Waldemar Gurian

To comprehend the development, the successes and the dangers of the Bolshevist-Communist movement, it must be understood as a social and political secular religion.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

It /communism/ demands absolute dominance over every realm of life — spiritual as well as secular. The Soviet regime does not regard itself simply as one among many possible regimes, but as a regime based upon a specific doctrine which corresponds to a necessary development in history and society.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Bolshevism has always insisted that its basic doctrine, the so called dialectical materialism, which has been presented in its official, definitive, obligatory form by Stalin himself, alone provides the truth about the universe, men, history and society, and alone comprehends their development.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

The Bolsheviks regard all other doctrines and views as errors and heresies to be rejected and fought, as expressions of an outdated social order which defends the egoistic domination of a single class, as the sources of prejudices in opposition to objective scientific knowledge.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

To deny God’s existence is basic for Bolshevism.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

All basic Bolshevik doctrines are taken from the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Bolshevism claims that it alone presents the correct interpretation and continuation of Marxism, the key to the right understanding of the universe and of history.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Lenin always believed that he was a loyal orthodox revolutionary Marxist [...] He regarded all his Socialist opponents as betrayers and falsifiers of the truth; the truth had been made accessible by the two great masters, Marx and Engels.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

In contrast to the moderate Socialists, whom they attack as opportunists and traitors because they accept a peaceful gradual development of society, the Bolsheviks emphasize the necessity of violence. Force and violence, they maintain, have been used in all periods of history to establish new social orders and are therefore needed to accelerate the emergence of Socialist and Communist societies. In the dictatorship of the proletariat force and violence are utilized, not for personal subjective reasons, but to facilitate objective social processes.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Acceptance of mass terrorism as an unavoidable weapon explains why the Stalin constitution of 1936, with its system of guarantees for individual rights, did not prevent the seemingly cynical disregard of those rights whenever the party leadership decided it had to supersede them.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

For its believers the Communist Party appears to be the instrument of an unavoidable social development, whereas critical outsiders look upon it as a group of ruthless activists cynically justifying their deeds by an “infallible” social doctrine.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

The combination of a dialectically justified, flexible power politics on the one hand, and a doctrinaire utopianism on the other, explains both the ambiguity and the cynical practice of Bolshevism in action. Old Party members suddenly are cast in the role of traitors if they do not submit to the victorious Party leadership or if their condemnation seems useful for the Party’s maintenance and expansion of power.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

The basis and significance of Bolshevism can be fully understood only when we realize that it is more than a political, economic or sociological doctrine. It is also a political religion maintaining that it knows the nature of the universe and of society, both in structure and in development.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

The Church is not only replaced by the Party; the Party has become something more than the Church. For the Party not only determines the right beliefs — it also guides the attainment of the true aim of life here on earth (and there is no other aim); it dominates the creed as well as the conduct of life.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Lenin came to power, first, because he had made his party into a disciplined and comparatively well-organized group; secondly, because the other parties — particularly the agrarian socialists, the so-called Socialist Revolutionaries, who had more followers than the Bolsheviks — had no strong leaders and no concrete practical program; and thirdly, because Lenin and his collaborators succeeded by propaganda and other tactics in giving the impression that they would achieve the wishes of the masses.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

The contradiction between the theory and the reality of Bolshevism — a contradiction between a propagandized declared freedom and its present practical destruction — originates in the very essence of Bolshevism as a political secular pseudo-religion, and its wrong ideas of man and society.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Utopia becomes an ideology, serving only to warrant the actions of the totalitarian masters and absolutely unconnected with the brutal nature of reality.

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf

Bolshevism has one of its roots in the West. The starting point and basis of its doctrine, Marxism, has been described by one of its two creators, Friedrich Engels, as the offspring of German philosophy, English economics and French sociology (utopian socialism).

Source: "BOLSHEVISM An Introduction to Soviet Communism", https://www.bard.edu/library/arendt/pdfs/Gurian_Bolshevism.pdf