All Quotes

"Lenin and Trotsky killed millions of Russian citizens right after the Civil War, when they were consolidating State power, which preceded Stalin’s bloody rule. The lesson is that we should not be tricked into surrendering the grassroots people’s power to dictators who pose as our friends or leaders."

"It is hard to find a word of human sympathy or concern anywhere in his [Lenin's] collected works. But he was quick to exploit the misery of the nation, to create scapegoats to deflect popular anger from the regime."

"Lenin taught us to be merciless towards the enemies of the revolution, and millions of people had to be eliminated in order to secure the victory of the October Revolution."

"When the news of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 burst upon the world, American workers learned for the first time of a man named Lenin-through this great event in human history, the beginning of socialism. We also learned some new words, which became part of the language in no time, "Bolshevik" and "Soviet," among them. Even those of us who were left-Socialists and IWWs knew practically nothing of the Russian Socialist movement, except that we had great sympathy with its long, agonizing struggle to overthrow the tsar's cruel and bloody regime. Overnight, "Bolshevik" became a household word, even to those who did not know it merely meant "majority," and referred to a political division in the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. "I am a Bolshevik from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes!" said Debs. "Damned Bolsheviks!" employers shouted at militant workers and union organizers. All strikers were "Bolsheviks," of course."

"Lenin was probably the most influential leader of the 20th century. He devised and spread a doctrine that dominated half the world and influenced or menaced the rest. A politician and theorist, he knew how to seize and maintain power and how to convince people that slavery was freedom. The totalitarian state he created lasted for more than 70 years."

"Lenin and Stalin have evidenced their outstanding brilliance as mass leaders in every revolutionary requirement: in Marxian theory, political strategy, the building of mass organizations, and in the development of the mass struggle. The characteristic feature of their work is its many-sidedness. Both men of action as well as of thought, they have exemplified in their activities that coordination of theory and practice which is so indispensable to the success of the every-day struggles of the masses and the final establishment of socialism. Both have worked in the clearest realization of the twin truths that there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory, and that revolutionary theory unsupported by organized mass struggle must remain sterile."

"The bourgeoisie, it now appeared, was digging its own grave. That, at least, was the argument Lenin put forward, at first from exile, and then after the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II early in 1917, from within Russia itself. Lenin differed from Marx and Engels, however, in his determination to move from theory to action: his coup d'état in November—for that is what it was—remains as striking an example as exists of the extent to which one person can change the course of history. Or, as Lenin would have put it, drawing on Marx, by which the "conscious vanguard of the proletariat" can accelerate history toward its scientifically predetermined conclusion. What the Bolshevik "revolution" meant was that one state had gone beyond trying to save capitalism: it had, in the middle of a war capitalists had started, declared war on capitalism itself. And if the expectations of Lenin and his followers were correct, the citizens of other states—themselves embittered by capitalism and battered by war—would soon seize power and do the same. The irreversible engine of history guaranteed it."

"The names of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler will forever be linked to the tragic course of European history in the first half of the twentieth century. Only weeks after the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks created secret police forces far more brutal than any that had existed under the tsar. The Nazis followed suit and were no sooner in power than they instituted the dreaded Gestapo. Under both regimes millions of people were incarcerated in concentration camps where they were tortured and frequently worked to death."

"Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight."

"Lenin was the most pliable politician in history. He could be an ultra-revolutionary, a compromiser and conservative at the same time. When like a mighty wave the cry swept over Russia, "All power to the Soviets!" Lenin swam with the tide.[A] When the peasants took possession of the land and the workers of the factories, Lenin not only approved of those direct methods but went further. He issued the famous motto, "Rob the robbers," a slogan which served to confuse the minds of the people and caused untold injury to revolutionary idealism. Never before did any real revolutionist interpret social expropriation as the transfer of wealth from one set of individuals to another. Yet that was exactly what Lenin's slogan meant. The indiscriminate and irresponsible raids, the accumulation of the wealth of the former bourgeoisie by the new Soviet bureaucracy, the chicanery practised toward those whose only crime was their former status, were all the results of Lenin's "Rob the robbers" policy. The whole subsequent history of the Revolution is a kaleidoscope of Lenin's compromises and betrayal of his own slogans."

