the Catholic church in Poland with the pope at its head (according to Adam Michnik); Islamic terrorism (according to Antony Flew); or U.S. Protestant funda-mentalism (as discussed by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan). Elena Bonner, wife of Andrei Sakharov, analyzes the difficult rebirth of democracy in Russia. Indumati Parikh argues for the need of implement-ing humanist rationalism not only in India, but in all of the Third World, out-

lining the benefits that would follow for the great majority of the population, par-ticularly women. The need to introduce principles of scientific rationalism in the construction of societies in Latin America is defended strongly by José Leite Lopes, whereas Bernard Crick, in an ironic mood, talks about British tolerance, which could end up producing a kind of "entro-morphic, ecumenic, Moslem, Christian, Hindu, Baptist, holistic unitarianism."

Challenges to the Enlightenment demon-strates that rational thinking, even when critical, can also be fun. More important, what is clear from reading this book is that the future of our planet depends on the use of reason, science, and the social and political ideals of the Enlighten-ment—upsetting as this may be for post- modernist obscurantism. •

Translated by Etienne Colon-Rios

Lenin: A New Biography, by Dmitri Volkogonov (New York: The Free Press, 1994) 529 pp., cloth $30.00.

Vladimir Illych Ulyanov (better known as Lenin, the name he assumed) was

one of the central revolutionary figures of the twentieth century. A man of iron will and dedicated purpose, the Bolshevik Revolution would not have succeeded without him. Much has been written about Lenin, but also much concealed. It is clear that a cult has developed around him. For a long time many within and outside of the Soviet empire considered him to be an idealist, even a man of goodness and virtue. Dedicated Communists who wor-shiped his name sought to memorialize him by erecting a monument just outside the Kremlin walls; tens of millions of Russians have shuffled by to gawk at his mummified body.

The Soviet empire grew out of Lenin's vision and determination. Now crumbling and in disarray, the brutal excesses of the monolithic regime that he created are blamed by many on Stalin, his successor, who, it is said, betrayed the ideals of the revolution inspired by Lenin. That, at least, is the scenario that so many Communists, Soviet citizens, and even social democrats and liberals throughout the world have in the past accepted. There have been abundant skeptical debunkers of the Lenin myth, who pointed out that

Lenin was no angel and that the dictator-ship of the proletariat that he founded was forged in blood and terror. A number of authors, many of them socialists, such as Max Eastman, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Kautsky, even Maxim Gorky, pointed out the excesses of Lenin's rule. Other authors—Sidney Hook, Bertrand Wolfe, Robert Conquest, and Arthur Koestler—have eloquently diagnosed the cruel char-acter of the Leninist regime. Many devo-tees of Lenin considered these detractors to be biased and in some ways to have betrayed leftist ideals. And many human-ist fellow travelers had long extolled the virtues of Leninism. Within Russia even Gorbachev, although he condemned Stalinism, never turned against the founder of the Marxist-Leninist state and believed that a return to his principles was essential.

Today, although Lenin's reputation has been tarnished, he has still not been fully dethroned and his body has not as yet been removed from its mausoleum in Moscow. Until this is done and the Russian soul confronts the true picture of Leninism, perhaps Russia cannot bind its wounds and recover from its legacy.

This is now possible, given the fact that the secret Soviet archives from the Communist Party, the KGB, and the Kremlin have been opened and a truer account of Lenin the man and his role in

history can be assessed. The Collected Works of Lenin has been published, edit-ed and, reprinted five times; and, accord-ing to official Soviet sources, was com-plete. This was not the case, and with the ascension of Boris Yeltsin to power and the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party, the heretofore secret archives have been made available to scholars. Thousands of new letters, memoranda, and documents withheld from publication can now be analyzed. There are 3,724 pieces of material in all, plus another 3,000 official documents signed by Lenin. What they reveal is that this bril-liant but complex revolutionary was any-thing but pure in motive or deed, and he committed dreadful crimes.

Perhaps the most significant analysis of of this new material to date is the pow-erful new book, Lenin: A New Biography, by Dmitri Volkogonov, a former lieu-tenant general in the Red Army in charge of psychological warfare, and a former dedicated Communist. I was pleased to have met General Volkogonov, who holds doctorates in philosophy and in history, through the good offices of Valeri Kuvakin, his former student, who is pro-fessor of Russian philosophy at Moscow State University.' As publisher of Prometheus Books, I was allowed to enter the secret archives and to arrange for the publication of several documents? I was surprised at being given the opportunity to examine these documents directly.

Volkogonov had just published a study of Stalin' He said that he was working on two other manuscripts. One was on the life of Trotsky, whose true place in the revolution and the early years of the Soviet regime has not yet been conveyed to the Russian public, and the other was

Reflections on the Cult of Lenin

Paul Kurtz

52 FREE INQUIRY

about Lenin. These books, said Volkogonov, would offer a more accurate appraisal of Lenin's character and role and would be based upon what Volkogonov had discovered in the archives. I endeavored to secure publica-tion of both books and offered contracts to General Volkogonov. Unfortunately, Pro-metheus Books did not have the financial resources to outbid larger publishing houses. I eagerly awaited the appearance of both books, which have since been published in Russia, The Lenin book has just been published in English.

