Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 5/7/12: There's a falsifiction that Lenin was a dour fellow, all business all the time.

Jacob Lawrence, "Picket Line" (1948) — Jacob Lawrence, *Picket Line* (1948)

May 7, 2012:

There's a falsifiction that Lenin was a dour fellow, all business all the time. Not true. In every private photo he's continually busting up, even near the end during his illness. Balabanoff and Tamara Deutscher mention his ubiquitous joyful laughter: the joy of a warrior for Life. That lot would have rejected that language, of course, which just makes me laugh harder.

The great revolutionaries were always laughing.