Seattle's Giant Lenin

I'm with you on this one, Michael. Let's pull this graven image down!

The dirty murderers.

There is the "lest we forget" motive.

Although I'm wondering why there aren't more rotten tomatoes or T.P. remnants around. Or the occational graffiti: "100 million Communists *can* be dead!"

Just wondering.

Mmm...tacos.

... glad I could alert you to this great travesty, michael.

though, while lenin helped to lay the foundation for soviet communism, it was actually stalin who was responsible for the deaths of so many people. lenin realized his ambitions and regretted his appointment before dying. so maybe he is still a dirty commie, but the view that his image is akin to hitler's is terribly, terrily misplaced.

"laying the ideological groundwork" is not an adequate case for his responsibility for stalin's actions. otherwise, we could be responsible for what hitler did, seeing as how "respected historians" agree that the post-war issues in germany, largely created by u.s. and allied decisions, set up the proper circumstances for such a fascist to come to power.

I didn't know if you wanted credit as the "dubious source" or not :)

Lenin did more than merely lay a philisophical groundwork (Marx escapes such strong indictment). Lenin violently overthrew the Russian tsar and instituted the communism that allowed Stalin, Mao, &c. to really carry out their vile ambitions.

I'm not a noted historian myself, but I play one on TV, and Lenin certainly does bear as much responsibility as Stalin does.

so now we're saying communism = murder! fantastic and intellectual, michael!

i guess if we get a psycho president after dubya, they'll share the responsibilities for any atroscities, eh? sounds like a strong historical link to me!

even tv historians cite their dubious evidence, mikey.

Ok, one "e" then!

Sorry I didn't quote you as the source for what I considered to be questionable information; I didn't realize you were an expert on Lenin statues, and I couldn't independently verify that this was the largest. I've updated the post to reflect your conversational contribution, and to point to these comments.

Nevertheless, Stalin's atrocities were inevitable consequences of Lenin's policies. The USSR wasn't a failed attempt at a good idea, as many liberals seem to think; communism is fundamentally destructive, and has, in every place it has been tried, led to massive loss of life. Lenin bears the responsibility for that in the former Soviet Union.

When you go to pull that down, could someone run over to that Taco place in the background and grab me a few? I am too hungry to worry about a pigeon perch right now.

Lenin was the Atilla to Stalin's hun. Had he lived longer the Soviet Union would have been no sweeter.

Lenin instigated the Red Terror, the cruelty of which delighted him. He referred to his victims as 'insects.' He established the Cheka, the first incarnation of the KGB, and ordered the creation of the first camps, including the notorious Solovki. His regrets about Stalin were more concerns about the lives of his Party comrades than any concern for the lives and fortunes of the Russian people and the other nationalities of the Soviet Union.

Once Stalin was dead, the CPSU encouraged the notion that he had ruined the paradise Lenin was building. Solzhenitsyn destroyed that notion, so beloved of Western leftists, when he documented Lenin's crimes in *The Gulag Archipelago.* That was his great offense in the eyes of Russia's rulers. Had Solzhenitsyn not been so famous throughout the world, he would have disappeared rather than being exiled in 1974.

Lenin was, of course, no angel. It is pathetic that some people pretend that Stalin ruined the "Soviet dream."

"For as long as we fair to treat speculators the way they deserve-with a bullet in the head-we will not get anywhere at all."

Lenin is personally responsible for the death of millions of people in the former Soviet Republics. I recommend you check out "The Black Book of Communism." A brief excerpt:

-The execution of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners without trial, and the murder and hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922
-The (forced) famine of 1922 which caused the death of 5 million people
-The extermination of the Don Cossacks in 1920
-The murder of tens of thousands of in concentration camps from 1918 to 1930 (some of this is Stalin)

Yea Stalin was the biggest killer, but Lenin and his Bolshevik thugs did plenty killin' too.
Ever heard of the Romanovs?
They were just the icing.

Oh I forgot, LET US NOT FORGET what that Lenin called his western supporters!
"USEFUL IDIOTS".
Wutta leader.
(Hey at least he was honest in his depravity lol.)

I've _been_ to this statue. This statue is notable because it's one of the few statues in which Lenin is depicted not with a book, but with a big pile of guns (that's what that weird, waist-high (on him) stuff is behind him).

Also, it's in Fremont, which is only _technically_ part of Seattle. Fremont's where the rich hippies live, with their precious hemp clothing swap meets and organic groceries and cutesy artisan shops. Interestingly, Adobe had a big office just two blocks from this statue when I was there.

Cool fact: It's still there because the current owner can't sell it. Well, maybe not "cool:" more ironic. A statue of Lenin, for sale. Suck it, commie bastard.

There is a statue of Lenin in Dallas, Texas in front of Goff's Hamburgers. (mmm, burgers) with a nice neat sign on the pedestal. The sign says 'you lost'.

"Lenin violently overthrew the Russian tsar"

lenin violently overthrew the socialist Provisional Government and dispersed the democratically elected Constitutional Assembly.

Wow. No matter how many times I come across such a thing, it's still baffling to see people with such a complete lack of sense of irony. It's almost scary, really. Can you not grasp the fact that he's doing this for humor purposes? Granted, it's a rather dark sense of humor, but it seems really rather apparent what the intentions are behind all of this.

