Jacob Heilbrunn

Did he do it? He would not be the first subordinate to seek to polish off his superior in an authoritarian system. History is replete with examples of a seemingly dutiful understudy scheming to remove his mentor.

I'm talking, of course, about Stalin and Lenin. The theory that Stalin sped along the demise of the old boy—who wasn't actually that old when he died, a mere fifty-four—has been around for decades. Now it is being revived. Last Friday, at the annual University of Maryland School of Medicine conference about the deaths of famous historical figures, the Russian historian Lev Lurie suggested that while Lenin was undoubtedly in poor health in the 1920s, Stalin hastened his death by having the Soviet leader poisoned. The convulsions Lenin suffered shortly before his death, Lurie says, are not consistent with the symptoms of the stroke he had experienced. If Lurie is right, it might turn Lenin into more of a martyr, at least in Russia. His specter continues to loom over the country. Almost instantly, the Bolsheviks transformed Lenin, whose corpse was embalmed and remains displayed in Moscow, into a cult figure, one that has outlived the regime itself. He serves as an important vestige of a neo-imperial past that postcommunist Russia apparently cannot afford to dispense with. What the historian Nina Tumarkin declared years ago in her scintillating book Lenin Lives! remains true today.

Certainly, Stalin had good reasons to hope Lenin would perish. It did not entirely escape Lenin's notice that the ambitious and young general secretary was taking control of the party machinery. Besides, as he complained in what has become known as his "testament," Lenin thought Stalin was "rude." Whether this would have translated into his demoting Stalin is another question. Lenin, after all, seemed to be complaining about bad manners. And Lenin himself was no shrinking violet when it came to taking out his enemies: he presided over the deaths of millions during the Russian Civil War and laid the foundations for the Gulag. Lenin's "Who Whom" question was no joking matter. It led to mass murder and totalitarian systems from Eastern Europe to China to Vietnam.

But unlike Stalin, Lenin does not seem to provide particular evidence of enjoying killing for its own sake. To Lenin applies the old line about loving humanity but despising individual humans. Stalin, by contrast, was a Georgian who relished feuds for their own sake. He seemed to take a lascivious pleasure in pitting his subordinates against one another, whether it was accusing them of plotting to subvert his leadership or simply forcing them to engage in endless drinking bouts while he mocked them. Stalin had no shortage of ways of rubbing out his real or perceived opponents, ranging from mass executions to more indirect methods—in his memoirs, Anton-Antonov Ovseyenko recounts, among other things, Stalin's proclivity for ordering medical operations that somehow ended fatally. But under Stalin's stewardship, the Soviet Union—the NKVD—became the supreme practicioner in the diabolical black arts of injecting victims with harmful potions. The NKVD has its own laboratory, which was revealed at the last major purge trial when its former director, Genrikh Yagoda, was accused in 1938 of having sought to use it to poison Stalin and other Bolshevik worthies. Today, Russia continues to enjoy a particular proficiency in this singular line of work, which is presumably why Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident and former FSB officer, had the misfortune to find himself ingesting polonium-210 in a fatal cup of tea in London in 2006.

Might the Soviet experiment, as it was known, have turned out differently in the event of Lenin's ruling the Soviet Union for several more decades? Could he have made a go of the enterprise? Would Trotsky and Bukharin have been promoted rather than Stalin, and would a kinder, gentler Soviet Union have emerged?

Historians, particularly revisionist ones such as Stephen F. Cohen, have long argued that the Soviet Union could have taken a more moderate path—that it is its own form of determinism to argue that Stalinism was preordained. In addition, Stalin, as Simon Montefiore argues in his biography of the generalissimo, may have gotten a bum rap. Generations of historians sympathetic to Trotsky, himself not averse to terror and violence (see: Kronstadt), have tried to present Stalin as something of an intellectual deadhead, but he turns out to have been an avid reader and keen student of history. So the notion that he was merely the faceless bureaucrat next to the brilliantly coruscating Trotsky may not be quite right.