"Not since Marx had the proletarian struggle for emancipation given the world a thinker and leader of the working class and all toilers of Lenin's stature. He combined scientific genius, political wisdom, and perspicacity with great organizational ability, an iron will, courage, and daring. He had a boundless faith in the creative powers of the popular masses, was close to them, and enjoyed their total confidence, love, and support. All of Lenin's activity embodied the organic unity between revolutionary theory and practice. As leader and man Lenin possessed a selfless devotion to communist ideals and to the cause of the party and of the working class and a supreme conviction of the righteousness and justice of that cause. He subordinated every facet of his life to the struggle for the emancipation of the toilers from social and national oppression. He both loved his homeland and was a consistent internationalist. Intransigent toward the class enemy, he had a touching concern for comrades. He was highly exacting toward himself and others and was morally pure, simple, and modest."

"In dealing with the issue, Lenin was candid. He stated, “One therefore cannot deny the justice of [the] remark that in ‘Marxism itself there is not a grain of ethics from beginning to end’; theoretically it subordinates the ‘ethical standpoint’ to the ‘principle of causality’; in practice it reduces it to the class struggle.”"

"The great actors and theorists of twentieth-century politics, on the right and left, agree on this point: 'Max Weber and Vladimir Lenin say, in almost identical words, that with regard to the use of force the state is always a dictatorship."

"It's not that the Left needed to control every piece of terrain in America; instead, they focused on key terrain- and the results, today, are sobering. Avowed Marxist and "founding father" of the Soviet Union Vladimir Lenin gave voice to a key aspect of this strategy in 1922, when he used the term commanding heights in a speech. Following the Russian Revolution, the Soviet economy tanked; Lenin proposed a solution: limited capitalist activities were permitted at the local level, but all the main levers of the national economy would be controlled by the state. In short, Marxists didn't need to control every aspect of the economy; they just needed to maintain a grip on the big and influential industries like steel, manufacturing, and energy. It worked, and the Russian economy temporarily recovered. This military analogy- the "commanding heights"- has captured the imagination of Marxists since, and it was famously dubbed "the road to serfdom" by free-market economists. Conservatives in America spent much of the twentieth century fending off Lenin's economic Marxism. Marx's entire theory was premised on economics and class warfare, and freedom lovers met the Soviet machine head-on- with free-market capitalism and sheer military might. In the end, that combination helped to eventually bring the Soviet Union to its knees. Lenin was an economic Marxist. American progressives are cultural Marxists."

"Lenin was the first man determinedly to denounce all prejudices against colonial peoples, which have been deeply implanted in the minds of many European and American workers. Lenin's these on the question of nationalities, approved by International communism, have brought about a momentous revolution in all oppressed countries throughout the world."

"The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."

"Lenin sprung a leak in the cesspool of Russian history and the stench has poisoned the civilized world."

"Lenin walks around the world. Frontiers cannot bar him. Neither barracks nor barricades impede. Nor does barbed wire scar him. Lenin walks around the world. Black, brown, and white receive him. Language is no barrier. The strangest tongues believe him. Lenin walks around the world. The sun sets like a scar. Between the darkness and the dawn There rises a red star."

"Drawing from Marxism, Lenin reinterpreted, revised and thus revived the native Russian tradition of revolution. In the previous generation revolutionary Slavophiles had indulged the pleasing thought that there was a distinct Russian story and a distinctively Russian trajectory to any radical action in that country. Some of them endorsed terrorism as a way to preserve the distinctive virtues of Russian society while undermining the autocracy. Though Lenin was impatient with the long-standing Russian heritage of activism, revolution by the act, nihilism, assassination etc., he insisted upon preserving the accompanying emphasis on voluntaristic action. But his voluntarism was girded by a Marxist vision of coming revolutions."

