Quote: useful idiot (antedating attrib Vladimir Lenin 1961)

Thu Aug 12 18:30:51 UTC 2010

Thanks to Victor for presenting the interesting viewpoint given in the
Russian language Wikipedia entry for "useful idiot".

One reason I included a link to the English language Wikipedia entry
is discussed in a recent message from Ron Butters. The bibliographical
information can be useful. The important New York Times citation for
"useful idiot" dated 1948 June 21 is referenced in the Wikipedia
article and it is listed in the bibliography. (This cite is also given
by Barry Popik.) The history of the Wikipedia article is difficult to
read but indicates that the citation was probably known in 2004
because the key year 1948 is mentioned in the article version dated
2004 October 6. A precise citation is added later.

The earliest attribution to Stalin I could locate for the phrase
"useful idiots" is in a work published in 1971 that prints a speech
delivered in January 1965 by Spruille Braden.

Cite: 1971 [1965 January 15], "Diplomats and Demagogues: the Memoirs
of Spruille Braden" by Spruille Braden,  "Appendix: Immorality and
Communism, Address by the Honorable Spruille Braden, Americanism
Educational League Award Dinner, January 15, 1965, Beverly Wilshire
Hotel, Beverly Hills, California", Page 461, Arlington House, New
Rochelle, New York. (Verified on paper)

Aiding this huge conspiracy have been countless innocent although
well-intentioned sentimentalists or idealists. Stalin baptized these
groups as "useful idiots".

