Abstract
Beginning in mid-1921 Lenin’s exhaustion repeatedly forced him to retreat to the dacha allocated to him in Gorki near Moscow. His condition deteriorated drastically in the spring of 1922. It was during a convalescence stay when on 22 February he suffered the first of several strokes from which he would never fully recover. The intervals between periods of work grew longer, and he gradually was forced to withdraw from central decision-making processes altogether. His access to materials and information was now in the hands of Stalin who the Central Committee commissioned to take charge of this task. From his sickbed in late 1922 and early 1923 he once again attempted to take stock of the nature of the revolution he had led, intervene in ongoing decisions, and establish several last points in what has become known as his political testament. He was no longer able to write, making him feel as if in captivity. Considering the extent of the assistance he depended on, he remarked to his secretary L.A. Fotieva: ‘“If I were at large (at first he made a slip, then repeated, laughing: if I were at large) I would easy do all this myself”’ (LW 42: 515).
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Brie, M. (2019). What Is to Be Done with Power?. In: Rediscovering Lenin. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23327-3_3
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