A look at Lenin's complex legacy in the Arab world

On the 100th anniversary of the death of the influential communist leader, Al Majalla takes a look at his interesting yet complex relationship with Arabs and Muslims.

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, portrait, soviet propaganda poster (detail), 1924

A look at Lenin's complex legacy in the Arab world

Sami Moubayed

last update on 21 Jan 2024

Vladimir Lenin died on 21 January 1924. Although relatively young, he was a sick man, having suffered three back-to-back strokes that left him half-paralysed and unable to speak.

His body was transported by train from his home in Gorki, south of Moscow, to the heart of the Russian capital. Over the next three days, an estimated 1 million people queued for hours in freezing weather to pay their respects.

His body was then taken to Red Square in a military procession, where it was embalmed in the vault of a mausoleum for permanent display. He has only been removed briefly during World War II for safety.

Throughout the century since his death, every Arab dignitary visiting Moscow was taken to Lenin’s mausoleum, and prominent Arabs were decorated with the Lenin Prize, created in 1925, discontinued in 1935 and then re-named the Stalin Prize before being re-dedicated to Lenin in 1956.

Among those honoured were President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and his army commander Abdul Hakim Amer. On Lenin’s birthday in 1970, Abdel Nasser had Lenin’s picture imprinted on an Egyptian stamp.

He had just returned from a visit to the Soviet Union in January 1970 and was relying heavily on the Soviets in his War of Attrition against Israel.

An identical stamp was issued in Syria. But it would be Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, who actually brought the Soviet Union to the Arab World, and that only began after the Russian victory in World War II.

Getty — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 - 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin

Throughout the century since his death, every Arab dignitary visiting Moscow was taken to Lenin's mausoleum, and prominent Arabs were decorated with the Lenin Prize.

Influential and controversial figure

Lenin was – and remains – one of the most influential and controversial figures of the 20th century. He is still venerated by his supporters and demonised by his enemies.

A revolutionary leader, political theorist and cult figure, Lenin was the father of world communism. He inspired millions both during his lifetime and after his death. He embraced revolutionary Marxism after the execution of his brother by the Tsarist regime in 1887 and was expelled from university for taking part in anti-Tsar demonstrations.

He relocated to St. Petersburg, the capital of the Tsarist Empire, only to be arrested and exiled to Siberia for three years. He would return to Moscow in 1917 and play a key role in the October Revolution that overthrew the immediate successors of Tzar Nicholas II.

Lenin and the Arabs

At first, the Arab world wasn't very much interested in Lenin. He had very little connection to the region apart from wanting to see it free from European colonialism.

Shortly after assuming power, he was approached in writing by Ibrahim Hananu, leader of the anti-French uprising in the Syrian north, with a request for military assistance. Hananu was fighting the French, a cause he thought would appeal to Lenin. But the Russian leader paid no attention.

He would eventually send military aid to Turkey's Kemal Ataturk in 1921: sixty thousand guns, 108 field batteries, 12 heavy artillery, and 10mn rubles.

In Syria, news of the Russian revolution inspired Syrian leftists and secularists, ambitious women and high school students from the countryside and the urban middle class.

They were especially impressed by Lenin's banning of religious publications and his move to shut churches amid opposition to the clergy. The political elite was less impressed with Lenin's calls for world revolution. Al-Asima expressed this, the official mouthpiece of the Syrian government on 19 August 1919:

"We who lived in this country distant from Russia cannot judge the Bolshevik movement except from the news that reaches us, whether from the Russians themselves or Europeans returning from Bolshevik Russia."

"Should we believe their testimonies, and we have no other evidence to rely on, then Bolshevism is one of the greatest disasters of civilisation and the worst thing that can befall a nation. Russia today has become a land of chaos and hunger, with so much injustice, despotism and oppression that people have come to long for the rule of the Tsar."

In Syria, Lenin and the Russian revolution inspired Syrian leftists and secularists, ambitious women and high school students from the countryside and the urban middle class.

Lenin and Islam

What reached the Arab World and sunk into the minds of its conservative societies was that Lenin was an atheist who strove to eradicate religion – all religion – from his giant country.

That said, and despite his open war on the Eastern Orthodox Church, Lenin did treat Russian Muslims well.

Many of them had been oppressed under Nicholas II by the Tzar, his security services, and the church, which explains why they initially embraced Lenin as a saviour. Weeks into the revolution, Lenin released an appeal to "Muslim workers of Russia and the East" in December 1917.

It read: "Muslims of Russia… all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the Revolution."

He made Friday, rather than Sunday, the official weekend for Muslims in Muslim-majority republics of the Soviet Union, even incorporating elements of Islamic law into their judicial systems, which ran contrary to the conviction and practice of the Russian communists.

Lenin made Friday, rather than Sunday, the official weekend for Muslims in Muslim-majority republics of the Soviet Union, even incorporating elements of Islamic law into their judicial systems.

Although Lenin was an atheist, his attack on the Russian church was part of a broader attack on the Tsarist government that relied heavily on it for its legitimacy. He saw the church as a threat to the revolution, a paranoia that applied neither to the mosques nor to Islam.

Some Muslims were seen as an asset, including those of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, who were historically opposed to Nicolas II. State atheism aside, the Lenin government allowed religious activity to continue in Muslim-majority republics. He also saw the return of certain Islamic artefacts, like Uthman Bin Affan's Quran, to Soviet Uzbekistan.

Freedoms scaled back

Still, Muslims slowly began to feel the brunt of his rule after he banned mosques from owning property, including cemeteries, based on a law issued in January 1918.

He also banned from collecting zakat – alms for the poor – depleting their resources and causing their mosques to deteriorate and the poor in their communities to sink into much greater poverty than that of the Tsarist era.

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