During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the โconsolationโ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.
Vladimir LeninLenin, the greatest man of action in our century and at the same time the most selfless.
Vladimir LeninAn end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.
Vladimir LeninWe must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles.
Vladimir LeninComrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ...Find tougher people.
Vladimir Lenin