation of military agents, reliable,experienced, and hardened workers.39 Our worst sin with regard to organisa-tion consists in the fact, exclaims Lenin, that by our primitiveness we havelowered the prestige of revolutionaries in Russia.40 He gives his disciples adetailed register of cardinal sins guilty of lowering the prestige of revolutionarywork.

A person who is flabby and shaky on questions of theory, who has anarrow outlook, who pleads the spontaneity of the masses as an excusefor his own sluggishness, who resembles a trade-union secretary morethan a spokesman of the people, who is unable to conceive of a broad and

bold plan that would command the respect even of opponents, and whois inexperienced and clumsy in his own professional art the art ofcombating the political police such a man is not a revolutionary, but awretched amateur.41

All comrades-in-arms, Lenin warns, should have a lively sense of their responsi-bility, knowing as they do from experience that an organisation of real revolution-aries will stop at nothing to rid itself of an unworthy member.42

The disciplinary power of the party43makes professional revolutionaries. Suchleaders can acquire training solelyby systematically evaluating all the everydayaspects of our political life, all attemptsat protest and struggle on the part of thevarious classes and on various grounds.44The total subordination of body andmind of military agentsunder the revolutionary goal aspired to, requires even amilitant preparedness,45a permanent self-control and endurance, for the desiredsalvationist actions and programmes.

Critics of Lenins party conception had pointed out the hidden religious dimen-sions in this catechism for professional revolutionaries very early on. F. Gerlichsaw very clearly that the Leninist proletarian was in fact a salvationist intellec-

tual.46

R. Flp-Miller observed the intense self-deification of the party as achiliastic movement dreaming of a paradise on earth.47 F. Stepun criticisedBolshevisms imitation of the Orthodox Church 48 N Berdiajew drew a compari


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Third International.49 Already in 1909, within the context of the Vecchi debate,S. Frank had called the zealous revolutionary socialist intelligentsiarevolutionarymonks who formed a revolutionary order.50The ascetic requirements, whichLenin demanded that his revolutionaries fulfil, were reflected by self-descriptionsof leading comrades-in arms. Stalin spoke of the Communist Party as a kind of

sword-bearing knightly order.51

While G.E. Zinoviev glorified the professionalrevolutionaries as dedicating themselves only to the Revolution and their inter-ests,52N. Bukharin praised the exclusive commitment of party cadres to the revo-lutionary goals. The Leninist party appeared to him a revolutionary order whichpursued permanent self-purification53 in order to obtain a moral unanimity.Dzerzhinsky, the First Chekist, believed in the redemptive power of terroristactions by the Cheka, requiring sacrifices in order to shorten up the road to salva-tion for others.54Later on, Dzerzhinsky added, we are willing to heal them butat the moment we are fighting for the power.55Lenin himself emphatically testi-fied to his belief in the party. We believe in the party, we see in her the reason, the

honour and the conscience of our epoch the only guarantee for the liberationmovement of the working class.56

Apparently, Lenins utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosirepresented:

1. a political religion typical of an intelligentsia. It was a militant collectivepursuing party unity, unquestioning obedience and iron discipline, instruc-tions directed to the self-conquest of virtuosiin order to serve as disciplinedsoldiers in a professional organisation of military agents.57That militant collec-tive seemed to offer a convincing answer to the classical Christian paradox oftheodicy,namely to the tormenting problem of how the extraordinary powerof such a god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that hehas created and rules over.58It substituted other-worldly God by becomingitself the centre for a this-worldly solution to Christian theocracies. By this wayof self-deification, the sacralised political body of the Leninist organisationgenerated historical truth, the salvation needed to solve the mysteries ofhistory and society. Applied to that this-worldly sacral political source ofhistorical truth and omnipotence, the Leninists could approvingly quoteDurkheims dictum: Si la religion a engendr tout ce quil y a dessentiel dans lasocit, cest que lide de la socit est lme de la religion.59Consequently, theLeninist idea of a militant collective is the sacral soul of its inner-worldly

political religion. In this sense, the Leninist intellectuals, as a social group ofvirtuosi,offered an answer to the theodicyproblem by claiming an exclusivemandate to public interpretation60of the symbolic universe of the sacral tradi-tion of socialism. Their claimed monopoly position within the competitiveideological world of rivalling socialists groups, factions and parties providedthem with the moral superiority to belong to the moral avant-gardeof progres-sive forces in history and society, and therefore to be entitled with the exclu-sive mandate to totally transform the structure and culture of society in thename of an emancipated mankind, and a new and better socio-cultural order.The Leninist organisational weapon provided the social and cultural frame of

reference for that salvationist mandate and endowed the Leninist intellectualwith the pervasive meaning, and thus to find unity with himself, with hisfellow men and with the cosmos 61 The quest for salvation through heroic


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collective, legitimising revolutionary thought and action, through virtuosipursuing their mission of redemption of society and humanity.

2. Lenins party of professional military agentsserved as a charismatic represen-tation for an inner-worldly salvation, longed-for by intellectuals aspiring toerect a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation in a backward

society at the outskirts of an industrialised and modernised Western Europe.It was significant and meaningful for some members of the Russianintelligentsia62 to join the revolutionary community of virtuosi in order toliberate the labouring and suffering proletarian and agrarian masses fromthe yoke of an autocracy hindering the modernisation of a latecomer toWestern modernisation.

3. The charismatic glorification of the party as a saviour, messiah, a salvationarmy for a backward society in overwhelming social and cultural misery,gives the intelligentsiaa mission to fulfil for their inner needs, a firm convic-tion to march on the progressive sides of historical development, and an undi-

vided commitment to the holy cause of the party. The fusion of the conflictingdemands of individual heroism and organizational impersonalism foundexpression in the form of an organizational hero the Bolshevik Party.63

4. On the long journey toward its salvationist mission, Lenins party experi-enced the bitter lessons of a painful search for historical truth, revealing thecorrect answers to the question of life and death;64namely, the sacral legiti-mation of the Leninist option to solve the parousiaproblem of revolutionarysalvation65in a predominantly agrarian society experiencing the first wavesof industrialisation a historical opportunity not forecasted in the sacralscriptures of classical Marxism directed at highly industrialised and moder-nised Western societies. The legitimacy of the October Revolution of 1917was at stake. Not surprisingly, the Leninist political religion produced ahuge array of catechisms, theoretical writings, pamphlets, books, forgeriesand fictitious traditions in order to legitimise the coup dtat of 1917 as ahistorically justified revolution, not violating the phases of historical devel-opment, one prophesied by Marx himself. Therefore, it seems justified toconsider the Leninist political religion as a true book religion giving itsadherents ample opportunities to study the sacral teachings, to interpretdogmas and canons, and to propagate the unfailing truths of the sacraltradition and their legitimised interpretation by the new censoring ortho-doxies of the party. The Leninist virtuosohad to be an expert familiar with

the sacral language and binding scriptures66of the imagined community ofLeninist disciples.

