this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Low estimates are nine million dead and the high estimates are that he killed thirty million of his citizens.
Western propaganda! TO THE GULAGS WITH YOU.
Oh never mind Stalin was nine to thirty million dead Lenin was only four to fourteen million.
I keep confusing these mass murdering communist heads of state.
Oh, I thought you were talking about Zedong... D:
His number is forty to seventy million dead.
High score so far.
did someone mention Deng Xiaoping?
But Lenin has a fancy sarcophagus so he gets a free pass.
It's ironic that you say "sarcophagus" because the only reason Lenin was mummified was that King Tut's tomb had been discovered just before his death. Pravda had covered the discovery extensively and the Bolsheviks decided to capitalize on Tut's popularity by preserving Lenin's corpse -- in hilariously amateurish fashion, since mummification was not something regularly done in Russia.
Also, Stalin was hot when he was young, so we can fix him.
It's not that fancy though. I found it deeply unimpressive honestly.
Psh, Ho Chi Minh's is better
Okay Stalin was just a dipshit but most people you're counting against Lenin died in circumstances legitimately out of his control (the civil war and the famine resulting thereof). He was still a dipshit, but not a mass murdering dipshit.
I mean, I don't know how much blame I'd ascribe to Lenin, but his 'war communism' policy was very much a contributor to the famine.
I mean true but save for some weird decisions (something something bag men) that strictly goes under the war part; I can forgive the Bolsheviks for not pulling punches while fighting literal fascists, and they did address the problem as soon as they knew about it. War communism didn't need to be as brutal or as far-reaching as it was, but for the most part it was an acceptable play in a terrible situation.
The famine in question (early '20s, not the later famine that resulted from de-kulakization) was made much worse because Lenin kept exporting food during it. The Bolsheviks did this because it was their only source of the foreign credit they needed to buy the machine tools and whatnot they needed to ramp up their industrial sector. I wouldn't call that "war communism", just straight "communism" as per Marx they felt industrialization was everything.
Interestingly, the only reason the death toll from this earlier famine wasn't even larger was that Herbert Hoover (of all people) organized an international relief effort that at one point was feeding about 10% of the USSR. When the agricultural situation improved, the Bolsheviks neglected to tell Hoover.
I really think you're mixing up the famines. Export of food to acquire industrial capital was a major motivation during the Holodomor. During the Russian Civil War, the motivation was to keep the Red Army fed and in the field without having to make concessions to the peasants, independent regions, or demobilizing any troops.
War Communism is a reference to a specific set of policies adopted during the Russian Civil War.
Bro, I mix them up too. Don't worry. I know that Lenin came first and that he didn't want Stalin to take over after him because he was too radical or something. But saying no to Stalin is like saying no to Putin. The word doesn't exist to them. But when it comes to numbers and statistics of who did what, I fuck it up constantly. I'm also not at all super knowledgeable about Russian history. Had a brief obsession with the Romanov dynasty, which is its own can of fucked up worms, but when it comes to communism, it's just so uniquely awful and demotivating to hear and read about that I tune out. Communism to my brain, is the gray apartment blocks where everything looks the same and there is no life and beauty anywhere.
Nitpicking but Gulag is singular and it's the division in control of the camps, where you'd be sent. It's like saying to the Pentagon with you
TIL, but in common speech gulag is always used for the camp itself.
What are you referencing? Even in the most anti communist historical interpretations the vast amount of deaths are usually attributed to Stalin, not Lenin.
If we're talking about the holodomor..... That began in 1932, roughly 8 years after Lenin had already died.
I'm not claiming that there aren't any valid criticisms of the Russian revolution, however I think attributing all that criticism to Lenin is just historically inaccurate.
We also have to view history within the context of their own time when evaluating things like social morality. Was the Soviet revolution devoid of crimes against humanity, no. But I think it would be hard to argue that it wasn't a vast improvement compared to the literal tyrannical rule of the Romanov family.
Lenin is responsible for a huge amount of deaths during the revolution, during the civil war and after. This whole story of "Lenin was good and then Stalin corrupted the revolution" is actually rooted in the propaganda of Khrushchevs destalinisation. But if you read a good biography of Lenin, you will find out that was totally fine with all the political murders
I would say that the Romanov are the party who are largely responsible for the deaths during the revolution. Some kind of revolution was going to happen in Russia, and just reducing all the blame on Lenin ignores the context of the actual fractious nature of the revolution.
Again, I didn't say he was a nice guy. My claim was that it's straight up ahistorical to claim he murdered 9 million people.
What is a revolution if not a collection of political murders? Again, we have to view the revolution with context and measure them against their contemporaries. It's not as if the revolution happened to a ruling government that was unfamiliar with political murders themselves.
Would you like to remind me what kind of mass violence there was between February and October in 1917
Would you like to remind me what provisional government and elected legislature the Bolsheviks actually performed their revolution against?
My claim didn't say that the Bolsheviks didn't engage in mass violence..... Are you claiming that the Russian revolution can be boiled down to between February and October in 1917?
I was more referring to the Romanov history of utilizing secret police to do horrific amounts of violence.
No, your claim was that it wasn't the Bolsheviks who caused mass violence, despite the Bolsheviks being the entirely-unprompted trigger for the actual civil war after Russians had seemed content to decide things through democratic elections.
