Lénine citations (347 citations, Page 11)

Statements attributed to Lenin in "Communists: The Battle over the Tomb" in TIME (24 April 1964) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,870884,00.html. Attributions

“The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children’s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted by Clara Zetkin in "Lenin on the Women’s Question", My Memorandum Book https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm, 1920. Attributions

“The wall is rotten. One good shove and it will collapse.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted by Tariq Ali in The Dilemmas of Lenin, in response to a officer asking "Why are you causing trouble, young man? You're breaking your head against a wall."
Attributions

“The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Lessons of the Commune" http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 13. Collected Works

“The bourgeoisie sees practically one one aspect of Bolshevism - insurrection, violence, and terror; it therefore strives to prepare itself for resistance and opposition primarily in this field. It is possible that, in certain instances, in certain countries, and for certain brief periods, it will succeed in this. We must reckon with such an eventuality, and we have absolutely nothing to fear if it does succeed. Communism is emerging in positively every sphere of public life; its beginnings are to be seen literally on all sides.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre La Maladie infantile du communisme

CH 10, The Lenin Anthology
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

“One will readily agree that any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may posses, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre La Maladie infantile du communisme

CH 10
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

“The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists - that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre La Maladie infantile du communisme

CH 5, "Left Wing Communism in Germany. The Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Mass"
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

“The economic basis for a true Socialist Republic does not yet exist… Communism is failing. Russian expectations are not towards communism, but towards capitalism…. The capitalist classes are advancing in serried ranks towards the promised land, destined to become in a few decades one of the greatest productive forces in the world.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in The Life of Benito Mussolini, Margherita Sarfatti, London: UK. Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1926, p. 261, remarks made at the end of 1920. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.173841/2015.173841.The-Life-Of-Benito-Mussolini_djvu.txt 1920s

“In particular, a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing; on the other hand, the socialised state enterprises are being put on what is called a profit basis, i. e., they are being reorganised on commercial lines, which, in view of the general cultural backwardness and exhaustion of the country, will, to a greater or lesser degree, inevitably give rise to the impression among the masses that there is an antagonism of interest between the management of the different enterprises and the workers employed in them.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

“The Role and Functions of the Trade Unions under the New Economic Policy”, LCW, 33, p. 184. Decision Of The C.C., R.C.P.(B.), January 12, 1922. Published in Pravda No. 12, January 17, 1922; Lenin’s Collected Works https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-33.pdf, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 188–196. 1920s

“When a real army is in retreat, machine guns are kept ready, and when an orderly retreat degenerates into a disorderly one, the command to fire is given, and quite rightly, too.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“In the sea of people we are after all but a drop in the ocean, and we can administer only when we express correctly what the people are conscious of. Unless we do this the Communist Party will not lead the proletariat, the proletariat will not lead the masses, and the whole machine will collapse.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“Political events are always very confused and complicated. They can be compared with a chain. To hold the whole chain you must grasp the main link. Not a link chosen at random.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“The idea of building communist society exclusively with the hands of the Communists is childish, absolutely childish. We communists are but a drop in the ocean, a drop in the ocean of the people.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“The retreat has come to an end; it is now a matter of regrouping our forces. These are the instructions that the Congress must pass so as to put an end to fuss and bustle. Calm down, do not philosophize; if you do, it will be counted as a black mark against you. Show by your practical efforts that you can work no less efficiently than the capitalists. The capitalists create an economic link with the peasants in order to amass wealth; you must create a link with peasant economy in order to strengthen the economic power of our proletarian state. You have the advantage over the capitalists in that political power is i n your hands; you have a number of economic weapons at your command; the only trouble is that you cannot make proper use of them.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“Retreat is a difficult matter, especially for revolutionaries who are accustomed to advance; especially when they have been accustomed to advance with enormous success for several years; especially if they are surrounded by revolutionaries in other countries who are longing for the time when they can launch an offensive.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

1920s

“We need a real test. The capitalists are operating alongside us. They are operating like robbers; they make profit; but they know how to do things. But you - you are trying to do it in a new way: you make no profit, your principles are communist, your ideals are splendid; they are written out so beautifully that you seem to be saints, that you should go to heaven while you are still alive. But can you get things done? We need a test, a real test, not the kind the Central Control Commission makes when it censures somebody and the All-Russia Central Executive Committee imposes some penalty. Yes, we want a real test from the view point of the national economy.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s

“Let us get down to work, to slower, more cautious, more persevering and persistent work!”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"New Times and Old Mistakes in a New Guise",(August, 1921)
1920s

“Admidst the colossal ruin of the country and the exhaustion of the forces of the proletariat, by a series of almost superhuman efforts, we are tackling the most difficult job: laying the foundations for really existing socialist economy, for the regular exchange of commodities (or, more correctly, exchange of products) between industry and agriculture.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

1920s

“There is no doubt that in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population consists of small agricultural producers, a socialist revolution can be carried out only through the implementation of a whole series of special transitional measures which would be superfluous in highly developed capitalist countries where wage-workers in industry and agriculture make up the vast majority.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

Introducing the New Economic Plan, (March, 1921)
1920s

“The way the enemies of the proletariat take advantage of every deviation from a thoroughly consistent communist line was perhaps most strikingly shown in the case of the Kronstadt mutiny, when the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and whiteguards in all countries of the world immediately expressed their readiness to accept the slogans of the Soviet system, if only they might thereby secure the overthrow of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, and when the Socialist revolutionaries and the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries in general resorted in Kronstadt to slogans calling for an insurrection against the Soviet Government of Russia ostensibly in the interest of the Soviet power.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

"Resolution on Party Unity" (May, 1921)
1920s

“The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high stage of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labour disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social quality - a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre L'État et la Révolution

The Lenin Anthology, p.379
The State and Revolution (1917)

“A state arises, a special force is created in the form of special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters but the exploited.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre L'État et la Révolution

1.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

“In such circumstances, in view of the incredibly widespread nature of the distortions of Marxism, our first task is to restore the true doctrine of Marx on the state.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin livre L'État et la Révolution

1.1, Essential Workers of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

“Imperialism is the epoch of finance capital and of monopolies, which introduce everywhere the striving for domination, not for freedom. Whatever the political system, the result of these tendencies is everywhere reaction and an extreme intensification of antagonisms in this field. Particularly intensified become the yoke of national oppression and the striving for annexations, i. e., the violation of national independence (for annexation is nothing but the violation of the right of nations to self-determination).”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

The Lenin Anthology, p. 268
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

“We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main thing in this process is the displacement of capitalist free competition by capitalist monopoly.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven

“Generally speaking, under capitalism, the ownership of capital is separate from the application of capital to production; money capital is separate from industrial or productive capital; the rentier, living entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all those directly concerned in the management of capital.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Three

“You must side with one of the two immensely wealthy and immensely powerful groups of imperialist predators - that is how capitalist reality poses the basic issue of present-day foreign policy.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

1910s, "The Foreign Policy of the Russian Revolution"

“The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution. The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about dual power.”

Help us translate this quote

Vladimir Lenin

This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old "formulas".
Lenin Anthology, p. 301
1910s, "The Dual Power" (1917)