Thread: Lenin: Good or bad?

Originally Posted by Molodets

Almost everything I've read about Lenin has been bad,

Have you heard the saying that "The victor writes the history"?
What people are taught in school and from media as history then forms what they think of as "facts".
But there are two sides to every story. Some things about him were good and some were bad.

In your case, assuming that you are American, then you come from a country that hates everything that Lenin stood for. Consider that you might have been the victim of propaganda... Some of the things that you have heard about Lenin are false or exaggerated.

Like people here have already said, there are usually two sides to a story.

The Russian state before 1917 (year of the revolution led by Lenin) was hugely unfair, corrupt and inefficient. 90% lived terrible lives, with no freedom and insufficient food, housing and clothing. Lenin wanted to change this because he believed in equality and freedom. Why should some of his countrymen starve when others lived in ridiculous oppulence?

The revolution that Lenin took part in led to the deaths of lots of people who might otherwise not have died. It meant that some people lost property that they valued or even needed. Some people starved to death in the first years after the revolution. It brought about lots of chaos. Socialism was forced on some people that did not want it - including religious people and people from ethnic minorities that were not interested in being part of a socialist state. Some people were unfairly exiled or executed in the tumult

All of this sounds very unpleasant and are reasons for many to hate Lenin.

Lenin, as I understand it, was a political genius in that he could translate the abstract writings of Marx into practical ideas that could be used in a country as Russia. Many of the things he said are relevant for todays society.

In the 1930s the change in Russia and the USSR was astonishing - foreigners who visited were blown away. The Russians had gone from a people of mostly opressed illiterate and starving peasants to a modern and forward thinking superpower.
Things were getting better. They took a horrible beating in the war, but without the USSR, Germany would have won....
The old Russia probably would not have been able to fight like the USSR did. Things got better and better up until about the 1970s. I think. None of this would have happened without Lenin.

One might think of "The maximum amount of benefit to the largest possible group of people" as an indicator of whether something is bad or good. Would Russia have been better off if Lenin had never been born?
Not sure!


I ran "lenin hero" in Youtube and got this:

An old British documentary that is a bit more objective than the Soviet meterial but still seems to have a high view of Lenin:

Originally Posted by Hanna

In your case, assuming that you are American,

Whether I'm American or Canadian or British is irrelevant, unless I asked something like 'Why isn't Putin awesome like Obama?' (Which I didn't ask). BTW, not all Americans are how you've depicted them here.