was lenin a bad man

[harmonicpursuit]

I think he meant well. I think that he really thought that he was guiding people toward a worker's paradise. Perhaps he was wrong; perhaps his and perestroika are unfinished revolutions. I really don't see that humanity has the right to judge humanity in such black-and-white terms. We're all flawed. Most of the people I know have what I consider good intentions, but they tend to simplify. I think Lenin oversimplified. That doesn't make him bad; it makes him human.

[Kalevipoeg]

So neo-nazis can come to this forum to praise Hitler as you can't say he was a bad man, he also just had some faults? Well that just seems weird and twisted, only said by romantics who see Lenin as a man from propaganda posters where he looks more Arian-like than a German on a Wehrmacht poster. Hitler also wanted good in his own way, you are practically saying it here.

Lenin was a "Bad man" because in the end he couldn't form anything better than the "opressive tzarist regime". More people were probably killed during 1917-1922 than during all of the punishments of the tzarist regime and those sacrifices of grandure gave Russians nothing. The economy was weak, the workers weren't better off, there wasn't a hint of socialism, free health care, wow, killing millions of your own people doesn't quite make up for that single thing. Lenin just created a country that annihilated Russian culture at its intellectual level and from which Hitler derived many of his own policies and basis of creating the Third Reich.
That doesn't seem anything to be broud of, a country that killed Bulgakov is worth litlle.

[AnarchistPatriot]

I think he was. He did not kill as many people as Stalin, that is true. But he murdered the imperial family (I don't like the Czars... except maybe Alexander II, but was it really necessary to kill the children?), he built the first gulags, he outlawed all other political parties and put the machinery in place for Joe Stalin to start his killing frenzy.

Lots of people say that if Trotsky would have gotten in power following Lenin's death than things would have been better but I think it would have only been slightly better. Remember that Leon Trotsky was Lenin's attack dog. When Lenin wanted to attack the Sailors at Kronstadt he had Trotsky do the dirty work. The reason that Stalin was allowed to gain power was because the Boshiviks feared him more than Stalin and figured an unsophisticated bumpkin like Joe could not do as much bad as Trotsky.

But getting back to Lenin, he was very very bad.

[generalzo]

Originally Posted by AnarchistPatriot

Remember that Leon Trotsky was Lenin's attack dog.

I would not agree. Trotsky was very energetic and itelligent man. He was probably greater revolutionary than Lenin himself - remember their role in the revolution of 1905. But, in the decisive moment (1917), Lenin was that who had a party under his control, and because of that fact, Lenin was the first and Trotsky the second man of teh new regime. Trotsky was not a member of the Bolshevik party till the summer of 1917, and that was the main reason why he lost the battle for the trone after the Lenin's death.

[harmonicpursuit]

Perhaps Lenin's main flaw was his certainty.

[AnarchistPatriot]

Originally Posted by generalzo

I would not agree. Trotsky was very energetic and itelligent man. He was probably greater revolutionary than Lenin himself - remember their role in the revolution of 1905. But, in the decisive moment (1917), Lenin was that who had a party under his control, and because of that fact, Lenin was the first and Trotsky the second man of teh new regime. Trotsky was not a member of the Bolshevik party till the summer of 1917, and that was the main reason why he lost the battle for the trone after the Lenin's death.

All the same his methods were less than honorable. He got Czarist officers to join the red army by threatening to kill their families. Ruthlessly destroyed the sailors rebellion at Kronstadt. The sailors wanted to see the Soviet government truely live up to its promise as a worker's democracy and Trotsky and his thugs defeated them. Many sailors were murdered afterwards.

People tend to feel sympathy for Trotsky because he lost in the power struggle with Stalin and was eventually murdered by one of Stalin's goons. But it does not mean everything he did was well and good.

[generalzo]

True. I just wanted to say that Trotsky should not be regarded as a simple Lenin's assistant (or "Lenin's attack dog"). But, also, there's no reason to overestimate noone's role in the Bolshevik movement after 1917 (including Lenin himself). So, speaking of the Red Terror, I would rather say their methods (Bolshevik methods, that is - Lenin's, Trotsky's, Zinoviev's, Stalin's... methods) instead of his (Trotsky's) methods.