"I want freedom of speech and press for myself — a proletarian who has been a member of the Party for 16 years, and not abroad, but in Russia... You should know that for such speech as I am indulging in at present, hundreds, even thousands of workers are imprisoned."
- Myasnikov's reply to Lenin, August 1921
Gavril Ilyich Myasnikov (1889-1945) is one of the most fascinating figures of the Russian Revolution: a metal worker from the Urals, an intransigent revolutionary, who out-principled the Bolsheviks on genuine freedom of speech, was expelled from the party, imprisoned, and ultimately executed by Stalin. His biography is the record of an ILE driven by principle past every rational stopping point, with an SLE accent that explains why he survived as long as he did.
His defining political demand, freedom of the press for everyone "from monarchists to anarchists inclusive", is quintessentially ILE: following a Ti-style principle of expanding Ne-style potentials to its logical extreme regardless of tactical convenience. Notably, he was the only Bolshevik to have called for anything like this. While having no sympathy for the bourgeios, he demanded "a forum for discussion for all shades of public opinion" at government expense. When Lenin argued that press freedom meant freedom for the bourgeoisie to buy newspapers and manipulate workers (a standard communist argument), Myasnikov's response cut directly to the logical contradiction: "You say that I want freedom of the press for the bourgeoisie? But what about freedom of the press for me, a proletarian who has never had anything?" His ideology combined elements from council communism, syndicalism, and orthodox Marxism in genuinely novel configurations.
In "The Latest Deception", his major post-exile work, Myasnikov was far friendlier towards intelligentsia, freeing himself from his initial suspicions of it having a particular counter-revolutionary role and listing repressions against it as part of his accusations. This can be seen as a possible reversion to the NT-intellectual orientation.
He continued publishing and organizing after expulsion from the party, after arrest, after torture, after exile, returning to the USSR despite obvious danger when lured back by promises that proved false (he explained to the investigators that he took the permission to return as the permission to continue oppositionary activism — truly "quixotic" naivety, indeed). After his expulsion, his radicalism even increased:
"When you come to a shop and find only one brand of cigarettes, choose or don't choose, you'll take that brand. Where there is only one point of view, one program, one line, and no other can be opposed to it — choose or don't choose, that program, that system of politics, that point of view will be implemented. Come to the elections or don't come, vote or don't vote, choose Stepan, Ivan, Kondrat or whoever else — the line, the system of politics, the program will be the same. Here elections lose all meaning and become an empty, truly bureaucratic formality."
Quite a diagnostic passage for ILE's logical radicalism and hatred of arbitrary prohibition.
His post-exile analytics foresaw the "state capitalism" framework that later dissident-left theorists like Djilas, Burnham, and others would develop decades later. ILE's are not the only ones who can be intellectual pioneers, but they are definitely one of the most prominent possible type for it.
His weak tribal belonging is equally characteristic of the ILE type (one of the more "democratic" types of the socion, despite the weakness of this dichotomy). He was both ally and critic of Lenin and Trotsky, a fiery enemy of Zinoviev, friend to Karl Korsch, Ruth Fischer and French Anarcho-Syndicalists. He found comrades across national and factional boundaries without much attachment to any particular collective identity: the German KAPD, the French council communists, whoever was following the logic of workers' democracy most consistently.
The SLE accent explains the physical directness and the fearlessness that made Myasnikov genuinely dangerous. The vicious execution of ex-Grand Duke Mikhail Romanov (whom Myasnikov rather dubiously considered to be a potential unification symbol for the counter-revolution) is the most obvious data point, revealing his weak and rejected Fi. This accent gives him a notable shift towards "central" quadra values and somewhat of an "anti-Delta" (central, ascending, democratic) quadra flavor.
The passionate nature of his writings sometimes reaches EIE pitch, but EIE political figures understand themselves as world-historical actors, stage their own suffering dramatically, and generate emotional heat around their personal narrative. Myasnikov's writing is almost entirely directed outward, at the logical structure of the argument, at the institutional contradiction, at the workers he's addressing. EIE builds movements around personal charisma and emotional transmission, but Myasnikov's involvement with various groups can hardly be called that. His Fe was obviously a valued element, but hardly the leading one — good enough for the activator position.
As for SLE or even LSI as the main types, their political instinct is toward hierarchy, dominance structures, and the organization of power. Myasnikov's entire project was the opposite: complete elimination of any structure that concentrated authority in a single organization. An SLE revolutionary might use democratic rhetoric instrumentally, but Myasnikov's commitment to pluralism was clearly genuine and logically derived rather than tactically convenient. He argued for press freedom even for monarchists — a position that served absolutely no personal power interest and probably actively endangered him.
Myasnikov's idealistic convictions placed him in permanent opposition to the powers that be. This is the ILE's characteristic fate when the SLE accent provides enough physical courage to keep acting on principle past all rational self-preservation.
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