In any case, the Trotsky vs. Stalin conundrum, if that is even what it is, can never be resolved (though Stalin did as much as he could to resolve it by having his rival brutally murdered in Mexico City, with not poison but, rather, an ice pick). The preponderance of the evidence suggests that communist regimes based on Leninist principles quickly devolved into totalitarian societies. Still, to satisfy historical curiosity if nothing else, it is probably worth probing whether Lenin himself became the most prominent victim of the very regime he had helped to construct. Lurie suggests that it would be simplicity itself to examine Lenin's brain and discover the truth. It would not be the first time that a criminal has preserved the evidence of his own crime.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. Israel is at war—with itself. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been upping the rhetorical ante for several months, threatening Iran and, implicitly, President Obama if he doesn't go along with the idea of unilaterally attacking Iran. Netanyahu and his followers are wont to portray sanctions against Iran as though it were somehow the equivalent of appeasement during the 1930s, when Nazi Germany swallowed up much of Europe. But Netanyahu's bombast is creating a backlash not just in Europe but also in Israel itself.

The latest Israeli leader to speak out against the prospect of attacking Iran for its nuclear efforts is former prime minister Ehud Olmert, whose remarks on Israeli television could not be clearer: "There is no reason at this time not to talk about a military effort, but definitely not to initiate an Israeli military strike." Previously, the former head of internal security, Yuval Diskin, and Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, stated that the government is providing misleading information about the efficacy of a potential strike.

Meanwhile, negotiations in Istanbul produced a more conciliatory stance from Iran—not necessarily because of the threat of an attack but because the sanctions that Obama imposed may be working. Could it be that Iran's major domos are looking for a way to climb down from their triumphalist rhetoric about building a bomb—a weapon that would do little for Iran's security—in exchange for full recognition from America and a pledge not to attack it? As the Washington Post's David Ignatius has pointed out, the basic framework exists for a deal, and it looks increasingly as though the Iranians are receptive to one. Indeed, if Obama is fortunate, he may be able to close a deal with Iran that would remove the issue from the 2012 election campaign and allow him to present himself as the new, great peacemaker. Nothing would come as a greater shock to Netanyahu and his noisy claque of supporters in the GOP.

All along, the contention of the Iran hawks has been that the Tehran regime is immune to external pressure. But this makes little sense. Its leaders are craven, bellicose, nasty. But they are also opportunistic, intent on self-preservation. Around the world, ugly regimes that were once seen as impervious to reform have indeed changed from within. Again and again, the mistake that Western hawks have made has been to overestimate the longevity of authoritarian and totalitarian dictatorships. The late Jeane Kirkpatrick even made a distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, arguing that the latter were far less likely to alter their political complexion. But as she herself acknowledged, this turned out to be wrong. The Soviet Union, viewed as a kind of implacable tyranny that could not be significantly undermined, was. Fast forward to today and you have Burma, one of the world's leading reprobate countries, reaching out to the West. Who would have dreamed a few years ago that it would hold free elections? The blunt fact is that standards continue to change, that the costs of remaining in not-so-splendid isolation are rising, both for leaders and their countries, as Basher al-Assad and his wife, who may not be able to enjoy her luxurious Parisian shopping trips any longer, are discovering.

So it would be mistaken to assume—as some are assuming—that the sole way to deal with Iran is to bomb it back to the stone, or at least the Safavid, age. Not so. But perhaps it is also a mistake to reckon that Netanyahu is really intent on going mano-a-mano with the Islamic republic. A credible threat, after all, is required to prod the Mr. Khamenei & Co. into deviating from the nuclear path. The good news, however, is that a debate, or, to put it more precisely, a very public battle is taking place in Israel over whether Iran is determined not simply to research but also to build and test a bomb—and whether a strike on Iran, which might lead to a wider war in the Middle East, would really be merited.

The Summit of the Americas was a debacle for President Obama. America essentially came away with nothing largely because of its foolhardy attempt to maintain the embargo on Cuba. In seeking to isolate Cuba, America is only isolating itself. But the biggest black eye for Obama came with the revelation—unearthed by CIA historian Ronald Kessler—that members of the Secret Service were apparently frolicking with prostitutes in Colombia. This isn't merely an embarrassing episode of gringos going wild, it should sound alarms about the Secret Service's ability to protect the president.

The eleven agents allegedly involved were recalled to the United States from Cartagena, but the Secret Service is trying to downplay the scandal, which came to light after one of the agents apparently tried to stiff a prostitute who demanded payment. Fortunately, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa is having none of it. According to the Washington Post, he believes that more agents may have been involved. The real danger may be that there is a culture of corruption at the Secret Service, which has acted as a kind of praetorian guard for decades. It has become a law unto itself.

