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Show Lenin, Scoffing at All Honesty in Politics, Honest With Himself By VICTOR CHEVNOY, in Foreign Affairs. Lenin was a great man. He was not merely the greatest man in his party; he was its uncrowned king, and deservedly, ne was its head, its will, I should even say he was its heart were it not that both the man and the party implied in themselves heartlessness as a duty. Lenin's intellect was energetic but cold. It was, above all, an ironic, sarcastic and cynical intellect. Nothing to him was worse than sentimentality, a name he was ready to apply to all moral and ethical considerations in politics. Such things were to him trifles, hypocrisy, "persons' talk." Politics to him meant strategy, pure and simple. Victory was the only commandment to observe; ob-serve; the will to rule and to carry through a political program without compromise, that was the only virtue; hesitation, that was the only crime. Lenin's conscience consisted in putting himself outside the boundaries boun-daries of human conscience in all dealings with his foes; and in thus rejecting re-jecting all principles of honesty he remained honest with himself. |