5. After the successful seizure of power in 1917, the Leninist inner-worldlycommunity itself has become an original sacral substance.67It was no longera quarrelling faction within the broad frame of reference of Western social-ism, but the revolutionary avant-garde of a trans-national movement prose-lytising and establishing mission centres to spread the holy gospel of worldrevolutionary obligations and expectations.

Leninism became a world mission. The world missionary activities organised

and directed by the organs of the Third International opened up newhorizons for salvationist hopes and actions, transcending the narrow WesternEuropean conceptions of class struggles and proletarian dictatorships to


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Second Congress of the Communist International (1920) 21 conditions68to beaccepted by communist parties wanting membership. His conception of acentralised party with disciplined cadres, working conspiratorially, formedthe organisational and ideological model of a new world church, equippedwith the hierocratic monopoly to excommunicate deviant church members.

For example, in September 1920, the Congress of Baku took place. Dele-gates of communist parties and sympathetic fellow travellers, mainly fromthe Near East, discussed the practical adaptation of Leninist theses to thecolonial question in their home countries. The chiliastic aspiration to estab-lish agrarian soviets and thereby overstep the capitalist phases of develop-ment and arrive immediately at a socialist heaven intoxicated the delegatesand stirred up among them a revolutionary tat deffervescence.69

The popular masses of the East are not so well educated as the workingmasses of the West, but the heart of the man of the East, awakened by

the thunder of revolutionary events in Russia, is filled with self-sacri-ficing zeal and burns with a bright fire of hatred for the oppressors, asacred fire of struggle. The entire East is saturated with bacteria ofrevolution. Millions of suffering masses of the East are gripped by thespirit of protest and are straining to go into the battle.70

The last desperate battle between Good and Evil, proletariat and capital,could only end with the lasting triumph of the proletariat, carrier of salvation.The salvation of the East lies in the victory of the proletariat, and so our onlyroad is that contact with Soviet Russia. Under its leadership and instruction,along with it, we must go forward against the common enemy world capi-tal.71In this holy war between the proletariat, messiah of the East, and worldcapital, devil of the West, the young Soviet power appeared as worldmissionary church, as ecclesia militans et triumphans, bringing the torch ofenlightenment and salvation into the darkness of oppressed peoples of theEast.

6. The coup dtatof October 1917 very clearly demonstrated theprimacy of poli-ticsfor realising the utopian designs and salvationist hopes long cultivated bythe Leninist militant collective of revolutionary virtuosi. Thus, the seizure ofpower did not mean solely a change from the Tsarist autocracy to a proletar-ian dictatorship usurped by the Leninist minority after having declared the

other rival socialist Russian parties supporting or tolerating the ProvisionalGovernment during the February Revolution as a short-lived bourgeoistransition period. Lenins decision to seize power, highly controversial evenwithin the Central Committee and supported only by a thin voting margin,accomplished the institutionalisation of a political religion combining a polit-ical and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the use of revo-lutionary terror against real or imagined enemies of the Leninist regime

became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy.The ideological sacralisation of revolutionary terror,72the use of unrestrictedviolence directed against political opponents, ideological rivals, stigmatised

social classes (wealthier peasants, the kulaks, petty bourgeois people, aristo-crats, priests, bishops and believers of the Orthodox Church, speculators,burglars hooligans enemy agents the whole administrative and army


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on) aiming at their oppression, social extermination, deportation and deten-tion in concentration camps. Lenin conceived of the class war as one wholly

between the socialist and salvationist forces on the one hand, and the exploit-ing classes of capitalist society doomed to extinction on the other. Conse-quently, uprisings of those evil, corrupted and stigmatised classes like the

kulakshad to be

mercilessly suppressed. The interests of the entire revolution requirethis, because now the last decisive battle with the kulaks is under wayeverywhere. One must give an example. 1. Hang (hang without fail, sothe people see) no fewer than one hundredknown kulaks, rich men, blood-suckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take from them all the grain. 4.Designate hostages as per yesterdays telegram. Do it in such a waythat for hundreds of versts around, the people will see, tremble, know,shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker

kulaks.73

7. The Leninist policy of social extermination74was very clearly expressed byLatsis, Chairman of the Eastern Front Cheka, in November 1918.

We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminat-ing the bourgeoisie as a class. During the investigation, do not look forevidence that the accused acted in deed or word against Soviet power.The first questions that you ought to put are: To what class does he

belong? What is his origin? What is his education or profession? And itis these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused. Inthis lies the significance and essence of the Red Terror.75

The most important instruments of the Leninist machinery of social exter-mination, Peoples Courts, Revolutionary Tribunals, the Cheka, forcedlabour camps and concentration camps, were already institutionalised athis lifetime.76 Even the arrangement of show trials followed instructionsinitiated by Lenin.77The show trial against leading members of the Social-ist Revolutionaries, Lenin admonished the Peoples Commissariat of Justiceon 20 February 1922, should be arranged as an educative model trial arous-ing the public opinion against the Socialist Revolutionaries, strengthening

the revolutionary consciousness, evoking their public guilt confessions,linking their deviant political opinions with capital crimes such as theattempted murder of Lenin78 and dramatising the dangerous situation ofthe socialist fatherland infiltrated and encircled by counter-revolutionaryagents.

8. Lenins policy of social extermination envisioned a new society purified ofthe deficiencies of the old order poisoned by class oppression and exploita-tion, human alienation and enslavement of the proletarian class. Interest-ingly, Lenin stigmatised his imagined political enemies by biologicalmetaphors, putting them on a subhuman level, easily, mercilessly and with-

out inner constraint to be crushed and annihilated. This rhetoric of stigmati-sation was deeply rooted in an ideological paradigm of thinking andacting, aspecific habitus a socially constituted system of cognitive and motivating


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Leninist ideological vocabulary abounds with invectives of this kind against aworld of imagined enemies supposedly threatening a future socialist society.For example, Lenin characterised the kulaksas

the most beastly, the coarsest, the most savage exploiters These

bloodsuckers have waxed rich during the war on the peoples want These spiders have grown fat at the expense of peasants, impoverishedby the war, of hungry workers. These leeches have drunk the blood oftoilers, growing the richer the more the worker starved in the cities andfactories. These vampires have gathered and continue to gather in theirhands the lands of the landlords, enslaving, time and again, the poorpeasants. Merciless war against these kulaks! Death to the kulaks. Hateand contempt to the parties defending them: the rightist Social Revolu-tionaries, the Mensheviks and todays left Social Revolutionaries!80

The future socialist society should be cleansed of the wealthy and thescoundrels, who represented only parasites, main enemies of socialism.81

A precondition for the achievement of socialism, Lenin continues, is thecleansingof the Russian earth from all harmful insects, fleas the scoundrels,

bugs the wealthy etc.82 As disciplinary measures applied to the lazywealthy, scoundrels and workers, Lenin recommended sending toprison, cleaning the toilets, or passing yellow passports in order to getsupervised by the whole people as harmfulelements until their correction, orshooting dead at least one out of ten lazy people.83

Lenins frank use of biological metaphors to stigmatise and dehumanise theenemies of the people as harmful insects, parasites, vermin and germsreveals his eschatological dream of creating a sanitised body of a futuresocialist society by means of revolutionary terror. The Leninist state appara-tus of social control and terror was supposed to work as a systematicallyplanned disinfection campaign84 for the sanitation of an infected, capitalistsociety. Typically, for the metaphorical world of inquisitorial endeavour,85

the Leninist political centre legitimised the unrestricted use of violence andterror by claiming to fulfil sacral obligation; in this instance, dictated by thehistorical laws of class struggle, to suppress and destroy ideological enemies,annihilate class formations of the old corrupted social order,86so as to openthe horizons on a new socialist society.

