A few people saying they cant hear the voice clearly, here is a transcript: I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia, I had an hours talk tête-à-tête with him. And um, he spoke English much better than you would have expected, the whole conversation was in English. I expected it to have been in German, but I found that his English was quite good. I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be. He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited. I disliked one other thing about him which was his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be, and one of them was “You profess to be establishing socialism, but as far as the countryside is concerned you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship which is a very different thing from agricultural socialism”. And he said, “Oh dear me no, we’re not establishing peasant proprietorship”, he said “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, ah hah hah HAH HAH”. I didn’t much like that.
@@kosikumah7249 As the leader of England's revolution, Cromwell ended up in a similar situation to Lenin and Stalin: no crown, but called "His Highness." A "democratic" leader who dismissed his Parliament, which became stuffed with religious bigots. He erased national differences from the top down by ruling a "Commonwealth" of England, Scotland and Ireland with military force and English gauleiters.
@@Iustinfm there was no point in stirring up poor peasants against rich ones, the rich ones where rich because they where higher in the ranks of their peasant family farm.
@@LaGzerdotcom Every generation cringes at the previous generation(s). Because life is a constant stream of embarrassment. So anyone will have something to cringe at, because life can be such an emotional embarrassing journey with problematic turn of events. Life can be such a pain, but going through it, can show beauty beyond the stars.
@@Jshwz I mean, both of them were vanguard-born populists who were tremendously effective at choosing their moments and seizing power from abusive imperial regimes, both did a lot of good and a whole lot of evil, and both are disproportionately villified in comparison with the power structures they opposed, who willingly wrought far more harm over far longer timescales than either revolutionary did. That's the bulk of that comparison to be made.
@@sirmount2636 I have bad news for you about not only your conception of those men but also your conception of any world leader you might possibly admire
@@sirmount2636 If genocide means killing a imperial family that was known for it's antissemitic policies and popular repression, and then suffering external invasion from 14 powerful nations which helped the white army that was far more brutal than the red army, then sure, he was. But one must remember that the changes the soviet revolution did for the labor world and human rights was like nothing else in the world, maybe except for the french revolution in terms of historic influence. We have to remember that while the USA lived in racial segregation until the 60's, Soviet Russia had racial equality even in the 20's, and not only that, but the freedom women had under Lenin government was so far beyond it's time. There was no more prostitution. The women wasn't a domestic slave of men anymore. It's amazing to see that the revolutionary spirit was so great in 17-24 that they achieved gender equality in a very conservative and patriarchal society. There was no class exploitation, really, but new production relations based on social cooperation between workers, peasants and small tradesman. Not everything was a bed of roses but men and women wasn't slaves of their own biological needs. They did not work to live, but rather lived to work and enjoy the riches of their work.
@bad dreams it's Lenin and I presume you were. at the meeting between these two? on the side making sandwiches? Bertrand Russell didn't think he was joking and neither does anybody else but you apparently know he was, or think he was
@bad dreams The fact is that's exactly what they got the peasants to do isn't it? So it's not really much of a joke. sounds to me like you're trying to defend Russia right now. Also lots of people have read about Lenin and watched bits of film clips about him . It doesn't make them infallible in that Judgment of whether he's joking or not I'm more likely to believe a report from someone who spoke to him face-to-face than someone who just "thinks" they know him well
Paul Jackson - I feel he thought the aristocracy who sent millions to their death between 1914-18, were equally as murderously psychopathic. Bertrand was nuanced.
I’ve always been extremely impressed with Russell’s dissatisfaction with some of the most renowned philosophers and political scholars. He really is his own man, a thinker who does not easily given in to orthodoxy of party or philosophical lines.
He is simply a man that analyzes all the facts of a situation/idea, creates a satisfactory conclusion, and then tests his conclusion to test its validity. Many people do this, those who do it better are usually more successful. In the case of Lenin, Lenin seemed to be aggressive and humorous about murder and wrath. Any moral/honorable man would be displeased with that kind of humor. Low-class socialist.
@@uberhaxonova I'm willing to bet Lenin detached himself from the killing and let others do it for him. Its usually the case that men who are responsible for ordering deaths, are a bunch of cowards who have never so much as gotten into a fistfight or have lived in an ivory tower for many decades.
@@uberhaxonova Lenin came from the middle class, like most of the Old Bolsheviks. Stalin was one of the few whose background was working class or, in your terms, "low class." N.B. I was responding to Josephean's remark that Lenin was a low class socialist.
@@uberhaxonova Lenin just simply arrived and enacted a “Scorched Earth Policy”. Whatever he said was propaganda and manipulation. He ended up insane in his later years from syphilis. The disease also caused him to have episodes of Seizures. I heard that He had a little island, that he rowed a boat to go and kill rabbits. He would spend the entire day on his little island killing rabbits. Then, bring them back on his rowboat. He didn’t shoot them, he used the butt of his rifle. One day, he killed So many rabbits, that his boat sank! Ands at night, he would howl at the moon! Perhaps it’s true. However, He was shot twice in an assassination attempt and the slugs remained in his body. Then He had a series of strokes. The first one, in 1922, another one that took him out of the spotlight, because he couldn’t talk anymore. And finally in 1924, at just 53 years old, he had a Massive stroke and he expired not soon after. A few hours, actually. He was then mummified and put on public display. A nasty existence in my opinion…
“Absolute Orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of suggesting that there was anything in Marx that wasn’t right.”
Yet he was always critiqued by the orthodox marxists who told him that the vanguard theory was useless and that it was impossible for Russia to have a revolution considering the low number of industrial workers in the country. It's weird to hear someone say that Lenin believed in everything Marx wrote, most people that he spoke or wrote to said the exact opposite, and many marxists of the time treated him and the bolsheviks as some kind of deviation.
@@marcosgonzalez7042 The thing is, when you look at most of the "orthodox Marxists" who criticized Lenin, their own ostensible fidelity is found wanting. For instance, Plekhanov became a vehement defender of Russia's participation in World War I, so much so that he alienated himself from most of the other Mensheviks. Kautsky's attitude toward parliaments and bourgeois democracy was closer to modern-day social-democracy than to Marx and Engels. Lenin made the point that Marxism is not a dogma, and that the superficial "orthodoxy" of the guardians of the Second International was used as a cover for reformism, social-chauvinism, etc.
@@IsmailofeRegime yes, quite a few of the so called "orthodox marxist" ended up as nothing more than social-democrats, something that one could argue is one of the worst revisionistic derivations of marxism.
@@marcosgonzalez7042 You could argue that, or you could also argue that it is an extension of some branches of Christian social thought which has always been critical of Capitalism
Marxism is all about envy. All the talk about equality is designed to make people jealous of everybody who has more than them. Of course you never think about the people who have less than you. Its class warfare the poor vs the rich. Of course they find out that a lot of the rich are rich because they were productive and without them everybody is going to starve. Mass starvation is a universal trait of Marxism. It happened just 20 years ago in North Korea. The government had to allow limited capitalism just to keep people alive. The same thing happened in China.
@@Dragon-Believer Bertrand when he met Lennin:"Communism works in theory, which is why im here in the first place meeting with you fuhrer" Decades later:"I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be"
@@Dragon-Believer Nah, marxisms is about abolishing the exploitation of workers by the capitalist. Workers create a bunch of wealth and the capitalist takes is because a piece of paper says he owns the means of production. Look at jeff bezos - he's not creating all of that wealth - the labor of his workers is. Jeff just takes it like a fucking parasitic leech.
And it still goes on to this day, especially in America, look at what the mainstream media is doing with constantly infuriating people into hating Trump (someone who wasnt supposed to get elected in the first place) and those that support him, its the same tactic, America is more divided now than ever before
@@artv.9989 Is this the same media that gave endless attention to Trump's political ambitions in the years leading up to 2016, when he was still a reality TV star?
"You see, there are poor peasants and rich peasants. And we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, oh ho ho ho!".
"You see, there are peasants of color and white peasants. And we stirred up the peasants of color against the white peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, oh ho ho ho!". -Coming soon to a western nation near you.
Lenin IS being revived these days. The unfairness and injustices of Capitalism are becoming intolerable to the bottom 99%. Revolution is coming--the common man is going to be liberated by a new socialist revolution! The Democratic Party ought to rerelease Lenin's writings, since they are just as relevant today as they were 100+ years ago.
@@GregoryTheGr8ster Which is why socalist party's keep loosing elections and the only people wanting his religion are upper class loosers who still live with their parents.
Wonderful? A duped old godless privileged fool who fell for the rantings of another odious tyrant… ‘in principle’… And millions died… Where is the confession of guilt? The begging fir forgiveness? I think Russel and these champagne socialist clowns have one hell of a lot to answer for. .
I find it very odd that Russel thought that Lenin didn't suppose anything in Marx could be wrong. The foundation of Leninism is that Marx was wrong about a number of things - class consciousness, the need for capitalism to build a material base for communism, the role of the state, etc.
@@richardcory5024 funny, I'm a strict constitutionalist, I think the USA should go back to fallowing the laws of that document 📄 that includes eliminating the federal reserve bank.
@@DANTHETUBEMAN I don't believe that the constitution actually introduced any laws, merely principles which could be interpreted any which way anybody in political power chose. I am not aware that the constitution had anything specific to say about the federal reserve bank. Perhaps you could helpfully point to the section where it specifically forbade the creation of that institution. Government activity has often consisted of journeys, driving through the large avenues intentionally provided as loopholes by the constitution to respond to political will. Politics always trumps the law and the constitution in the final analysis. In the end the constitution is just a paper document which can be torn up, if enough people decide that that is what should be done with it.
@@richardcory5024 only the congress shall have the power to coin money, once the fed is inserted the congressman no longer has to partition the people for money creation he goes to the bank.
I didn't meet Lenin myself for sure but I don't understand how he was orthodox or dogmatic about Marxism since Marx thought a revolution would happen in a late stage capitalist highly indurialized country, but Lenin made it happen in a backwards peasant country.
Seems to be one of the things Marx got wrong. Revolutionaries made multiple assassination attempts on the Czars. some successful, not so many on industrialised western democracies.
@@KevTheImpaler Yeah Marx himself became disillusioned with the inevitability of proletarian revolution under capitalism. Which threw away the idea that industrialized societies with large proletariats were the prime environment for socialist revolution. Which is why Lenin was so important. He proved that proletarian revolution can be forced into existence regardless of the circumstances, through the revolutionary vanguard.
he was orthodox about the economic and political aspects of marxism the idea on how to make it happen and make it work was his own interpretations, which is called leninism
Archival evidence revealed after the fall of the Soviet Uunio shows that Lenin issues orders such as "kill 10,000 kulaks". These were small to medium Ukrainian Farmers with about 5-22 employees. They were highly productive. He had them executed not for a crime but simply because they were a class of small people that opposed him. This mass murder was the beginning of the genocide known as the Holodomor that probably killed 5 million and maybe as much as 8 million. Stalin added more murders and also confiscated the food and shipped it out of Ukraine. The Peasants and Kulacks who resisted were tortured till they gave up the hidden grain. One method was to douse a woman dress hem in petrol and ignite it till she spoke or her husband spoke. -This is what adherence any ideology, such as orthodox marxism, can lead to.