Volkogonov had been summarily dis-missed from the army during the Brezh-nev era for saying that the Soviet leader-ship had to come to terms with Stalinism—a radical view at that time. He was reinstated by Gorbachev, who asked him to read the Kremlin archives and tell him what was in them. Volkogonov was badly shaken by what he uncovered. The Communist leaders apparently saved everything. They no doubt had a sense of history.

When Gorbachev was deposed in a coup, Volkogonov was high on the list to be eliminated by conservative Com-munists. When Yeltsin prepared to seize power, the Central Committee ordered all sensitive documents in the archives to be burned. Yeltsin abolished the Communist Party and appointed Volkogonov chair-man of the Presidential Commission Examining the Archives, thus saving the archives for posterity.

Volkogonov's account of Lenin is dev-astating. It was Lenin who first con-

ceived of the dictatorship of the proletari-at, and used the Communist Party, espe-cially the Central Committee and the Politburo, as a vehicle for the revolution. Moreover, it was Lenin who rejected par-liamentary democracy—as espoused by the Mensheviks and the Social Demo-crats—and went on to use terror, violence, and coercion to achieve his goals. He demanded absolute obedience. Indeed, from the time he seized power in 1917 until his death of a stroke in 1923, hun-dreds of thousands of people were execut-ed under his regime. This applied not only to "right-wing deviationists, reactionaries, or monarchists" during the battles with the White Army and the civil war within

Russia, but to other liberals, leftists, socialists, and social democrats—anyone who threatened his authority or ques-tioned his policies. According to Volkogonov, Lenin approved of the mur-der of the czar and his family and attempt-ed to cover up the foul deed. Under Lenin, the rule of law was abandoned and Revolutionary Tribunals were used to condemn thousands of people without a trial or hearing. It was Lenin who first cre-ated the secret police, the dreaded Cheka (later the NKVD and the KGB) under the tyrannical control of Felix Dzerhinsky, who tortured and murdered thousands of innocent people.

Lenin wanted earthly happiness for the people, and his utopian ideal justified any means; nothing was allowed to stand in the way of the revolution. Volkogonov reveals that Lenin came from a well-to-do family and that the execution of his older brother, who was involved in the assassination of Czar Alexander, left a permanent scar on his character and engendered bitterness toward the ruling regime.

A letter written in August 1918 by Lenin and addressed to the Bolsheviks in Penza clearly shows his attitude.

Comrades! The kulak uprising in [your] five districts must be crushed without pity. The interests of the whole revolu-tion demand it, for the "final and deci-sive battle" with the kulaks everywhere is now engaged. An example must be made. 1) Hang (and I mean hang so that the people can see) not less than 100 known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2) Publish their names. 3) Take all their grain away from them. 4) Identify hostages as we described in our telegram yesterday. Do this so that for hundreds of miles around the people can see, tremble, know and cry: they are killing and will go on killing the blood-sucking kulaks. Cable that you have received this and carried out [your instructions.] (p. 69)

In another document Lenin attempted to vindicate his use of terror. He said: "The dictatorship means nothing other than power totally unlimited by any laws, unre-strained by regulation, and based directly on the use of force" (p. 237).

In retrospect, the great debate in the ear-lier part of the century between social

democrats, who thought that socialism could only come into being by peace-ful parliamentary means, and Marx-ists—Leninists, who were willing to use terror to achieve the revolution, has been resolved. The virtues of the democratic society, where pluralistic parties and the right of opposition and dissent is permit-ted, indeed encouraged, has been vindi-cated. Alternative authoritarian and totali-tarian systems, although efficient for a time, are too dangerous to human well-being: for from them any kind of mon-strous crimes might ensue.

Many still believe that had Lenin lived or had his policies prevailed, Russia would not have suffered the awesome bloodbath that was to follow under Stalin. In another book, Lenin's Will: Falsified and Forbidden, Yuri Buranov, who had direct access to the archives, argues that as Lenin lay incapacitated by a stroke Stalin used Machiavellian means to secure his own power. According to Buranov, Lenin's famous will, which raised doubts about Stalin's character and his leader-ship, was distorted by Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva, who served as Lenin's secre-tary; indeed, as Lenin lay on his deathbed, the Central Committee decided to sup-press his last testament. Much of this was revealed by Max Eastman in a book he published in England in 1925, but his views remained suppressed from the Soviet public. Stalin maneuvered himself into power, and the terrible bloodletting in which an estimated 20 million people died eventually emerged. True, Lenin's terror pales in comparison to Stalin's. Yet Volkogonov argues that the totalitarian state was already formed by Lenin. Stalin's book, The Principles of Leninism, which he published in 1927, spelled this out clearly. Leninism viewed the Com-munist Party as a "combat organization; every person had to be a selfless fighter with gun in hand" Dissent was forbidden. Stalin later suppressed many of the letters and documents of Lenin that were stored in the archives and made Lenin appear semi-divine.