There was a guy a while back who visited my website who was the same friggin' way. He was totally unable to differentiate between when I was being a smart-ass and when I was actually making an argument. He sent me a point-by-point e-mail about the different things he disagreed with, and it was really rather annoying that he was arguing seriously against things that I presented for humor purposes. "Jack Chick isn't an antisemite! He never said anything like that at all!" It took a great deal of effort for me to not just respond to every point in his e-mail with a "Shut the Fuck Up, you Humorless Dumbfuck, and Never Speak Ever Again." It's surprising that people are unable to grasp these kinds of things.

I have to admit, though... despite how baffling it is when you people respond in this fashion... it IS quite entertaining. Keep it up if you wish, but be prepared to be mocked and laughed at by the members of this species with some semblance of intelligence and a modicrum of humor recognition.

OMG! the statue is for sale! this relic would make a wonderful (historical) eddition to my garden and perhaps I could even convert it into bird bath/feeder. Has anyone a clue on how much it costs and how I could go about purchasing it? I need dimensions too since I live in Australia, the postage could be herendous.

If you really want to get rid of a killers statue, star with all the statues and pictures of Bush. Lenin was a hero, he build a great country which could get in the was of US's evil actions. Now that its gone america can do whatever it wants and will eventually lead to WW3.

Please send me a link with a picture of a statue of President Bush. Even a single one.

Since bush has been a president only for a short time, he didn't have time to put up any YET. But look at this link, there will be one soon. http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/02/01/loc_sculpture01.html

That is a little strange, but you'll note that the statue is being built with private donations, and not by any government entity. You certainly can't object to that.

WEll, one would wonder if this "private" donation is not a bribe. I mean who would want to give money for a statue of a president who hasn't done anything for his country. but that is just my opinion.

Your opinion doesn't make sense. Lots of people give money for all sorts of things; for instance, people gave money to build a presidential library for Clinton. Why? I don't know why every president builds presidential libraries, or why people give them money.

But none of that has anything to do with bribery, which you apparently don't even know the definition of.

Building a library in someonce name is good, but who need a statue? Statues are build for people who have contributed greatly to the sociaty. but what has bush done? killed inocent people, made the economy drop, out the country in horrible dept, and hasn't achieved anything at all. so who would want to donate money for his staue.

Every bloody time I go to Seattle (which is quite frequently)I always forget to check this out.

It hasn't been sold or moved yet or anything has it?

Freemont is the coolest place in the coolest city in the world

GSJ
Calgary, Canada

lol, Lenin died in 1923, you know, only 5 years after the Oktober Revolution (in Novembre, Julian Calender if you ignorant americans wonder why).
You idiots are killing innocent people in Iraq, but those are the good guys, no? killing the enemy is good right? so that just what we did, we killed the enemy, and according to the american way of thinking, we had every right to assure our freedom and independance, I wish your daddies were nutered.

Well, Blank, I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Are you defending the communist revolution, or what? It's not the revolution that anyone has a problem with, it's the communism.

And it's not very nice to wish that people's fathers had been "nutered", whatever that is.

So, Michael, you have something against an economic system where the goods are held by everyone, but not the violent overthrow of the tsar which led to it?

What do you people have against "Communism" anyway? If it's the (overexaggerated propoganda) "mass murders" that bothers you, then that means you have a problem with authoritarianism and totalitarianism, not Communism.

Long live the revolution.

fuck you

If it is okay for Seattle to have a statue of Lenin, then perhaps I could erect a statue of Franco or Mussolini, eh?

Just the fact that the statue is there proves that the "Good and Benevolent Czar Lenin" myth lingers on (there are even a few "useful idiots" who posted here that still believe it). The liberals and leftists who dominate academia, the media and the entertainment industry can be thanked for this. If people knew what kind of butcher Lenin really was the statue wouldn't be tolerated. Lenin and his Bolsheviks founded the 20th century's first modern totalitarian "terror-state," complete with an omnipotent secret police (the Cheka), summary executions, hostage taking, collective punishment, concentration camps, torture chambers and all the rest. His blueprint would be copied again and again by Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and other bloody tyrants.

Here is an interesting quote from a book I recently read on the Russian Revolution:

"Under Lenin's regime - not Stalin's - the Cheka was to become a vast police state. It had its own leviathan infrastructure, from the house committees to the concentration camps, employing more than a quarter of a million people. These were the Bolshevik 'oprichniki', the detested police of Ivan the Terrible... Although no one knew the precise figures, it is possible that more people were murdered by the Cheka than died in the battles of the civil war." - A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes, pg. 649

Never forget the 100 million victims of Communism:

http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/

Maybe the reason that liberals dominate academia is that we are the only one's smart enough to occupy those positions!

