ABSTRACT
Many Russians, Bumke reported, were hoping that Lenin would live on, because Lenin had finally realized that communism was not workable; but only Lenin would be capable of abandoning communist ideas and guiding the evolution toward a different system. Lenin was treated with camphor, quinine, and iodine, but he became increasingly reluctant to take those more or less useless medicines. It is possible that the reports of his progress were exaggerated, or that Lenin was making good progress but wanted to keep the fact secret. Lenin was learning to write with his left hand whose action had not been affected by the strokes. The political situation was moving toward a crisis. This implied that Lenin himself had caused the recrudescence of chauvinism. By contrast, Stalin supported Lenin's strictures against bureaucracy and described Lenin as his teacher. Lenin presumably was worried about some of the arguments by the opposition, but undoubtedly desired the demotion of Stalin.