9. The Leninist takeover provided his party with an effective symbolic monop-oly over the sacral socialist tradition, stigmatising and liquidating competi-tive conceptualisations and interpretations within that socialist universe.The early iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition tried to present Leninhimself as a numinous hero87 in leading his believers to a utopian end ofhistory. The sacralisation of Lenin as a numinous leader, messiah, andsaviour who could liberate the labouring masses from misery, hunger,exploitation and civil war was a continuation of the former process of sacra-lisation of his party, distinguished as a charismatic, militant, heroic andsalvationist collective of virtuosi. The Lenin cult, centring on the assumed

charismatic capabilities of Lenin, considered him an icon represented, by asacralised, charismatically qualified party organisation whose imperatives ofobedience discipline and heroic self sacrifice were transposed in an uncon


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108 K.-G. Riegel

this iconographic work in progress, he proposed in a decree on 14 August1918 influenced by Campanellas City of the Sun88 to establish a revolu-tionary sacral tradition and ordered Lunatscharskii, the Commissar ofEnlightenment, to prepare the creation of monuments to great revolutionar-ies on an extremely large scale, temporary monuments made out of

gypsum.89

In order to politically appropriate the public urban space, Leninenvisioned cities in which monuments, inscriptions, emblems, street namesand coats of arms would serve as constant reminders for the pupils of hisgigantic new revolutionary school.90

Nevertheless, Lenin himself moved into the centre of devotion, veneration andcharismatic glorification. For May Day 1918, the Bolshevik poet Bednyi praisedhim as vozhd, a military title appropriate to a leader of a party functioning as amilitary organisation.91After the 30 August 1918 assassination attempt on Lenin

by Fania Kaplan, the first but still exceptional religious associations tried to

explain Lenins survival. Since September 1918, Lenins qualities of a saint, anapostle, a prophet, a martyr, a man with Christ-like qualities and a leader by thegrace of God92 were venerated. Especially in the speeches of Trotsky andZinoviev, the hagiographic traits of a Leninist sacral tradition were prefigured.Zinoviev, for example, described

Lenins long years in emigration as the trial of an ascetic and [he] cameto be the apostle of world communism Lenin became a leader ofcosmic stature, a mover of worlds He is really the chosen one ofmillions. He is the leader by the Grace of God. He is the authentic figureof a leader such is born once in 500 years in the life of mankind.93

In February 1919 the first official bust of Lenin was unveiled, copies were placedin 29 cities between August 1919 and February 1920.94Additionally, the politicalposters depicted Lenin preaching to workers and mobilising them against theenemy, showing new Bolshevik icons, symbols and images of Lenin and Marx.After the celebration of Lenins fiftieth birthday on 22 April 1920, the Lenin cult

began to develop its own dynamic: the superhuman qualities of the vozhd, hissimplicity and humaneness, the popular essence (narodnost) of the vozhd, and hispower (moshch)95were praised.

Certain symbolic forms probably recalled religious icons. The extensiveuse of the colour red, the distorted perspective (Lenin is far larger thanthe sun, the globe, and the worker and peasant on either side) the compo-sition (Lenin flanked by the worker and peasant, just as Christ was some-times flanked by two apostles) and the circular frame that surroundsLenin (Christ was often situated in an oval frame) must have been famil-iar to Russians accustomed to the conventions of religious icons.96

Furthermore, Lenins outstretched arm

clearly points the way for his followers, but later renditions of theoutstretched arm also suggested a benediction The image of Leninsraised arm may well have reminded viewers of Russian Orthodox icons


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images of Christ or the saints (the right hand conferred a blessing whilethe left hand held a book or scroll).97

After Lenins death, the cult of Lenin was organised by special party commis-sions. Artists and writers were engaged in producing new images, rituals, and

symbols incorporating both Russian Orthodox and traditional folk rhetoric andpractice. Henceforth, Lenin was often invoked as our dear father, and at thefuneral some mourners carried Lenins portrait on tall sticks, like religious

banners in a Russian Orthodox procession.98 The establishment of LeninCorners was modelled after the Russian Orthodox home, the place where theicon was kept.99 The decision of the Politburo to build a mausoleum and toembalm Lenins corpse for veneration by a mass pilgrimage recalled RussianOrthodox dogmatic belief that saints bodies were incorruptible and did notdecay after death.100Embedded in this sacralised tradition, Lenins embalmedcorpse and his sacral writings evoked the medieval myth of the Kings two

bodies, a visible mortal and an immortal, invisible body politic that wasimmortal, infallible, and capable of absolute perfection.101 The propagandaslogan Lenin is dead ! Leninism lives! Leninism will triumph! evoked thismyth of the Kings two bodies, his visible mortality as well as his invisible politi-cal immortality.

Not surprisingly, the Lenin cult, already established during his own lifetime,consecrated him as a political and sacral icon for a militant collective of virtuosi,and laid the foundations for a political and sacral tradition which could be selec-tively used by the Stalinist hierocratic power. For example, in his mourningspeech, within the context of the funeral rites for the dead Lenin, Stalin made thefamous oath of swearing to comrade Lenin: Departing from us, comrade Lenindirected us to guard the unity of our party as the apple of our eye. We swear toyou, comrade Lenin, that we will also fulfil this commandment with honor.102

The greatness of Lenin, Stalin exclaimed,

consists in his capacity of having created the Soviet Union, thereby givingby his deeds the oppressed masses of the whole world that the hope forsalvation is not lost, that the domination by landlords and capitalists doesnot hold very long, that the realm of work can be created through theendeavours of the working people itself, that the realm of work had to becreated on earth and not on heaven. Thereby he had inflamed the hearts

of workers and peasants of the whole world giving them the hope forliberation.103

On 28 January 1924, in a commemorative speech, Stalin compared Lenin with amountain-eagle, called him a genius of revolution, praised his humility aswell as his steadfastness on principles and his faith in the masses.104 Eventhough Stalin did not play a leading role105in the establishment of the Leninistleadership cult before and after Lenins death, in his mourning speech Stalinclearly claimed to be the only reliable guardian of the Leninist legacy, leading theparty and protecting it from evil heretical contaminations. Furthermore, the

Central Committee praised a mystical union between Lenin and his believers.Lenin lives in the soul of every member of our party. Every member of our partyis a particle of Lenin Our entire communist family is a collective embodiment of


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every poor peasant.106Stalin could, within this sacral Leninist tradition,107pursuehis own advancement toward the status of immortality and infallibility. Stalinfollowed the strategy of cult building via the assertion of Lenins infallibility. Bymaking the partys previous vozhd an iconographic figure beyond criticism,Stalins letter implicitly nominated the successor-vozhdfor similar treatment.108