@@williamzk9083 first of all, let´s have a look at that "archival evidence", second of all, a kulak is a village capitalist and loan shark, who uses the slave labour of the poorest peasants in order to enrich himself. He is a speculator, too - keeps back the bread in times of hunger in order to sell it after a while for double the price. After the revolution, many of these criminals would borrow their way inside kolhozes to destroy them from within. Mass hunger of1932-1933 was caused partially by their activity (and the activity of other counter-revolutionary layers). I can´t even read your idiotic post, it´s so... bleh. Zero knowledge of the subject. But hey, I can tell you´re not a farmer or agricultural worker. Otherwise you would know that capitalist agriculture is also collectivized. The difference between capitalist and socialist kolhozes is that socialist kolhozes didn´t have a monopoly draining them of all their profit and didn´t have the exploitation of any worker, including migrant labour.
I read a comment of a viewer of another Russel interview in 1952 that was kind of fascinating. At least for me. And I’m certain this talk was right about the same time of the 1952 discussion. He said that ‘we are watching a clip that’s 70 years old which isn’t even a full lifetime generally speaking and he is talking about his grandparents who were born in the 1700’s.’ I don’t know if that comment is as impactful for everyone but for Americans it’s crazy because that takes is back to the revolution of our nation in just a few generations. It’s so trippy to seemingly shrink time like that. It really does go by so so fast.
If you make it to 50 that’s half a century - only 20 of those half-centuries in one thousand years. 40 times is the time of Christ, 90 times a 50 year olds lifetime they are just finishing the Great Pyramids.
Your nation was born in the mid XX. century. Before that it was just a bunch of immigrant trying to make money and taking land. You should lose your "education" already and start using your brain!
Non-historians almost always overestimate how long ago the past actually was. Part of training becoming a historian (unless you’re in an English speaking country or a country they colonized, long story) involves exercises to perspectivize the path through modelling and hermeneutics, so you can overcome this alienation. Most of human history happened really not that long ago, I’m among those who refuse to call anything after the invention of writing "ancient."
According to some people that met him, Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent. Apparently, the person he hired to teach him English was Irish, and that's why he spoke it that way.
Also quite very ironically considering how english aristocracy rules by instigating one part of english society against another then they propose themselves as the moderate side🧐
It still is one of the most spoken languages in the world, and a significant portion of Europe has spoken some form of German for many centuries - when globalism first started taking hold, it was a contender for the global lingua franca.
Germany was much bigger and there were large in German minorities all over central and Eastern Europe. Additionally, German was the language of science. Most of the bourgeoisie and upper classes could speak some German. Hitler managed to halve or even quarter the importance of Germans in the world. They bounced back somewhat but lost their previous position forever.
The German Empire sponsored Lenin’s trip back to Russia under secrecy as a means to topple the Russian government and win the war. It worked, as far as destroying the Czar, but it came back to bite them in the 40’s. 😂
How can you say that? This little anecdote shows - just like many others that he was anything but wise - And a good person? All that he was, was very clever - but of course - you don't have to be stupid to be a fool - and evil
Still, although he didn't always believe Marx was right, he believed his interpretation of Marx was basically correct, and anyone who disagreed with him was, in his view, disagreeing with Marxism and therefore socialism/communism.
@@JSmusiqalthinka Tbf Lenin was mostly correct. He even established primitive forms of revolutionary methods that wouldn't come about until decades later. Also had a killer stache like damn
The remark in the beginning of the video should be corrected. In 1920 there was no "Soviet Russia", they were in the middle of a huge civil war that would end only 2 years later. And that really puts the encounter in a totally different perspective, as Russell wouldn't be meeting any country political leader or chief of state. At that point Lenin was one of the main leaders of an ongoing revolution and they were fighting foreign forces as well. Victory took a heavy toll, so I think that small correction alone would cast a different shadow over the violent statement that Russell much correctly didn't appreciate.
Lenin studied foreign grammars to put himself to sleep, because of chronic insomnia. Vlad was studying the miasma of the French subjunctive and literary tenses, when someone came to the door. Krupskaya answered, then told her husband that a certain Lev Bronstein from back home wanted to meet him.... to the station!
@@dieinternationalesolidarit8540 Well Russell seems to be suggesting otherwise. I'm not saying that Karl Marx didn't have some very important and interesting ideas, but who reads Karl Marx uncritically and doesn't see any questionable ideas really hasn't read him. I'm sure even Karl Marx, egotist that he was, would have to agree with that.
@@omlettecheese2260 what’re you basing his “egotism” on? Because decades later people took on a fervor for his method and named themselves after him? Having read a good amount of his work, ego centric is literally the last way I’d describe any of it
@@ignaciomedinadunin359 There is no Greeks, but Jews. Greece is created 1830, and never existed before that. ALl you know about Aristotel, Pitagor - all of this guys were Jews. Later, after 1830, presented by British empire as ,,Ancient Greeks".
@@goshu7009 Can you tell me please how these guys were jews?. Excuse me but they called themeselves "greeks" or "helenes"; the greeks of nowadays just took the name and geographic space. There is an important difference between state, nation and motherland. I await for your answer.
@@ignaciomedinadunin359 Very simple. I am from Thias region. People here say: Everytime a ,,greek" is born, a ,,Jew" is crying. And thats because the so called ,,Greeks" after 1830 (this word was uknown before), are taking Jewish Identity from Antiquity. All this ,,Greeks" from 4 Century B:C - represent the last and the Best Jewish Scholars and Propehts, Teachers and masters. MOst of them took their knowldge from Egypt. During that time, the so called ,,Greeks"after 1830, were called ,,Danayans" - a Pirate, nomadic tribe. One of the Sea peoples, one of which are Phoenicians. They use different tactic when invade - in this case - They mixed with the locals of the Balkans and took their identity. Hellas or Helenes means literally ,,Whity". Thats when they so called ,,Greeks' who are little dark on skin, short, black curly hair, started to mix with the locals, who are white, tall and bright hair and eyes (this Genotype comes from Black Sea and Caspean Sea region) IF you look the Statues of the so called ,,Greek GODs" they dont look like greek people, but like other balkan people like Bulgarians, Serbians, Croatians.... I can continue with hours, but that would be disrespect for your inteligence, since you can go to the library and read.
Isn't it extraordinarily powerful how an extreme understatement can have such impact when it comes from the mouth of such a credible character as is Bertrand Russell.
@@cerdic6305he hears a head of state talk about and laugh about how he got his people to murder their neighbors and he goes "Mmh, I didn't much like that."
Unfortunately there are not much of Lenin speaking Russian. Lenin had a speech defect, though his speeches were always very powerful in action he preferred them to be just written down than recorded. But some people who had chance to meet hem told that he had a strong irish accent because he could afford only Irish english teachers
Have just uploaded some films from 1918-1920 which contain recordings of Lenin's voice (in Russian) - I added English subtitles. ua-cam.com/video/TH_LEXZfCdk/v-deo.html These would have been recorded on early cylinder or foil mechanisms (similar to the early Edison machines) as it was before sound on film became possible.
Lenin was a religious zealot in his belief of Communism. That's why he had the drive, focus, confidence, energy and sheer bravery to achieve what he did.
@@drott150 Lenin had all the traits you mention except for religiosity and zealotry. He had zeal, but zealotry is taking it too far. Lenin was a Marxist because he believed it was an accurate science, but that didn't stop him from disagreeing with Marx on certain things. He did believe that communism isn't only possible and desirable, but also that it's inevitable, but he believed this for scientific reasons.
@@alzndjsnsmwjsj8227 You say he had zeal but zealotry was taking it too far? I have no idea what your semantics mean. Lenin had religious zeal in his beliefs. His brother was killed by the Tsarists. He deeply hated the Tsar and his regime. So much so, he was willing to do anything to get rid of it. He was willing to risk imprisonment, torture and death to achieve his goal. He lived through many years of very dangerous times before he finally ascended to power. Anyone with a smoldering hatred of his political opponents so intense he is willing to risk everything including his life, is a zealot by definition. Anyone happily willing to commit mass murder and genocide to bring about what he believes in - as evidenced in Russell's account of what Lenin said - is a zealot by definition. Zealot doesn't mean you're irrational or stupid either. It just means you are hyper focused and hyper committed to what you believe in. As far as Lenin not agreeing with Marx on certain things? Maybe. But the Communist Manifesto was interpreted by many different communists of his era in differing ways. They read into various aspects of what they believed Marx may not have expressed explicitly or clearly according to their own interpretation. And some people had differing interpretations than others. Same thing with the Bible, the Koran, The US Constitution etc. Those differences in interpretation doesn't mean a murderous fanatic like Lenin wasn't a communist zealot.
@@drott150 There is a difference between zeal and zealotry. A zealot has so much zeal that they're blinded by their beliefs, they aren't scientific in their analyses. You can have zeal without being a zealot. And Marx expressed his ideas very specifically, Lenin wasn't just interpreting what he wrote in a certain way, he understood him and explicitly disagreed with him on certain things. Marx stated that since only countries with fully developed capitalism could become socialist, revolutions would start in the capitalist imperial core and spread to the periphery. Lenin proved that Marx had it backwards. The works of Marx and Engels aren't written like religious texts at all, they're filled with evidence and detailed explanations. The Communist Manifesto is a slight exception, but that's a minor work meant as a very rudimentary introduction to communism. And you'll have to elaborate on your "mass murder and genocide" charge against Lenin. According to the standard anti-communist narrative, Lenin is guilty of mass murder, but that narrative is far from objective. I'm not sure where the charge of genocide comes from.
BR in 1949: We must attack USSR with nulear weapons before they get one. Stalin: Unfortunately for you we already have one. BR: Ok ok lets all calm down and put down our nuclear weapons.
Yeah he was a pretty reprehensible and hypocrtitical human being. Funny to see how all the comment section is singing him praises. He was pro eugenics too iirc.
@@nonono4160 found the commie in the comments….fuck Stalin fuck Lenin and fuck Marx and really fuck any modern idiot who espoused communism or socialism
damn, I didn't know he was so extremely based. I mean set theory and all that formal logic stuff is admirable but nuking Russia to hell is on another level. Great man
Communism killed a lot more people than fascism, so you know the vitriol is not on purely humanitarian grounds. Killing for communism is cool, if regrettable.
@@Atilla_the_Fun long-run effects... lmao, lets talk again in 10 years and attribute whatever the hell is going on then to the revolution 200 years ago.
@@uberhaxonova That's how history works man??? Agricultural revolution happened 10,000 years ago, it still affects us today because you can drink beer and eat cultivated rice without even having to look for food yourself.