Lennin Led a revolution for the people against a government that was supressing them in order to set up a new system of government that would give everyone an equal share. Hey Americans...does this ring a bell???? Communism may not have turned out to be such a successful system, but you know, if democracy didn't work, wouldn't we all be sitting around here drinking tea discussing how terrible and stupid Washington, Jefferson, and Adams were for starting a war leading to the deaths of many people? It's all winner's history. The guy probably was not as ideologically divine as he or other supporters would like to think, but the guy overthrew a horrible regime in favor of an economic policy that gave the downtrodden rights in society and a share in the pie, now how can we hate a man for doing that, especially since he did come to realize the wrong direction in which his intent went near the end of his life.

I love that the statue is there becuase it is a symbol that people still have the power in their hands to overthrow a government that is neglecting them (something our founding fathers believed in strongly as well) and is also a symbol of our American right of freedom of speech. For those who don't like the statue, don't come to Seattle or Fremont, the city will be a better place for it, and trust me, this resident of the city won't miss your absence!

More left-wing propaganda about the "good Lenin" from the "useful idiots" I see. Lets correct some things shall we?

Lenin did not lead a "revolution for the people" against an oppressive government, he and his small group of Marxist fanatics launched a coup d'etat aganst the democratic provisional government which replaced the Tsar after the popular Revolution in February 1917:

"When the Tsar abdicated on 13th March, a Provisional Government, headed by Prince George Lvov, was formed. Kerensky was appointed as Minister of Justice in the new government and immediately introduced a series of reforms including the abolition of capital punishment. He also announced basic civil liberties such as freedom of the press, the abolition of ethnic and religious discrimination and made plans for the introduction of universal suffrage." - "http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSkerensky.htm"

Hardly sounds like a government that suppresses rights does it? Now lets compare that to the Bolshevik regime which overthrew it. To quote from the excellent new book "In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage" by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr:

"The Soviet regime was a tyranny from its origins. It took power in 1917 in an armed coup and dispersed at gunpoint the freely elected Constituent Assembly in 1918 when a majority refused to support Bolshevik rule. The Soviet state not only suppressed democratic liberties; it engaged in mass murder from its very beginnings. But Lenin's "Red Terror" was only a prelude to Stalin's reign, with its use of violence and deliberate starvation to collectivize agriculture and break the peasantry, followed by the ideological show trials and the "Great Terror" of the 1930's."

Let's put the myth of the "good Lenin" to bed once and for all:

"Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov (Lenin): Chairman of the first Soviet government after the violent seizure of power in 1917. Exponent of mass terror, violence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, class struggle and other inhuman concepts. Organizer of the fratricidal Russian civil war and the concentration camps, including camps for children. Incessant in his demands for arrests and capital punishment by bullet or rope. Personally responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian citizens. By every norm of international law, posthumously indictable for crimes against humanity." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 15

"The suppression of the Don Cossack revolt in the spring and summer of 1919 took the form of genocide. One historian has estimated that approximately 70 percent of the Don Cossacks were physically eliminated." - Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present by Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr M. Nekrich, pg 87

"The harvest was ominous: mass terror, concentration camps, hostages, with mothers, wives, and children shot because their sons, husbands and fathers refused to cooperate with the adventurers in power. The number of hostages runs into the thousands. As early as 1918, on orders from the Petrograd Cheka, 500 hostages were shot. Shot the following year, also in Petrograd, were the relatives (including the children) of officers of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Regiment who had gone over to the Whites. In May 1920 the newspapers told of the execution in Elizavetgrad of the elderly mother and four daughters, ages three to seven, of an officer who had refused to serve the proletarian regime. Arkhangelsk, where the Cheka shot children of twelve to sixteen, was known in 1920 as the "city of the dead." Between 1918 and 1922 the Bolsheviks frequently held children hostage in their struggle against peasants attempting to resist the regime's agrarian policy. The fall of 1918 saw the creation of concentration camps whose prisoners at first were largely hostages, including women with infants, taken as relatives of the 'rebels.'" - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 34

"The ingenuity of the Cheka's torture methods was matched only by the Spanish Inquisition. Each local Cheka had its own specialty. In Kharkov they went in for the 'glove trick' - burning the victim's hands in boiling water until the blistered skin could be peeled off: this left the victims with raw and bleeding hands and their torturers with 'human gloves'. The Tsaritsyn Cheka sawed its victims' bones in half. In Voronezh they rolled their naked victims in nail-studded barrels. In Armavir they crushed their skulls by tightening a leather strap with an iron bolt around their head. In Kiev they affixed a cage with rats to the victims torso and heated it so that the enraged rats ate their way through the victim's guts in an effort to escape. In Odessa they chained their victims to planks and pushed them slowly into a furnace or a tank of boiling water. A favourite winter torture was to pour water on the naked victims until they became living ice statues. Many Chekas preferred psychological forms of torture. One had the victims led off to what they thought was their execution, only to find that a blank was fired at them. Another had the victims buried alive, or kept in a coffin with a corpse. Some Chekas forced their victims to watch their loved ones being tortured, raped or killed." - A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes, pg 646