Garson

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 3:02 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Quote: useful idiot (antedating attrib Vladimir Lenin 1961)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  This is a very interesting observation. I've always cringed at the
> putative attribution of the phrase to Lenin, particularly from
> conservatives (the likes of Laura Ingraham, who uses the term freely, or
> Mona Charen, who used it in the title of her book). There are two
> reasons for this. First, it's not the kind of phrase that you would find
> in Russian, particularly in Lenin's writings. It may have been someone's
> free translation from the original, but, then, the attribution to Lenin
> is obviously questionable.
>
> But the second reason--and I don't claim to be an expert in Lenin--the
> phrase does not sound like one of Lenin's coinages. He was much more
> inventive in broad strokes than in fine details. For example, one
> coinage was the parliamentary "swamp"--the "centrist" unprincipled
> members who swing to the right or to the left depending on the prevalent
> popular opinion (if they have any reason at all), but mostly serve to
> kill any initiative that has any hope of being productive. If anyone
> would have been the target of the "useful idiot" moniker, it would have
> been the "swamp". But why two coinages? To emphasize different aspects
> of the same group? Another group that the phrase might have referred is
> "poputchiki" == fellow travelers. But, again, the latter term appears to
> be much more vividly descriptive.
>
> More importantly, the word "idiot" has a different social status in
> Russian than it does in English. So it is possible that the concept
> existed, but the specific English phrasing is very likely to have been a
> new invention.
>
> It is useful to compare the treatment in the Russian Wiki. The
> suggestion that the phrase was coined by Lenin is seen as preposterous,
> as it supposedly applied to the Western allies of the Bolsheviks. The
> problem is that this make no sense historically, as by 1924, there would
> not have been any substantial allies in the West--other than those who
> already shared the party with them--in historical terms, these "useful
> idiots" did not exist /at least/ until the late 1920s, if not later, so
> they would not have been thus insulted by Lenin. Wiki quotes one source
> that ascribed the coinage to Karl Radek. It only traces the English (US)
> usage to 1948 (specifically, NYT), then suggests that no evidence of
> such phrasing has ever been found in any of Lenin's published works or
> heard in any of his speeches. The article then quotes (but without
> citation) Grant Harris (LoC consultant, as it says) claiming that LoC
> could find no evidence of any phrase in any way resembling "useful
> idiots" in any of Lenin's papers. Given the description and temporal
> placement (spring 1987), the quote probably appeared in Safire's column.
>
> The main point remains that referring to Lenin and Stalin as treating
> Western allies as "useful idiots" is not the same as claiming that they
> used the actual phrase. Given that the search has been quite exhaustive
> by quite a few authorities with access to all the relevant documents,
> the conclusion seems to be rather definitive.
>
> In fact, Garson refers to finding references in the "40s and 50s". If he
> can predate the Russian Wiki citation (which gives the year, the
> location--NYT, and the context--a unflattering description of an Italian
> politician, but not the actual citation), it would already be
> interesting. If any Russian leaders did use the phrase, it might have
> been Khrushchev, not Lenin or Stalin. But, by then, the phrase may well
> have been in use. By the 1970s, the phrase came to symbolize "idealism
> based on ignorance" (http://bit.ly/b51XGR) and was mainly used by
> conservative writers in reference to the left-leaning opponents as a way
> of tarring them with both treason and stupidity.
>
> I did come across one interesting suggestion (http://bit.ly/c73hBx) that
> "useful idiots" was "invented by Willi Münzenberg immediately after the
> 1917 revolution".
>
> Interestingly, I only found two GB sources with dates unambiguously
> preceding the 1948 article--one a novel from 1864, and the other
> Alexander Granach's  autobiography from 1945. Neither one deals with
> Lenin (1870-1924), nor with Communists. [Two other sources with earlier
> tags are clearly misdated.]
>
>     VS-)
>
> PS: Here's what appears to be the 1948 NYT article identified by Russian
> Wiki:
>
> http://bit.ly/9E112M
> COMMUNIST SHIFT IS SEEN IN EUROPE; Tour of Two Italian Leaders ...
> $3.95 - New York Times - Jun 21, 1948
> L'Umanita said the Communists would give the "useful idiots" of the
> left-wing Socialist party the choice of merging with the Communist party
> or getting out. ...
>
> Perhaps the original source of the phrase (in this context) is Italian?
>
> On 8/11/2010 12:19 AM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>> The term "useful idiot" has been attributed to Vladimir Lenin and
>> Joseph Stalin. The earliest citation in the Yale Book of Quotations is
>> dated 1981. YBQ also says "Like many other putative Leninisms, it
>> seems to be a myth."
>>
>> Wikipedia has an entry for "Useful idiot":
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
>>
>> William Safire investigated the term in an "On Language" column dated
>> 1987 April 12:
>> http://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/12/magazine/on-language.html
>>
>> Barry Popik has an entry for the term:
>> http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/useful_idiot/
>>
>> I have located a variety of citations containing the term "useful
>> idiot" and "useful idiots" in the 1940s and 1950s. Lenin died in 1924.
>> This post just presents the earliest citation I found in which the
>> term is attributed to Lenin:
>>
>> Cite: 1961 (Copyright 1960), The Khrushchev Pattern by Frank Gibney,
>> Page 8, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York. (Google Books snippet view;
>> Verified on paper)
>>
>> Historically, the hard core of Communist believers have always
>> needed a spongelike mass support around them, to swell their tri-
>> umphs and to cushion their adverse moments.
>>
>> Lenin first coined the term "useful idiots" for them. First applied
>> specifically to the Socialists, it is a good phrase for describing the
>> Communist follower, whether he is a left-wing Socialist in Japan,
>> a member of the Chilean Popular Front, a professional humani-
>> tarian like Jean-Paul Sartre, or an idealistic student from Guinea
>> who plans to organize a new chapter of the World Federation of
>> Democratic Youth.
>>
>> http://books.google.com/books?id=re1oAAAAMAAJ&q=coined#search_anchor
>>
>> The obituary of the author of "The Khrushchev Pattern" appeared in the
>> New York Times on 2006 April 14.
>>
>> Frank Gibney, 81, Writer and Authority on Asia, Dies
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/us/14gibney.html
>>
>> Garson
>
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