SLEZKINE’S HISTORY IS founded on an elaborate conceit: that Bolshevism and the society based upon it closely resembled a religious movement.
This parallel occurs in a great many analyses, and I know (in part from reviews of Slezkine’s book) that Marxists are tired of hearing it. As far as they are concerned, Marxism is based on the objective study of history, not on myth or revelation, and their adherence to it is based on reason, not on faith. They do have a point.
Slezkine's conceit is not a cheap shot, though, not just a snarky aside. He came to it through an immersion in the archive--the books, journals, letters, oral histories of hundreds of actual Bolsheviks--that I imagine has few parallels among the other historians of the period. He also has done a lot of homework in the study of religion, it appears.
In sum, I would say he makes the case. Marxism may not be a religion, but Bolshevism and the early years the Soviet state so closely resemble a religious movement as to make no difference--psychologically, in any case. The hopes, the energy, the eventual compromises, the betrayals, the ultimate collapse--the scale was immense, covering a good part of the globe, but the arc not all that different from that of the Millerites.
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