"Today I shot at Lenin. I did it on my own. I will not say from whom I obtained my revolver. I will give no details. I had resolved to kill Lenin long ago. I consider him a traitor to the Revolution."

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some."

"There are individuals – a mere handful in the history of mankind – who, while themselves being the product of an imminent catastrophic change, leave their mark upon an entire epoch. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is one such giant mind, one such giant will... However mighty such giants of history may be, the universal-general principle that they symbolise and embody dissolves all the narrowly individual. The ordinary measuring rod of the qualities, failings and passions characteristic of the people of that age is not applicable to them. It is not a question of the personal characteristics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin but what he symbolises... He has gathered to himself like a magnet everything in the revolution that is expressive of will, power, ruthless destruction and constructive persistence. Everyone who values what the workers' revolution brings with it in its cleansing whirlwind cannot but value and cherish its symbol, its embodiment – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin."

"Vladimir Ilyich, your concrete actions are completely unworthy of the ideas you pretend to hold.Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions?... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages. I hope you will not answer me that Power is for political men a professional duty, and that any attack against that power must be considered as a threat against which one must guard oneself at any price. This opinion is no longer held even by kings... Are you so blinded, so much a prisoner of your own authoritarian ideas, that you do not realise that being at the head of European Communism, you have no right to soil the ideas which you defend by shameful methods... What future lies in store for Communism when one of its most important defenders tramples in this way every honest feeling?"

"Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. He is a madman, an immolator, wishful of burning, and slaughter, and sacrificing."

"Lenin was of the generation that grew up under the influence of Pisarev, Shchedrin, Nekrasov, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky, of the revolutionary-democratic poets of the sixties...From his earliest years Lenin loathed philistinism, gossip, futile time-wasting, family life "separated from social interests", making women a plaything, an amusement, or a submissive slave. He despised the sort of life that is full of insincerity and easy adaptation to circumstances. Ilyich was particularly fond of Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?; he loved the keen satire of Shchedrin, loved the Iskra poets, many of whose verses he knew by heart, and he loved Nekrasov."

"Ilyich told the young people that it was necessary for them to devote all their work, all their efforts to the common cause. And Lenin's own life was a model of how this should be done. Ilyich could not live any other way, he did not know how to. But he was not an ascetic; he loved skating and fast cycling, mountain-climbing and hunting; he loved music and life in all its many-sided beauty; he loved his comrades, loved people in general. Everyone knows of his simplicity, his merry, infectious laughter. But everything about him was subordinated to the one thing--the struggle for a bright, enlightened, prosperous life of meaning and happiness for all. And nothing gladdened him so much as the successes achieved in this struggle. The personal side of him merged naturally with his social activity..."

""Progress" is for the convinced ochlocrats a consoling Utopia of madly increased comfort and technicism. This charming but dull vision was always the pseudoreligious consolation of millions of ecstatic believers in ochlocracy and in the relative perfection and wisdom of Mr. and Mrs. Averageman. Utopias in general are surrogates for heaven; they give a meager solace to the individual that his sufferings and endeavors may enable future generations to enter the chiliastic paradise. Communism works in a similar way. Its millennium is almost the same as that of ochlocracy. The Millennium of Lenin, the Millennium of Bellamy, the Millennium as represented in H. G. Wells's, "Of Things to Come," the Millennium of Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford — they are all basically the same; they often differ in their means to attain it but they all agree in the point of technical perfection and the classless or at least totally homogeneous society without grudge or envy."

"The ultra-centralism asked by Lenin is full of the sterile spirit of the overseer. It is not a positive and creative spirit. Lenin’s concern is not so much to make the activity of the party more fruitful as to control the party – to narrow the movement rather than to develop it, to bind rather than to unify it."

