Simon Bolivar: Revolutionary, Liberator, and Idealist

In 1975, I published a paper in which I addressed the question of how Lenin became a world revolutionary. In that essay (Pollock, 1975), I called attention to the possible influence of the death of Lenin's father at age fifty-five of a cerebral hemorrhage when Lenin was sixteen years of age (Lenin himself died of the same illness at age fifty-four), and the execution of his slightly older brother, Alexander, for revolutionary activities, a year later. After his brother's death, Lenin, who previously was not a revolutionary, identified with his brother and became heavily immersed in revolutionary activity. This identification process is not an uncommon outcome of the mourning-liberation process. In the same paper, I suggested two possible aspects of political leadership: revolutionary, where the predominant emphasis is on overturning the political regime which is seen as dictatorial, stifling, or blameworthy of the evils of the existing society; or utopian, where the goal is the creation of a perfect society. My interest lay in trying to study the possible impact of loss through death of a significant parent or sibling on the later career of the “leader.” Though in fact leadership is usually a mixture of these two styles it was clear that the revolutionary leader seemed more involved in overturning the existing governmental system—at times with violence—whereas the utopian leader was more invested in attaining the ideal government without violence. I began a cursory study and found some interesting biographical data—especially since quite a few of the revolutionary and utopian leaders I investigated showed a fairly high incidence of childhood and/or adolescent