councilor.org
| Source | Yoshie Furuhashi |
| Date | 99/06/05/15:36 |
| Lenin wrote: "The revolutionary parties must complete their education. They have learned to attack. Now they have to realize that this knowledge must be supplemented with the knowledge how to retreat properly. They have to realize -- and the revolutionary class is taught to realize it by its own bitter experience -- that victory is impossible unless they have learned both how to attack and how to retreat properly. Of all the defeated opposition and revolutionary parties, the Bolsheviks effected the most orderly retreat, with the least loss to their "army," with its core best preserved, with the least (in respect to profundity and irremediability) splits, with the least demoralization, and in the best condition to resume the work on the broadest scale and in the most correct and energetic manner." Of all Lenin's writings, this bit is what I have taken to my heart--especially the part about retreating "with the least demoralization." A lesson still relevant for (post-60s, post-USSR) leftists without mass movements, I think, though sadly neglected. Yoshie |
Copyright (c) 1998, Joongpil Cho