Vladimir Ilyich LENIN

Posted on March 31, 2008. Filed under: Personalities |

” I informed him that I could not cooperate with a regime that prosecuted anarchists ………………………………………. His reply was that my attitude was bourgeois sentimentality ……………………. Russia was igniting the World Revolution, ………… and here I was lamenting a little blood letting” – Emma Goldman

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924). Russian revolutionary, communist politician and main leader of the October Revolution. He was first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and was from 1922, the first de facto leader of the Soviet Union. Lenin instructed the Cheka (secret police) to commence a “Red Terror’ and suspected enemies could expect brutal torture, flogging, maiming or execution. Historians estimate that between 1917 and 1922 over 280,000 people were killed; about half through summary executions and half through suppression of rebellion. More people were killed by the Cheka than died in battle. Lenin had always been an advocate of “mass terror” – against enemies of the revolution and his view was that the proletarian state was a system of organized violence against the capitalist establishment.

Emma Goldman (1869 -1940). Anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches and derided as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Initially supportive of the Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the use of violence and the repression of independent voices. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in the United States and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.