"The place had formerly been a garage, and then the provincial Che-Ka's main slaughter-house. And the whole of it was coated with blood - blood ankle deep, coagulated with the heat of the atmosphere, and horribly mixed with human brains, chips of skull-bone, wisps of hair, and the like. Even the walls were bespattered with blood and similar fragments of brain and scalp, as well as riddled with thousands of bullet holes. In the centre was a drain about a quarter of a meter deep and wide, and about ten meters long. This lead to the sanitary system of the neighboring house, but was choked to the brim with blood. The horrible den contained 127 corpses, but the victims of the previous massacre had been hurriedly buried in the adjacent garden. What struck us most about the corpses was the shattering of their skulls, or the complete flattening out of those skulls, as though the victims had been brained with some such instrument as a heavy block. And there were corpses the heads of which were missing altogether. But in these cases the missing heads cannot possibly have been cut off. They must have been *wrenched* off. In the main, bodies were identifiable only if they still had left on them some such mark as a set of gold-mounted teeth - left, of course, only because the Bolshevists had not had time to extract it. And in every case the corpses were naked. Also, though it had been the Bolshevists' rule to load their victims on to wagons and lorries as soon as massacred, and take them outside the town for burial, we found that a corner of the garden near the grave already described had in it another, older grave, and that this second grave contained eighty bodies which in every instance bore almost unimaginably horrible wounds and mutilations. In this grave we found corpses with, variously, entrails ripped out, no limbs remaining (as though the bodies had literally been chopped up), eyes gouged out, and heads and necks and faces and trunks all studded with stab wounds. Again we found a body which had had a pointed stake driven through its chest, whilst in several cases the tongue was missing. And placed together in one corner of the grave we found a medley of detached arms and legs, as well as, near the garden fence, some corpses that no sign at all of death by violence. It was only a few days later that, on these unmarked bodies being subjected to post-mortem examination, our doctor discovered their mouths and throats and lungs to be choked with earth. Clearly the unfortunate wretches had been buried alive, and drawn the earth into their respiratory organs through their desperate efforts to breathe. And it was persons of all ages and of both sexes - old, and middle-aged, and women and children - that we found in the grave. One woman was lying tied with a rope to her daughter, a child of eight; and both bore shot wounds. Further, a grave in the yard of the building yielded the body of Lieutenant Sorokin (accused of espionage on behalf of the volunteer army) and the cross on which he had been crucified a week before our arrival. Also, we found a chair like a dentist's chair which still had attached to it straps for the binding of its tortured victims. And the whole of the concrete floor around the chair was smeared with blood, and the chair itself studded with clots of blood, and fragments of human skin, and bits of hairy scalp. And the same with the premises of the district Che-Ka, where, similarly, the floor was caked with blood and fragments of bone and brain. There, too, a conspicuous object was the wooden block upon which the victims had had to lay their heads for the purpose of being brained with a crowbar, with, in the floor beside it, a traphole filled to the brim with human brain-matter from the shattering of their skulls." - The Red Terror in Russia (London & Toronto, J.M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1925) by Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, pg 176-177

"The official term 'execution' was often a euphemism for murder, fiendishly refined. For example, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev was mutilated, castrated, and shot, and his corpse was left naked for the public to desecrate. Metropolitan Veniamin of St. Petersburg, in line to succeed the patriarch, was turned into a pillar of ice: he was doused with cold water in the freezing cold. Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk, who had voluntarily accompanied the czar into exile, was strapped alive to the paddlewheel of a steamboat and mangled by the rotating blades. Archbishop Andronnik of Perm, who had been renowned earlier as a missionary and had worked as such in Japan, was buried alive. Archbishop Vasily was crucified and burned." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 156

"The documents bear witness to the most savage atrocities against priests, monks and nuns: they were crucified on the central doors of iconostases, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled with priestly stoles, given Communion with melted lead, drowned in holes in the ice. According to the 'Statistics on the Persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20th Century' assembled by the Orthodox Holy Tikhon Theological Institute, nearly 3,000 members of the clergy were shot in 1918 alone." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 156.

"The retaking of the Crimea by the Bolsheviks, the last confrontation between the Red and White forces, was the occasion of one of the largest massacres in the civil war. At least 50,000 civilians were killed by the Bolsheviks in November and December 1920." - The Black Book of Communism, pg 100

I could go on and on with these horrors...

My apologizes, he did not LEAD the revolution, but he was responsible for organizing the prolitariat and laying much of the foundation so it could happen. And the coup d' etat, note, that was a blodless one in which he took the country out of a war. Certinly, let's blame the guy for taking power WITHOUT using mass murder to stop a war that the Russian people did not want to be fighting in the first place! SOO wrong! Biography of Vladimir Lenin, leader of Communist experiment in USSR. Read about the man who made theory into reality.
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870 - 1924)

Early Life

Born on May 4, 1870 this son of a Russian nobleman was to have a profound effect on the future of Russia and, indeed, the world. His father had been the son of a serf who had risen to post of inspector of schools in Simbirsk. While his mother was the daughter of land owning physician.

In school he proved himself to be very bright though he suffered alienation because of it. However, he excelled in his studies. He also enjoyed reading and writings of Goethe and Turgenev would affect him for the rest of his life.

Two major tragedies occurred which had an acute effect on the young Lenin (then Ulyanov). In 1886 his father died from a cerebral haemorrhage, the following year his brother, Alexander, was hung for plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Lenin renounced religion and the political system. Added to this he was the brother of dead revolutionary and found many doors closed to him. He finally managed to be accepted in a Kazan University where he studied law. This was to be shortlived as he was expelled for attending a peaceful protest some three months later. He was ostracised from the academic world. He studied the law on his own and passed the exam, coming first in a class of 124 in 1891.

