Lenin (Ulyanov), Vladimir Ilyich

Lenin (Ulyanov), Vladimir Ilyich

(b. Simbirsk, Russia [now Ulyanovsk, U.S.S.R.], 22 April 1870;d. Gorki, near Moscow, U.S.S.R., 21 January 1924),

politics, statesmanship, philosophy.

Lenin’s paternal grandfather was a peasant and a serf. His father, Ilya Nicolaevich, was an inspector of public schools in Simbirsk, and his mother, Maria Alexandrovna Blank, a well-educated woman. His character and outlook were strongly influenced by his family, by the political and social environment in which he was brought up, and by the progressive traditions of Russian literature. An elder brother, Alexander, was executed in 1887 for an attempt on the life of the Czar Alexander III. In 1887 Lenin graduated from the Gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the University of Kazan. He was soon expelled for participating in the student movement and arrested. He then began the study of Marxism, seeing in it the ideological weapon for liberation of the Russian proletariat. In 1891 he succeeded brilliantly in the examination for the faculty of law at the University of St. Petersburg.

This notice will be concerned only with the place of natural science and its philosophy in Lenin’s work and thought. It is convenient to divide his career into three periods. The first (1893-1905) includes his work in St. Petersburg, his Siberian exile in the village of Shushenskoye, where he married Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya, and his first residence abroad from 1900 to 1905. The second (1905-1917) includes his participation in the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, followed by his second and longer residence abroad from 1908 to 1917. The third (1917-1924) includes the February and October revolutions and the early years of the Soviet state.

Throughout the first period of his life, Lenin studied seriously about natural science with emphasis on its history and on the parallels to be made out between developments in natural and social science. He devoted particular attention to the Darwinian theory of evolution, to chemistry, and to psychology, with a view to substantiating and developing a scientific method applicable to the analysis and generalization of factual material. He adopted the name Lenin in 1901, as a literary pseudonym in the first instance.

It was after 1907, however, during his exile in Switzerland that Lenin gave himself most intensively to scientific reading. The positivist philosophies of Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius were then arousing interest among the Russian intelligentsia. Lenin considered them to be merely varieties of subjective idealism, and directed a book, Materialism and Empiriocriticism (1909), against them and their Russian followers. The argument is a defense and a development of dialectical materialism, the philosophical theory of Marx and Engels.

In preparation for that work, Lenin studied hundreds of writings on natural science and philosophy, concentrating now on physics, and reading widely in the literature in English, French, German, and Italian, as well as Russian. He frequented the libraries of Geneva and Paris, and traveled to London to work, like Marx before him, in the reading room of the British Museum. In the course of his studies, he formed the view that a revolution in science had begun around the turn of the century, marked by Roentgen’s discovery of X rays, the isolation of radium, the identification of the electron, and the transformation of chemical elements in early atomic physics. Traditional notions about the structure and physical properties of matter and the modes of motion had thus been vitiated. It was henceforth quite impossible to hold that atoms were indivisible, elements immutable, mass invariant, and the laws of classical mechanics universally valid. Experiment showed the contrary.

Nevertheless, changes in scientific comprehension of matter offered no justification for the views of idealists and the energeticists, who made the error of referring matter to electricity while separating motion from matter and declaring motion to be immaterial. Philosophical materialism, Lenin argued, does not presuppose admitting any specific physical theory of the structure of matter as a compulsory requirement. He showed that all physical notions are relative and changeable—and yet their relativity and changeability fails to lead to a conclusion that matter may disappear or be transferred into something spiritual or immaterial. That atoms turn out to be divisible is not to be taken as a derogation of the objective existence of matter. Indeed, Lenin predicted ever further penetration of science into matter, stating that the electron is as inexhaustible as the atom, and therefore could no more be regarded as the least structural unit of matter than could the atom itself. In Lenin’s view, modern physics illustrated the dialectical nature of human cognition, and it substantiated materialism. Certain physicists who adopted idealistic notions in this crisis of the old views of matter failed to understand the point. Their errors, in Lenin’s view, were a feature of the revolutionary disintegration of previous basic orthodoxies in physics. Lenin indicated that overcoming the difficulties and resolving the crisis required replacing obsolete metaphysical materialism with dialectical materialism.

During his years in Bern early in the war Lenin concentrated his studies on Hegel’s philosophy as well as on the history of science and technology, which he thought the most pertinent aspect of history for verifying the operation of the dialectical method. His notes on these studies were the direct continuation of Materialism and Empiriocriticism. They were published after his death under the title Philosophical Notebooks (1929-1930), for once involved in the events of the Revolution in Russia, he had no time to finish the treatise on dialectics he had conceived and already begun.

As head of the Soviet state, Lenin took a direct part in the organization of science, higher education, and cultural life. Technological problems of the energy supply had interested him even during the years of exile, when among his scientific interests was a study of the possibility of converting mineral coal deposits into gas for urban and industrial use. Now in April 1918 he formed a plan according to which the Russian Academy of Sciences should take an active part in constructing a new socialist economy. His most immediate concerns were with seeking out new mineral resources within Soviet Russia and devising a scheme for electrifying the whole country.