As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed, the Secret Service has dramatically increased its size over the past several decades—it now has some six thousand employees—and at times become what he called in 1992 a "disgrace and danger" to the republic. It's now become a badge of honor for aspiring presidential candidates to receive Secret Service protection during the primary campaign—it's an ego boost and signifies that you've arrived. The agents sometimes act as ruthless enforcers for the candidates by snuffing out legitimate protests at campaign rallies. Then there is the cost of all this security—$1.5 billion a year. There's no way that taxpayers should be footing the bill for the Secret Service protection that the likes of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich received. Let them pay for it themselves.

The best way to think about the Secret Service is to realize that its name is bogus. It isn't secret. Instead, it's like any other government agency intent on maximizing its influence, reach and numbers. It can always dream up new threats that it needs to address. Congress has pretty much signed off on anything the agency wants. Why not subject the Secret Service to the scrutiny that other govenment agencies are now receiving? Even the Defense Department is going to see a diminution in the rapidity of its budget increases. There is no reason the Secret Service should be exempt.

The behavior allegedly engaged in by the Secret Service suggests an agency that is running amok. Heads need to roll. This is the second fiasco (think the Salahis crashing the White House State Dinner) on Secret Service director Mark Sullivan's watch. Rep. Issa has it exactly right: incidents like this aren't an accident but probably representative of a broader problem at the Secret Service. The Wall Street Journal reports that "wheels up, rings off" is a running joke at the agency.

The Secret Service bears the classic hallmarks of a complacent and bloated government agency. It has become too large for its own good. Lawmakers should use this scandal as an opportunity to scrutinize the agency and overhaul what Senator Moynihan rightly called "a threat to the quality of the American democracy."

Gunter Grass' poem "What Must Be Said," which denounces Israel as a threat to world peace, has now become an international controversy. Israel has banned Grass from entering the Jewish state, a move that is drawing criticism from some prominent Israelis. And in Germany foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has written a op-ed in the conservative newspaper Bild am Sonntag declaring that it was "absurd" of Grass to place Israel and Iran on the "same moral plane." Meanwhile, Grass and his defenders say he is being persecuted for telling the truth in his poem—yours truly has also been chastised for "intellectual cowardice" in lambasting Grass.

Ultimately, however, the Grass affair may say more about Grass and Germany than about Israel itself. Novelists and poets have often weighed in on the future of the German nation, serving as moral oracles pronouncing on its fate. Grass was a leading socialist who actually campaigned for Chancellor Willy Brandt. Until the revelation of his own service in the SS, he regularly upbraided German society for failing to face up to its Nazi past adequately.

Now the moralist has weighed in again. In reflecting upon his poem, Grass says that he wished he had attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly rather than Israel itself. But it seems safe to say that he has tarnished his reputation among German elites, but perhaps not among the German population. Germany has become the dominant power in Europe. While it remains uncomfortable flexing its muscles too visibly, there can be no doubting that it has become increasingly prone to displaying its new power. The Euro crisis is the most prominent example, with chancellor Angela Merkel becoming a figure of hatred in Greece.

But it is also the case that Germany remains divided about its own past. Grass exemplifies the resentment of the postwar generation that served in the war and has a somewhat mixed view of the American "liberators." Grass, who served in the Waffen-SS, has always been a staunch critic of America. He was also an admirer of East Germany. In his later fictional work, he mourned the demise of East Germany as a kind of socialist paradise. When East Germans toppled the Berlin Wall in 1989, he scoffed that they had succumbed to capitalism and were sellling out for a few bananas (a fruit that was only available a few times a year in the German Democratic Republic). Grass always saw America as the international bad guy. Now he has found a new villain which comports with his old world-view. Where America once jeopardized world peace by stationing nuclear weapons in Europe, now it is Israel that threatens it by insisting that it is prepared to attack Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear project.

The distinguished German literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, who survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding out in the countryside and whose ordeal Grass has written about, says that Grass knew he could create a furor with his poem. He says that Grass is returning to the sentiments of his youth as he ages and that

Grass was always interested in sensations, affairs, scandals... It's no accident that he's attacking Jews.

Is Grass a lone voice in Germany? Or does he represent a new wave of frustration with the instransigence of the Netanyahu government and its corrosive settlement policies that will mutate into antipathy toward Jews more generally? The coming months will show whether the Grass affair is a mere footnote or a new chapter in Germany's politics of memory after reunification.