Rise to Power

He moved to St. Petersburg in 1893 where he practised law. While there he began developing a Marxist underground movement. He grouped members into six member cells. By this means industrial conditions were investigated, statistics compiled and pamphlets written. It was also through these groups that he met his future wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, who he married in 1898.

He travelled to Switzerland to meet like minded Social Democrats in 1895. While there he talked with Georgi Plekhanov. They argued over the means of bringing about change in Russia. Plekhanov wanted to include the liberal middle class; Lenin favoured the rise of the proletariat. This disagreement led to the eventual split of the Social Democratic party into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

When Lenin returned to Russia he carried with him illegal pamphlets, he wanted to start up a revolutionary paper. On the eve of its publication he and other leaders were arrested. He served fifteen months in prison. After this term he was exiled to Siberia and it was there that he and Krupskaya were married. Having finished their period of exile in 1900 they left for Switzerland where they finally managed to establish their paper, Iskra (Spark). During his years in Switzerland he rose to a position of power in the Social Democratic party. His uncompromising views were a core cause for the split in the party.

The 1905 St. Petersburg Massacre spurred Lenin to advocate violent action. The Massacre itself occurred when Cossacks fired on peaceful protesters led by Father Georgi Gapon. This event led to several uprisings in Russia. Lenin returned to Russia for two years but the promised revolution did not happen as the Tsar made enough concessions to mollify the people. Lenin went abroad again.

1917 was to finally see the revolution in Russia. In fact two revolutions occurred in this year. In March steelworkers in St. Petersburg went on strike. It grew until thousands of people lined the streets. The Tsars power collapsed and the Duma, led by Alexander Kerensky, took power. Lenin made a deal with the Germans; if they could get him safely back to Russia, he would take power and pull Russia out of the war. Kerensky was to fall over this same issue. He refused to take Russia out a war in which they were suffering severe losses and causing brutal hardship at home. Lenin came to power in October after a nearly bloodless coup.

Lenin in Power

At age forty seven Vladimir Ilich Lenin was named president of the Society of Peoples Commissars (Communist Party). The problems of the new government were enormous. The war with Germany was ended immediately (his battle cry had been Bread not War). Though Russia lost the bread basket of the Ukraine to Germany this was soon regained when Germany was ultimately defeated in the war. Land was redistributed, some as collective farms. Factories, mines, banks and utilities were all taken over by the state. The Russian Orthodox Church was disestablished.

There was opposition and this led to a civil war in 1918 between the Mensheviks (Whites) and the Bolsheviks (Reds). Despite being supported by Britain and the U.S.A. the whites were defeated after a bitter struggle.

From 1919 to 1921 famine and typhus ravaged Russia and left over 27 million people dead. To counter these disasters Lenin put into effect the New Economic Plan. This plan embraced some capital ideas (limited private industry) in order to revitalise the flagging economy. However he was never to see the full effect of his measures

Decline and Death

In May 1922 Lenin suffered the first of a series of strokes, less than a year later he suffered a second one. In his two remaining years he tried correct some of the excesses of the regime. He saw that it would be necessary to learn coexistence with capitalist countries and eliminate the inefficiency of his bureaucracy. He also tried to ensure that Trotsky and not Stalin succeeded him. In this endeavour he failed. Stalin was far too clever and astute even for Lenin. 1923 saw him decline further as he had another stroke which left him paralysed and speechless. He never fully recovered and died of a cerebral haemorrhage on January 21, 1924.

Some people are so blinded by their own ideology that they cannot see the truth or accept facts. This is certainly the case with the useful idiots here who still believe in the myth of the "good" and "humane" Lenin, who was the founder of the 20th century's first totalitarian police-state and what would become one of the bloodiest and most barbaric regimes in human history (estimates on the Soviet death toll range from 20-60 million). Even after all the examples I provided in previous posts of horrendous atrocities - torture, rape, mass murder and even genocide - committed by Lenin's Bolsheviks, they still refuse to believe it. This borders on insanity folks, and is akin to the Holocaust deniers and their whitewashing of Hitler.

The Bolshevik coup itself was relatively bloodless, but the aftermath was anything but:

"Between 1825 and 1917, the Czars carried out 6,321 political executions, or roughly one-third the number Lenin’s Communist executioners carried out in the first two months after assuming power. Add up all of Pinochet’s victims in Chile over the two decades of his rule — which have probably generated more western media outrage than all Communist crimes put together — and you might be able to fill a week’s quota of political murders in Russia’s Red Terror." - The Double Standard for Political Crime by Sean McMeekin, http://www.boundless.org/2000/departments/pages/a0000407.html

"In the six years following the revolution of 1917, it is believed that about half a million people were executed. This set the pattern for Stalin's time, when as many as 30 million Soviet citizens may have been put to death by the secret service." - Statue plan stirs Russian row, by Stephen Dalziel (BBC Russian affairs analyst), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2273462.stm

