Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924,) born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, was one of the most important revolutionary thinkers of the twentieth century. He masterminded the 1917 October Revolution, and, after the overthrow of the tsar, became the architect and the first premier of the Soviet Union.
Born in Simbirsk, western Russia, Lenin lived in Switzerland from 1900. He returned to Russia in 1917 and led the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution. After three years of civil war, the Bolsheviks triumphed and took total control of the country. During this period of revolution, war, and famine, Lenin exhibited a frightening indifference for the sufferings of his compatriots and ruthlessly crushed all political opposition.
As the Soviet leader from 1918 until 1924, Lenin became the first political leader to put Marxist principles into practice. This change resulted in the rise of Communism in the former Russian Empire and elsewhere. Lenin’s creation of Soviet Russia’s militant socialist establishment endangered other political and social systems. Leninism, which was characterized by the influence of political principles over unstructured economic and social forces, laid the foundation for Stalin’s rule and influenced many other militant party-led regimes controlled by a single leader.
Lenin was a prolific writer; his collected works on his sociopolitical and economic theories amounted to fifty-five volumes. His most notable works include What Is To Be Done (1902,) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) and State and Revolution (1917.) During the last years of his life, he denounced the bureaucratization of the Soviet regime but was unable to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of his eventual successor, Joseph Stalin.
Lenin was venerated as a national icon and the architect of the Soviet Union until the fall of Communism in 1990. In 1991, Leningrad, Russia’s second-largest city that had been named in his honor, changed its name back to St. Petersburg. Many of the world’s formerly communist states have since discarded Marxist-Leninism in favor of free-market capitalism.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Vladimir Lenin
Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Literature, Books
The most important thing in illness is never to lose heart.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Cancer, Health
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Children
A lie told often enough becomes truth.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Truth
Communists have become bureaucrats. If anything will destroy us, it is this.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Communism
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Class
If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Communism, Socialism
Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Intelligence, Intellectuals
Our power does not know liberty or justice. It is established on the destruction of the individual will.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Communism
Any cook should be able to run the country.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Government
They capitalists will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.
—Vladimir Lenin
To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities—that is not to be taken seriously in politics.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Politicians, Politics
While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State.
—Vladimir Lenin
It is true that liberty is precious. So precious that it must be rationed.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Freedom
It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Revolution
All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. I am just like everybody else.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Heroism, Heroes, Heroes/Heroism
When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward—or go back. He who now talks about the “freedom of the press” goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism.
—Vladimir Lenin
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
—Vladimir Lenin
A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Revolution
Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.
—Vladimir Lenin
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Despair
Crime is a product of social excess
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: One liners, Crime
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Freedom
Fascism is capitalism in decay.
—Vladimir Lenin
I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practicing moral self-purification; I don’t eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Progress, Self-improvement
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Communism, Socialism
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Capitalism
Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Socialism, Communism
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.
—Vladimir Lenin
You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.
—Vladimir Lenin
Topics: Housework
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