Okay, but the problem is that the Bolsheviks didn't revolt against the Tsar, but against the provisional government.
"I would say that the Romanov are the party who are largely responsible for the deaths during the revolution. "
The Bolsheviks anger didn't build in a vacuum, nor did it happen in 6 odd months the provisional government exists. That's ignoring over a hundred years of context.
Yeah. Again, would you like to remind me what power the Romanovs had when the Bolsheviks decided to start a civil war against a democratic government?
When the Bolsheviks triggered the civil war, what was the Romanov role in that? Existing while under house arrest?
I'm sure you have GREAT context for rebelling against a government that was born in a revolution and existed for a few months before the Bolsheviks decided they preferred to take power by force and dismiss democratically elected socialist legislators.
Maybe just do not try to downplay soviet crimes? They were not nice guys, they murdered a lot ot people and we really should not discuss about how many millions were slaughtered. Lenin was not a good man.
usually, claims to Lenin are about anarchists in a Finnish port
https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/historia-contemporanea/20210228/6259751/lenin-marineros-kronstadt.html
First of all, I don't really know of anyone calling Konstadt rebellion to be led by anarchist. They were ardent communist who became disillusioned over time due to poor working conditions.
Secondly, out of the 15k men who held the fort, it's thought that around 10k escaped to Finland during the fighting, all while killing around 10k soldiers of the red army.
I don't really think this really fits within the scope of the argument that Lenin murdered 9 million people.
Demands of the Kronstadt Rebellion
1. In view of the fact that the present soviets do not express the will of the workers and peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot, with freedom to carry on agitation beforehand for all workers and peasants. 2. To give freedom of speech and press to workers and peasants, to anarchists and left socialist parties. 3. To secure freedom of assembly for trade unions and peasant organisations. 4. To call a non-party conference of the workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and Petrograd province, no later than 10 March 1921. 5. To liberate all political prisoners of socialist parties, as well as workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors imprisoned in connection with the labour and peasant movements. 6. To elect a commission to review the cases of those being held in prisons and concentration camps. 7. To abolish all political departments, since no party should be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or receive the financial support of the state for such purposes. Instead, cultural and educational commissions should be established, locally elected and financed by the State. 8. To remove all road block detachments immediately. 9. To equalise the rations of all working people, with the exception of those employed in trades detrimental to health. 10. To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all branches of the army, as well as the Communist guards kept on duty in factories and mills. Should such guard attachments be found necessary, they are to be appointed in the army from the ranks and in the factories and mills at the discretion of the workers. 11. To give peasants full freedom of action in regard to the land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means, that is, without employing hired labour. 12. To request all branches of the army, as well as our comrades the military cadets, to endorse our resolution. 13. To demand that the press give all our resolutions wide publicity. 14. To appoint an itinerant bureau of control. 15. To permit free handicraft production by one's own labour.
... would you like to remind me what the second point in the demands made by the sailors was?
Fucking what
The minute Lenin took power there was a food crisis in Russia and arranged for every scrap of grain taken from Ukraine. A series events unfolded over the coming years that would ultimately lead to the Holodomor under Stalin much later. It’s a long and complex tale that I’m sure some believe is fake news.
The Holodomor is only related to Lenin insofar as the system Lenin established with 'war communism' was not agriculturally robust, and the backpedaling of the NEP didn't outlast him.
All the major factors of it - the mass collectivization, the export of food from starving regions, the export of food from the Soviet Union itself, the deportation of 'kulaks' to Siberia, etc etc etc, were all Stalinist initiatives. Maybe you could argue that if Lenin had legitimately improved Soviet agriculture it wouldn't have happened, but other than that, I don't know that there's a strong argument for putting Lenin - shithead though he was - in with the causes of the Holodomor.
Lenin sent Stalin to Ukraine to do what was necessary to get the grain. Unless I’m misremembering.
I think your timeline is a little mixed up. To my memory Stalin wasn't involved with Ukraine at all (except passing through when he had his taste of military service against the Poles) during Lenin's lifetime. That was like, 1921 or so. Stalin was a bit-player at the time. Lenin died in 1924.
The Holodomor happened around 1932.
Lenin did cause food shortages by grain seizures, but, again, to my memory, Stalin was not a key part of that. And Lenin's grain seizures weren't focused on Ukraine, nor as idiotic and arbitrary as Stalin's. Just callous, feeding the Red Army during the Russian Civil War at the expense of the starvation of workers and peasants.
The Russian famine of 1921 was largely due to a drought combined with the aftermath of WW1 and the Russian revolution. You could argue that Lenin's policies didn't effectively combat the famine, but I think it would be hard to argue that he instigated it. Also, I think you are misremembering the timeline of the soviet's impact on Ukraine.
Churchill starved 4 million Bengali to death.
And the high estimates of excessive deaths in British occupied India is 100 mil?
So because British imperialism was bad, mass death in the Soviet Union was okay?
It seems like you're learning the wrong lessons from history...
It’s that same style whataboutism that Trumpers love to do: “what about Biden?” It’s fucking annoying and I hate Joe Biden. When your only argument is pointing to what someone else did, you don’t really have an argument.
Sounds like we all agree that IMPERIALISM BAD. Glad that's been cleared up
Cool. The first one still happened.