The war crimes of the Bolsheviks were numerous, and not nearly as well publicized as those of the Whites. Just as the Whites massacred large numbers of Jews, the Bolsheviks (apparently under Lenin's orders - see the documents in Richard Pipes The Unknown Lenin) were guilty of the mass extermination of the entire Don Cossack people - killing an estimated 700,000 out of around 1,000,000 of them. (This would prove to be only the first of several near-genocides of ethnic minorities within the Soviet Union). The Red Army showed especial brutality to surrendering Whites and civilians sympathetic to them. (Kolchak's armies and associated civilians suffered particularly awful treatment because the Allies made no effort to evacuate these refugees before departing, as they did with the Whites in the Crimea). In the train of the army followed the Cheka, eager to apply more systematic penalties for opposition to the Soviet state. - http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/museum/his1f.htm

Sounds like mass murder to me! But of course facts mean nothing to some people...

"With the evidence currently available it becomes difficult to deny that Lenin was, not an idealist, but a mass murderer, a man who believed that the best way to solve problems - no matter whether real or imagined - was to kill off the people who caused them. It is he who originated the practice of political and social extermination that in the twentieth century would claim tens of millions of lives... The practice of taking and executing hostages alone would qualify him as a criminal under current international law." - The Unknown Lenin, edited by Richard Pipes, pg 181

"Another comment is in order. There are still some people who credit the myth that these mass repressions were the work only of Stalin and his underlings; in Lenin's time, they claim, it was different. Others maintain that the measures taken in Lenin's day were random or necessitated by specific events. alas, these assertions are not borne out by the facts. The truth is that in his punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 20

Some quotes from the "humane" Lenin (gathered from various sources):

"The dictatorship - and take this into account once and for all - means unrestricted power based on force, not on law."

"It is a great mistake to think that the NEP put an end to terror. We shall return to terror and to economic terror."

"If for the sake of Communism it is necessary for us to destroy 9/10ths of the people, we must not hesitate."

"The point of the uprising is the seizure of power; afterwards we will see what we can do with it."

"One out of ten guilty of parasitism will be shot."

"Merciless war against the kulaks! Death to the kulaks!"

"The more representatives of the reactionary clergy we shoot, the better."

"impose mass terror immediately, shoot and deport hundreds of prostitutes who have been getting soldiers, former officers, and so on drunk. Not a minute's delay."

"Hang (by all means hang, so people will see) no fewer than 100 known kulaks, fat cats, bloodsuckers."

"launch merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests, and White Guards. Suspicious individuals to be locked up in concentration camp outside city."

Read a book. A serious one, not silly propaganda like Yakovlev and Conquest.

Lenin is the most important figure of the last Century. Lenin wasn't a blow-hard hack, he was a brilliant political scientist who taught the world what "class war" meant. A revolutionary's revolutionary. Lenin applied his stringent dialectics to everything. His Cheka was notoriously light-handed, for the most part getting offenders to promise never to do it again and then let go. I know that doesn't jive with your silly propaganda, but it's high time you dealt with real history and not the make-believe pap you use to keep yourself comfrotably isolated from the real world.

Lenin advocated one thing, all day, every day: Power to the people! Not a goverment official, but the people! To the peasants all the land; the factory workers their factories. War against racism, war against poverty, war against all ills imposed on society by the old world. Lenin spearheaded the drive to revitalize the repressed languages and nationalities of dozens of peoples crushed under the Russian empire. He did it not for some half-baked scheme to get votes -- but to enrich the self-determination of everyone. Lenin told them that in order to grasp political power, they must first have a unity of the community and common language and culture. That was the benevolant brilliance of Lenin, the greatest leader in the last hundred years.

Communist: Oh brother.

Oh brother is right!

Can you prove that Yakovlev and Conquest are propagandists (did I even mention Conquest)? Can you prove anything I posted as not being factual? Can you prove that the cheka didn't summarily execute tens of thousands of people based on their class origins? The answer, of course, would be a resounding NO!

And "Communist" (LOLOL), I've read plenty of books on the bloodsoaked USSR and its murderous founder. Here are some more (not that it matters to the "useful idiots" Lenin so rightly described):

“A Revolution without firing squads,” Lenin is meant to have said, “is meaningless.” He spent his entire career praising the Terror of the French Revolution because his Bolshevism was a unique creed, “a social system based on blood-letting.” The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough.” – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, pg 85

“Stalin was the mastermind but he was not alone. Indeed, it is neither accurate nor helpful to blame the Terror on one man because systematic murder started soon after Lenin took power in 1917 and never stopped until Stalin’s death.” – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore, pg 230

“And so vast numbers of men and women were shot out of hand: 200 in this jail, 450 in that prison yard, 320 in the woods outside of town. Even in small outlying areas, such as in the small Siberian town of Ossa Ochansk in 1919, 3,000 men were massacred. And this went on and on. As late as 1922, 8,100 priests, monks, and nuns were executed. This alone is equivalent to one modern, jumbo passenger jet crashing, with no survivors, each day for 32 days.” - Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R.J. Rummel, pg 37

