A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #349 - Culture, Read Jean Jacques Lecercle: Lenin and the weapon of language and Jacques Baynac: Terror under Lenin (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

During January, the centenary of Lenin's death was rich from an 
editorial point of view. Several works, new releases or reissues, allow, 
if not to shed light in a new light on the life and work of the 
Bolshevik leader, to position ourselves for his rehabilitation or his 
definitive burial. ---- La Fabrique editions have, for their part, 
chosen rehabilitation: "to read Lenin as a philosopher of language is to 
reconnect with a practice of language as a weapon which made Lenin a 
formidable polemicist and the thinker of conjuncture ". Nothing less! 
The work could have the subtitle "Mastery of language in the service of 
Leninism". The thesis defended by its author, the linguist Jean-Jacques 
Lecercle, is to demonstrate the usefulness of drinking in the texts of 
Vladimir Ilyich Oulianov, making the latter a "philosopher of language".

Without going into linguistics, it is nevertheless worth noting two 
strong contradictions in this work. First of all, if we can only share 
with the author the fact that language is a weapon and that it is 
underpinned by class relations which are also relations of domination, 
the work reproduces exactly what he claims to denounce: technical and 
arduous language. Second contradiction, if this book intends to teach us 
that the "True" is not the same thing as the "Right", the latter being 
the true adjusted to the situation, it will not mislead the minds that 
are even a little curious and informed about the history of the Russian 
Revolution. All powers have claimed, and still claim, to be the 
expression of the Truth. Thiers claimed Order and designated disorder, 
its antonym. Lenin did the same thing. A little pleasure all the same, 
the quotation of this passage from What to do on class consciousness 
which can only be brought to the worker (and the worker) from the 
outside: this constitutes a definitive admission of the Leninist approach .

Ultimately, why read Lenin, since this was the introductory question of 
this book? The author's conclusion calls out: "we will read it, 
therefore to continue to think about the revolution, thanks to him and 
sometimes in spite of him".

Editions l'Échappée have chosen to celebrate this centenary by reissuing 
The Terror under Lenin, initially published in 1975, directed by the 
historian Jacques Baynac, in a revised and expanded version by Charles 
Jacquier. This time, the "True" challenges the "Righteous" in all its 
fullness, the work developing an argument around Leninist terror. Quick 
scan of its contents: translations of decrees, articles and official 
documents, by Alexandre Skirda who delves into the legal expression of 
the phenomenon, another linguistic reality, before studying, further, 
revolutionary counter-terror; repression under the Bolshevik regime, 
addressed by the Cheka, with comments collected by the office of the 
Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party; evocation of terror at the level 
of all of Russia in the period 1918-1924, by the historian S. P. 
Melgounov; the repression of anarchism in Soviet Russia by the Group of 
Russian Anarchists exiled in Germany; the trial of the revolutionary 
socialists by W. Woïtinsky, this former Bolshevik, member of the Central 
Executive Committee, joined the Mensheviks; a writing by Martov, a 
member of the Bund, entitled Down with the death penalty!; an 
investigation into the Russian penal colony of Solovki, by Raymond 
Duguet; the ethical aspect of the revolution by the People's Commissar 
of Justice in 1917-1918, Isaac Z. Steinberg; contribution to the 
understanding of Lenin and the Vetcheka, by Michel Heller, French 
historian of Russian origin, interned in a work camp in 1950.

As Lenin would have said, "a good communist is also a good Chekist". 
Approaching this universe, providing various elements was the objective 
of this narration of the phenomenon which developed in December 1917 by 
the political police, the Cheka, which later became GPU and then NKVD in 
1934. These infamous names will be the evils of the END. Another reality 
of Leninist language!

Dominique Sureau (UCL Angers)

Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Lenin and the weapon of language, La Fabrique 
éditions, 2024, 200 pages, 15 euros.
Jacques Baynac, Terror under Lenin, Édition L'écuée, 2024, 300 pages, 14 
euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Jean-Jacques-Lecercle-Lenine-et-l-arme-du-langage-et-Jacques-Baynac-La
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