Opinion of Vladimir Lenin?

[TheReckoning]

What’s your opinion of this leftist revolutionary?

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

FF in the context of his time and country. Though the execution of the Romanovs was disgusting.

[KaiserDave]

Despicable mass murderer. Gets a softer treatment in history than he deserves because his successor was more evil and more murderous and his predecessors were incompetent. The overwhelming majority of the Russian left was preferable to him (as well as all the liberals and many on the right), and did not support his brutal tactics and aims. He let his ideological dogmatism and pursuit for utopia blind him to the consequences of his actions among the poor suffering Russian people, especially the peasantry. Such terrible crimes as Decossackization, the suppression of the Tambov Rebellion, many of the policies of War Communism, the Red Terror, and more come to mind.

The humanitarian and scientific improvements of the USSR from the Tsarist backwater did not necessitate the historic amount of blood shed, lives ruined, families destroyed, and communities annihilated "in defense of the revolution."

I cannot emphasize enough how revolting I find how Lenin's dogmatism, coldness, and drive towards imagined utopia lead him to justify the murder of so many innocents. Such attitudes are extraordinarily dangerous, and history proves this. Whether it is to "win the war" or to "defend the revolution", please my God, we must keep our humanity. There is such a thing of making sacrifices or doing nasty things for a necessary and noble cause, and then there is needless slaughter of innocents.

HP.

[President Johnson]

Massive HP

[Big Abraham]

Massive FF and a necessary bulwark against the White Terror.

The Reds had a war to win and revolution is not a dinner party.

[TDAS04]

Not a fan.

[All Along The Watchtower]

HP (not insane)

[PSOL]

A hero.

[Santander]

Massive FF and a necessary bulwark against the White Terror.

The Reds had a war to win and revolution is not a dinner party.

Your views are amazing.

[GeneralMacArthur]

History's most successful terrorist.  The Bolsheviks were basically ISIS, except they claimed to be fighting for the working proletariat rather than fighting for Islam.

Lenin exclusively used violence, mostly directed against innocent people, to undermine his own nation in the middle of a war.  He and Trotsky lied that they could get Russia out of the war with dignity, taking advantage of anti-war sentiment, and then after they violently seized power, it turned out they were lying, and Russia was utterly humiliated and had to surrender enormous amounts of resources and sovereignty to Germany just to be allowed to crawl away from the war.

After getting out of the war, Lenin was able to focus on his own country, where he had two problems.  The first was that he had to share power, the second was that there were a lot of people upset about his violent coup.  He solved the first problem by murdering and imprisoning all his political opponents and using the entire state apparatus to spread lies about them and murder anyone who expressed support for them in any way shape or form.  He solved the second problem by mass-murdering everyone who opposed him (including the famous Crimean incident where he promised amnesty to any White soldiers who surrendered, and then slaughtered every last one of them) and spreading hatred and division.  His government created quotas of people who had to be killed and encouraged the people to hate each other and find reasons to kill each other.  People hating and killing each other at Lenin's direction was basically the defining characteristic of his rule.

Meanwhile his actual governance of the country was an utter disaster.  His government immediately suffered from one of the worst famines in history, which was entirely man-made and directly caused by his disastrous agricultural policies.  The Soviet Union had to crawl on its knees and beg for food aid from its enemies.  This arrangement persisted throughout the entire lifespan of the Soviet Union, and they endured the famines of 1932 and 1946 even in spite of all the aid.  Workers hated his labor policies, but found that whenever they tried to strike or protest, they were violently crushed by the state military.  What a great hero for the working man!

Stalin was a monster, but he was only able to get away with his monstrous crimes against humanity because of the mass-murder infrastructure gifted to him by Lenin and the Bolsheviks.  Lenin slaughtered millions of people and destroyed a world power so he could instead joyride as the pseudointellectual tinpot dictator of a failed state where people lived as slaves and had to eat their own children to survive.

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity ... You must make example of these people.

(1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers.
(2) Publish their names.
(3) Seize all their grain.
(4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram.
Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ...

Yours, Lenin.