Watch a 94 year old Tom Sowell talk about old New York too. He dumbfounds so many with his experience. It’s great watching these old guys so much knowledge to pass on and more often ignored.
thats it thats the only thing he was a likeable hack a complete joke of a philosopher and merely exemplified the charm of upper class english pretention
I had a Russian teacher, born in 1938, who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s for the U.S. He was a journalist in Moscow most of his life. He was not a Communist by any means, but he always held Lenin in high regard for his intelligence, and often used Lenin's study habits to help us in language learning (Lenin was, if nothing else, a polyglot). I think that view may be true for a lot of Russians, especially from that generation. Sure they know their history, but in light of what was to follow after Lenin's death, he is considered the lesser of the evils to follow.
Oil industry mogul Armand Hammer back in the 1960's also remarked on a meeting he had with Lenin in Moscow in 1922. Hammer was quite surprised to hear Lenin speaking English not only fluently but with an Irish accent! Hammer said, in his address at UCLA, he had expected Lenin to speak like Trotsky with a thick Russian accent or to even need the help of a translator because of poor ability to speak English, but neither was the case. Hope somebody somewhere has and can post a film with sound or a radio recording of Lenin speaking English. Lenin's English tutor in Switzerland was an Irishman, at that time a British subject. That's where Lenin got the accent from, not from the neighbors. Also, if there are any archives of Hammer's Occidental Petroleum company anywhere, there may be the script of his talk at UCLA.
@@haroldfarquad6886 Lenin Lived In London for over a year so his sources of English were pretty much unlimited if he wanted to practice..which he clearly did to become fluent. I find it difficult to believe you are going to pick up your entire accent from one person. How many kids grow up in north America with immigrant parents with heavy accents, but don't sound anything like them?
BR rocks loved his temperament, philosophy as a study and infinitesimal calculus..especially digging these interviews...I never heard him talk..cool..exactly as I had hoped...
Transcript study: (to the best of my ability) 0:40 “He seemed to me to be a reincarnation of Cromwell” (Oliver, from England) “with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy. He thought a proposition could be proven by quoting a text in Marx. And he was quite incapable of supposing that there anything could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right. That struck me as rather limited.”
Its not document. Documents state facts and here is an opinion. And pretty lame one btw. You have to know nothing about Lenin to call him an orthodox marxist.
It was Lenin's ability to break from orthodoxy, especially in the April Theses, that distinguished him from the "Old Bolsheviks" that wanted the revolution to pass through every preordained phase in its due course. Who knows if Russell is being truthful about "hanging the wealthy peasants" comment....but, given how the muzhiks were treated by the kulaks, it seems a fair enough proposition to me.
These are people your talking about! And they are hardly rich How cheap you hold their lives 🤬 I wonder if you’d be saying the same thing as the noose went around your neck as you shit yourself!
And what a great success Lenin's authoritarian Marxism turned out to be, eh? Bolshevik 'socialism' became a barracks until it collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence.
I think there's a possibility Russell took that last statement as a threat. As in you don't accept my view, then it's the highway or death( hanging from a limb). Considering the view t;at it's fun manipulating the general public, it also puts the idea of,.. after I got done doing a show of power, and telling people what to do next. I was amused some did very much as I expected. Letting their jealousy and ignorance guide their activities. And killing, then blaming it on an outside force, or Lenin. And still that power, getting away with it. Though would have been Stalins thing to laugh at. So, it goes with, one, doesn't know what someone else is going thru.
The sound is heavily distorted, there's that buzzy noise. I think the audio has either had a messy noise clean or the LUFS level is wrong, or both. A shame how distracting it is.
Russell thought that both Lenin and Trotsky were brilliant but fanatical revolutionaries. He thought that Trotsky was very charming . Russell contested Bolshevism from the very beginning ( 1917 )consistent with more British notion of democratic socialism. Right to the day he died Bertrand Russell was a formidable opponent of American foreign policy . I read " Bertrand Russell's America ".
I agree with all the points Bertrand Russell made here. The problem is not with what he said - but with what is missing, which is placing the Bolshevik revolution (on the one hand, its positive stated goals, and on the other hand, its harsh and cruel methods of pursuing those goals) in the historic context of Russia during the Czarist regime and in its aftermath. The Czar's regime was autocratic and corrupt. The vast majority of Russia's population was rural, and within the rural population the majority lived in miserable conditions. The urban working class also lived in poverty. The autocratic regime gave no hope to most people. This is why (very briefly, without even going into the impact of WW1 on an impoverished nation), in 1917 Russia had a revolution, that overturned that anti-democratic regime that worked well for the wealthy only. The Revolution was followed by a Civil War, in which several forces (monarchist, and anti-Czarist divided between Bolsheviks and their opponents) fought for power. The logic of a Civil War is simple: kill or get killed. During the Civil War, this is when Bertrand Russel met Vladimir Lenin. Does it sound like "making excuses for Lenin"? Absolutely NOT. But, the purpose of studying history is to know and understand what really happened, before jumping to judgment. The cruel methods used by Lenin, resulting in the killing of large numbers of people, belong to a historic context that bears no comparison to the current circumstances of advanced countries. Anything - from democracy and civil rights, through level of education of the masses, to living standards of working people - is so different now (even in Russia, and so much more in Western democracies), from what it was then. Keeping the right historic perspective is the only way to understand why Lenin's revolution was victorious then (against strong armed opposing forces), while in the Western Democracies this kind of violent revolution didn't occur then, and is even more (much more) unthinkable now.
In the years leading up to WW1, land reforms led by Stolypin had given more opportunities to people willing to work and make the land productive than ever before. This, of course, was set back by the assassination of Stolypin. The disaster that was WW1 drained so much out of the land of Russia that it pushed people into resistance that previously was not something widely supported. The idea that the Czarist government only worked for the wealthy is a myth. The aristocrats benefited disproportionately, to be sure, but there WERE land reforms that were creating a larger middle class, land reforms which were reversed under the collectivization of the Soviets. If the Czar was so bad, why did the Soviets have to deal with all those meddlesome Kulaks, after all? Under the Czar, there was industry, a film industry, a society in which people, while perhaps not always thriving, at least weren't starving like they would during the holodomor.
Bertrand Russel was and will always be one of my heroes, I was introduced to him by my father who is a phd in political science, he gave me the book, "marraige and morality" and from thereon out I was hooked.
incredibly based. The kulaks were attempting to induce an artificial famine which could have killed countless people. They were actively destroying crops in protest and attempting to starve out the urban areas - which were ofc almost entirely civilians who had nothing to do with the revolution. Kulaks were willing to kill countless innocents just so they could keep their wealthy positions and keep food as a commodified product to profit off of. They were evil to their very core and lenin took the trash out. Unfathomably based
This is such an interesting gem. While UA-cam has largely become populated with brain-eating mundane hip-pop and cat videos, finding things like this still shows it has a phenomenal capacity to peer into history and enlighten.
I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia, I had an hours talk tête-à-tête with him. And um, he spoke English much better than you would have expected, the whole conversation was in English. I expected it to have been in German, but I found that his English was quite good. I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be. He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited. I (decide/recite/decite??) one other thing about him which was his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be, and one of them was “You profess to be establishing socialism, but as far as the countryside is concerned you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship which is a very different thing from agricultural socialism”. And he said, “Oh dear me no, we’re not establishing peasant proprietorship”, he said “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, ah hah hah HAH HAH”. I didn’t much like that.
What he doesn't say , like many of the luvvies , even today , he went to Russia to support the 'wonderful ' revolution and met one of the worlds mass murderers. If he'd read Tolstoy's the devils , or brothers Karamazov , he would have known what to expect. The likes of these people soon flee.
it just goes to show that even without religion that people can still fall into such a mindset that the ideas and people they belive in are sacred and infallable and that all those who disagree must be brought to heel
Not unlike Trump supporters, who fall into categories in and out of explicitly Christianist mindsets (although the professed “Christian” and “evangelical” supporters of the disgraced former president do comprise a sizeable majority, without whose unprincipled and hypocritical support Trump would have never been elected). If any group should have been brought to heel in the last five years, it was this one.
@@willforest5302 I remember what I wrote two years ago, if not by instant recall then by recognition. Anyway, enough has happened in the last two years to give everything context.
When I visited Russia with my mother in 1979 I was only twenty and very niieve about the U.S.S.R. When I saw military men with guns greeting our plane in Moscow I just wanted to turn around and go home. The U.S.S.R. scared the "you know what' out of me!
Go to China - they are Nazis with nukes, submarines as well as satellite technology. They believe they are the master race. China is scary right now. Propaganda there is off the scale.
I don't normally understand Betrand Russell but this is interesting. One could argue that communism/Marxism/socialism only ever see society as competing groups, not as individuals. And Marxism stokes up mutual resentment (like social media today) which causes one group to eliminate another. With the leaders (Lenin, Stalin etc) being the net winners. Social engineering at a vast scale. Pol Pot, collectivisation, etc etc. Lenin's indifference to someone being hung from a tree telling in my opinion.
marxism is not at all "like social media today", that is among the weirdest critiques i have seen about marxism even if marxism DID "only ever see society as competing groups", please think about what exactly the groups you're supposing about are. they are the owners of the levers of power vs those who have that power enacted upon them, forced to bear the privilege of working for the owners' dreams and ideals or suffering otherwise. this is the core of why marxists want something different. so people can pursue a greater personhood without the necessity of cowing to and labouring for something that benefits very few people and instead working "for each according to their ability, to each according to their need" further, marxism very much does not concern itself with seeing society as competing groups. it concerns itself with seeing things in a "dialectical materialist" manner, a scientific manner, and with the means and processes of production (as opposed to the process/fairness of distribution, which is the commonly misunderstood conception of marxism/communism). it is obviously very hard to do this when you want to think of the "individual" rather than the specific universal circumstances that lead to - for a crucial example - a very small, very nondemocratic group having control over the intricate systems that are called the means of production
@@unco_pk_traceur7748 In all Marxist systems that have ever existed it's the Marxists themselves who take over the levers of power. It's always been about the intellectuals who run the show (Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot) and everyone else who is considered expendable. Serfs in Russia etc. Stalin eliminated the Kulaks by using internecine class warfare. Marxist dialectic is shortcut for using words in Capital to identify anyone as an "enemy of the people" and eliminate them. Marx claimed that workers of the world would unite to overthrow their bosses. How come then that there was no Marxist revolution in the Countries with the most unequal and capitalist system (UK, Holland, USA) and the only Countries where Marxism took off were where peasants had no information, no factories to work in and no hope? It turns out that workers of the world want washing machines, cars that work, cookers and microwaves and are happy to accept the inequalities of capitalism to get them. Marxism and Socialism bring poverty, starvation and death with them everywhere. Capitalism brings inequality, wealth, health, education. Marxists going back to the book are like the Christian fundamental creationists who believe the Bible literally.