The Civil War in Russia (1918-1920) impeded putting these ideas into effect for a time, but at the end of 1920 Lenin drew together leading scientists and engineers in preparing a detailed project for electrification under a famous slogan: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” His speeches and writings of that period emphasize the importance of developing science and technology for the benefit of all humanity, and not of a privileged class. It was his view that science is a force making for peace and welfare in a time of inevitable revolutionary change. He kept himself informed of developments in science, and never disputed technical findings or theory on dogmatic grounds. Lenin admired Einstein as one of the great reformers of natural science and considered the theory of relativity to be entirely consistent with the dialectical progress of knowledge. He ardently advocated union between progressive scientists and Marxist philosophers. His article “On the Significance of Militant Materialism” (1922) was dedicated to that subject.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Original Works. Lenin’s works have been collected in several editions, all published in Moscow: 1st ed., 20 vols. (1920-1926); 2nd and 3rd eds., 30 vols. (1925-1932); 4th ed., 45 vols. (1941-1957); and 5th ed., complete in 55 vols. (1958-1965). Translations include that into English of the 4th ed., as Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow-London, 1960-1970), with index to the complete works (1969-1970). Archive materials and manuscripts are listed in Leninskye zborniki ( “Lenin Collections” ), 37 collections, 39 vols. (Moscow, 1924-1970).

Lenin’s works on science include Materializm i empiriocrititsizm (“Materialism and Empiriocriticism”), in several eds. (Moscow, 1909-1969), translated into several languages, including English (Moscow, 1970); O nauke i vysshem obrazovanii ( “On Science and Higher Education” 1st ed., Moscow, 1967; 2nd ed., 1971); and V. V. Ado ratsky, ed., Filosofskye tetradi, which first appeared as vols. IX and XII (Moscow, 1929, 1930) of Leninskye zborniki (most recent separate edition, Moscow, 1969), and which was translated into several languages, including into French as Cahiers philosophiques (Paris, 1955).

II. Secondary Literature. On Lenin and his scientific work, see the collections Organizatsia nauki v pervye gody sovetskoy vlasti (1917-1925). M. S. Bastrakova et al., eds., Sbornik dokumentov ( “Organization of Science in the First Years of Soviet Power [1917-1925]. A Collection of Documents” ; Leningrad, 1968); M. E. Omelyanovsky, ed., Lenin i sovremenoye estestvoznanie ( “Lenin and the Contemporary Natural Sciences” Moscow, 1969), English trans, in press; P.N. Pospelov, ed., Lenin i Akademia nauk. Sbornik dokumentov ( “Lenin and the Academy of Sciences. A Collection of Documents”; Moscow, 1969); A. V. Koltsov, ed., V. I. Lenin i problemi nauki ( “V. I. Lenin and Problems of Science”; Leningrad, 1969); and M. V. Keldysh et al., eds., Lenin i sovremennaya nauka ( “Lenin and Contemporary Science”; Moscow, 1970).

See also B. M. Kedrov, Lenin i revolutsia v estestvoznanii XX veka ( “Lenin and the Revolution in the Natural Sciences in the Twentieth Century” ; Moscow, 1969); and Lenin i dialektika estestvoznania XX veka ( “Lenin and the Dialectics of the Natural Sciences in the Twentieth Century”; Moscow, 1971), trans. into French as Boniface Kedrov, Dialectique, logique, gnoséologie: leur unité (Moscow, 1970); and P. V. Kopnine, Filosofskye idei V. I. Lenina i logika ( “Philosophical Ideas of V. I. Lenin and Logic” ; Moscow, 1969); Dialektika kak logika poznania. Opyt logiko-gnoseologitcheskogo issledovania ( “Dialectics as Logic and the Theory of Cognition. The Logical and Gnosiological Analysis” ; Moscow, 1973).

Biographies include Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Biograficheskaya khronika 1870-1921 ( “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. A Biographical Chronicle 1870-1921” ), written under the direction of G. N. Gorshkov, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1970-1972); Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Biografia, written under the direction of P. N. Pospelov (1st ed., Moscow, 1960; 5th ed., 1972); K. A. Osiroukhova et al., v. I. Lenin. Kratkyi biograficheskiyi otcherk ( “V. I. Lenin. A Short Biography” ; 1st ex., Moscow, 1960; 7th ed., written under the direction of G. D. Obytchkin, 1972); G. N. Golykov et al., eds., Vospominania o Vladimire Ilyiche Lenine ( “Recollections of V. I. Lenin” ), 5 vols. (Moscow, 1968-1970); and, especially, N. K. Krupskaya, O Lenine ( “On Lenin” ; Moscow, 1971).

B. M. Kedrov