P.S. Find tougher people.

[😥]

Massive HP

[John Dule]

Never learned how to play well with others.

[PSOL]

Some people here need to cope harder.

Anyway, I might as well provide a critical effortpost in this trash heap of a thread. While I have massive respect for Lenin, it can’t be understated the clear and persistent mistakes made by him in matters of internal discourse and domestic matters.

Firstly, Lenin was supreme only to Trotsky in punching left. Whatever you make of the war in Ukraine, jailing the “left” communists inside the Bolsheviks and suppressing the various strikes brought on by wage controls was the wrong way to go. Lenin, along with Trotsky, were imperative in establishing a toxic and good olé Boys culture with the harassment and sexist remarks on figures like Alexandra Kollontai which would pervasively alienate the cultural and societal developments of the Soviet Union through reactionary views.

Secondly, Lenin’s two major mistakes in running the country were the undeserved promotions of Stalin and the NEP. Stalin’s promotion as play-up general would cost the war in Poland and the NEP would re-establish a rigid class structure they spent an entire war dismantling, wasting more resources trying to fix this error during a famine. The end of the great project was foreseen in its beginning

Still, we cannot forget that some great foundations stood the test of time. The Indigenization policies of the 1920 were vital in ethnic awakening and cultural outputs among diverse nations in the Soviet Union. Lenin promoted an Affirmative Action-like policy—the largest project until India—that promoted cosmopolitanism in the CPSU and in individual production sites that would last until its dissolution. That effort built most of the industrial and technological sites and innovations in the surrounding member republics, responsible for Kazakhstan being a mining giant and Estonia being a tech hub.

Also I might as well disprove some myths about his time leading the Bolsheviks

Despicable mass murderer. Gets a softer treatment in history than he deserves because his successor was more evil and more murderous and his predecessors were incompetent. The overwhelming majority of the Russian left was preferable to him (as well as all the liberals and many on the right), and did not support his brutal tactics and aims. He let his ideological dogmatism and pursuit for utopia blind him to the consequences of his actions among the poor suffering Russian people, especially the peasantry. Such terrible crimes as Decossackization, the suppression of the Tambov Rebellion, many of the policies of War Communism, the Red Terror, and more come to mind.

The humanitarian and scientific improvements of the USSR from the Tsarist backwater did not necessitate the historic amount of blood shed, lives ruined, families destroyed, and communities annihilated "in defense of the revolution."

Outside of virtue signaling about lost lives and downplaying the achievements of the Soviet Union, this post ignores the context of several actions done by the Bolsheviks and does not state the crimes done by others

How anyone could defend the pogrom-inducing, imperial warrior caste of Tsarist Russia is beyond me. The Cossacks were the main force of suppression of internal dissent and terror against bordering nations, peasants, and Jews in Russia. Their violence and fiefdoms needed to have been removed else the revolution fail. The Tambov rebellion, falsely painted as a rebellion of peasants against the Bolsheviks, were mainly former White officers taking advantage of the collapsing situation to hold onto territory. Indeed, outside of reactionary peasant leaders and the difficulty in maintaining the Soviet early on in the war through War Communism, the relations between the Bolsheviks and peasants were better if not the same then the remaining Left. Menshevik controlled Georgia and the nationalist republics in Poland, Azerbaijan, and the Baltics also heavily suppressed peasant uprisings and took harsh taxation and tribute. This, along with total war against the seceding republics, made it easy to conquer them.

I’m finishing this off with the usual stump speech. Education spending was rapidly increased for all in this new state under Lenin, Women could get an education and were strived to be equals under the law under Lenin, Lenin greatly aided anti-colonial and justice movements across the world, and finally sexual and artistic freedom were greatly expanded under Lenin. The revisionists and Landlords by all evidence deserved it, while the Leftcoms and Anarchists who had beliefs you all would still hope fail did not as much and in the way it happened.

Never learned how to play well with others.