@@simonbowden8408 not the case at all. you're looking at things anachronistically, as if capitalism simply caused things to go well in the positive ways you mentioned 1. without any bedding in period (think about how large China's emissions currently are - that's because they are practically in an "industrial revolution" phase, or not long out of it, to compare a communist developmemt with a capitalist one) and 2. as if a huge amount of the global workforce subjected to capitalism is PREVENTED from enjoying these "benefits" due to over-exploitation. this is where ideas of imperialism come in to an understanding of capitalism - and is the blind spot as to why people who disparage communism and marxism seem to think we talk exclusively about the poor in imperial/1st world countries the reason no "developed" nation has risen to revolution is because our needs are always kept in check enough - as you sort of alluded to about us having access to the treats capitalism affords us - so as to not see the purpose of revolution when one weighs it up as you did the problem with this math is that it assumes that we'll always be comfortable, only bearably exploited, and that the suffering of those who necessarily need to be exploited to keep the 1st world wealthy will not really impact us. with all that is going on in the world i'm sure i don't need to spell out why that is incorrect
@@unco_pk_traceur7748 well the Communist party vote had fallen steadily pretty much every election since 1945 in every European country until they are one of the smallest fringe parties now. Only a few ananchronistic die hards vote Communist now. Communism is dead and has never borne any relation to human nature for the whole of the history of civilisations. In Ur there was huge inequality. Who do you think carved the Portal on the gates? How much were they paid? Have you read Gilgamesh? There was huge inequality in almost every civilisation, bar perhaps some data for the Maya, though we have no written record, just relative house sizes. Inequality is the driver for wealth overall. And health. An life expectancy. Communist ideology involves stoking inter group hatred to achieve anarchy, at which point the Communist intellectuals (Fascists) take over. Every time. Same old loop. That's why it's based on getting ppl to hate each other, like social media. In group empathy = out group antipathy. The Nazis used exactly the same techniques as Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot, just different enemies.
In fact I would make the prediction that almost all Communist ideologues have large aspects of autism about themselves individually. Perhaps you might be so? These people see only competiting groups of people. Not individuals. There is no mention of individual people in the Communist manifesto, nor in Capital. Lenin and Stalin were singularly unaffected by the sufferings of millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor, calling the dead and dying people traitors etc. It's the total lack of compassion for individuals that is the dominant characteristic of all Communists (and Fascists).
That's because Socialism, in all it's forms, it's not a political ideology or an economic system, it's a cult. Their goal is utopia and everything that isnt utopia is "not real socialism". It's impossible to have a debate in good faith with a socialist because that requires logic and honesty, and the cult is built on fantasy and deception. Their "utopia" is also impossible on many levels beyond the economic. They are basically at war with reality itself
Lenin lived in london for a period of his life with his wife, above a shoe repair shop from what I can recall. You can visit the house and it has a sign outside of it commemorating that he lived there. All those years in exile helped Lenin become a bi lingual individual. He could also speak German, French and Swedish to a good standard aswel.
Ryan McCallum Yes you are correct. But he also lived at Percy Circus, off Kings Cross Road. Which there is also a plaque saying that he lived there. Also go to my channel and watch the video, Lenin in London.
![Moscow 1908 (New Version) in color [60fps,Remastered] w/sound design added](/img/n.gif)
A few people saying they cant hear the voice clearly, here is a transcript:
I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia, I had an hours talk tête-à-tête with him. And um, he spoke English much better than you would have expected, the whole conversation was in English. I expected it to have been in German, but I found that his English was quite good. I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be. He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited. I disliked one other thing about him which was his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be, and one of them was “You profess to be establishing socialism, but as far as the countryside is concerned you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship which is a very different thing from agricultural socialism”. And he said, “Oh dear me no, we’re not establishing peasant proprietorship”, he said “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, ah hah hah HAH HAH”. I didn’t much like that.
@@amoinoacid thanks! :)
thanks
Thank you, being a not native it was difficult to understand.
Thank you, I really needed a transcript! Why does "dislike" have an asterisk?
@@thebiggestcauldron It was to show where the edit was, i'll remove it.
When he brought up Cromwell, I was half expecting him to say 'who had met in my youth'.
"We're going to chop the head off a king hahaha'
"I didn't much like that"
I almost did a double take and said : did he just mention CROMWELL?
@@kosikumah7249 As the leader of England's revolution, Cromwell ended up in a similar situation to Lenin and Stalin: no crown, but called "His Highness." A "democratic" leader who dismissed his Parliament, which became stuffed with religious bigots. He erased national differences from the top down by ruling a "Commonwealth" of England, Scotland and Ireland with military force and English gauleiters.
@@faithlesshound5621 He butchered many (Ireland especially) Lenin would have approved I'm sure.
I think you a.
"I didn't much like that" Probably the most British response you can give in that situation.
ua-cam.com/video/vIqnLZA3U8A/v-deo.html
Years of fighting, humans right violations, terrorist attacks: "We shall call it the "troubles"
Yes, they slay in subtle ways.
That's why I love British people XD
@@Iustinfm there was no point in stirring up poor peasants against rich ones, the rich ones where rich because they where higher in the ranks of their peasant family farm.
I'm listening to a person who died ~50 years ago describing an event that happened ~100 years ago.
Imagine 100 years from now someone watching their great grandma on tiktok
@@mykebellinger6439 they would cringe at our generation
@@LaGzerdotcom Every generation cringes at the previous generation(s). Because life is a constant stream of embarrassment. So anyone will have something to cringe at, because life can be such an emotional embarrassing journey with problematic turn of events. Life can be such a pain, but going through it, can show beauty beyond the stars.
Wow time passes sooo crazy
@Rodney Hamilton oof , would have been impossible for me since I was born in 95
apparently Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent (having lived with Irish immigrants during his time in London)
Wow, Lenin was truly magnificent..
I expected a strong Russian accent like a true Russian should sound like in English.
His english teacher was from Rathmines, Dublin
He had the south dublin accent when speaking english
The exact accent I grew up with
@@leightonredmond8150 Would that be the West brit accent........
@@tomasomaonaigh7659 ......Don't ever say anything about irish being british again or so help me god
It's quite impressive to actually here a first hand encounter of someone who actually met Lenin face to face.
Here! Here!
Couldn’t agree more .
And not just anyone, Bertrand Russell... One of the greatest thinkers and men of all time.
Not really. Lenin died in the full light of history. If there was a manuscript of someone who described meeting Jesus or genghis Khan
Yea and still be alive 😅
Yeah, I met Lenin, wasn't that impressed. - Bertrand Russell.
@Lee Ruan Billions disagree.
Except he literally said in this video he was in fact impressed by him, just not by the amount he thought he was going to.
@@kadventure Which is the only thing that a philosopher would care about.
He said that Lenin was a great man.
that is not at all what was said. that's silly pretentious reductionism. shame on you.
"He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell"
That's so incredibly specific and British to say.
More like Cromwell was a pre-incarnation of Lenin.
@@SimonAshworthWood no
@@Jshwz I mean, both of them were vanguard-born populists who were tremendously effective at choosing their moments and seizing power from abusive imperial regimes, both did a lot of good and a whole lot of evil, and both are disproportionately villified in comparison with the power structures they opposed, who willingly wrought far more harm over far longer timescales than either revolutionary did. That's the bulk of that comparison to be made.
@@sirmount2636 I have bad news for you about not only your conception of those men but also your conception of any world leader you might possibly admire
@@sirmount2636 If genocide means killing a imperial family that was known for it's antissemitic policies and popular repression, and then suffering external invasion from 14 powerful nations which helped the white army that was far more brutal than the red army, then sure, he was. But one must remember that the changes the soviet revolution did for the labor world and human rights was like nothing else in the world, maybe except for the french revolution in terms of historic influence. We have to remember that while the USA lived in racial segregation until the 60's, Soviet Russia had racial equality even in the 20's, and not only that, but the freedom women had under Lenin government was so far beyond it's time. There was no more prostitution. The women wasn't a domestic slave of men anymore. It's amazing to see that the revolutionary spirit was so great in 17-24 that they achieved gender equality in a very conservative and patriarchal society. There was no class exploitation, really, but new production relations based on social cooperation between workers, peasants and small tradesman. Not everything was a bed of roses but men and women wasn't slaves of their own biological needs. They did not work to live, but rather lived to work and enjoy the riches of their work.
What a life this man lived. His grandpa knew napoleon. He knew everyone else.
Did you buy that NFT or did you steal it as you should have XD
@@joshuapenner2164 I own it!
@@orangemanbad waste of money.
@@GlizzyGoblin757 nah. 1.7 million well spent
@@orangemanbad lol... only the orange man should be throwing around millions like that. You must be a rich peasant.
I cracked up when Bertrand Russell began imitating Lenin.
His laugh is hilarious
@bad dreams Sure but then the jokes turned into reality, which kinda beats the point of joking about it if you go do it anyway.
Should've met Sergei Prokofiev, Shostakovich too
@bad dreams it's Lenin and I presume you were. at the meeting between these two? on the side making sandwiches? Bertrand Russell didn't think he was joking and neither does anybody else but you apparently know he was, or think he was
@bad dreams The fact is that's exactly what they got the peasants to do isn't it? So it's not really much of a joke. sounds to me like you're trying to defend Russia right now.
Also lots of people have read about Lenin and watched bits of film clips about him . It doesn't make them infallible in that Judgment of whether he's joking or not I'm more likely to believe a report from someone who spoke to him face-to-face than someone who just "thinks" they know him well
"I didn't much like that.."
@@johnmulligan455 Classic, British understatement at it's finest!
It pleases me that this is the top comment.
It makes you wonder what it would take to get Russell to use the term 'murderous psychopath', if that's all the invective he can muster about Lenin.
Paul Jackson - I feel he thought the aristocracy who sent millions to their death between 1914-18, were equally as murderously psychopathic. Bertrand was nuanced.
@Lex772 As indeed they were. I expect Russell 'didn't much like them' either.
always when i hear him talk or read his text, i immediately admire his clarity in convictions and in his ethics! he is dear to my heart!
I’ve always been extremely impressed with Russell’s dissatisfaction with some of the most renowned philosophers and political scholars. He really is his own man, a thinker who does not easily given in to orthodoxy of party or philosophical lines.
He is simply a man that analyzes all the facts of a situation/idea, creates a satisfactory conclusion, and then tests his conclusion to test its validity. Many people do this, those who do it better are usually more successful.
In the case of Lenin, Lenin seemed to be aggressive and humorous about murder and wrath. Any moral/honorable man would be displeased with that kind of humor. Low-class socialist.
@@uberhaxonova I'm willing to bet Lenin detached himself from the killing and let others do it for him. Its usually the case that men who are responsible for ordering deaths, are a bunch of cowards who have never so much as gotten into a fistfight or have lived in an ivory tower for many decades.
@@uberhaxonova Lenin came from the middle class, like most of the Old Bolsheviks. Stalin was one of the few whose background was working class or, in your terms, "low class." N.B. I was responding to Josephean's remark that Lenin was a low class socialist.
