Lost Highway Times...Paths in Oblivion

Track down a copy of Mikhail Agursky's book "The Third Rome". There, Agursky documents commitment to the idea that the ends justify the means by showing that Lenin collaborated with a) the German government, which was an aristocratic-military system, during World War I, with the aim of helping the Russia lose World War I b) collaborated with sections of the secret police for several reasons, taking money from them to fund the Bolshevik movement and receiving special treatment from them which the other political parties didn't receive. Agursky documents
membership in the Bolshevik party by agents of the secret police and speculates that pro-Russian patriotic forces who were anti-czarist in the secret police supported the Bolsheviks and that on some level the Bolsheviks, since in Agursky's analysis they tapped into Russian chauvanism, were considered to be safer in the long run by the Czar than other political parties, who were for liberal rights, which the Bolsheviks very conveniantly didn't believe in. c) that Lenin wasn't above recruiting members of the Black Hundreds right wing terror squads into the Bolsheviks. Why? The Black Hundreds saw the Czar as being illegitimate because his family was German and he was interested in westernization. After the Revolution Black Hundreds members were rehabilitated and welcomed into the Bolshevik party.

Agursky paints a striking picture of the burning of the files of the Okhrana, the secret police, during the Revolution, giving the opinion that this was done to conceal just how many members of the secret police were members of the Bolshevik party.

So, to recap, Mr. Socialist took money from a military aristocratic dictatorship, collaborated with ultra-rightwing terror forces and collaborated with the secret political police in Czarist Russia.

What a great exemplar of duplicity. This, from someone who parties around the world want to look on as a great leader of the socialist movement. This is where "ends justifies the means" gets you; collaboration with the worst reactionary forces in the interest of furthering your movement. As they say, when you lie down with dogs you should expect to pick up some fleas.

Looking at the extensive collaboration with ultra-rightwing forces which Lenin initiated, going from Agursky's account, it's not hard to see where Stalin's policies came from.