Marxism-Leninism as a Political Religion

This article describes Lenin's utopian design of a revolutionary community of virtuosi as a typical political religion of an intelligentsia longing for an inner-worldly salvation, a socialist paradise without exploitation and alienation, to be implanted in the Russian backward society at the outskirts of the industrialised and modernised Western Europe. The coup d'etat of October 1917 accomplished the institutionalisation of a political religion combining a political and sacral monopoly of power and belief. Consequently, the Leninist policy of social extermination of political opponents, ideological rivals and stigmatised social classes became a sacral obligation to be fulfilled by the new ideological orthodoxy. The beginning iconography of a Leninist sacral tradition praised Lenin as a messianic and numinous leader, a process of iconographic work in progress which culminated after Lenin's death in the sacral Lenin cult. The Lenin mausoleum served as the monumental centrepiece of sacral rites and practices to be enacted by the Stalinist orthodoxy. Stalin's invention of a sacral tradition of Marxism-Leninism qualified him as the only true disciple of Lenin. Therefore, Stalin claimed the monopoly of the infallible interpretation of the holy scriptures, summarised in his own dogmatic performances. In this sense, Stalin's Leninism became itself a religion d'etat (B. Souvarine).