Let the truth be known: 1917, November - Metropolitan Tikhon of Moscow excommunicates the Communists. "Come back into your senses, you madmen and stop spilling blood! What you are doing can please only satan. The retribution for it will be curse on you down the generations and eternal torture in hell fire. In the name of Almighty God I hereby anathematize you and also excommunicate those of you who happened to be Orthodox Christians by birth... I hereby call on the Orthodox faithful to rise in numbers and beat off the forces of evil that are besieging the Church on all sides." 1918, September 5, - The Communist authorities shot senior priest Ioann Vostorgov of St Basil, confiscated its property, melted down its bells and closed the cathedral down. 1919, April 5, - Letter of Appeal to Christian Churches of the World by Fr.G. Loshako, "Many churches have either been desecrated and ruined by the Red Army or sealed by the Soviet authorities. Executions of clergy are often accompanied by the cruelest of tortures. School prayers have been banned. Holy icons have been removed from all public buildings." 1922 - Church Property confiscated. The Soviet authorities launched a campaign to confiscate church valuables. Many churches were destroyed. 1922, May 26 - Lenin suffers stroke after arresting Bishop. Archbishop Agafangel refused to sign a pledge to the Soviet government. He was arrested and forbidden to leave Yaroslavl. That very day Lenin suffered the first of a series of crippling strokes that was to kill him in less than two years. 1927 - Russian Bishop Ignaty Bryanchaninov , "Whoever does not obtain the kingdom of God within oneself will not recognize the Antichrist and will inevitably, become his follower".

Lenin was a complex individual who initially espoused ideas that would give the Russian people some greater freedom. But sadly, upon assuming power, he and his cronies trampled on the rights of individual Russians far worse than the Tsar ever did. Eventually, they were responsible for the deaths of more Russians and other enslaved people of the so-called "USSR" than any previous leadership had been. So my opinion of Lenin: brilliant mind that went astray.

Lenin was weak individual, and a naive dreamer, who lived a life of luxury while the Russian serfs and workers toiled in the mud. Lenin, like many 19th Century Russian revolutionaries came from rather well to do family. While most of people the Tsar condemned to Siberian exile went on a long and arduous journey in an open wagon or RR cattle cars, Lenin, on the other hand, traveled to his "Siberian exile" at his own leisurely pace with a first class RR ticket. He stopped in to see his family in Moscow, visited friends, and collected his papers and books. While others in Siberian exile were starving and begging for food, Lenin wrote home and asked for more writing supplies. His so-called "exile" was a vacation compared to other revolutionaries who were banished to live in dismal native villages in the frozen Arctic, or work in the mining camps of Siberia. The validity of any revolutionary movement can only be judged by its outcome. The communist system brought about by Lenin was built upon the bones of millions of victims, and has a dismal record of helping the workers and toilers of Russia. Lenin and his ilk claimed to support the underclass of Russia, but in reality they despised them and abused them for their own greedy political ambitions. Lenin was a weak ideolog who was manipulated and outmaneuvered by that ruthlessly clever Georgian, Osif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, or Stalin. Ironically, Stalin murdered most of Lenin's compatriots at the same time he was praising Lenin as the "father of the revolution". Revolutionaries such as Lenin will always be replaced by ruthless conniving monsters like Stalin. The face of Lenin was just a poster for the Stalin and his Georgian thugs who brought about a bloody terror unmatched in European history. I don't see any reason to honor or celebrate Lenin.

He was fantasy dreamer, bloodthursty dictator without any democratic education and marxist-communist-anarchist truebelliver wich was incompetent to win power on democratic and free elections, so he created devastating revolutions and civil wars and forced coletivization processes...and he killed and murdered millions of Orthodox Russians all around Russia !!! HITLER, GOEBBELS, GOERING, HIMMLER, STALIN, MOLOTOV, BERIA, JEZHOV, JAGODA, TROCKI, KAMENEV AND LENIN Those are mass murderers and destructors of Russia and Russian people !!!