Stalinist Hierocratic Domination

Stalin transformed the Leninist community of virtuosi into a church dispensinggrace (Anstaltsgnade), which includes the righteous and the unrighteous and isespecially concerned with subjecting the sinner to Divine law.109The organisa-tional necessities of wartime communism and the revolutionary transformationsof industrialisation and collectivisation in the 1930s transformed the Leninistcommunity of virtuosito (1) a bureaucratised and hierarchically organised institu-tion of grace, with institutionalised salvation and an office of charisma.110This

evolved into an administrative apparatus with obedient and disciplined cadreswho substituted the pneumatic enthusiasm of the early virtuosi. The Stalinistchurch was also organised as (2) an office hierarchy that dispensed grace. Thecorrect interpretation of the store of sacral scriptures, the supervision of canonicalpreaching, and the functioning of the missionary apparatus belonged to theduties of office holders. The vouchsafing of grace and absolution of sins areorganised as a ritual which requires little personal ethical accomplishment.111

The structural change from the Leninist political religion of virtuosito the Stalinistchurch institution was accompanied by (3) a selective reformulation of the Lenin-ist legacy of sacral scriptures, and ritual worship of the numinous leader of theOctober Revolution. The hierocracy112is forced to develop their own interpreta-tions of the history and future of the revolutionary cause. The rise of a profes-sional priesthood with salaries, promotions, professional duties, and adistinctive way of life,113indicates that the ideological experts of propaganda andstate security have noticed the heretical challenges. They are engaged with thetask of rationalising dogma and rites [Kultus], [which were] recorded in holyscriptures, provided with commentaries, and turned into objects of systematiceducation, a distinct difference from mere training in technical skills.114 Thesacral experts of Stalinist orthodoxy worked out and invented115the new sacraltradition of Marxism-Leninism, with the intention of legitimising the new mono-cratic office holder of the church.116

The deification of Stalin left the party unable to control his actions andjustified in advance everything connected with his name The cult ofStalin, following the logic of any cult, tended to transform the Commu-nist Party into an ecclesiastical organization, producing a sharp distinc-tion between ordinary people and leader-priests headed by theirinfallible pope.117

The most important tenet of faith in this invented sacral tradition of Marxism-Leninism was that Stalin alone qualified as the only true disciple of Lenin; the

consequence thus being his monopoly infallible interpretation of his holy scrip-tures. Stalins own dogmatic performances like his lectures at the SverdlovUniversity (1924) published as Leninism118 can be presented in this way as an


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became a religion dtat.119Like most catechisms, the Stalinist version of Leninismwas a very dogmatic, rigid and categorical booklet,120 Bible nouvelle dcoupe enversets comme sil sy trouvait autant de rponses dfinitives toutes les questions poses

par lhistoire,121trying to catechise the novices as well as the cadres, probing theirideological knowledge, testing the correct memorising of relevant ideological

formulas, and selecting the aspiring and faithful party members out of the flock ofsheep of illiterate and agnostic party candidates. Stalins Leninism, the ideologicalcore of the newly founded Marxism-Leninism, formed une thologie complexe avecsa dogmatique, sa mystique et sa scolastique122, a new secular religion,123a social-ist religion with a god. And the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-holy god of thenew religion was himself, Stalin.124

Using the Leninist icon of party organisation for legitimising his own claim toleadership, Stalin outlined his conception of the new party as the Party ofLeninism.125That party is the war staff of the proletarian army,126armed with arevolutionary spirit unbounded devotion to the cause of the proletariat. But in

order to be an effective vanguard, the Party must be armed with revolutionarytheory, with a knowledge of the laws of movement, of the laws of revolution.127

Praising the party as the highest form of the class organisation of the proletar-iat,128Stalin urged it to fulfil a cultural revolution by educating and convertingthe proletarian masses

with the spirit of discipline and organisation; that the proletarian massesmust be inoculated against the harmful influence of the petty bourgeoisie,must be prevented from acquiring petty-bourgeois habits and customs;that the organisational activities of the proletariat must be utilised inorder to educate and transform the mentality of the petty bourgeoisie;that the proletarian masses must be taught to help themselves, to culti-vate their own strength, so that, in the course of time, class may be abol-ished and the conditions be prepared for the inauguration of socialistproduction.129

In order to realise that utopian goal of socialist production, the party itself,Stalin claimed, had to be an expression of a unity of will incompatible with theexistence of fractions. The required iron discipline should not be blind, butpresupposes, the existence of conscious and voluntary submission; for only aconscious discipline can ever become a discipline of iron. By purging itself, Stalin

recommended, the party can be steeled in the school of solidarity and discipline,and reach a unity of will. After having enumerated the dangerous seductionsand challenges coming from the opportunist, reformist, all the socialists whohave an imperialist and jingoist bias, all the socialists who are infected withpatriotism and pacifism, Stalin made unmistakably clear that: The more drasticthe purge, the more likelihood is there of a strong and influential Party arising.130

Sometime later, at the apex of his power and influence, Stalin issued hisHistory of the All-Union Communist Party: Short Course(1938),131approved by theCentral Committee, and surely a party catechism and canonical text to be memo-rised by heart by the new, compliant party cadres. At the height of the great

purges, Stalin himself went on to rewrite the history of the party.132

By rewritingthe party history, he tried to occupy the historical memory of the party cadres,eliminating all rivals belonging to the early community of Leninist disciples and


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leader conquering history and society. Stalins crude forgery of party historywas intended for the believing younger cadres for whom, mastering the ShortCoursewould be obligatory; it was revolutionary theory with a knowledge ofthe laws of movement, of the laws of revolution.133The Short Course, he hopedand decreed, must become the basis of the Soviet System of political education.

By providing a unitary guidance, it would end the confusion in the telling ofParty history and the abundance of diverse viewpoints on theory and historyfound in earlier texts.134The Short Coursewas to initiate the Stalinist revolutionof belief, providing the unity of will for party cadres attempting to modernisea late developing society in the mould of European industrialisation andmodernisation.

Dramatic management of the Moscow show trials (193638) was the last stepin the formation and legitimisation of the new Stalinist monocratic rule. They

brought Stalin a monopoly of the legitimate use of hierocratic coercion.135Themeans for implementing such a monopoly of hierocratic coercion consisted

mainly of (4) the establishment of internal security organs, and the leadershipcadres who could act as representatives of the Stalinist centre. At the sametime, this applies also to mission institutes136 that acted as instruments ofpower in dominating foreign communist parties, as well as ideological andcultural zones of influence forming a worldwide church with its headquartersin Moscow.

The Stalinist Purge Machinery

As already mentioned, the Stalinist cadres who replaced the Leninist virtuosipresented a different biographical identity. They stemmed predominantly frompeasant origins, with low intellectual standards and no cosmopolitan outlook.