Under Lenin during the revolution; he managed to recruit the best writer among the Mensheviks, the peasant leaders who didn’t accept compromise, and even a possible Okhrana agent. Lenin was chiefly responsible for getting workers to support the Bolsheviks, what the self-compromising Mensheviks failed to do. Lenin was furthermore in the literal middle of the party as the chief negotiator between the different factions. He was by all accounts a team player.

[SWE]

Imagine was a terrible song, HP

[KaiserDave]

Despicable mass murderer. Gets a softer treatment in history than he deserves because his successor was more evil and more murderous and his predecessors were incompetent. The overwhelming majority of the Russian left was preferable to him (as well as all the liberals and many on the right), and did not support his brutal tactics and aims. He let his ideological dogmatism and pursuit for utopia blind him to the consequences of his actions among the poor suffering Russian people, especially the peasantry. Such terrible crimes as Decossackization, the suppression of the Tambov Rebellion, many of the policies of War Communism, the Red Terror, and more come to mind.

The humanitarian and scientific improvements of the USSR from the Tsarist backwater did not necessitate the historic amount of blood shed, lives ruined, families destroyed, and communities annihilated "in defense of the revolution."

Outside of virtue signaling about lost lives and downplaying the achievements of the Soviet Union, this post ignores the context of several actions done by the Bolsheviks and does not state the crimes done by others

How anyone could defend the pogrom-inducing, imperial warrior caste of Tsarist Russia is beyond me. The Cossacks were the main force of suppression of internal dissent and terror against bordering nations, peasants, and Jews in Russia. Their violence and fiefdoms needed to have been removed else the revolution fail. The Tambov rebellion, falsely painted as a rebellion of peasants against the Bolsheviks, were mainly former White officers taking advantage of the collapsing situation to hold onto territory. Indeed, outside of reactionary peasant leaders and the difficulty in maintaining the Soviet early on in the war through War Communism, the relations between the Bolsheviks and peasants were better if not the same then the remaining Left. Menshevik controlled Georgia and the nationalist republics in Poland, Azerbaijan, and the Baltics also heavily suppressed peasant uprisings and took harsh taxation and tribute. This, along with total war against the seceding republics, made it easy to conquer them.

I’m finishing this off with the usual stump speech. Education spending was rapidly increased for all in this new state under Lenin, Women could get an education and were strived to be equals under the law under Lenin, Lenin greatly aided anti-colonial and justice movements across the world, and finally sexual and artistic freedom were greatly expanded under Lenin. The revisionists and Landlords by all evidence deserved it, while the Leftcoms and Anarchists who had beliefs you all would still hope fail did not as much and in the way it happened.

Virtue signalling? This is the kind of callous and ideological delusional dismissal that comes along with Leninism I suppose.

Firstly, the Cossacks are not a class, they are an ethnic group. Many Cossacks participated in horrific crimes under the Tsarist regime, and were undeniably mostly quite reactionary. If you think that justifies the practices of the Bolsheviks that verged on ethnic cleansing, and engaged in wholesale collective punishment. I suppose we disagree. I disagree on the Tambov Rebellion as well, but that's more of a matter of facts. Alexander Antonov, the leader of the rebellion, was a longtime S-R and target of the Okhrana. But if you want to chalk him up to some kind of reactionary White, that's more propaganda. The reality of Tambov was that the Russian peasantry wanted more their own land and self-government, which had been denied for centuries. They were not however, interested in submitting themselves to the draconian demands of War Communism, or the grand utopian goals of the party to achieve their perfect society. The ruthless enforcement of party policy produced a justifiable backlash. As for broader peasant relations, Lenin had a very public derisive view of the peasants, and his policies contributed to the calamitous famines of the Civil War. Peasant rebellions were common, and they were entirely organic. Hard to say relations with the peasants were very good. As for the conquest of the outlying seceding Republicans, I can only say they were tragic.

As for the accomplishments of the USSR. I acknowledge the tremendous strides made by the USSR in social policy compared to the reactionary Tsarist regime. But these gains could all have been made in a Republic run by a liberal-socialist coalition. As for the very last sentence, I can only say justifications for political terror with lines such as "deserved it" (even for other socialists) are very disturbing, and it is the kind of thinking I warned against in my initial post. You can either deny the horrific collective punishment and mass violence that occurred by Lenin's order, or you can say it was justified. Either is deeply wrong.

