QUOTES: VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV "LENIN"

Vladimir Lenin

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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ульянов) (April 22 (April 10 (O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the main theorist of Leninism.

Contents [hide] 1 Sourced 1.1 Telegram 2 Attributed 3 On Lenin 4 External links

[edit] Sourced

• Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.
  • The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism (1913)

• We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.
  • Will the Bolsheviks Retain Government Power? (1917)

• The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief: either to perish, or to catch up with the advanced countries and outdistance them, too, in economic matters.
  • The Impending Catastrophe and How to Fight It (1917)

• In one place they will put into prison a dozen rich men, a dozen scoundrels, a half-dozen workers who shirk on the job...In another place they will set them to cleaning outside toilets. In a third they will give them yellow tickets after a term in prison...so that the entire people...will act as the overseers of them as harmful people. In a fourth they will shoot on the spot one out of every ten guilty of sloth.
  • 9 January, 1918.
  • Collected Works: Volume 26 (1964), p. 414.

• One technique of bourgeois press always and in all countries is found to be most common and “faultlessly” effective. Lie, shout, make a noise, repeat lie — something will remain.
  • Complete works of V.I.Lenin, 5th Edition, Vol.31, p.217, “The alliance of lie”

• "I am confident that the suppression of the Kazan Czechs and White Guards, and likewise of the bloodsucking kulaks who support them, will be a model of mercilessness."
  • (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], p119)

• Let us...take the most concrete example of state capitalism...It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.
• 'Left Wing' Childishness, Lenin, Pravda, May 1918

• "... catch and shoot the Astrakhan speculators and bribe-takers. These swine have to be dealt [with] so that everyone will remember it for years."
  • (Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins, 1994], p201)

• These spiders have grown fat at the expense of peasants...These leeches have drunk the blood of toilers, growing the richer the more the worker starved in the cities and factories. These vampires have gathered and continue to gather in their hands the lands of landlords, enslaving, time and time again, the poor peasants. Merciless war against these kulaks! Death to them!
  • Early August 1918.
  • Collected Works: Volume 28 (1965), pp. 56-7.

• "Let them shoot on the spot every tenth man guilty of idleness."
  • (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], p55)

• "Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror."
  • (Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins, 1994], p203)

• You must...instantly introduce mass terror, shoot and transport hundreds of prostitutes who get the soldiers drunk, ex-officers, etc. Not a minute to be wasted...You must act at full stretch: mass searches. Executions for possession of weapons. Mass deportations of Mensheviks and unreliable elements.
  • Telegram of 9 August, 1918.
  • Collected Works: Volume 28 (1965), p. 142.

• It is necessary secretly -and urgently-to prepare for terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through the SNK or otherwise.
  • Memorandum to N. N. Krestinsky, 3 or 4 September 1918.

• "Dictatorship is rule based directly on force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained through the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws."
  • (Stephan Courtois, "Conclusion," in The Black Book of Communism, ed. Stephane Courtois [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999], p741)

• Пока есть государство, нет свободы. Когда будет свобода, не будет государства. ** Translation: While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
  • State and Revolution (1919)

• Communism is Soviet government plus the electrification of the whole country.
  • New External and Internal Position and the Problems of the Party (1920)

• "Surely you do not imagine that we shall be victorious without applying the most cruel revolutionary terror?"
  • (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], p57)

• At present, British Communists very often find it hard even to approach the masses, and even to get a hearing from them. If I as a Communist come out and call upon the workers to vote for Henderson against Lloyd George, they will certainly listen to me. And I will be able to explain in a popular manner not only why Soviets are better than parliament and why the dictatorship of the proletariat is better than the dictatorship of Churchill (disguised with the signboard of bourgeois “democracy”), but also that, with my vote, I want to support Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man – that the impending establishment of a government of the Hendersons will prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will accelerate the political death of the Hendersons and the Snowdens just as was the case with their kindred spirits in Russia and Germany.
  • Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder (1920)

• When we say "the state," the state is we, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.
  • Speech (May 27, 1922)

• "Until we apply terror to speculators - shooting on the spot - we won’t get anywhere."
  • (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], p55)

• It is true that liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.
  • Attributed. Quoted by Sidney & Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism:A New Civilization? (1936)

• Из всех искусств важнейшим для нас является кино.
  • Translation: Cinema is the most important of all the arts for us.
  • Complete works of V.I.Lenin - 5th Edition - Vol.44. - p.579: Conversation with A.V.Lunacharsky

• Ничего не знаю лучше «Apassionata», готов слушать ее каждый день. Изумительная, нечеловеческая музыка. Я всегда с гордостью, может быть, наивной, детской, думаю: вот какие чудеса могут делать люди ... Но часто слушать музыку не могу, действует на нервы, хочется милые глупости говорить и гладить по головкам людей, которые, живя в грязном аду, могут создавать такую красоту. А сегодня гладить по головке никого нельзя — руку откусят, и надобно бить по головкам, бить безжалостно, хотя мы, в идеале, против всякого насилия над людьми.
  • Translation: I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! ... But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, those little heads must be beaten, beaten mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people.
  • Maxim Gorky. "V.I.Lenin" (Lenin eulogy), first edition

[edit] Telegram

The following is a telegram sent by Lenin to the communist authorities in Nizjnij-Novgord, 11 August 1918. Source: Library of Congress exhibition.

• Товарищи! Восстание пяти волостей кулачья должно повести к беспощадному подавлению. Этого требует интерес всей революции, ибо теперь взят "последний решительный бой" с кулачьем. Образец надо дать.
  1) Повесить, (непременно повесить, чтобы народ видел) не меньше 100 заведомых кулаков, богатеев, кровопийц.
  2) Опубликовать их имена.
  3) Отнять у них весь хлеб.
  4) Назначить заложников — согласно вчерашней телеграмме.
  Сделать так, чтобы на сотни верст кругом народ видел, трепетал, знал, кричал: душат и задушат кровопийц-кулаков.
  Телеграфируйте получение и исполнение. Ваш Ленин.
  P.S. Найдите людей потверже.
  • Translation: Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak administrative regions must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us the "final decisive battle" against the kulaks. We need to set an example.
    

1) You need to hang (most definitely hang, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, the bloodsuckers.

2) Publish their names.

3) Take away all of their bread.

4) Designate hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this. Yours, Lenin

P.S. Find some of the tougher people.

[edit] Attributed

• What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy.
  • Carlos Rangel, Third World Ideology and Western Reality (Transaction, 1986), p. 15.

• The state does not function as desired. The car does not obey. A man is at the wheel and he seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes. **Susan George, A Fate Worse than Debt 1988

[edit] On Lenin

• Max Weber and Vladimir Lenin say, in almost identical words, that with regard to the use of force the state is always a dictatorship.

  Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude