A HIPPIE STANDS UP TO LENIN

This sailor isn't really a hippie but he does display the "question authority before it questions you" attitude that was part of the '60s.

After two days in office, he had occasion to call the headquarters of the Baltic fleet to summon the sailors' help to defend Petrograd. The discussion between the ruler of Russia and the sailor at the other end of the wire speaks volumes: Sailor: "What is new with you in Petrograd . . . ?" Lenin: "There is news that Kerensky's units have taken Gatchina . . . it is necessary to strengthen [the Bolshevik forces in Petrograd] as fast as possible. . . ." Sailor: "What else is new?" Lenin: "Instead of the question 'what else' I expected an immediate announcement that you are ready to come to our help and fight." ¹ To the average sailor (or worker or peasant) the idea that there was such a thing as an order to be obeyed unquestioningly, or that another man, whatever his office, was too important to engage in a conversation, was by now almost incomprehensible.

¹Lenin, Works, Moscow, 1941,v. 26, page 232.

SOURCE:
The Bolsheviks : the intellectual and political history of the triumph of communism in Russia : with a new preface / Adam B. Ulam.
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, c1998.
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