The lower ladders of the now swelling administration, in the economic,political, and other spheres, were swamped by newcomers from thepopular classes, badly prepared for their new positions, in fact, for themost part poorly educated, if not semiliterate Petit bourgeois mental-ity, to use the language of official disapproval, soon permeated official-dom and all too often combined greed with incompetence.137

Even the upper layers of the administrative apparatus, the powerful class of

bosses (nachalstvo) endowed with power, privileges, and status, was a rulinglayer created by the state, trained, indoctrinated, and paid by it.138Not surpris-ingly, those party cadres had to pay the Stalinist hierocratic domination onlypure obedience to the institution (Anstaltsgehorsam).139 This pure obediencepresented itself as a formal humility of obedience140 (formale Gehorsamsdemut),which informally deviated from prescribed patterns of commands by formallykeeping up appearances.

For such cadres it was sufficient to function as disciplined and obedientmachines, without any personal calls to revolutionary enthusiasm. The pneu-matic ethic of virtuosi was transformed into pure obedience to the institution,

which is regarded as inherently meritorious, and not concrete, substantive ethicalobligation, nor even the qualification of superior moral capacity achieved throughones own methodical ethical actions 141 The institutional grace was dispensed


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obtained by regular admission procedures. Minimal knowledge of party cate-chism and some formulas for faith in salvation were sufficient for admission. Agood proletarian background, the achievement of a party membership card, andthe demonstration of obedience and discipline belonged to the minimal standardequipment of a normal party cadre.143

Under those historical conditions, the purge machinery of hierocratic domina-tion was implemented only in the registration of party membership, and the veri-fication of minimal requirements for ideological knowledge and personalconduct. Party cadres were purged due to passivity, breaches of Party disci-pline, including factional activities, bad behaviour accounts, and misappropri-ating funds, of taking bribes.144 Getty has vividly described that the purgesuncovered an abyss of corruption, nepotism, minimal ideological knowledge,

bureaucratic formalism and inefficiency, as well as mafiosi type practices withinthe party ranks.145Thus the proverkawas restricted to examining only the outerconformity and not the inner vocation of a cadre. The public confession of deviant

acts before a purging commission, or the public of a party collective, can beconsidered a ritual obligation without a soul-searching transformation in the totalpersonality of the respective party cadre. Confessing minor and/or mortal sins

belonged to the routine practice of an experienced cadre. Furthermore, thisconfession seemed to be restricted to external acts without a questioning of ideo-logical motives. Repentance was conceived of as an external retaliation relative tothe severity of the deviant acts. Apparently, this practice of merely mechanicallyconnecting external, sinful acts with corresponding punishments and retaliationsleads only to outer conformity without a social control of painful feelings oversinful thoughts, as well as a conscience which includes total personality patterns.All of the purge and confession rituals were enacted by hierocratic dominationas a means to control, admonishing and threatening a submissive administrativeapparatus with, in the case of visible moral faults and shortcomings in theconduct of party affairs, external retaliations.

Fulfilment of the tasks of industrialisation and collectivisation were therequired capabilities from the party cadres

for a regime of economy, the fulfilment of the industrial and financialplan, the punctual fulfilment of grain collections, proper preparations forthe spring sowing, for harvesting and the distribution of the crop, and ingeneral for firmness in regard to the accuracy and efficiency of work done

by Party members subordinated to the leadership of this or thatcomrade.146

The central apparatus of the hierocratic domination had to invent the imagery ofan almighty master who could periodically discover, expose and punish unwor-thy cadres in order to overcome their localism, and to purge their ideological andadministrative shortcomings. The need for a central power to install at least anexternal, threatening potential to be internalised by the administrative partycadre, seems to be indicated in the closing speech of Stalin at the Thirteenth PartyCongress:

The basic idea in the purging is the fact that people of this kind feel thatthere is a master who may call them to account for their transgressions


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must without fail go through the ranks of the Party with a broom in hishands.147

Stalin demanded from his party cadres permanent revolutionary vigilance.

The Shakhty-affair demonstrated the failing revolutionary vigilance ofthe party organisations and labour unions. It demonstrated that ourtechnical experts are enormously backward, that some old engineers andtechnicians are working without being controlled and therefore slidinginto industrial wrecking pressured by special offers from enemies fromforeign countries.148

The revolutionary vigilance to be pursued by party cadres, admonished Stalin,had to fight and discover an invisible enemy operating everywhere in the coun-try, using the mask of outer conformity of loyal party membership in order to

secretly sabotage Soviet industrialisation projects. Every party member had toshow his utmost revolutionary vigilance to detect these wreckers, to forcethem to publicly confess their industrial sabotage, and to punish them for theircounter-revolutionary wrecking. This necessary individual revolutionary vigi-lance had to be complemented, Stalin urged, by a good organised control func-tioning like a searchlight helping to light up at every possible time to cast lightupon the present state of the apparatus and to bring out into the open the

bureaucrats and clerks.149In his report Deficiencies of Party Work and Methods forLiquidation of the Trotskyites and other Two-faced People,150 Stalin formulated theideological outlines for the chistki,which were directed against regional (oblast)party family circles as well central high level party cadres151at the height of theEzhovshchina (193738). Again, Stalin deplored, leading party comrades had

been naive and blind, had been unable to see the true face of the enemies of thepeople and to discover the wolfs in sheeps clothing and to unmask them.152Thepresent Trotskyites, Stalin continued, represent no more a political platform butrather a gang of wreckers, diversionists, spies, assassins, without principles andideals, a gang of sworn enemies of the working class, being employed in thesecurity organs of foreign countries.153 Stalins requests for enhanced revolu-tionary vigilance was directed at every party cadre, since the Trotskyites mask-ing themselves as true believers had infiltrated all ranks of the party byobtaining party memberships cards. The Trotskyites strength, Stalin advised the

Central Committee plenum, consisted in getting party membership cards,thereby acquiring political trust and access to all of our institutionsand organisations.154 Therefore, Stalin concluded, the Trotskyite wreckers,diversionists, spies and assassins were omnipresent at every party cell andeven at every corner and in the midst of the socialist institutions and corpora-tions. By 1937 during the Great Purge, the demonisation of ideological hetero-doxy was complete.

