Anti-Climacus

QUOTE:

"BAD VLAD [Andrew Stuttaford]
One of the more alarming aspects of being a friend of Martin Amis must be the danger of having one's more ridiculous opinions being quoted in his books. In Koba the Dread, his new work on Stalin, Amis has plenty to say about the views of journalist Christopher Hitchens, amongst which is the opinion that Lenin was a 'great man' . Whether Mr. Hitchens also thinks that the world is flat goes, sadly, unrecorded.

Christopher Hitchens has now reviewed Amis' book in the September 2002 edition of The Atlantic Monthly (sadly it's not yet on the magazine's website, but go on, splash out a few bucks on an original copy). As is very often the case with something written by him, the piece is well worth a read, and it merits much, much longer discussion. Nevertheless, one point in particular made startling reading: Mr. Hitchens' suggestion that there was no prospect of parliamentary pluralism in a Russia devastated by the First World War.

This is nonsense. The last legacy of the vaguely liberal Provisional Government that succeeded the Czars was a democratic election for a constituent assembly. The Bolshevik coup took place too late to stop this vote, and the results were profoundly embarrassing for the new Soviet regime. Turnout was high, the campaign was vigorous and the Bolshevik share of the poll (ten million votes, or 24 percent. of the total) was unacceptable to Lenin. Less than two months later he shut down the new assembly.

It wouldn't have been easy, but Russia in 1917 had a chance of moving towards democracy. That it didn't get to take that opportunity was the fault of one individual more than any other: Lenin, the tyrant who Christopher Hitchens apparently still considers to have been a 'great man'."