:de: Controversial Lenin statue unveiled in Germany's Gelsenkirchen

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All this rowing about Lenin reminds me of arguments between tankies and trots when I was at Uni.
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I was a Trotskyist in my student days. I was up nice and early every weekend at 11am to go and flog the paper in town. Not anymore though, thankfully.
 
Regular_Atheist said:
go and flog the paper in town.
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My mother would do the embarrassing thing of cornering Socialist Worker sellers to inform them that she’d been at Uni with some of the people who’d set up the Party and what an awful bunch they’d been. 🙃
 
Regular_Atheist said:
Lenin was good.
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I would suggest reading up on what Lenin actually did as opposed to fitting him in to your ideology. Start with the Black Book of Communism if you want a basic introduction. Move on to The Unknown Lenin, part of the Annals of Communism series.
 
I am very familiar with Lenin, both what he did and what he wrote. I don’t think you should get your information on Lenin from a CIA asset like Richard Pipes.
 
Considering the Annals of Communism is a peer reviewed source of original documents, I’ll stick with them.

What do you think of Lenin’s ordering the execution of thousands? The ethnic cleansing of the Cossacks? Kronstadt? The murder of priests? Oppression of the anarchists and right socialists and peasants etc etc etc.? Or are all those justified for your imagined revolution?
 
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And there are many of her compatriots who would disagree with her (especially those who suffered under the purges). Regardless, I don’t think whether she likes him or not really matters anyways. A person’s goodness is measured by their actions.

Clearly, his actions do not qualify as good or am I missing something here??

I would assume that she is a practicing Orthodox, what does she think of how the Church was treated under Lenin and other communist dictators of Russia?
 
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Actually, yes, it does matter very much because such a history does not bear repeating itself nor the people who supported the violence that made it happen.

I’m sure there are Germans (and non-Germans) who like Hitler but that doesn’t mean I can’t OBJECTIVELY claim he was bad.
 
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Mine is driven more by what he did than anything else. I have books on and admire certain Marxists like Gramsci, Pasolini, Paul Sweezy, E. P. Thompson, Alexander Cockburn, Harry Braverman, etc.
 
I’m more inclined to such views as those of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Nestor Makhno.
 
If you’ve never seen the movie Reds I recommend it. The scenes with Goldman debating the revolution with Reed, and Reed’s breakdown on the train are worth it alone.
 
Says the person denouncing other historical figures for their real and perceived evils, but can’t fess up to Lenin’s even more violent past.

Maybe I should get a pick and destroy some statues too.
 
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josie_L said:
Anyone who claims Lenin is good is just as bad as anyone claiming Hitler is good.
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Arguably worse. By the deliberate manipulation of famine he became the biggest mass murderer of the century, Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot included.
 
Some would call the policies he/state implemented in the name of communism on the hapless peasants/kulaks a form of class genocide.
 
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I just am astounded more don’t mention the ethnic cleansing of the Cossacks.
 
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You’re not suggesting that the British were prone to cynical manipulation of famines where millions died, surely? 😵
 
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Stalin might have been the first to say:
“If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.”
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But he wasn’t being original with the idea.
 
On what basis was the 1921 famine deliberate or manipulated? It was the result of the “long war” in Russia, that had essentially been going since 1914. The Bolsheviks were operating a siege economy. The famine was never kept a secret like the Ukrainian famine during collectivisation. Outside help was accepted - the charity Save the Children essentially emerged as a permanent organisation from a campaign to alleviate the effects of the Russian famine.
 
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