Lenin

Lecture 9, Lenin, of UGS 303, Ideas of the Twentieth Century, at the University of Texas at Austin, Fall 2013

[@devilmansanchez]

I'm addicted to these lectures, I can't stop watching them.

[@CaneofLoxley]

also to claim Rosa Luxemburg wasnt a revolutionary is rediculous. She died fighting for the revolution.

[@DonCarlosHormozi]

Fantastic lecture!

[@Octyron]

13:45 It is Chernyshevsky's book. Look at the title page. The author's name has too many letters for Lenin (Ленин)

[@Jonny466371]

Love these videos? could you post the order of them?

[@FabulousResults]

To the thing about him being the first self-appointed dictator... Caesar would like a word.

[@marreco6347]

I think the idea was that he was a civilian and got the job by his own accord rather than getting it by circumstance, but then again, Oliver Crownwell and Robespierre have him beat by a couple of centuries.

[@lconfort]

Great course (as usual)

[@yashasvi2]

can you tell me the source of the quote at 18:00.

[@Tyippe99]

I wanna learn this stuff in school!

[@marcantoinelab12321]

Man I wish my engineering teachers were this energetic. Instead I get 40 year old monotone voice people constantly writing on the board without explaining

[@ayanpal9429]

Prof. Bonevac, it is an impeccable experience to learn from your classes. The most alluring part is the 'unbiased'[though perfect unbiasedness is indeed a myth'] approach towards the subjects. Professor I do have lots of questions though and how could I get my answers? Not to put too fine a point youtube post areas are not the place. Professor is there any other way I can get in touch with you and get my questions answered? I am not a student in technical sense but a 42 years old school principal who happens to be interested in becoming a student of your prudence.

[@voidofmisery4810]

I probably never would have learned about lenin, and here I am, making up for my crappy education I got in high school.... and my lack of caring to study also.... well it's fun now! Thanks!

[@debadritadas8202]

Thanks

[@ehsanfazel239]

You are awesome!

[@surjamitbhattacharjee1645]

Imagine there's no money.... - john lenin

[@EugenAntunGojks]

"Who was paying for this?" That's the question that lead me to search for this video, was hoping to find the answer. kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3W8g4etlqajfa8 Great lecture, btw.

[@dallaskenn]

What does Lenin have to do with violence in and of itself?

[@3brenm]

In retrospect in seems Rosa was right to be skeptical.

[@TheScrewOnHead]

It's just poor scholarship to talk about the violence of the revolution and not mention that Russia was in a state of civil war at the time.

[@vaughncollins1386]

The civil war was because of the opposition from the communists who had already been using brutal tactics from the beginning. The white forces were brutal too obviously but Lenin’s activities started years before the civil war.

[@WukFanatic]

Connecting futurism to Lenin is also pretty stupid, since futurism is more connected to Fascism. Militarism, masculinity, fetishism of masters,... goes more with Fascism then with Bolshevism. Bolsheviks were the ones who actually liberated women of Russia, who were basically slaves in the backward Zarist society.

[@fenzelian]

It's entirely appropriate. Lenin may have wanted women to be liberated from old institutions, but it was in service of the revolution, and it was not because he valued their opinions or how they lived. He shared the familiar contempt for women and their concern with the futurists and frequently made his masculinist mindset clear. He lamented when talented men "wasted" their time with relationships with women. He thought all children should be forced to play sports and was a patriarchal prude who hated anyone talking about sex and sexuality (while at the same time insisting that married people must have sex often) and thought women were generally petty and cared about unimportant things (like their roles and freedoms in their marriages) when they should be caring about violent overthrow of the system and changing the world - militarist and masculine. By contrast, the influence of his wife and of socialist revolutionary women who were not Bolsheviks in the both the beginning and the end of the overthrow of the Tsar should not be understated. "The record of your sins, Clara, is even worse. I have been told that at the evenings arranged for reading and discussion with working women, sex and marriage problems come first. They are said to be the main objects of interest in your political instruction and educational work. I could not believe my ears when I heard that. The first state of proletarian dictatorship is battling with the counter-revolutionaries of the whole world. The situation In Germany itself calls for the greatest unity of all proletarian revolutionary forces, so that they can repel the counter-revolution which is pushing on. But active Communist women are busy discussing sex problems and the forms of marriage - ‘past, present and future.’ They consider it their most important task to enlighten working women on these questions. It is said that a pamphlet on the sex question written by a Communist authoress from Vienna enjoys the greatest popularity. What rot that booklet is! The workers read what is right in it long ago in Bebel. Only not in the tedious, cut-and-dried form found in the pamphlet but in the form of gripping agitation that strikes out at bourgeois society." - Lenin, The Emancipation of Women, 1920

[@fenzelian]

Lenin also hated female sex workers and opposed Rosa Luxemburg's attempt to organize them. He opposed the exploitation of sex workers by the capitalist system in general, but considered a focus on reaching out to them as a group to be corrupt, degenerate, and divisive. "Aren’t there really any other working women in Germany to organise, for whom a paper can be issued, who must be drawn into your struggles? The other is only a diseased excrescence." That is, Lenin supported women when women behaved like his ideal men, and that's what he expected of them. When they dwelt on issues that primarily affected women, he poo pooed them in a way that feels familiar if you're looking at the overarching trend of 20th century violent, industrialized, mass-media hypermasculinity. Yekaterina Kuskova's critiques of "primitive Marxism" and how she was punished for them by the Bolsheviks is another opportunity to investigate this dynamic.

[@fenzelian]

Also Lenin didn't have much to do with overthrowing the Tsar - he wasn't even in the country when it happened. He came in later and took over what was left, shouldering out the other parties that did that work, and then rewrote history so his party got credit for it and rebuilt the political institutions and laws so the other parties lost their voice and independence. The women of Petrograd started the 1917 revolution while Lenin was still negotiating his paycheck with the Kaiser. Lenin did fight the civil war though. He did that. He fought a lot of wars.