@@uberhaxonova Lenin just simply arrived and enacted a “Scorched Earth Policy”. Whatever he said was propaganda and manipulation. He ended up insane in his later years from syphilis. The disease also caused him to have episodes of Seizures. I heard that He had a little island, that he rowed a boat to go and kill rabbits. He would spend the entire day on his little island killing rabbits. Then, bring them back on his rowboat. He didn’t shoot them, he used the butt of his rifle. One day, he killed So many rabbits, that his boat sank! Ands at night, he would howl at the moon! Perhaps it’s true. However, He was shot twice in an assassination attempt and the slugs remained in his body. Then He had a series of strokes. The first one, in 1922, another one that took him out of the spotlight, because he couldn’t talk anymore. And finally in 1924, at just 53 years old, he had a Massive stroke and he expired not soon after. A few hours, actually. He was then mummified and put on public display. A nasty existence in my opinion…
@@uberhaxonova He also ate children and was the human incarnation of the fungus
“Absolute Orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of suggesting that there was anything in Marx that wasn’t right.”
Yet he was always critiqued by the orthodox marxists who told him that the vanguard theory was useless and that it was impossible for Russia to have a revolution considering the low number of industrial workers in the country.
It's weird to hear someone say that Lenin believed in everything Marx wrote, most people that he spoke or wrote to said the exact opposite, and many marxists of the time treated him and the bolsheviks as some kind of deviation.
@@marcosgonzalez7042 The thing is, when you look at most of the "orthodox Marxists" who criticized Lenin, their own ostensible fidelity is found wanting. For instance, Plekhanov became a vehement defender of Russia's participation in World War I, so much so that he alienated himself from most of the other Mensheviks. Kautsky's attitude toward parliaments and bourgeois democracy was closer to modern-day social-democracy than to Marx and Engels.
Lenin made the point that Marxism is not a dogma, and that the superficial "orthodoxy" of the guardians of the Second International was used as a cover for reformism, social-chauvinism, etc.
@@IsmailofeRegime yes, quite a few of the so called "orthodox marxist" ended up as nothing more than social-democrats, something that one could argue is one of the worst revisionistic derivations of marxism.
@@marcosgonzalez7042 You could argue that, or you could also argue that it is an extension of some branches of Christian social thought which has always been critical of Capitalism
^supposing
“i was less impressed by lenin than I expected to be.”
I think he expected to Lenin to sodomize him instead of just molesting his children. You know "muh equality" and what not
@@elgatofelix8917 come again?
Marxism is all about envy. All the talk about equality is designed to make people jealous of everybody who has more than them. Of course you never think about the people who have less than you.
Its class warfare the poor vs the rich. Of course they find out that a lot of the rich are rich because they were productive and without them everybody is going to starve. Mass starvation is a universal trait of Marxism.
It happened just 20 years ago in North Korea. The government had to allow limited capitalism just to keep people alive. The same thing happened in China.
@@Dragon-Believer Bertrand when he met Lennin:"Communism works in theory, which is why im here in the first place meeting with you fuhrer"
Decades later:"I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be"
@@Dragon-Believer Nah, marxisms is about abolishing the exploitation of workers by the capitalist. Workers create a bunch of wealth and the capitalist takes is because a piece of paper says he owns the means of production. Look at jeff bezos - he's not creating all of that wealth - the labor of his workers is. Jeff just takes it like a fucking parasitic leech.
Listening to Bertrand Russell for 60 seconds makes me want to write poetry
the man’s got a nice lilt, i’ll give you that :)
Hahahaha if you do sent me some
@@igorjajic2726 roses are red violets are blue Joetatoe is demented and if ur a Libtard so are u
@Gareth Fairclough What's your problem?
@Gareth Fairclough fair enough, he just cared about academia lmfaoo. So it is true in a true british imperialist fashion
That actually IS quite fascinating.
And it still goes on to this day, especially in America, look at what the mainstream media is doing with constantly infuriating people into hating Trump (someone who wasnt supposed to get elected in the first place) and those that support him, its the same tactic, America is more divided now than ever before
@@artv.9989 Is this the same media that gave endless attention to Trump's political ambitions in the years leading up to 2016, when he was still a reality TV star?
It really is!
@Fard Rid oh they are doing much more than just making profit
@@artv.9989 there is not an America anymore
"You see, there are poor peasants and rich peasants. And we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, oh ho ho ho!".
Thank you!
I didn't much like that.
I didn't get this
..thank you for transcribing
"You see, there are peasants of color and white peasants. And we stirred up the peasants of color against the white peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, oh ho ho ho!".
-Coming soon to a western nation near you.
@@retiredshitposter1062 not.
I was impressed with Bertrand Russel just as I expected to be.
Genteel British*
I ja
Sensational tête-à-tête between a nazi-rasist-eugenist and a bolshevik monster...
Because he's British. That's it.
Thank you for making this conversation available to everyone.
More will be learned about Lenin's views when his preserved corpse is revived.
This should be the ending to Atomic Heart, fight with cyber Lenin.
@ClandestineOstrich to be fair, he did do quite a bit of the former
Lenin IS being revived these days. The unfairness and injustices of Capitalism are becoming intolerable to the bottom 99%. Revolution is coming--the common man is going to be liberated by a new socialist revolution! The Democratic Party ought to rerelease Lenin's writings, since they are just as relevant today as they were 100+ years ago.
"SMASH CAPITALISM! GRRR!"
@@GregoryTheGr8ster
Which is why socalist party's keep loosing elections and the only people wanting his religion are upper class loosers who still live with their parents.
**Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho**
I didn't much like that
IMPOSTER
@@forest7205 -I- WE do not know .
@@forest7205 Why did you create an account on UA-cam ? It's the same reason .
Chilling
This is wonderful. Never heard it before. Thanks for posting.
Wonderful? A duped old godless privileged fool who fell for the rantings of another odious tyrant… ‘in principle’… And millions died… Where is the confession of guilt? The begging fir forgiveness?
I think Russel and these champagne socialist clowns have one hell of a lot to answer for. .
I find it very odd that Russel thought that Lenin didn't suppose anything in Marx could be wrong. The foundation of Leninism is that Marx was wrong about a number of things - class consciousness, the need for capitalism to build a material base for communism, the role of the state, etc.
You are absolutely right!
He didn't suppose anything was wrong yet Lenin opposed the vanguard theory.
@@richardcory5024 funny, I'm a strict constitutionalist, I think the USA should go back to fallowing the laws of that document 📄 that includes eliminating the federal reserve bank.
@@DANTHETUBEMAN I don't believe that the constitution actually introduced any laws, merely principles which could be interpreted any which way anybody in political power chose. I am not aware that the constitution had anything specific to say about the federal reserve bank. Perhaps you could helpfully point to the section where it specifically forbade the creation of that institution.
Government activity has often consisted of journeys, driving through the large avenues intentionally provided as loopholes by the constitution to respond to political will. Politics always trumps the law and the constitution in the final analysis. In the end the constitution is just a paper document which can be torn up, if enough people decide that that is what should be done with it.
@@richardcory5024 only the congress shall have the power to coin money, once the fed is inserted the congressman no longer has to partition the people for money creation he goes to the bank.
I didn't meet Lenin myself for sure but I don't understand how he was orthodox or dogmatic about Marxism since Marx thought a revolution would happen in a late stage capitalist highly indurialized country, but Lenin made it happen in a backwards peasant country.
Exactly, he instrumentalized Marx theory for the revolution to happen in Russia and then trigger a revolution in germany, wich didn't happen
He thought that a revolution in Russia would stir the highly developed European nations(most importantly Germany)
Seems to be one of the things Marx got wrong. Revolutionaries made multiple assassination attempts on the Czars. some successful, not so many on industrialised western democracies.
@@KevTheImpaler Yeah Marx himself became disillusioned with the inevitability of proletarian revolution under capitalism. Which threw away the idea that industrialized societies with large proletariats were the prime environment for socialist revolution.
Which is why Lenin was so important. He proved that proletarian revolution can be forced into existence regardless of the circumstances, through the revolutionary vanguard.
he was orthodox about the economic and political aspects of marxism
the idea on how to make it happen and make it work was his own interpretations, which is called leninism
When Lenin takes it from 0-1000 real quick.
...Broke my neck in the process...
Rich peasant 0, poor peasant 1
berty couldnt keep up xD
@@williamrobinson4265 1:48
It is what is called a pro gamer move.
I like the way that Russell describes dogmatic adherence as imposing a limitation on oneself. I quite agree.
except that he´s lying.
Archival evidence revealed after the fall of the Soviet Uunio shows that Lenin issues orders such as "kill 10,000 kulaks". These were small to medium Ukrainian Farmers with about 5-22 employees. They were highly productive. He had them executed not for a crime but simply because they were a class of small people that opposed him. This mass murder was the beginning of the genocide known as the Holodomor that probably killed 5 million and maybe as much as 8 million. Stalin added more murders and also confiscated the food and shipped it out of Ukraine. The Peasants and Kulacks who resisted were tortured till they gave up the hidden grain. One method was to douse a woman dress hem in petrol and ignite it till she spoke or her husband spoke.
-This is what adherence any ideology, such as orthodox marxism, can lead to.
@@williamzk9083 first of all, let´s have a look at that "archival evidence", second of all, a kulak is a village capitalist and loan shark, who uses the slave labour of the poorest peasants in order to enrich himself. He is a speculator, too - keeps back the bread in times of hunger in order to sell it after a while for double the price. After the revolution, many of these criminals would borrow their way inside kolhozes to destroy them from within. Mass hunger of1932-1933 was caused partially by their activity (and the activity of other counter-revolutionary layers). I can´t even read your idiotic post, it´s so... bleh. Zero knowledge of the subject. But hey, I can tell you´re not a farmer or agricultural worker. Otherwise you would know that capitalist agriculture is also collectivized. The difference between capitalist and socialist kolhozes is that socialist kolhozes didn´t have a monopoly draining them of all their profit and didn´t have the exploitation of any worker, including migrant labour.
@@dodgro8342
Ok?
..rather on other people. at least in this case.
I read a comment of a viewer of another Russel interview in 1952 that was kind of fascinating. At least for me. And I’m certain this talk was right about the same time of the 1952 discussion.
He said that ‘we are watching a clip that’s 70 years old which isn’t even a full lifetime generally speaking and he is talking about his grandparents who were born in the 1700’s.’
I don’t know if that comment is as impactful for everyone but for Americans it’s crazy because that takes is back to the revolution of our nation in just a few generations. It’s so trippy to seemingly shrink time like that. It really does go by so so fast.
If you make it to 50 that’s half a century - only 20 of those half-centuries in one thousand years. 40 times is the time of Christ, 90 times a 50 year olds lifetime they are just finishing the Great Pyramids.
Your nation was born in the mid XX. century. Before that it was just a bunch of immigrant trying to make money and taking land. You should lose your "education" already and start using your brain!
@@BlookbugIV
Good point. It’s so weird to me. Just not something I’ve thought about
Non-historians almost always overestimate how long ago the past actually was. Part of training becoming a historian (unless you’re in an English speaking country or a country they colonized, long story) involves exercises to perspectivize the path through modelling and hermeneutics, so you can overcome this alienation. Most of human history happened really not that long ago, I’m among those who refuse to call anything after the invention of writing "ancient."
Where can I find that interview ?