“The number killed throughout Soviet territory by the Red Terror, the execution of prisoners, and revenge against former Whites or their supporters possibly involved the murder of between 250,000 and 3,650,000 people; most probably about 500,000, including at least 200,000 people officially executed. Among all the conflicting figures, 500,000 seems the most prudent estimate. Yet, as large as it is, it may by overly conservative (and this is what makes it prudent).” – Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R.J. Rummel, pg 39

“In practice, as acknowledged by Reingold, the president of the Revolutionary Committee of the Don, who was entrusted with imposing Bolshevik rule in the Cossack territories, “what was carried out instead against the Cossacks was an indiscriminate policy of massive extermination.” From mid-February to mid-March 1919, Bolshevik detachments executed more than 8,000 Cossacks. In each “Stanista” (Cossack village) revolutionary courts passed summary judgments in a matter of minutes, and whole lists of suspects were condemned to death, generally for “counterrevolutionary behavior.” In the face of such relentless destruction, the Cossacks had no choice but to revolt.” – The Black Book of Communism, pg 99

“The policy of "de-Cossackization" begun in 1920 corresponds largely to our definition of genocide: a population group firmly established in a particular territory, the Cossacks as such were exterminated, the men shot, the women, children and the elderly deported, and the villages razed or handed over to new, non-Cossack occupants. Lenin compared the Cossacks to the Vendée during the French Revolution and gladly subjected them to a program of what Gracchus Babeuf, the "inventor" of modern Communism, characterized in 1795 as "populicide." – The Black Book of Communism, pg 8-9

"The Cheka or 'Extraordinary Commission' of revolutionary police (forerunner of the OGPU, NKVD, and KGB) was organized by the Polish nobleman Felix Dzierzynski (1877-1926) with a ferocity that made Robespierre look faint-hearted. It struck down all ‘class enemies’, real or imagined, from the ex-Tsar and his family, murdered on Lenin’s orders at Ekaterinburg in July 1918, to unnumbered multitudes of nameless victims." – Europe: A History by Norman Davies, pg 929 and 931

“Lenin himself was the patron saint of the Cheka. Established in December of 1917, it was soon accorded extra-judicial status at Lenin’s behest. The omnipotent Cheka had the power to arrest, investigate, pass sentences and carry them out. Tens of thousands of people were shot without trial in the cellars of the Cheka. As if this was not enough, on 14 May 1921 the Politburo, chaired by Lenin, passed a motion ‘broadening the rights of the [Cheka] in relation to the use of the [death penalty]’. – Lenin: A New Biography by Dmitri Volkogonov, pg 238

“Almost as soon as it was created, the Cheka was given an extraordinary task to carry out. On September 5, 1918, Dzerzhinsky was directed to implement Lenin’s policy of Red Terror. Launched in the wake of an assassination attempt on Lenin’s life, this wave of terror – arrests, imprisonments, murders – more organized than the random terror of previous months, was in fact an important component of the civil war, directed against those suspected of working to destroy the Revolution on the “home front.” It was bloody, it was merciless, and it was cruel - as its perpetrators wanted it to be. Krasnaya Gazeta, the organ of the Red Army, described it: “Without mercy, without sparing, we will kill our enemies in scores of hundreds. Let them be thousands, let them drown themselves in their own blood. For the blood of Lenin…let there be floods of blood of the bourgeoisie – more blood, as much as possible…” – Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum, pg 9

“They learned too that the revolutionary Lenin, only yesterday their ally, was suppressing these revolts with a cruelty of which the dethroned tsar would never have dreamed. Lenin ordered: “The revolt of five cantons must be mercilessly suppressed. An example must be made by (1) hanging – execution must be hanging, so that the people can see it – at least 100 known kulaks, (2) publishing their names, (3) confiscating all their grain, (4) naming hostages – and doing all this in such a way that people for hundreds of versts can see it and tremble.” Molotov complacently recalled in old age how “Lenin gave orders to suppress the Tambov rising by setting fire to everything.” – Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky, pg 173

And I found these articles interesting:

Not long after the Bolsheviks had seized power in 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin filled out a bureaucratic questionnaire. For occupation, he wrote "man of letters." So it was that a son of the Russian intelligentsia, a radical straight from the pages of Dostoyevsky's novel The Possessed, became the author of mass terror and the first concentration camps ever built on the European Continent.

Lenin was the initiator of the central drama — the tragedy — of our era, the rise of totalitarian states. A bookish man with a scholar's habits and a general's tactical instincts, Lenin introduced to the 20th century the practice of taking an all-embracing ideology and imposing it on an entire society rapidly and mercilessly; he created a regime that erased politics, erased historical memory, erased opposition. In his short career in power, from 1917 until his death in 1924, Lenin created a model not merely for his successor, Stalin, but for Mao, for Hitler, for Pol Pot. - TIME 100: V.I. Lenin, http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/lenin.html

From this point the Cheka initiated a period of mass executions of people not based only on their specific actions, such as sabotage, but also for their beliefs and class origins. In reprisal for the assassination of the German ambassador, the Cheka executed 350 Social Revolutionaries and 512 hostages were shot by the Secret Police after the assassination attempt on Lenin. It has been estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 people were executed by the Cheka during the Red Terror.

