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date: 21 January 2025

Lenin 1870–1924
Russian revolutionary 

  1. Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
    Imperialism as the Last Stage of Capitalism (1916) ch. 7 ‘Briefest possible definition of imperialism’
  2. One step forward two steps back.
    title of book (1904)
  3. No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.
    State and Revolution (1919)
  4. While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
    State and Revolution (1919) ch. 5
  5. Either the lice will defeat socialism or socialism will defeat the lice.
    on the cause of extensive typhus epidemics, also found in the form ‘Either socialism will defeat the louse or the louse will defeat socialism’
    addressing the seventh congress of Soviets, 1919; Collected Works vol. 30
  6. Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.
    Report to 8th Congress, 1920
  7. Who? Whom?
    definition of political science, meaning ‘Who will outstrip whom?’
    in Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii vol. 44 (1970) 17 October 1921 and elsewhere
  8. A good man fallen among Fabians.
    of George Bernard Shaw
    Arthur Ransome Six Weeks in Russia in 1919 (1919) ‘Notes of Conversations with Lenin’
  9. Liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.
    Sidney and Beatrice Webb Soviet Communism (1936)
  10. The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.
    attributed to Lenin, but not found in his published works in this form; I. U. Annenkov, in ‘Remembrances of Lenin’ includes a manuscript note attributed to Lenin: ‘They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide’, in Novyi Zhurnal/New Review September 1961