Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile
I would even agree that Stalin meant well. And also that Hitler meant well. I think there's a certain distance between what a person mean and what he's doing. Also, Lenin's understanding of "helping the poor" has always been based on the expropriation idea, remember? Meaning, he planned to be good for some and evil for the others.
Yes, it's true. Russian revolutionaries admired the French ones -- Marat, Robespierre -- and those people were quite willing to spill the blood of the "wrong" people.

"To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is barbarity." (Robespierre)
"Robespierre saw no room for mercy in his Terror, stating that "slowness of judgments is equal to impunity" and "uncertainty of punishment encourages all the guilty"."

I am also reminded of a quote from one my fave BBC series "North and South" from a Union leader (the time is the 1850s and there's a strike in all the mills in the town):
"Being in the union, it is like being in a war. And with the war come some crimes. But it would be a bigger crime to do nothing."