Review of Slavoj Žižek’s “Lenin 2017”
Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through by Slavoj Žižek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What is very good about this book is the presentation of such important texts from the last years of Lenin’s life, working through really intractable problems of Soviet Russia, isolated and weakened after intervention and civil war. Zizek shows that he really understands Lenin’s thoroughly principled insistence that the “waving of little red flags” could not resolve such problems, only a slow and patient inculcation of bourgeois culture and bourgeois management under Soviet political control. Lenin’s image of mountaineers having to retrace their steps, a much more dangerous and difficult task than an ascent is particularly beautiful and apt. The references to and citations from Robespierre and the quotations from Badiou are apt and very helpful. Whether Milner and Lacan are equally good guides is a matter for legitimate discussion.
the real movement which abolishes the present state of things 