Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed a subset of Marxism called Leninism.
Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother’s 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empire’s Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye in Siberia for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya.
After his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent theorist in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1903, he took a key role in the RSDLP ideological split, leading the Bolshevik faction against Julius Martov’s Mensheviks. Following Russia’s failed Revolution of 1905, he campaigned for the First World War to be transformed into a Europe-wide proletarian revolution, which, as a Marxist, he believed would cause the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.
After the 1917 February Revolution ousted the Tsar and established a Provisional Government, he returned to Russia to play a leading role in the October Revolution in which the Bolsheviks overthrew the new regime. Lenin’s Bolshevik government initially shared power with the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, elected soviets, and a multi-party Constituent Assembly, although by 1918 it had centralised power in the new Communist Party.
Lenin’s administration redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry. It withdrew from the First World War by signing a treaty conceding territory to the Central Powers, and promoted world revolution through the Communist International. Opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign administered by the state security services; tens of thousands were killed or interned in concentration camps.
His administration defeated right and left-wing anti-Bolshevik armies in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922 and oversaw the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921. Responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin encouraged economic growth through the New Economic Policy. Several non-Russian nations had secured independence from the Russian Empire after 1917, but three were re-united into the new Soviet Union in 1922.
His health failing, Lenin died in Gorki, with Joseph Stalin succeeding him as the pre-eminent figure in the Soviet government. Widely considered one of the most significant and influential figures of the 20th century, Lenin was the posthumous subject of a pervasive personality cult within the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
He became an ideological figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and a prominent influence over the international communist movement. A controversial and highly divisive historical figure, Lenin is viewed by his supporters as a champion of socialism and the working class. Meanwhile Lenin’s critics accuse him of establishing a totalitarian dictatorship which oversaw mass killings and political repression.
Some of the best quotes from Vladimir Lenin are listed below.
- “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing that is possible. Revolution is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannons, i.e. extremely authoritarian means.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “As an ultimate objective, ‘peace’ simply means communist world control.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of communism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat… Furthermore, famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier… Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of ‘advanced’ countries. And this ‘booty’ is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are drawing the whole world into their war over the division of their booty.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Crime is a product of social excess.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Democracy is indispensable to socialism.” – 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
- “Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Every society is three meals away from chaos.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Exchange, fair or unfair, always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Germany will militarize herself out of existence, England will expand herself out of existence, and America will spend herself out of existence.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Give me your four-year-olds, and in a generation, I will build a socialist state.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “He who does not work shall not eat.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “He who now talks about the ‘freedom of the press’ goes backward and halts our headlong course towards socialism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “How can you make a revolution without executions?” – Vladimir Lenin
- “I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution.” – 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
- “In the history of modern socialism, this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is impossible to predict the time and progress of the revolution. It is governed by their own more or less mysterious laws.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of the revolution’ than to write about it.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is necessary – secretly and urgently to prepare the terror.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is necessary sometimes to take one step backward to take two steps forward.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Learning is never done without errors and defeat.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher than the interests of the right of nations to self-determination.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Of all the arts, for us, the cinema is the most important.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “One must always strive to be as radical as reality itself.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers and the disarming of the bourgeoisie (the middle class).” – Vladimir Lenin
- “One of the chief symptoms of every revolution is the sharp and sudden increase in the number of ordinary people who take an active, independent and forceful interest in politics.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Socialism means keeping account of everything. You will have socialism if you take stock of every piece of iron and cloth.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Sometimes – history needs a push.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other but also to merge them.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The bourgeoisie are today evading taxation by bribery and through their connections; we must close all loopholes.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The goal of socialism is communism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “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
- “The more democratic the system of government is, the clearer it will be to the workers that the root of the evil is not the lack of rights, but capitalism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The only one who doesn’t make mistakes is the one who doesn’t do anything.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The revolution does not need historians.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “There can be nothing more abominable than religion.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important – if not the most important – phenomena of modern capitalist economy.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Those who are opposed to armed uprising… must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors, and cowards.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Three keys to success: read, read, read.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Thus, the 21st century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still ‘reigns’ and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Trust is good, but control is better.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Truth is the most precious thing. That’s why we should ration it.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “War cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and Socialism is created.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We are not shooting enough professors.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We are witnessing a highly instructive and highly comical spectacle. The bourgeois liberal prostitutes are trying to drape themselves in the toga of revolution.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters – then we are for it!” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not ‘in the name of capitalism,’ but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labor. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “When a liberal is abused, he says, ‘Thank God they didn’t beat me’. When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “When it comes to hang the capitalists they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?” – Vladimir Lenin
- “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “You must have your heart on fire and your brain on ice.” – Vladimir Lenin
- “You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” – Vladimir Lenin