In addition to mass executions, the Cheka also initiated the infamous slave labor camps to imprison not only those considered undesirable but also people who happened to have the wrong class origins, most particularly the bourgeoisie. By the end of 1920 Soviet Russia had 84 of these concentration camps with about 50,000 prisoners. This prison system grew rapidly immediately following the Russian Civil War so that by 1923 the number grew to a total of 315 camps.

Perhaps the greatest crime committed by the Cheka during the Red Terror was its campaign of executions and starvation against the peasantry. Lenin demanded strict adherence to the law that required the peasantry to sell all their excess grain to the state at fixed prices. Because of runaway inflation these payments were worth virtually nothing so most of the peasants opted not to sell any of their grain to the state. Lenin retaliated by sending Cheka teams to carry out executions against speculators who purchased grain from the peasants and then sold it on the black market. Since this succeeded only in driving up grain prices, the Cheka was ordered to seize the grain directly from the peasants. Whether wealthy or not, all peasants were branded as rich kulaks and the full fury of the Cheka was unleashed on them in what came to be known as the Bread War. Not only were individual peasants executed but entire families and whole villages as well. - Origins of the Cheka, http://iaia.essortment.com/cheka_rvph.htm

Satisfied yet, or are you so blinded by ideology that facts just don't get through??? Facts can be stubborn things, ya know...

Here is an excellent article on Lenin's statue by Russian emigre Jamie Glazov, who is managing editor for Frontpage Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies:

Lenin's Statue: Adding Insult to Injury

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 20, 2000

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3173

Here is an excerpt:

"So why is it that Russian émigrés, and all victims of communism from around the world, have to be so profoundly insulted by the raising of a statue of Lenin, while Jewish people never have to worry about this society raising a sculpture of Hitler or of a swastika? Well, because the Left has completely achieved its control of Western social discourse. Mass murder and genocide is inexcusable in our society in the context of racial hatred, but it remains understandable, and even laudable, especially in academic circles, in the name of class hatred. Thus, it doesn't really matter that Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was about a reality that had just as much to do with Lenin as it did with Stalin. In the "progressive" mindset, Lenin must be forgiven because of his ideals.

But though the Left cannot stomach the idea of it, the truth and empirical reality remains undeniable: that it was the idea of socialism that created Lenin, and it was Lenin that paved the road to Stalinism. As the opening of the Soviet archives has confirmed, Lenin's favorite order was the one given to execute. His infamous opinion has now been engraved in the historical record: that the greatest mistake of the French Revolution, which Lenin stressed must not be repeated by his Bolsheviks, was that not enough people had been killed. That is why Lenin initiated ruthless terror on a wide and far-reaching scale, to be perfected by his successor, who ended up annihilating more than 30 million lives for the sake of class equality. The late Dmitri Volkogonov did an impressive job in demonstrating this tragic truth in his biography Lenin: A New Biography, where he confirmed, in his meticulous utilization of Soviet documents, that Stalinism's roots resided in Vladimir Lenin.

Today, Lenin's statue continues to stand prominently at its infamous intersection in Fremont. It is also for sale for $150,000. The buyer will most likely be allowed to raise it in full view once again – on public property. After all, we are told that it reflects artistic merit. But reality tells us something different: that artistic impressions of mass murders can never be apolitical, not in the case of racial hatred, nor in the case of class hatred. Genocide is what it means in the dictionary, and Lenin represents it remarkably well. Enjoying the aesthetic quality of Lenin's images, therefore, is a luxury that communism's victims can ill afford."

I want to have a lenin statue (2-3.5 meters). Does someone has an idea where I get one?
Please send an email if you have a link!

For me the Statue of Lenin is symbolic of Russia. I do not think I am communist. If you know any other symbol of Russia - tell me.

Vodka, wooden dolls, balalaikas you guys buy from pitchmen in Russia - are absolutely outdated. Those are symbolic of archaic Russia... not my Russia. I grew up in time when statues of Lenin were everywhere, in every Russian city.
When Soviet Union came to an end they dismounted the statues of Lenin. People always look for symbols - and russians switched over to other symbol - vodka - now we're dying from alcoholism.

I admit Lenin was a dictator. Some people say he killed 100 millions (was that for real? 100M- is today's Russia population). People may charge whatever crime up to Lenin, for all I care, even the Star Wars, but not to statue!

My point - hands off the statue.
Hands off the symbol of Russian epoch.

"Respected historians agree Lenin laid the ideological groundwork for 50 million to 100 million murders in the name of 20th-century Communism."

OTHER respected historians say only 4 million died from Stalin's repressions with a few more million dying from famine.
http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf

Does this make it right? No, Stalin was a criminal.

Does this make Lenin responsible for Stalin's crimes? No.

Is Leninism an ideological framework for mass death?

No more than capitalism.

Add up the total number of people in history who died from repression under capitalism (and fascism is a kind of capitalism).

Cuba executes less people per capita per year than America!! They are even considering a moratorium.

Rako: "Add up the total number of people in history who died from repression under capitalism (and fascism is a kind of capitalism)."

Saying that fascism is a kind of capitalism is profoundly ignorant. If anything, communism and fascism are ideological cousins... capitalism is economic democracy.