"In Lenin’s overanxious desire to establish the guardianship of an omniscient and omnipotent Central Committee in order to protect so promising and vigorous a labor movement against any misstep, we recognize the symptoms of the same subjectivism that has already played more than one trick on socialist thinking in Russia. It is amusing to note the strange somersaults that the respectable human “ego” has had to perform in recent Russian history. Knocked to the ground, almost reduced to dust, by Russian absolutism, the “ego” takes revenge by turning to revolutionary activity. In the shape of a committee of conspirators, in the name of a nonexistent Will of the People, it seats itself on a kind of throne and proclaims it is all-powerful. [The reference is to the conspiratorial circle which attacked tsarism from 1879 to 1883 by means of terrorist acts and finally assassinated Alexander II. – Ed.] But the “object” proves to be the stronger. The knout is triumphant, for tsarist might seems to be the “legitimate” expression of history. In time we see appear on the scene and even more “legitimate” child of history – the Russian labor movement. For the first time, bases for the formation of a real “people’s will” are laid in Russian soil. But here is the “ego” of the Russian revolutionary again! Pirouetting on its head, it once more proclaims itself to be the all-powerful director of history – this time with the title of His Excellency the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Russia. The nimble acrobat fails to perceive that the only “subject” which merits today the role of director is the collective “ego” of the working class. The working class demands the right to make its mistakes and learn the dialectic of history. Let us speak plainly. Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee."

"[N]o one can doubt that Lenin was one of the greatest leaders of men ever thrown up in any epoch."

"Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities."

"He (Lenin) lies asleep as it were and it is difficult to believe that he is dead. In life they say he was not beautiful to look at. He had too much of common clay in him and about him was the 'smell of the Russian soil'. But in death there is a strange beauty and his brow is peaceful and unclouded. On his lips there hovers a smile and there is a suggestion of pugnacity, of work done and success achieved. He has a uniform on and one of his hands is lightly clenched. Even in death he is the dictator. In India, he would certainly have been canonised, but saints are not held in repute in Soviet circles, and the people of Russia have done him the higher honour of loving him as one of themselves."

"There was no doubt or vagueness in Lenin's mind. His were the penetrating eyes which detected the moods of the masses; the clear head which could apply and adapt well-thought-out principles to changing situations; the inflexible will which held on to the course he had mapped out, regardless of immediate consequences... It is not many years since he died, and already Lenin has become a mighty tradition, not only in his native Russia, but in the world at large. As time passes he grows greater; he has become one of the chosen company of the world's immortals. Petrograd has become Leningrad, and almost every house in Russia has a Lenin corner or a Lenin picture. But he lives, not in monuments or pictures, but in the mighty work he did, and in the hearts of hundreds of millions of workers today who find inspiration in his example and the hope of a better day."

"We also read Lenin on housework, which is a very, very interesting essay. He uses the word "degrading," which I never felt, because you really see the results of what you've done. But the enormous amount of time it took! That was a factor in our not being as active. Of course, the men came home, and if we were working, we did not sit down like they did. It took a women's movement to change that."

"[If Lenin had lived after 1924] there is no strong reason for thinking that the main lines of development would have been very different. Well before 1923 the seeds of a totalitarian society were quite plainly there. Lenin, indeed, is one of those politicians who win an undeserved reputation by dying prematurely. Had he lived, it is probable that he would either have been thrown out, like Trotsky, or would have kept himself in power by methods as barbarous, or nearly as barbarous, as those of Stalin."

"This most powerful machinist of the revolution... was irrevocably controlled by one and the same idea, the goal. He was probably the most extreme utilitarian whom the laboratory of history has produced. But his utilitarianism was of the broadest historical scope. His personality did not grow flat or poor thereby, but on the contrary developed and enriched itself in extent, as his experience of life and sphere of activity grew."

"Here we see the possible significance of Lenin's book for the future working-class movement. The Communist Party, though it may lose ground among the workers, tries to form with the socialists and the intellectual class a united front, ready at the first major crisis of capitalism to take in its hands the power over and against the workers. Leninism and its philosophical textbook then will serve, under the name of Marxism, to overawe the workers and to impose upon the intellectuals, as the leading system of thought by which the reactionary spiritual powers are beaten, Thus the fighting working class, basing itself upon Marxism, will find Lenin's philosophical work a stumbling-block in its way, as the theory of a class that tries to perpetuate its serfdom."