It's amazing to hear someone so close to the source of history.
It would be more amazing if the world would have payed more attention to his conclusions.
The conclusions in question:
God isn't real and naive realism is true.
Absolutely groundbreaking stuff!
@@wslovsport It really is!
The internet is amazing.
kindly help me pls: at 0:46 second says RUSSEL xxxxx 's reencarnation ! I cannot get it clearly the name RUSSEL pointing at ,from his pronounce!!!
Cromwell, as in Oliver Cromwell.
Probably Cromwell, the revolutionary english statesman who, to put it shortly, lead the "parliament armies" in the English Civil War
According to some people that met him, Lenin spoke English with an Irish accent. Apparently, the person he hired to teach him English was Irish, and that's why he spoke it that way.
That's not how that works and it's complete bollocks
@Jean Sanchez According to Mr. Russell he did, he was an orthodox marxist, so Marx's discourse on machines and the "general intellect" and all
@Jean Sanchez I meant the internet and was joking
@@monkeytennis8861 that is absolutely how that works
"I didn't much like that."
Most logical man I've heard.
Also quite very ironically considering how english aristocracy rules by instigating one part of english society against another then they propose themselves as the moderate side🧐
LOL go study actuall logic and analytical philosophy
no this berty continental bullcrap
saying most logical man youve heard means nothing from u mate
@@williamrobinson4265 and your opinion on his opinion means nothing mate. infact most of all our lives mean nothing.... MATE.
@@williamrobinson4265 Do you know who Bertrand Russell was?
@@williamrobinson4265 You lack of both the intellect and the resources to insult anyone. Shut up, please.
This man met lenin and his grandfather met napoléon in elba. Quite an extraordinary life.
Interesting that german was so widely spoken
It still is one of the most spoken languages in the world, and a significant portion of Europe has spoken some form of German for many centuries - when globalism first started taking hold, it was a contender for the global lingua franca.
Germany was much bigger and there were large in German minorities all over central and Eastern Europe. Additionally, German was the language of science. Most of the bourgeoisie and upper classes could speak some German. Hitler managed to halve or even quarter the importance of Germans in the world. They bounced back somewhat but lost their previous position forever.
Also, Lenin spent a long time in Switzerland which was a safe haven for various kinds of Russian revolutionaries at least since Dostoevsky's time.
Lenin spent a lot of time in Germany and a lot of the ideals of socialism were first popularized in Germany.
The German Empire sponsored Lenin’s trip back to Russia under secrecy as a means to topple the Russian government and win the war. It worked, as far as destroying the Czar, but it came back to bite them in the 40’s. 😂
His depth and breadth of vision are refreshing! Ah, the sound and taste of real intelligence grounded in sanity! Wonderful!
?????????😂😂😂😂
Although I don't agree with Mr. Russell on everything, I still have to respect him. He was a wise and good person.
What, because he didn't much like Lenin laughing about peasants hanging other peasants?
@@varvarvarvarvarvarI know more about him than just what's in this video.
How can you say that? This little anecdote shows - just like many others that he was anything but wise - And a good person? All that he was, was very clever - but of course - you don't have to be stupid to be a fool - and evil
@@SJQuirke I don't see how you could've come to that conclusion from this.
@@TheOriginalJphyper What do you disagree with him on?
LOL! I love his response : "I didn't much like that". Classic!
Bertrand Russell is always a gem to listen to! There is so much to learn from him.
Russell on Lenin: "The more I talked to this fellow, the more I didn't care for him."
Also: « He was a real jerk »
It seems like this discussion kept going. Does anyone know where to find the full conversation?
Well, yes, Lenin did not contradict Marx so much that he even criticized him in his works in plain text, lol.
Still, although he didn't always believe Marx was right, he believed his interpretation of Marx was basically correct, and anyone who disagreed with him was, in his view, disagreeing with Marxism and therefore socialism/communism.
@@JSmusiqalthinka Tbf Lenin was mostly correct. He even established primitive forms of revolutionary methods that wouldn't come about until decades later. Also had a killer stache like damn
That's quite typical of Marxists, I find. They believe they can evidence stuff just based on Marx citations. Quite limited.
@@JSmusiqalthinka Both were tribesmen. Their disagreements amount to nothing, as usual
Dumb reductionist racism, also I'd say the beliefs of Lenin and Marx have had a biggggg impact on things
The remark in the beginning of the video should be corrected. In 1920 there was no "Soviet Russia", they were in the middle of a huge civil war that would end only 2 years later. And that really puts the encounter in a totally different perspective, as Russell wouldn't be meeting any country political leader or chief of state. At that point Lenin was one of the main leaders of an ongoing revolution and they were fighting foreign forces as well. Victory took a heavy toll, so I think that small correction alone would cast a different shadow over the violent statement that Russell much correctly didn't appreciate.
Don’t apologize for this maniac. The murders only accelerated after the war was over.
Soviet Russia was consolidated by Spring of 1921 but not formalised until 1922.
Lenin studied foreign grammars to put himself to sleep, because of chronic insomnia. Vlad was studying the miasma of the French subjunctive and literary tenses, when someone came to the door. Krupskaya answered, then told her husband that a certain Lev Bronstein from back home wanted to meet him.... to the station!
Stop it. Vlad is short name for vladislav. It has nothing to do with vladimir. Short name for it is Vova.
@@lpi3 s it's Vova the Impaler?
These videos are an extraordinary work of history. Amazing we can watch and listen to them.
could not agree more 💙
“A great readiness to stir up hatred”
Same group is still at it, today.
Marxism is grounded on the hate of god and christianity, envy and technocracy.
@@hellucination9905 Marx's writings are grounded in material reality.
If that's what you got from reading his works, it tells us things about you.
@@hellucination9905 Yes it is against god and christianity. And?
Eat the rich.
Cry me a river, bootlicker.
Fascinating...a true intellectual is commenting critically about his meeting with such an important man.
Love or hate Lenin, he was also a true intellectual. Ruthless, but still a great mind
@@dieinternationalesolidarit8540 Well Russell seems to be suggesting otherwise. I'm not saying that Karl Marx didn't have some very important and interesting ideas, but who reads Karl Marx uncritically and doesn't see any questionable ideas really hasn't read him. I'm sure even Karl Marx, egotist that he was, would have to agree with that.
@@omlettecheese2260 lenin himself wrote many books expanding upon marxism
@@dieinternationalesolidarit8540 No.
@@omlettecheese2260 what’re you basing his “egotism” on? Because decades later people took on a fervor for his method and named themselves after him? Having read a good amount of his work, ego centric is literally the last way I’d describe any of it
Bertrand Russell was a great man and very good at writing, I recommend his ''History of Western Philosophy'' if you can put the time aside to read it.
There is no ,,Western" Philosophy West from Germany and little in France. Its just in English, is not possible. Ask anyone who understand this mater.
There are Greeks, Muslims, Italians. There is no way Italy "does not exist" in matters of phylosophy.
@@ignaciomedinadunin359 There is no Greeks, but Jews. Greece is created 1830, and never existed before that. ALl you know about Aristotel, Pitagor - all of this guys were Jews. Later, after 1830, presented by British empire as ,,Ancient Greeks".
@@goshu7009 Can you tell me please how these guys were jews?. Excuse me but they called themeselves "greeks" or "helenes"; the greeks of nowadays just took the name and geographic space.
There is an important difference between state, nation and motherland. I await for your answer.
@@ignaciomedinadunin359 Very simple. I am from Thias region. People here say:
Everytime a ,,greek" is born, a ,,Jew" is crying. And thats because the so called ,,Greeks" after 1830 (this word was uknown before), are taking Jewish Identity from Antiquity. All this ,,Greeks" from 4 Century B:C - represent the last and the Best Jewish Scholars and Propehts, Teachers and masters. MOst of them took their knowldge from Egypt.
During that time, the so called ,,Greeks"after 1830, were called ,,Danayans" - a Pirate, nomadic tribe. One of the Sea peoples, one of which are Phoenicians. They use different tactic when invade - in this case - They mixed with the locals of the Balkans and took their identity.
Hellas or Helenes means literally ,,Whity". Thats when they so called ,,Greeks' who are little dark on skin, short, black curly hair, started to mix with the locals, who are white, tall and bright hair and eyes (this Genotype comes from Black Sea and Caspean Sea region)
IF you look the Statues of the so called ,,Greek GODs" they dont look like greek people, but like other balkan people like Bulgarians, Serbians, Croatians....
I can continue with hours, but that would be disrespect for your inteligence, since you can go to the library and read.
What did Russell say at 0:14?
"I had an hours' talk tête à tête with him"
"I had an hours' talk tête à tête with him"
He had conversation tete-a-tete. Face to face
Isn't it extraordinarily powerful how an extreme understatement can have such impact when it comes from the mouth of such a credible character as is Bertrand Russell.
Good observaation, Hal.
What did he understate?
@@cerdic6305he hears a head of state talk about and laugh about how he got his people to murder their neighbors and he goes "Mmh, I didn't much like that."
There are no recordings of Lenin speaking English, but Russell’s impression is still fitting for him. It sounds the way Lenin looks, somehow
Crazy, that is.
Unfortunately there are not much of Lenin speaking Russian. Lenin had a speech defect, though his speeches were always very powerful in action he preferred them to be just written down than recorded. But some people who had chance to meet hem told that he had a strong irish accent because he could afford only Irish english teachers
Have just uploaded some films from 1918-1920 which contain recordings of Lenin's voice (in Russian) - I added English subtitles. ua-cam.com/video/TH_LEXZfCdk/v-deo.html
These would have been recorded on early cylinder or foil mechanisms (similar to the early Edison machines) as it was before sound on film became possible.
0:46 I doubt this, Lenin had significant disagreements with Marx
Clearly not enough to mention to Bertrand Russell.
Lenin was a religious zealot in his belief of Communism. That's why he had the drive, focus, confidence, energy and sheer bravery to achieve what he did.
@@drott150 Lenin had all the traits you mention except for religiosity and zealotry. He had zeal, but zealotry is taking it too far. Lenin was a Marxist because he believed it was an accurate science, but that didn't stop him from disagreeing with Marx on certain things. He did believe that communism isn't only possible and desirable, but also that it's inevitable, but he believed this for scientific reasons.
@@alzndjsnsmwjsj8227 You say he had zeal but zealotry was taking it too far? I have no idea what your semantics mean. Lenin had religious zeal in his beliefs. His brother was killed by the Tsarists. He deeply hated the Tsar and his regime. So much so, he was willing to do anything to get rid of it. He was willing to risk imprisonment, torture and death to achieve his goal. He lived through many years of very dangerous times before he finally ascended to power. Anyone with a smoldering hatred of his political opponents so intense he is willing to risk everything including his life, is a zealot by definition. Anyone happily willing to commit mass murder and genocide to bring about what he believes in - as evidenced in Russell's account of what Lenin said - is a zealot by definition. Zealot doesn't mean you're irrational or stupid either. It just means you are hyper focused and hyper committed to what you believe in.
