How many Bolsheviks does it take to change a light bulb?  After five years of collectivization and mass starvation in the Ukraine, the Soviet Union has managed to change one light bulb in the Kremlin. 

It’s funny how people are so found of Lenin.  I didn’t know a man who responsible for state terror, gulags, and political and religious repression is highly regarded.  

Gif replies do not make a counter argument.

Let me guess who think Obama is a monster but somehow Lenin, a man responsible for millions of deaths under his rule, is somehow more moral?

There really isn’t a much of a difference between left-wing and right-wing totalitarianism.  You keep thinking Lenin was a man of freedom and was really devoted to the “withering away of the State.”  However, you are really no different than Obama and Bush apologits no matter how hard you try to pretend not to be.

Keep in my mind this is a blog that actually links to academic journals and histories rather than linking to blogs (that source themselves) as resources.

Lenin’s references to struggle aren’t really that different from Hitler’s use of the term. It’s a type of push for cultural and political through violence and war.  Lenin used class struggle even though his circle consisted mainly of the middle class intellectuals and acts of terrorism carried out by the Bolsheviks affected the “exploited class” negatively.  Hitler used race and nationalism in his references to the spiritual and national struggle of Germany.

Lenin’s regime brought purges, killings, and economic policies that only worsened the conditions in Russia.  His policies destroyed the rights of the individual—the destruction of the Orthodox Church being one example.  Hitler attempted to break the power of the Catholic and Protestant Churches but was largely unsuccessful.

Totalitarians think the same things across time and space. 

I am not sure why Lenin, whose actions and policies were as tyrannical as the regime who proceeded it, is so often quoted by “freedom loving leftists.”  

Is this who we are to align ourselves with? The admirers of despots?

How many rich people do you think will have to robbed and killed so that revolutionary left, for whom Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara are heroes, can be equal, so that workers may have the full value of their labor?

Milton Friedman - Socialism is Force (by LibertyPen)

The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends. The sensational events which stir the emotions and catch the interest of superficial observers are merely the consummation of ideological changes. There are no such things as abrupt sweeping transformations of human affairs. What is called, in rather misleading terms, a “turning point in history” is the coming on the scene of forces which were already for a long time at work behind the scene. New ideologies, which had already long since superseded the old ones, throw off their last veil and even the dullest people become aware of the changes which they did not notice before.

In this sense Lenin’s seizure of power in October 1917 was certainly a turning point. But its meaning was very different from that which the communists attribute to it.

The Soviet victory played only a minor role in the evolution toward socialism. The prosocialist policies of the industrial countries of Central and Western Europe were of much greater consequence in this regard. Bismarck’s social security scheme was a more momentous pioneering on the way toward socialism than was the expropriation of the backward Russian manufactures. The Prussian National Railways had provided the only instance of a government-operated business which, for some time at least, had avoided manifest financial failure. The British had already before 1914 adopted essential parts of the German social security system. In all industrial countries, the governments were committed to interventionist policies which were bound to result ultimately in socialism. During the war most of them embarked on what was called war socialism. The German Hindenburg Program which, of course, could not be executed completely on account of Germany’s defeat, was no less radical but much better designed than the much-talked-about Russian Five-Year Plans.

For the socialists in the predominantly industrial countries of the West, the Russian methods could not be of any use. For these countries, production of manufactures for export was indispensable. They could not adopt the Russian system of economic autarky. Russia had never exported manufactures in quantities worth mentioning. Under the Soviet system it withdrew almost entirely from the world market of cereals and raw materials. Even fanatical socialists could not help admitting that the West could not learn anything from Russia. It is obvious that the technological achievements in which the Bolshevist gloried were merely clumsy imitations of things accomplished in the West. Lenin defined communism as, “the Soviet power plus electrification.” Now, electrification was certainly not of Russian origin, and the Western nations surpass Russia in the field of electrification no less than in every other branch of industry.

The real significance of the Lenin revolution is to be seen in the fact that it was the bursting forth of the principle of unrestricted violence and oppression. It was the negation of all the political ideals that had for 3,000 years guided the evolution of Western civilization.