"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

"Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!...And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics...One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future."

"Lenin, the greatest man of action in our century and at the same time the most selfless."

"Soon after my arrival in Moscow I had an hour's conversation with Lenin in English, which he speaks fairly well... I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of self-seeking, an embodied theory. The materialist conception of history, one feels, is his life-blood. He resembles a professor in his desire to have the theory understood and in his fury with those who misunderstand or disagree, as also in his love of expounding, I got the impression that he despises a great many people and is an intellectual aristocrat. ... He described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the Government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing. ... I think if I had met him without knowing who he was, I should not have guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty, courage, and unwavering faith — religious faith in the Marxian gospel."

"Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures. When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible, by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible. He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic beliefs—such as philosophic materialism, for example—which may be true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to be true with any certainty."

"When I met Lenin, I had much less impression of a great man than I had expected; my most vivid impressions were of bigotry and Mongolian cruelty. When I put a question to him about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, "and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree—ha! ha! ha!" His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold."

"My impression [of Lenin] was not so good as I'd rather thought it would be. I, of course, realised that he had immense strength of will, and integrity in the sense that I think all his public acts were dictated by something that he really believed to be for the public good. But his defects, as they struck me, were two. One, that he was very narrowly orthodox in his adherence to Marx. If he wanted to prove a point, he thought it enough to quote a text of Marx. No fundamentalist was ever more addicted to scripture than he was to Marx. And I thought that seemed to me rather narrow. The other thing I didn't like about him was that he was quite clearly rather cruel. In both these respects I thought he resembled Oliver Cromwell. In fact, I thought he might be a reincarnation of Oliver Cromwell."

"The State and Revolution permanently changed the discourse of left-wing politics. After 1917 no socialist group could formulate its ideas without taking Leninism into account, even if only to repudiate it. With endless recourse to the sacred texts of Marx and Engels, Lenin postulated that two historical stages had to be traversed after the overthrow of capitalist rule. The first stage was to be initiated by the dictatorship of the proletariat which would start by introducing radical social and economic reform while suppressing the rights of the middle classes and implementing the principle: from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work. People would be rewarded for what they contributed to the good of society. As the coercive requirements of the authorities diminished and the proletarian dictatorship became a distant memory, the second stage would start. This would be communism itself. Kitchen maids would do their share of administration. History would be coming to an end. Then the operational principle would at last be: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The prophetic vision of Marx and Engels would be fulfilled."

"They [Lenin and Stalin] formed the world's first Marxist government, remained at the peak of the state for the rest of their days, sacrificed millions of lives at the pitiless altar of their utopian ideology, and ruled the imperium, between them, for the next thirty-six years."

"We never talked about men or clothes or inconsequential things we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution - real girls' talk."

"Through the ages of world history thousands of leaders and scholars appeared who spoke eloquent words, but these remained but words. You, Lenin, were an exception. You not only spoke and taught us, but translated your words into deeds. You created a new country. You showed us the road of joint struggle. ... You, great man that you are, will live on in the memories of the oppressed peoples through the centuries."

"Lenin was a revolutionary Marxist and collectivist to the depths of his being. All his life and work was devoted to one great goal--the struggle for the triumph of socialism. This left its imprint on all his thoughts and feelings. He had none of the pettiness, petty envy, anger, revengefulness and vanity so much to be found in small-property-minded individualists."

"Lenin fought, he put questions sharply; in argument he introduced nothing personal but approached questions from the point of view of the matter in question, and, because of this, comrades were not usually offended at his sharp manner. He observed people closely, listened to what they had to say, tried to grasp the essential point, and so he was able, out of a number of insignificant points, to catch the nature of the person, he was able to approach people with remarkable sensitivity, to find in them all that was good and of value and could be put to the service of the common cause."