The lesson is clear and needs to be reit-erated: one cannot hope to build a better society using mendacious means; nor can one sacrifice an ethic of principles for an ethic of ends without disastrous conse-quences. For in the process of creating the

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ideal society the conditions of power used to achieve it will corrupt those who wield the power. Will future reformers learn or will some still unknown Robespierre sac-rifice human dignity on the altar of revo-lutionary zeal? Given the prostrate, tragic character of life in Russia today, it is clear that the ideal end was not worth the price in suffering that it exacted from the peo-ple.

What a pity to have had an entire nation predicate its existence on the myth

of Lenin. How important it is for the peo-ple of Russia and others who were enam-ored of Leninism to confront the truth of Lenin, abandon the icon, and move on.

Notes

1. I have written three articles in FREE INQUIRY about my visits to Russia in 1989, 1991, and 1992 as the Communist state was breaking up, "Militant Atheism Versus Freedom of Conscience: Reflections on the Moscow Atheist/Humanist Dialogue" (Fall 1989); "The End of 'Kremlin II'?" (Spring 1991); and "Letter from Moscow: Russia in Transition"

(Summer 1992). 2. Four books have been published by

Prometheus Books or are in press: Yuri Buranov, Lenin's Will: Falsified and Forbidden (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994); Yuri L. Dyakov and Tatyana S. Bushuyeva, The Red Army and the Wehrmacht: How the Soviets Militarized Germany, 1922-33, and Paved the Way for Fascism (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995); Gennadi V. Kostyrchenko, Out of the Red Shadows: Anti-Semitism in Stalin's Russia (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995); and Valentina Vilkova, Struggle for Power: 1923 (Amherst, N.Y.: Pro-metheus Books, forthcoming, 1995).

3. Dmitry Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Grove Atlantic, 1991). •

Scientist Nitwit Atheist Proves Existence of God

Victor J. Stenger

The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology and the Resurrection of the Dead, by Frank J. Tipler (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 528 pp., cloth $24.95.

The jacket of The Physics of Immortality tells us that author Frank

Tipler had arrived at a "... stunning con-clusion: Using the most advanced and sophisticated methods of modern physics, relying solely on the rigorous procedures of logic that science demands, he had cre-ated a proof of the existence of God." Conservative radio newsman Paul Harvey obviously had read this when he exclaimed: "Professor Frank Tipler was a typical scientist nitwit and an atheist. As a physicist, he could not accept anything he could not prove. But when he began to cal-culate the ultimate end of the universe—wow! He discovered God!" (Conservative

Victor J. Stenger is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii and the author of Not By Design: The Origin of the Universe (Prometheus Books, 1988) and Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books, 199O). He is currently working on The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology.

Chronicle, October 26, 1994). Tipler hedges no bets. He assures the

reader who may have lost a loved one or is afraid of death: `Be comforted, you and they shall live again" (p. 1). He claims his deductions follow straight from the laws of physics as we now understand them.

Frank J. Tipler is professor of mathe-matical physics at Tulane University. He is already well known from his earlier book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, co-authored with John D. Barrow, that has become an authoritative source for the new generation of Christian apologists who claim that science and religion are converging, and that what they are converging on is religion. Before the apologists get too excited about Tipler's latest effort, however, I urge them to read it very carefully.

Tipler's idea is not new, being the sort of thing cosmologists prattle about when they sit around drinking beer. However, he has added a few wrinkles. The author argues that the robots we should be able to build by the next century will ultimately spread themselves throughout the uni-verse, each generation of robot producing ever-superior versions of itself. He esti-mates that robotic life will blanket the galaxy in a mere million years. In a hun-dred million years, it will spread to the Virgo cluster of the galaxies. By then,

homo sapiens will likely have long van-ished from the universe.

Finally, after the passage of a billion billion years, give or take a hundred bil-lion years or so, the universe will be uni-formly populated with an extremely advanced form of life that will be capable of feats far beyond anyone's (but Tipler's) imagination.

At that point, Tipler assumes the uni-verse will begin to contract toward what is called "the big crunch," the reverse of the big bang. Now, it should be noted that most cosmologists currently do not expect that the big crunch will happen. The best guess based on current observation and theory is that the universe is open; that is, it will expand forever. Tipler, however, claims that his theory "predicts" that the universe is closed. It is a strange sort of scientific prediction, when a desired result far in the future is used to predict a current fact. But, at least we have a falsifiable claim: if someday cosmologists convinc-ingly demonstrate that the universe is open, then Tipler will be refuted.

Tipler makes other "predictions," such as the masses of the top quark and Higgs boson. But these are essentially based on the unrelated calculations of others and he is being a bit disingenuous to claim them as his own.

The big crunch is not sufficient for immortality. The crunch must happen in a highly specific way in order to maintain causal contact across the universe and pro-vide sufficient energy for what life must then accomplish in order to avoid extinc-tion. In other words, the collapse of the universe must be very carefully controlled.

Now, if Tipler believed in a supernatur-al cosmic mind controlling everything, he

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