#OTD 21 January – The passing of power

On 21 January 1924, Vladimir Lenin died at 53. Thirteen years later, Orwell recalled in The Road to Wigan Pier:

One day the master who taught us English set us a kind of general knowledge paper of which one of the questions was, ‘Whom do you consider the ten greatest men now living?’ Of sixteen boys in the class (our average age was about seventeen) fifteen included Lenin in their list. This was at a snobbish expensive public school, and the date was 1920…

Orwell died on 21 January 1950, at 46.

In Animal Farm, Lenin, unlike Trotsky or Stalin, has no avatar. Rather, he and Karl Marx are wrapped up in wise old Major. The tragedy of the animals’ revolution is not its lack of wisdom but its betrayal by Napoleon, aka Stalin.

That said, Orwell was ambivalent, noting in an essay published the same decade as Animal Farm:

Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved reputation by dying prematurely. Had he lived, it is probable that he would either have been thrown out, like Trotsky, or would have kept himself in power by methods as barbarous, or nearly as barbarous, as those of Stalin.

For those who prefer loyalty with their revolutions, 21 January marks the birthday in 1763 of Augustin Robespierre, who volunteered to be arrested with and was soon guillotined with brother Maximilien in 1794.

King Louis XVI had already been guillotined, on 21 January 1793.