The greatest revolutionary
Sir: May I be permitted to comment on the outrageous farce enacted in the United Nations in connection with the centenary of Lenin's birth?
It turns out that the UN Human Rights Commission, having decided to celebrate this great event in the history of mankind, wel- comed the decision of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (uNEsco) to make arrangements on the occasion of the centenary of V. I. Lenin and noted the his- torical influence of his humanistic [sic!] ideas and activity on the development and realisation of economic, social and cultural rights [sicl] . . . The sponsors were: Finland, France, India, Mauritania, Poland, Senegal, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, United Arab Republic, United Republic of Tanzania and Yugo- slavia. Against: United Kingdom and United States. Abstentions: Austria, Chile, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Greece, Guate-
mala, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru and Philippines.
Thus, a commission—and an entire organ- isation—whose alleged concern it is to pre-
serve and protest human rights and human dignity—decided to celebrate the birth of the architect of the prototype of the totali- tarian state, the birth of a man who—what- ever his other achievements—did, with Stalin, more than anyone else in this century to stifle human -thought and creativity, who in- augurated the tradition of wicked show trials —that of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1922 is as good an example as any—who originated the massacre of independent- minded peasants, who drowned in blood the workers of Kronstadt who had risen against the Bolsheviks and for the Soviets, the birth of a man who used the army against the Constituent Assembly elected by the Russian people in the freest election in Russian his- tory, of a man who brought civil war and economic and social ruin to a country which had achieved one of the fastest rates of economic growth in the world, of a man, in short, without whose existence the world might have been a less bleak and dangerous place than it is today.
This immoral doubletalk and double- standard as practised by the United Nations ought to arouse the indignation of all people throughout the world who still believe in genuine human rights, and believe in them at all limey and not just when they come under attack in right-wing dictatorships.
C. E. Brancovan Russian Research Centre, Harvard Univer- sity, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
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