[John Dule]

Never learned how to play well with others.

Under Lenin during the revolution; he managed to recruit the best writer among the Mensheviks, the peasant leaders who didn’t accept compromise, and even a possible Okhrana agent. Lenin was chiefly responsible for getting workers to support the Bolsheviks, what the self-compromising Mensheviks failed to do. Lenin was furthermore in the literal middle of the party as the chief negotiator between the different factions. He was by all accounts a team player.

PSOL I have to say I've worked on many group projects in my life but not once have I resorted to the mass murder of peasant farmers to meet my deadlines

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad LOL bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad

[KaiserDave]

I haven't even mentioned the horribly elitist nature of vanguardism. Lenin had nothing but contempt for the people he desired to build utopia for, especially the peasantry.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I haven't even mentioned the horribly elitist nature of vanguardism. Lenin had nothing but contempt for the people he desired to build utopia for, especially the peasantry.

Calling his minority splinter faction "the Majority" really tells you all you need to know about Lenin's attitude towards the masses or indeed his fellow socialists. Vanguardism was absolutely contemptuous of the ordinary worker and was flatly uninterested in HIS opinions or wants. Nothing remotely democratic about it.

[HisGrace]

One of the biggest HP's of the 20th Century. I shed no tears over him killing the Czar, though.

[ꙮ]

Some people here need to cope harder.

The lack of self-awareness here is honestly kind of funny.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Massive FF and a necessary bulwark against the White Terror.

The Reds had a war to win and revolution is not a dinner party.

The Bolsheviks started the civil war by couping the Provisional Government.

[Beet]

Massive FF and a necessary bulwark against the White Terror.

The Reds had a war to win and revolution is not a dinner party.

The Bolsheviks started the civil war and the Terror by couping the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government screwed themselves by not ending the war with Germany, which is why the revolution happened to begin with.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Outside of virtue signaling about lost lives and downplaying the achievements of the Soviet Union, this post ignores the context of several actions done by the Bolsheviks and does not state the crimes done by others

How anyone could defend the pogrom-inducing, imperial warrior caste of Tsarist Russia is beyond me. The Cossacks were the main force of suppression of internal dissent and terror against bordering nations, peasants, and Jews in Russia. Their violence and fiefdoms needed to have been removed else the revolution fail. The Tambov rebellion, falsely painted as a rebellion of peasants against the Bolsheviks, were mainly former White officers taking advantage of the collapsing situation to hold onto territory. Indeed, outside of reactionary peasant leaders and the difficulty in maintaining the Soviet early on in the war through War Communism, the relations between the Bolsheviks and peasants were better if not the same then the remaining Left. Menshevik controlled Georgia and the nationalist republics in Poland, Azerbaijan, and the Baltics also heavily suppressed peasant uprisings and took harsh taxation and tribute. This, along with total war against the seceding republics, made it easy to conquer them.

Wow, this is a real mask off moment.  All those millions of people who died totally deserved it, and it was worth it because the USSR got to conquer their countries after murdering them.  Pretending to care about the mass murder of millions of innocent people is just virtue signaling.

Just to clarify, "Their violence and fiefdoms needed to have been removed else the revolution fail" means Lenin needed to murder every single kossack, along with all their friends and families, down to the last child, because otherwise the great worker's paradise PSOL longs to recreate was doomed to fail.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Massive FF and a necessary bulwark against the White Terror.

The Reds had a war to win and revolution is not a dinner party.

The Bolsheviks started the civil war and the Terror by couping the Provisional Government.

The Provisional Government screwed themselves by not ending the war with Germany, which is why the revolution happened to begin with.

The point is that it was Lenin's initiative to unleash civil war and terror by deciding to coup the Provisional Government. So being a bulwark against the Whites is not a particularly strong point in his favour, given it was his actions that precipitated the civil war that nearly destroyed Russia.