As far as Lenin not agreeing with Marx on certain things? Maybe. But the Communist Manifesto was interpreted by many different communists of his era in differing ways. They read into various aspects of what they believed Marx may not have expressed explicitly or clearly according to their own interpretation. And some people had differing interpretations than others. Same thing with the Bible, the Koran, The US Constitution etc. Those differences in interpretation doesn't mean a murderous fanatic like Lenin wasn't a communist zealot.
@@drott150 There is a difference between zeal and zealotry. A zealot has so much zeal that they're blinded by their beliefs, they aren't scientific in their analyses. You can have zeal without being a zealot.
And Marx expressed his ideas very specifically, Lenin wasn't just interpreting what he wrote in a certain way, he understood him and explicitly disagreed with him on certain things. Marx stated that since only countries with fully developed capitalism could become socialist, revolutions would start in the capitalist imperial core and spread to the periphery. Lenin proved that Marx had it backwards. The works of Marx and Engels aren't written like religious texts at all, they're filled with evidence and detailed explanations. The Communist Manifesto is a slight exception, but that's a minor work meant as a very rudimentary introduction to communism.
And you'll have to elaborate on your "mass murder and genocide" charge against Lenin. According to the standard anti-communist narrative, Lenin is guilty of mass murder, but that narrative is far from objective. I'm not sure where the charge of genocide comes from.
BR in 1949: We must attack USSR with nulear weapons before they get one.
Stalin: Unfortunately for you we already have one.
BR: Ok ok lets all calm down and put down our nuclear weapons.
Yeah he was a pretty reprehensible and hypocrtitical human being. Funny to see how all the comment section is singing him praises. He was pro eugenics too iirc.
@@nonono4160 found the commie in the comments….fuck Stalin fuck Lenin and fuck Marx and really fuck any modern idiot who espoused communism or socialism
damn, I didn't know he was so extremely based. I mean set theory and all that formal logic stuff is admirable but nuking Russia to hell is on another level. Great man
@@Unstable_constant If they did that there wouldve been nothing but desert in the Northa America today. And youre fucking stupid.
He wanted to denuclearize Russia in 1948
"You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.” - Norm MacDonald
He is also quoted as being afraid of going back in time and joining the Nazi party because of Hitler.
macdonald was a funny guy, but... what's the relevance?
@@Dystisis The understated comment about not liking Lenin.
@@redhen2470 The understatement doesn't work because Lenin isn't vilified as Herr H in the Western culture.
Communism killed a lot more people than fascism, so you know the vitriol is not on purely humanitarian grounds. Killing for communism is cool, if regrettable.
You can't lead a revolution if you have doubts. Fanatics are always successful in their doggedness.
Masterful observation
Helps if you have all the major banks behind you...
Not necessarily a bad thing. Look at the French Revolutions long run effects on the world
@@Atilla_the_Fun long-run effects... lmao, lets talk again in 10 years and attribute whatever the hell is going on then to the revolution 200 years ago.
@@uberhaxonova That's how history works man??? Agricultural revolution happened 10,000 years ago, it still affects us today because you can drink beer and eat cultivated rice without even having to look for food yourself.
what a clear man. too bad and a shame that not more of his generation were such bright and humble minds.
Watch a 94 year old Tom Sowell talk about old New York too. He dumbfounds so many with his experience.
It’s great watching these old guys so much knowledge to pass on and more often ignored.
I heavily disagree with Russell's work on epistemology and language, but his public political personality seems to be admirable.
@@vincentmcgrath4179 Lol I agree. But that was quite brutal.
it's probably because you don't understand it.
thats it thats the only thing he was a likeable hack a complete joke of a philosopher and merely exemplified the charm of upper class english pretention
@@onsenguy no russel was a joke and is laughed at now and was back then by his peers
@@williamrobinson4265 laughed at by who? noam chomsky, christopher hitchens, and sam harris hold him in high regard.
Russell pure class knows right from wrong
We need Bertrand Russell today...
Sup
I had a Russian teacher, born in 1938, who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s for the U.S. He was a journalist in Moscow most of his life. He was not a Communist by any means, but he always held Lenin in high regard for his intelligence, and often used Lenin's study habits to help us in language learning (Lenin was, if nothing else, a polyglot). I think that view may be true for a lot of Russians, especially from that generation. Sure they know their history, but in light of what was to follow after Lenin's death, he is considered the lesser of the evils to follow.
A project needs to be created to interview the elderly so we can have their knowledge, experience, and perspective to benefit future generations.
I'd give the boomer generation a miss. Not a lot of benefit to anyone - present or future.
In Soviet Russia Lenin meets you :)
When you get to know Bertrand Russell, you get to love him!
Or, if you're not completely mentally incompetent, despise him.
not if you are actually a professional philosopher
I could never love an "instigator".
Is this part of a longer conversation that one can find? How about a link?
Conservative people in the comments of a Bertrand Russell video. How unexpected.
Yes,it's connected with intelligence. Something you wouldn't understand.
@@ms-jl6dl conservatives and intelligence.....the irony
Oil industry mogul Armand Hammer back in the 1960's also remarked on a meeting he had with Lenin in Moscow in 1922. Hammer was quite surprised to hear Lenin speaking English not only fluently but with an Irish accent! Hammer said, in his address at UCLA, he had expected Lenin to speak like Trotsky with a thick Russian accent or to even need the help of a translator because of poor ability to speak English, but neither was the case. Hope somebody somewhere has and can post a film with sound or a radio recording of Lenin speaking English. Lenin's English tutor in Switzerland was an Irishman, at that time a British subject. That's where Lenin got the accent from, not from the neighbors. Also, if there are any archives of Hammer's Occidental Petroleum company anywhere, there may be the script of his talk at UCLA.
Fascinating, I didn't know this!
@@haroldfarquad6886 Lenin Lived In London for over a year so his sources of English were pretty much unlimited if he wanted to practice..which he clearly did to become fluent. I find it difficult to believe you are going to pick up your entire accent from one person. How many kids grow up in north America with immigrant parents with heavy accents, but don't sound anything like them?
Armand Hammer -- proud corporate sponsor of the Bolshevik Revolution.
I think Lenin was ginger too.. Good fella
BR rocks loved his temperament, philosophy as a study and infinitesimal calculus..especially digging these interviews...I never heard him talk..cool..exactly as I had hoped...
Transcript study: (to the best of my ability) 0:40 “He seemed to me to be a reincarnation of Cromwell” (Oliver, from England) “with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy. He thought a proposition could be proven by quoting a text in Marx. And he was quite incapable of supposing that there anything could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right. That struck me as rather limited.”
"A readiness to stir up hatred."
The comment section shows the success of classcuckery and bourgeois propaganda
this type of documents are jewels for humanity.
Its not document. Documents state facts and here is an opinion. And pretty lame one btw. You have to know nothing about Lenin to call him an orthodox marxist.
I learned something I didn’t know from this short clip. Appreciate hearing his assessment.
It was Lenin's ability to break from orthodoxy, especially in the April Theses, that distinguished him from the "Old Bolsheviks" that wanted the revolution to pass through every preordained phase in its due course.
Who knows if Russell is being truthful about "hanging the wealthy peasants" comment....but, given how the muzhiks were treated by the kulaks, it seems a fair enough proposition to me.
These are people your talking about!
And they are hardly rich
How cheap you hold their lives 🤬
I wonder if you’d be saying the same thing as the noose went around your neck as you shit yourself!
And what a great success Lenin's authoritarian Marxism turned out to be, eh? Bolshevik 'socialism' became a barracks until it collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence.
I think there's a possibility Russell took that last statement as a threat.
As in you don't accept my view, then it's the highway or death( hanging from a limb).
Considering the view t;at it's fun manipulating the general public, it also puts the idea of,.. after I got done doing a show of power, and telling people what to do next. I was amused some did very much as I expected. Letting their jealousy and ignorance guide their activities. And killing, then blaming it on an outside force, or Lenin. And still that power, getting away with it.
Though would have been Stalins thing to laugh at. So, it goes with, one, doesn't know what someone else is going thru.
one of the best mathematician and philosopher of xx century
More like Gustavo Bueno. Such a pity that he hasn't been translated to English.
The sound is heavily distorted, there's that buzzy noise. I think the audio has either had a messy noise clean or the LUFS level is wrong, or both. A shame how distracting it is.
Russell thought that both Lenin and Trotsky were brilliant but fanatical revolutionaries. He thought that Trotsky was very charming . Russell contested Bolshevism from the very beginning ( 1917 )consistent with more British notion of democratic socialism. Right to the day he died Bertrand Russell was a formidable opponent of American foreign policy . I read " Bertrand Russell's America ".
They were not fanatical revolutionaries they were fanatical about power and control they destroyed the heart and soul of the revolution in March 2021.
I agree with all the points Bertrand Russell made here. The problem is not with what he said - but with what is missing, which is placing the Bolshevik revolution (on the one hand, its positive stated goals, and on the other hand, its harsh and cruel methods of pursuing those goals) in the historic context of Russia during the Czarist regime and in its aftermath.
The Czar's regime was autocratic and corrupt. The vast majority of Russia's population was rural, and within the rural population the majority lived in miserable conditions. The urban working class also lived in poverty. The autocratic regime gave no hope to most people. This is why (very briefly, without even going into the impact of WW1 on an impoverished nation), in 1917 Russia had a revolution, that overturned that anti-democratic regime that worked well for the wealthy only. The Revolution was followed by a Civil War, in which several forces (monarchist, and anti-Czarist divided between Bolsheviks and their opponents) fought for power. The logic of a Civil War is simple: kill or get killed. During the Civil War, this is when Bertrand Russel met Vladimir Lenin.
Does it sound like "making excuses for Lenin"? Absolutely NOT.
But, the purpose of studying history is to know and understand what really happened, before jumping to judgment. The cruel methods used by Lenin, resulting in the killing of large numbers of people, belong to a historic context that bears no comparison to the current circumstances of advanced countries. Anything - from democracy and civil rights, through level of education of the masses, to living standards of working people - is so different now (even in Russia, and so much more in Western democracies), from what it was then.
Keeping the right historic perspective is the only way to understand why Lenin's revolution was victorious then (against strong armed opposing forces), while in the Western Democracies this kind of violent revolution didn't occur then, and is even more (much more) unthinkable now.
In the years leading up to WW1, land reforms led by Stolypin had given more opportunities to people willing to work and make the land productive than ever before. This, of course, was set back by the assassination of Stolypin. The disaster that was WW1 drained so much out of the land of Russia that it pushed people into resistance that previously was not something widely supported. The idea that the Czarist government only worked for the wealthy is a myth. The aristocrats benefited disproportionately, to be sure, but there WERE land reforms that were creating a larger middle class, land reforms which were reversed under the collectivization of the Soviets. If the Czar was so bad, why did the Soviets have to deal with all those meddlesome Kulaks, after all? Under the Czar, there was industry, a film industry, a society in which people, while perhaps not always thriving, at least weren't starving like they would during the holodomor.
I liked John Lenins work in the Beatles best..