“Lenin took Marxist theory of communism and put it into practice where everyone will be equal and the working class will rule”. This was the crap I was proud of when I studied Marxism at school many years ago, but now knowing who was Lenin, who and why financed him to power, it makes me sick. I also learned another crap at school that Lenin led the peasants to a successful spontaneous uprising against the Tsarist oppression, but just like a 2000km pipeline which needs every 50km a pump station to flow the oil movement, the peasants uprising needed at every town in Russia money station financed from abroad to flow the revolution movement. There are no such spontaneous peasants uprising unless there is a massive fund to feed them and enormous intelligentsia backing and planning. This condition had to be fulfilled before the planned WW2 and subsequent formation of IMF, World Bank, NATO, CIA, FBI and Bretton Woods of monetary management. Well rehearsed ploy: PROBLEM-REACTION-SOLUTION. This was the objective this time round with the 2008 economic crash.

JUST LIKE A CAMERA OBSCURA, Vladimir Lenin is being maligned and Adolf Hitler is on the best-seller list in India.

In the video for this article, In the museum that was Lenin's home, it shows a chess board that has pieces placed on all four sides of the board each of a different color, Are two colors just extra pieces or is that another version of chess ??????

In every aspect a normal society gauges its progress and success, the Lenin years (1917-1924) and what followed immediately thereafter was a COLOSSAL catastrophe for Russia, a cataclysm of near-galactic proportions, quite possibly the biggest disaster in the history of human race. Unless one considers murdering millions of own people in order to stabilize the bloody reign of terror a 'success', there is not a single parameter in the annals of governance or political science that could be used to brand Lenin's rule (or "heritage") a success. The only charitable thing that can be said about Lenin was that he vaguely shared Russian people's views on equality, social justice and fair social distribution . But this view was so morbidly distorted through the lens of rabid, hysterical, inhumane ideology that, by the time he gained power and started slaughtering everyone in sight, not a trace of it was left. In terms of sheer bloodthirst, Lenin and his henchmen, such as Dzerzhinsky or Kaganovich, made even the most notorious mass murderers of history, such as Marat or Kim Il Sung look sweet and fuzzy in comparison. It took Russia 43 years to again reach the level of agricultural production it had in 1913. Anywhere between 4 and 10 million of people were killed in the ensuing civil wars of the 1920s ALONE (not counting the victims of the great famine caused by Stalin's collectivization drive or those killed in the World War I). The nation lost vast tracts of territory to Germany, Poland and Finland. The flower of inteligentsia was killed, forced out or imprisoned, some 50,000 Orthodox Christian temples were razed to the ground, cultural treasures of Russian nation was squandered and scattered all around the world (many, thankfully, preserved in my country) . But the worst trauma of the Lenin years was the toll in human blood, sweat and tears -- an immeasurable ocean of human suffering and degradation that even today richochets through the Russian national psyche.

Well said Kihnu. Very, well said. I can add nothing more but agree.

It's interesting to visit Leninskiye Gorky, just outside Moscow to the South-East. This was the estate where Lenin died. Not exactly modest, but not as grandiose as anything the Tsars had, and he was a head of state after all. The most interesting object there for me was his custom-made Rolls Royce snowmobile. Its rear wheels are like tank tracks, while there are skis at the front with small holes through which a portion of the wheels can make contact with the ground. It's also massive. A fascinating design from the era, and cost an absolute fortune. The two things that struck me about this were 1) The arrant hypocrisy of spending so much on himself at the worrkers' expense and 2) How Rolls Royce could have fulfilled the contract when Britain was assisting the White Army against Lenin in the revolution. Marxist ideology and reality may have been introduced to each other at a few parties, but I doubt they exchanged numbers.

its ironic and sort of funny to see how the face of communism is now a brand for consumers... any government that stifles dissent is evil... i am very interested in russian history and try to look at it from different perspectives. in the end, i believe lenin was bad for russia and its people as well as the world. the whole concept of people living in peace and harmony in a worker controled state turned out to be a nightmare for almost a century.... and for what? to show humanity that it goes against human nature and that absolute power corrupts. peace