No more accurate analysis can be offered than that of the writer for themigr Menshevik press who stated that Trotsky is forced into the role of

the tempting demon, a Satan who holds in his hands the reins of allconspiracies While Nikolai Vasilevich Krylenko believed thatTrotsky will enter history as the monstrous blend in a single person of all


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mind, Anastas Ivanovich Mikoian denied that oppositionists werehuman at all: Trotskii, Zinovev and Bukharin gave birth to a new type ofman a monster disguised as a person. Everything dark, sinister, andcriminal, the contemporary Soviet press observed, all the human scum,all the dregs of society gather at the sound of Trotskiis cry, ready for

ignoble and sordid deeds.155

Not surprisingly, in this demonised context of hell and heaven, devil and god,vreditel (wrecker, saboteur), that originally referred to agricultural pests orvermin,156became the standard ideological slogan to stigmatise and exterminateall the saboteurs, spies, diversionists, double-dealers, Trotskyites and soon; blamed for the widespread chaos that reigned within the planned economy,responsible for shortfalls of industrial production, agrarian crises, hunger anddisease epidemics, mine disasters, trains and railway accidents, chronic short-comings in proliferation of consumer goods.157To associate the wrecker slogan

with germs and disease caused by harmful, infection-spreading locusts158

wasnot only a scapegoat mechanism used for diverting popular resentment anddiscontent with the failed prophecies of socialist reconstruction to socialoutcasts. It was also a conscious ideological strategy to sanitise an epidemic andinfectious social organism by introducing healing measures to be taken bypermanently purging the sinful, infected, sick parts of the body politic. The stag-ing of model show trials like the Shakhty Affair (1928), the Industrial Party Trial(1930), the Menshevik Trial (1931), the Metro-Vickers Trial (1933), the MoscowShow Trials (193538) with their wide propaganda effects transmitted by radio,print newsreel campaigns, mass attendances, demonstrations, agitation meetingsat the industrial working places was supposed to be a moral drama showingthe victory of the progressive, disciplined, vigilant party soldiers over thevermin, germs and wreckers, damaging and infecting socialist culture andsociety. The Stalinist pedagogy of publicised rituals of criticism and self-criticism(samokritika), enacted by the discovered and accused wreckers delivering thestereotyped formulas of confession, repentance and pleas for reintegration to thesocialist order, intended to evoke the empathy necessary to induce spectators toreproduce this ritualized self-judgement in themselves.159The public drama ofconfession and repentance of sins was to be re-enacted within the confines of theprivate courtroom, where the individual sinner simultaneously played the rolesof police, judge and jury in order to re-forge himself after the moral require-

ments of the new Stalinist ethic. Reforging a New Soviet Man from the Stalinisteschatology had to be practised by the believing party cadres themselves. Withinthe invisible sphere of private soul-searching the party cadre, like everyconscious proletarian, had to undertake the task of self-fashioning a new identity

by detecting and correcting his sinful habits and thoughts, his heretic seductionsand secret deviations from the prescribed social norms and expectations of thesocialist moral and ethic.

For example, the Soviet diaries of the 1930s offered a convenient opportunity forintrospection and record-keeping to writers aspiring to a journey of self-renewaland salvation160 by repudiating the backward, old and dark habits, social

norms and bourgeois attitudes, and by embarking the virtuous path of personalsalvation through an ardent identification with the Stalinist revolutionary project.Like the defendant forced to bare his soul before the prosecutor in the courtroom


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methodology to himself. On his own initiative, and outside the parameters of offi-cial Bolshevik discourse, he kept purging his soul, exposing, and holding trial overthe potential class enemy within himself.161Not surprisingly, the young Potyo-mkin,162 a student at the Sverdlovsk Mining Institute, welcomed the year 1935with the firm intent of fulfilling Stalinist high expectations. After having visited a

Komsomol meeting, Potyomkin noted in his diary:

I spoke out in the debates, voiced the enormous purport and meaning ofthe resolution and linked it with the goals of our work toward becomingworthy bearers of the calling of advanced, politically active and commit-ted youth. Tirelessly working to raise my cultural-theoretical level,embodying absorbing in myself the ideal of a social activist and theoreti-cian, a revolutionary, a party worker of the great school of Lenin. But Iwas dissatisfied with my speech. I didnt talk in freely developed instan-taneously formulated thoughts, my thought couldnt come up with clear

and emphatic enough words to keep pace with my headlong enthusiasm.Imprecision of thought made the precision of words lose its meaning. Thewords dragged the meaning along and formed sentences in the air. Thisis the speech without preparation that I was drawing attention to justnow. A new years toast to the great successes in the cultural and scien-tific enrichment of culture, and science and the potentialities of life. Toprecision, intensity of work, to the culture of speech. To self-confidence,high spirits, and good cheer.163

This inspiring revolutionary enthusiasm, written down in the diary of that youngKomsomol reflecting his inner feelings and aspirations, strongly reminds one ofthe prophetic exclamations voiced by Trotsky, the charismatic demagogue of theOctober Revolution. Through a permanent process of self-disciplining, Trotskyprophesied, the envisioned New Soviet Man could become

incomparably stronger, wiser, more subtle. His body will become moreharmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more melodious.The forms of everyday life are changing into dynamic theatricality. Theaverage human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, Goethe, Marx.And beyond this ridge, other peaks will emerge.164

From the darkness of former, polluted, decadent, bourgeois phasesof history appeared the proletariat embodied with the messianic missionto lead the enslaved proletarian masses into the lightning sun of asocialist paradise. The New Man could not be considered simply aworker Rather, the paragon of Communism was a proletarian-intelli-gent. Absorbing the intelligentsias messianic message, and acquiringthe latters personality, the working class was polluted. Ceasing to be itspure self, it turned into the intelligentsia.165

The working-thinking New Man represented messianic attributes not yet seen in

human history. Sharing the same utopian and messianic revolutionary enthusi-asm as Trotsky, Grigory Piatakov, one of the prominent old Bolsheviks, accusedof being a Trotskyist and condemned to death in a show trial 1937 could


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The limitless extension of the possible is the feature which makes usmen of miracles Our idea is to bring into life that which is consideredimpossible, not realizable and inadmissible We are people of specialtemper, without any equivalents in history precisely because we makethe impossible possible.166

Inquisition by Confession

The required self-criticism and criticism of the party cadres was used asmedium to reach their inner conscience, and therefore to convert and convincethem to show self-discipline and self-sacrificing work for the benefit ofCommunism.167However, this exposed conscience could not claim the protec-tion of a private guilt-biography. The routine rituals of criticism and self-criticism were arranged as degradation ceremonies to expose, humiliate and, inmany cases, to exclude the sinner accused of sins which were publicised by a

censuring purge commission, or a monitoring and questioning public. In thisinstance, the respective rituals were organised as an institutionalised ritual ofexclusion for those cadres who dared to confess criminal thoughts and acts. Theconfessional practise is transformed to a ritual of exclusion, an inquisition byconfession.168

The inquisition by confession, the chistka, tried (1) to isolate the deviant sinnersocially. (2) The enactment of public criticism and self-criticism aimed at his stig-matisation. The bearing of his soul to the disciplinary authorities of the party didnot give him the certainty of absolution from his criminal identity, but rather

bound him closer to the community. His obedience to the discipline of thecommunity, and his unconditional surrender to its commandments, weredemanded from him. The public confession of sins served as a sign of thissubmission and surrender. The training in systematic obedience was thecentrepiece of the ritual of criticism and self-criticism.169(3) The physical isolationand social stigmatisation of the deviant sinner had to serve as a means of moralinstruction and terrorisation. The pedagogy of terror and moral instruction isapplied to deter further contagion by heretical diseases. (4) The extraction ofconfession by physical and psychological means of torture was practised bytrained personnel of the state security apparaty. In contrast to the Roman CatholicChurch, the Stalinist inquisition disguised all traces of physical or psychic torture.The Catholic Inquisition170worked within the legal frame of justice at that time,

which believed in the effectiveness of torture as a legal means to getting the lasttestimony of guilt from the charged culprit. Torture as a legalised practice, theprocedure to torture as prescribed and testified by legal persons, was thought ofat that time as an improved legal procedure compared to the ordeal preferredearlier. However, the Stalinist inquisition worked, rather, with the arrangedillusion of presenting public sinners who confessed invented sinful thoughts andcriminal acts.