And Groucho Marx, too.
Cringe
was that last part a reference to the kulaks?
Bertrand Russel was and will always be one of my heroes, I was introduced to him by my father who is a phd in political science, he gave me the book, "marraige and morality" and from thereon out I was hooked.
We strirred up the poor peasants to the rich peasants and the soon hanged them to the nearest tree.
- Lenin
Based
incredibly based. The kulaks were attempting to induce an artificial famine which could have killed countless people. They were actively destroying crops in protest and attempting to starve out the urban areas - which were ofc almost entirely civilians who had nothing to do with the revolution. Kulaks were willing to kill countless innocents just so they could keep their wealthy positions and keep food as a commodified product to profit off of. They were evil to their very core and lenin took the trash out.
Unfathomably based
What’s the technobabble you hear in the background
This is such an interesting gem. While UA-cam has largely become populated with brain-eating mundane hip-pop and cat videos, finding things like this still shows it has a phenomenal capacity to peer into history and enlighten.
I like cat videos.
Richard G. Joy I would suppose it’s where you look ; videos on brilliant thinkers will invariably be far removed from the banal and superficial .
@@Jide-bq9yf I guess so mate, it's just remarkable how unnoticed some things go
Richard G. Joy indeed ; we that are held in abstraction’s firm grip are fated to be the minority party of humanity for all perpetuity .
@@Jide-bq9yf What the hell are you blubbering about?
Never knew Lenin spoke English!
I'm gonna need some subtitles.
I met Lenin in 1920 when I was in Russia, I had an hours talk tête-à-tête with him. And um, he spoke English much better than you would have expected, the whole conversation was in English. I expected it to have been in German, but I found that his English was quite good. I was less impressed by Lenin than I expected to be. He was of course a great man. He seemed to me a reincarnation of Cromwell, with exactly the same limitations that Cromwell had. Absolute orthodoxy, he thought a proposition could be proved by quoting a text in Marx, and he was quite incapable of supposing that there could be anything in Marx that wasn’t right, and that struck me as rather limited. I (decide/recite/decite??) one other thing about him which was his great readiness to stir up hatred. I put certain questions to him to see what his answer would be, and one of them was “You profess to be establishing socialism, but as far as the countryside is concerned you seem to me to be establishing peasant proprietorship which is a very different thing from agricultural socialism”. And he said, “Oh dear me no, we’re not establishing peasant proprietorship”, he said “You see there are poor peasants and rich peasants, and we stirred up the poor peasants against the rich peasants, and they soon hanged them to the nearest tree, ah hah hah HAH HAH”. I didn’t much like that.
What he doesn't say , like many of the luvvies , even today , he went to Russia to support the 'wonderful ' revolution and met one of the worlds mass murderers. If he'd read Tolstoy's the devils , or brothers Karamazov , he would have known what to expect. The likes of these people soon flee.
Is Russell trying to say Lenin sounded like Santa Claus?
it just goes to show that even without religion that people can still fall into such a mindset that the ideas and people they belive in are sacred and infallable and that all those who disagree must be brought to heel
Not unlike Trump supporters, who fall into categories in and out of explicitly Christianist mindsets (although the professed “Christian” and “evangelical” supporters of the disgraced former president do comprise a sizeable majority, without whose unprincipled and hypocritical support Trump would have never been elected). If any group should have been brought to heel in the last five years, it was this one.
@@TheRealGnolti whoosh
@@willforest5302 Glad to see you put some thought into your response.
@@TheRealGnolti you replied to a 2 year old comment, what where you expecting?
@@willforest5302 I remember what I wrote two years ago, if not by instant recall then by recognition. Anyway, enough has happened in the last two years to give everything context.
When I visited Russia with my mother in 1979 I was only twenty and very niieve about the U.S.S.R. When I saw military men with guns greeting our
plane in Moscow I just wanted to turn around and go home. The U.S.S.R. scared the "you know what' out of me!
Go to China - they are Nazis with nukes, submarines as well as satellite technology. They believe they are the master race. China is scary right now. Propaganda there is off the scale.
Have you been to any other airports since? Super common in France, Italy, Israel, US, etc
@@paulrouhan7288 Very common in countries suffering from terrorist attacks, yes.
@Arlene NEVER happened. Why do you even bother?
Thank you. This is amazing.
I don't normally understand Betrand Russell but this is interesting. One could argue that communism/Marxism/socialism only ever see society as competing groups, not as individuals. And Marxism stokes up mutual resentment (like social media today) which causes one group to eliminate another. With the leaders (Lenin, Stalin etc) being the net winners. Social engineering at a vast scale. Pol Pot, collectivisation, etc etc. Lenin's indifference to someone being hung from a tree telling in my opinion.
marxism is not at all "like social media today", that is among the weirdest critiques i have seen about marxism
even if marxism DID "only ever see society as competing groups", please think about what exactly the groups you're supposing about are. they are the owners of the levers of power vs those who have that power enacted upon them, forced to bear the privilege of working for the owners' dreams and ideals or suffering otherwise. this is the core of why marxists want something different. so people can pursue a greater personhood without the necessity of cowing to and labouring for something that benefits very few people and instead working "for each according to their ability, to each according to their need"
further, marxism very much does not concern itself with seeing society as competing groups. it concerns itself with seeing things in a "dialectical materialist" manner, a scientific manner, and with the means and processes of production (as opposed to the process/fairness of distribution, which is the commonly misunderstood conception of marxism/communism). it is obviously very hard to do this when you want to think of the "individual" rather than the specific universal circumstances that lead to - for a crucial example - a very small, very nondemocratic group having control over the intricate systems that are called the means of production
@@unco_pk_traceur7748 In all Marxist systems that have ever existed it's the Marxists themselves who take over the levers of power. It's always been about the intellectuals who run the show (Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot) and everyone else who is considered expendable. Serfs in Russia etc. Stalin eliminated the Kulaks by using internecine class warfare. Marxist dialectic is shortcut for using words in Capital to identify anyone as an "enemy of the people" and eliminate them. Marx claimed that workers of the world would unite to overthrow their bosses. How come then that there was no Marxist revolution in the Countries with the most unequal and capitalist system (UK, Holland, USA) and the only Countries where Marxism took off were where peasants had no information, no factories to work in and no hope? It turns out that workers of the world want washing machines, cars that work, cookers and microwaves and are happy to accept the inequalities of capitalism to get them. Marxism and Socialism bring poverty, starvation and death with them everywhere. Capitalism brings inequality, wealth, health, education. Marxists going back to the book are like the Christian fundamental creationists who believe the Bible literally.
@@simonbowden8408 not the case at all. you're looking at things anachronistically, as if capitalism simply caused things to go well in the positive ways you mentioned 1. without any bedding in period (think about how large China's emissions currently are - that's because they are practically in an "industrial revolution" phase, or not long out of it, to compare a communist developmemt with a capitalist one) and 2. as if a huge amount of the global workforce subjected to capitalism is PREVENTED from enjoying these "benefits" due to over-exploitation. this is where ideas of imperialism come in to an understanding of capitalism - and is the blind spot as to why people who disparage communism and marxism seem to think we talk exclusively about the poor in imperial/1st world countries
the reason no "developed" nation has risen to revolution is because our needs are always kept in check enough - as you sort of alluded to about us having access to the treats capitalism affords us - so as to not see the purpose of revolution when one weighs it up as you did
the problem with this math is that it assumes that we'll always be comfortable, only bearably exploited, and that the suffering of those who necessarily need to be exploited to keep the 1st world wealthy will not really impact us. with all that is going on in the world i'm sure i don't need to spell out why that is incorrect
@@unco_pk_traceur7748 well the Communist party vote had fallen steadily pretty much every election since 1945 in every European country until they are one of the smallest fringe parties now. Only a few ananchronistic die hards vote Communist now. Communism is dead and has never borne any relation to human nature for the whole of the history of civilisations. In Ur there was huge inequality. Who do you think carved the Portal on the gates? How much were they paid? Have you read Gilgamesh? There was huge inequality in almost every civilisation, bar perhaps some data for the Maya, though we have no written record, just relative house sizes. Inequality is the driver for wealth overall. And health. An life expectancy. Communist ideology involves stoking inter group hatred to achieve anarchy, at which point the Communist intellectuals (Fascists) take over. Every time. Same old loop. That's why it's based on getting ppl to hate each other, like social media. In group empathy = out group antipathy. The Nazis used exactly the same techniques as Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot, just different enemies.
In fact I would make the prediction that almost all Communist ideologues have large aspects of autism about themselves individually. Perhaps you might be so? These people see only competiting groups of people. Not individuals. There is no mention of individual people in the Communist manifesto, nor in Capital. Lenin and Stalin were singularly unaffected by the sufferings of millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor, calling the dead and dying people traitors etc. It's the total lack of compassion for individuals that is the dominant characteristic of all Communists (and Fascists).
He thought a proposition could be proved by quoting Marx. I like Marx, but that Marxist habit always felt cultish.
Dude like marxs
The French taught the world that sometimes you do have to hang the rich to the nearest tree... or worse.
The comparison with Cromwell is absolutely perfect. The blind zealotry of both would oversee the deaths of untold thousands.
That's because Socialism, in all it's forms, it's not a political ideology or an economic system, it's a cult.
Their goal is utopia and everything that isnt utopia is "not real socialism".
It's impossible to have a debate in good faith with a socialist because that requires logic and honesty, and the cult is built on fantasy and deception.
Their "utopia" is also impossible on many levels beyond the economic. They are basically at war with reality itself
Meanwhile at that time the British Empire was killing millions.
I always had been told Lenin couldn’t speak English very well at all.
Lenin lived in london for a period of his life with his wife, above a shoe repair shop from what I can recall. You can visit the house and it has a sign outside of it commemorating that he lived there. All those years in exile helped Lenin become a bi lingual individual. He could also speak German, French and Swedish to a good standard aswel.
Ryan McCallum Yes you are correct. But he also lived at Percy Circus, off Kings Cross Road. Which there is also a plaque saying that he lived there. Also go to my channel and watch the video, Lenin in London.
I guess you're insinuating Bertrand Russell is senile in this recording, and therefore hearing things?
@@markeedeep Amusing, but no I don’t think that old Bertram was senile at all. Perhaps I am wrong about Lenin’s grasp of the English language.
Lot of rich peasants in the comment section
That's quite funny. I still agree with Russell though.
@@patrickpaganini why?
@@migueltrejo4558 Because I don't approve of casual killing.
@@patrickpaganini what do you think 'bout millions of killings under capitalist system?
@@migueltrejo4558 if you kill 3 people you are a muderer, but if you kill millions you are a politician.
So Bertrand just SHIT-TESTED Lenin, and the latter failed immideatly. Betrand moved on with his life
I like that even though he was incredibly smart, this guy kept it simple. Lenin seemed overly orthodox and cruel, which are bad things.
The Great philosopher meets the great revolutionary.
Naah....Lenin was just a murderer. Nothing was great about him. Stop making a god out of him. Please. It's pathtic.