Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to offer a case study of the readaptation of moral ideas as they pass from one social environment to another. Otherwise stated, it is a study of the formation of what is sometimes called an "operational code" by the rejection, modification, or semiconscious retention of current moral ideas for use in a situation very different from that in which the ideas originated. Specifically the purpose is to take some moral ideas as they appear in a few great Russian novels and plays—literary works that everyone reads—and to note how these, or their opponent counterparts, appear when restated by Lenin. For Lenin created the code of the Russian revolutionist, and he used moral ideas current in Russian literature, though his purpose was to remake the society in which that literature was produced. The terms used in the title were purposely chosen: "ethics" to refer to maxims or rules or concepts of behavior as it should be; "Bolshevism" to refer to a generation now extinct or well on the road to extinction. The study is intended to have philosophical rather than literary significance, for it is meant to illustrate characteristics of ethical language.