S LIBERAL HELPERS

55And later he describes those "'discussions": internal affairs, the most crucial post in the fledglingThe slander was like a volcanic eruption. It was a greatshock to the large mass of the party. I lay in bed with agovernment. Lenin was not pleased.temperature and remained silent. Trotsky and LeninDuring Lenin's death he was, of course, sick. He did Trotsky's relation to his own self-conscious mind isnot return to Moscow for the funeral. While it is un- laid bare in his attitude towards the figure of Lenin, for itdoubtedly true that Stalin misinfoi:med him of the datewas Lenin who was supremely possessed of that qualityof the funeral, it is inconceivable that Trotsky should which Trotsky lacked: the ruthless determination to acthave trusted Stalin at that point in time; in any event, according to the dictates of self-consci0usness, andpolitical considerations demanded that he head back to "opinion" be damned!Moscow with all possible speed. (It was at this time that When this fact is understood, Trotsky's capitulation toTrotsky spoke in support of the Lenin Levy). Trotsky the "Lenin cult" is seen in its true significance. Isaachimself indicates his awareness of this fact in MyL(fe by Deutscher uneasily attempts to account for thisquoting the following passage written by his wife: seemingly uncharacteristic religious act of Trotsky's as amere factional ploy designed to defuse Stalin's slandersOur friends were expecting L.D. to come to Moscow, concerning his actual relation to the actual Lenin. Inand thought that he would cut short his trip in order to part, this is no doubt true. Trotsky was not above suchreturn, since no one imagined that Stalin's telegram hadcut offhis return. I remember my son's letter, received at justifiable overemphasis.Sukham. He was terribly shocked by Lenin's death, and The kernel of the hagiolatry, however, is Trotsky'sthough suffering from a cold, with a warn temperature of consciousness of Lenin's real superiority to himself, in104, he went in his not very warm coat to the Hall ofthe specific sense we have indicated. The religiousColumns to pay his last respects, and waited, waited,and waited with impatience for our arrival. One could content of his appreciation of Lenin is not that hefeel in his letter his bitter bewildeiment and diffident exaggerates Lenin's virtues or accomplishments, butreproach, rather his insistence that such qualities of self-At the end of the chapter Trotsky remarks laconically: consciousness are in effect unattainable. "Marx andLenin, so closely linked historically and yet so different,It is necessary to analyze the content of this slander. As I were to me the two unsurpassable summits of man'slay in bed, I had plenty oftimetodoso, spiritual power," he writes in lVly Life. Lenin is theThus, returning to the October fainting spell, it is iconographic representation of his own self-consciousmind. Trotsky's ego pays Sunday worship to selfclearthat there is more here than meets the naive eye. In consciousness, only to excuse itself during the ensuingclinical work, especially among gifted revolutionaries,week. To act completely from self-consciousness cannotjust such psychosomatic reactions as fainting are readilybe expected of a mere mortal like Trotsky!observable under situations of acute anxiety-stress, andHe makes the point with painful bluntness in his 1935the most profound anxiety is especially observable whenthe individual's everyday sense of "I," the infantile dairy. In what is clearly a reflection on his own relationto the dead Lenin, he writes:witch/ego, is threatened with takeover by the selfconscious"I" -- no longer in the form of the impotent Christianity created the figure of Christ to humanize theelusive Lord of Hosts and bring him nearer to mortalsuperego, but as an identity associated with the mostman. Alongside the Olympian Marx, Engels is moreprofound emotional powers of the human mind, "human," more approachable. How well they cornemotionsthreatening in the extreme to the infantile ego. plement one another! Or rather, how consciously EngelsOn the night of the insurrection Trotsky is confronted endeavors to complement Marx ....with the inescapable fact that he is no longer merely a When it is most incumbent upon him to "be likebrilliant actor within history, but that his self-conscious Lenin" -- to act unrelentingly according to self'-self has completely and potently changed and dominated conscious reason -- he views Lenin (i.e., self-consciousthe"inevitable" course of history, The implications of ness) as an unattainable ideal, something more thanthis confirmation of his self-conscious identity by reality human (actually inhuman) as a kind of Christian Goditself are too great -- he can only faint as did his mother of unchanging law. This attitude is quite consistent withbefore him. This is further confirmed by the brief his earlier attacks on Lenin in his pamphlet "Ouroutburst of modesty which struck him immediately after Political Tasks," written immediately after thethe seizure of power. Not only did he refuse the presi- Bolshevik-Menshevik split.dency of the Soviet Republic, which is perhaps under- In the later years Trotsky recognizes Lenin as thestandable, but he refused to take on the commisariat of appropriate standard of personal behavior, only to reject