Especially in the context of the Moscow show trials (193638),171 the accusedheretics and criminal cadres of diversion and sabotage had to play a prear-ranged drama of the successful unmasking of hidden and dangerous spies,

saboteurs and heretics. The accused cadres of diversion who were torturedbefore their appearance on the stage of the show trial had to play their roles asculprits according to the directives of the screenplay writers Yezhov172 and


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heretic cowardice, and of Leninist discipline and obedience against Bukharinist orTrotskyite treason and sabotage, was enacted for moral instruction, and for agood end of the heretics who welcomed their defeat as true soldiers of the party.

These rituals of public confession, of criticism and self-criticism, are normallypractised in minimal differentiated societies integrated by a solidarit mcanique.173

The confessional cultures of such groups do not legitimise the inner workings ofprivate conscience, sin and individual responsibility. Social groups with a solidaritmcaniquecultivate public rituals of confession in order to control dangerous, sinfulforces that could threaten the purity of the collectivity.174The individual miscon-duct is at the same time an affair of the whole collectivity. Therefore, the individualsinner is demanded to expiate his sins publicly in order to purify the contaminatedconscience collective. The confession of sins is public and collective since the individ-ual sinner has violated the collective norms and values of his reference group, andis therefore obliged to exercise acts ofpiaculato restore the endangered stability ofhis community.

The sins confessed represent stereotypes of sinful motivations and offences. Assoon as the stereotypes of sins, acts and thoughts have been spoken, or vomited,so to speak, before the public, the pollution of the community can be healed andthe former purity of their sacral authority restored. The sinners, ideologicallydeviant party members, experienced during their detention in prison, and theirinterrogation by security experts and torture specialists, a process of self-purifica-tion, a precondition for a confession vomiting175the internal harmful objects. Inthis sense, Vishinsky, the prosecutor in the Moscow Show Trials, quoted Zinovievas having said at the trial of 1516 January 1935: I am telling you all I think, andthereby I am extracting from my body the last splinter of the crimes that are beingunfolded.176Another prominent defendant, Drobnis, reported of his conversionand rebirth after having vomited his inner dirt:

Arrest and imprisonment were the purgatory which enabled mecompletely to sweep away, to rid myself of, all that filth. I did this withcomplete determination, with complete firmness and consistency I askyou to believe me that I have purged myself and washed rotten putridTrotskyism from every recess of my mind, I have dealt with it ruth-lessly.177

Notes1. Cf. H. Lbbe, Religion nach der Aufklrung(Graz: Styria, 1990), pp.14478.2. Lbbe calls that function Kontingenzbewltigung, ibid., pp.16078.3. See S.N. Eisenstadt, Tradition, Change, and Modernity (New York: John Wiley, 1973), pp.4772.

Eisenstadt declares this breakdown of modernity as pathologies of breakdowns of modernisation,or, as in the case of Nazism, as attempts at what might be called demodernisation but not ascases of lack of or of tardy modernisation, ibid., p.51.

4. E. Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1996).

5. E. Gentile, The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on theQuestion of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1(2000), pp.1855 (at 1819).

6. The term political religion was developed systematically by Eric Voegelin, Die politischenReligionen (1938; Mnchen: Fink, 1993). Voegelin used this term in order to describe GermanNational Socialism and Russian Bolshevism At the same time R Aron wrote on the religions


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tudes et tmoignages (Paris: Commentaire no 2829. Juillard, 1985), pp.32740. See also R. Aron,Lavenir des religions sculires (1944), ibid., pp.36983. Aron described Leninism as a gnosticsect almost in the same manner as Voegelin did. Le lninisme apparat donc la gnose dune religiondu salut par lhistoire, dont se rclamait une Internationale peu cohrente sans la prendre au pied de lalettre, R. Aron, Remarques sur la gnose lniniste, in idem, Machiavel et les tyrannies modernes(Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1993), pp.388404.

7. Maxim Gorky, Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture and the Bolshevisks 19171918(London: Garnston Press, 1970), p.89, astutely observed that experimental character on Leninsrevolutionary strategy. Lenin works like a chemist in a laboratory, with the difference that thechemist uses dead matter, but his work produces a valuable result for life; Lenin, however, workswith living material and he is leading the revolution to ruin. Sensible workers who follow Leninshould realize that a pitiless experiment is being performed on the Russian working class, anexperiment which will destroy the best forces of the workers and will arrest normal developmentof the Russian revolution for a long time to come, 10 (23) November 1917.

8. See Hannah Arendt, Elemente und Ursprnge totaler Herrschaft, Vol. III, Totale Herrschaft (1951;Mnchen: Pieper, 1973), pp.65461.

9. See A. Gerschenkron, Economic Development in Russian Intellectual History of the NineteenthCentury, in idem, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (Cambridge,MA: Belknap Press, 1966), pp.15287. Interestingly, Lenin itself used the paradigm of the advan-tages of backwardness with respect to the German socialist movement and later on the RussianBolsheviks. The second advantage is that, chronologically speaking, the Germans were about thelast to come into the workers movement [] so the practical workers movement in Germanyought never forget the English and French movements, that it was able simply to utilise theirdearly bought experience, and could now avoid their mistakes, which in their time were mostlyunavoidable. Without the precedent of the English trade unions and French workers politicalstruggles, without the gigantic impulse given especially by the Paris Commune, where would webe now?, in V.I. Lenin, What is to be Done: Burning Questions of Our Movement(1902; New York:International Publishers, 1969), pp.278.

10. Gerschenkron (note 9), p.184.11. L. Trotzki, Unsere politischen Aufgaben (1904), in idem, Schriften zur revolutionren Organisation,

ed. and trans. H. Mehringer (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1970), pp.7134, esp. p.96. Trotskys vision of

revolutionary enthusiasm was supposed to be an alternative model to Lenins Fabrik-Disziplin , aLeninist notion Trotsky vehemently criticised in this pamphlet. See K.-G. Riegel, Sendungspro-phetie und Charisma: Am Beispiel Leo Trotzkis, in W. Lipp (ed.), Kulturtypen, Kulturcharaktere(Berlin: Reimer, 1987), pp.22140.

12. M. Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1978), vol.2, p.1161.

13. See J.L. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase(London: Secker & Warburg, 1960).14. Cf. J.L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy(London: Mercury Books, 1966).15. Talmon (note 13), p.18.16. Vera Zasulic to Marx, 16 February 1881, in D. Rjazanov (ed.),Marx-Engels-Archiv: Zeitschrift des

Marx-Engels- Instituts in Moskau, vol.1 (reprint Frankfurt am Main.: Neve Kritik, 1969), p.317.17. Karl Marx, Vorrede zur zweiten russischen Ausgabe des Kommunistischen Manifestes (1882), in Karl

Marx and Friedrich Engels, Die russische Kommune: Kritik eines Mythos, ed. M. Rubel (Mnchen:Hanser, 1972), pp.6971 (at 71). Cf. W. Geierhos, Vera Zasulic und die russische revolutionre Bewe-gung(Wien: Bhlau, 1977), pp.129272.

18. See, for example, his correspondence with Kautsky dealing with the appropriation of funds, atheme very characteristic for Lenin and Stalin, who proved his early steelness by illegitimateappropriations (bank robberies). Cf. D. Geyer, Kautskys Russisches Dossier: Deutsche Sozial-demokraten als Treuhnder des russischen Parteivermgens 19101915 (Frankfurt and New York:Campus, 1981). For a detailed account of the various splits, discussions and factions within theranks of the exiled Russian Social Democrats like Plekhanov, Akselrod, Martov and Lenin residingin London, Geneva and Munich, see D. Geyer, Lenin in der russischen Sozialdemokratie (Graz:Bhlau, 1962), esp. ch.V.

19. Cf. P. Selznick, The Organisational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (London: Free

Press, 1952), esp. pp.4255.20. B. Mazlish, The Revolutionary Ascetic: Evolution of a Political Type(New York: Basic Books, 1976),esp. ch.8.

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120 K.-G. Riegel

22. See J.H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith(New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Publishers, 1999), esp. ch.14.

23. See M. Raeff, The Decembrist Movement(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966). The statutes ofPestels association in G. Dudeck (ed.), Die Dekabristen: Dichtungen und Dokumente(Leipzig: Insel,1975), pp.163210.

24. Necaevs Catechism in M. Bakunin, Gewalt fr den Krper, Verrat fr die Seele? (Berlin: Karin

Kramer, 1980), pp.11723. See also P. Pomper, Sergei Nechaev(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1979).Necaev seems to be the Stawroginin Dostoevskiis Demons. See I. Berlin, Russische Denker(Frank-furt am Main: Europische Verlagsanstalt, 1981), p.46.

25. Cf. D. Hardy, Petr Tkachev, the Critic as Jacobin(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977).26. See F. Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth

Century Russia(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966), pp.33553.27. Bakunin (note 24), p.80.28. In Demons, Dostoevsky gave a lively portrait of some underground revolutionaries like Necaev,

Bakunin or Tkachev, experiences won in the Petrashevsky circle where the followers of Speshnevdiscussed the advantages of instituting a central committee for the planned uprising. See Venturi(note 26), pp.889.

29. Weber, Economy and Society(note 12), vol.1, p.539, defines the virtuosias heroic men of self-controland self-discipline pursuing their salvation. Thus, all these methodologies of sanctificationdeveloped a combined physical and psychic regimen and an equally methodical regulation of themanner and scope of all thought and action, thus producing in the individual the most completelyalert, voluntary, and anti-instinctual control over his own physical and psychological processes,and insuring the systematic regulation of life in subordination to the religious end. The goals, thespecific contents, and the actual results of the planned procedures were very variable. Appar-ently, Weber had the Western monasticism in mind as a paradigm of moral self-perfection withincommunities of virtuosi. See, for example, M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,trans. T. Parsons (London: Unwin, 1984), p.117. For a first attempt to interpret the Leninist virtuosiwithin the Weberian sociology of religion, see Klaus-Georg Riegel, Konfessionsrituale im Marxis-mus-Leninismus(Graz: Styria, 1985). Interestingly, some time later O. Kharkhordin, The Collectiveand the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999),esp. pp.35122, uses the confessional culture of the Orthodox Church and their monasteries as a

starting point for analysing within the context of Foucaults theoretical approach the Leninist andStalinist cadres. Not very astonishingly, both approaches, the Weberian and the Foucaultiandiscourses, are portraying the Leninist monk revolutionaries (S. Frank) and the Stalinist cadreswithin the paradigm of public penance and private confession.

30. Lenin sees his movement in the tradition of the Jacobins of the French Revolution. See for exampleW.I. Lenin, Zwei Taktiken der Sozialdemokratie in der demokratischen Revolution(1905; Berlin: Dietz,1946), pp.545. Cf. Astrid von Borcke, Die Ursprnge des Bolschewismus: Die jakobinische Tradition inRuland und die Theorie der revolutionren Diktatur (Mnchen: Berchmanns, 1977); J. Keep, TheTyranny of Paris Over Petrograd, Soviet Studies20 (1968), pp.2235.

31. Berlin (note 24), p.167.32. M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Orgins of Radical Politics (New York:

Atheneum, 1976), p.315.

33. Lenin (note 9), p.123.34. Ibid., p.137.35. E. Goffman, On the Characteristics of Total Institutions, in E. Goffman,Asylums: Essays on the Social

Situation on Mental Patients and Other Inmates(Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1961), pp.1124.36. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison(London: Penguin, 1991), esp. pp.195228.37. Lenin (note 9), p.137.38. Ibid., p.5. Lenin put this ideological Leitmotivon the title page of his catechism, quoting from a

letter of Lassalle to Marx on 24 June 1852.39. Ibid., p.116.40. Ibid., p.123.41. Ibid., p.1234.42. Ibid., p.138.

43. In the words of Foucault (note 36), Discipline makes individuals; it is the specific technique ofpower that regards individuals both as objects and as instruments of its exercise. It is not a trium-phant power, which because of its own excess can pride itself on its omnipotence; it is a modest,

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45. Ibid., p.158.46. F. Gehrlich, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom Tausendjhrigen Reich(Mnchen: Bruckmann, 1920),

pp.301.47. R. Flp-Miller, Geist und Gesicht des Bolschewismus: Darstellung und Kritik des kulturellen Lebens in

Sowjet-Russland(Wien: Amalthea, 1926), p.120.48. F. Stepun, Das Antlitz Russlands und das Gesicht der Revolution(Berlin and Leipzig: Gotthelf, 1934),

p.60.49. N. Berdiajew, Wahrheit und Lge des Kommunismus(Luzern: Vita Nova, 1934), p.22.50. S. Frank, Die Ethik des Nihilismus (1909), in K. Schlgel (ed.), Wegzeichen: Zur Krise der russischen

Intelligenz(Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1990), p.312.51. J. Stalin, ber die politische Strategie und Taktik der russischen Kommunisten, in Werke 5

(Berlin: Dietz, 1952), p.61.52. G. Sinowjew, Vom Werdegang unserer Partei(Hamburg: Carl Haym, 1920), pp.1718.53. N. Bucharin, Die eiserne Kohorte der Revolution, Russische KorrespondenzJg.III; Vol.1112 (1922),

p.730.54. In an entry in his diary of 20 August 1919, A. Paquet reported that characterisation by Radek. See

W. Baumgart (ed.), Von Brest-Litovsk zur Deutschen Novemberrevolution: Aus den Tagebchern, Briefenund Aufzeichnungen von Alfons Paquet, Wilhelm Groener und Albert Hopman Mrz bis November 1

RIEGEL -Marxismo-Leninismo Como Una Religion Politica

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