In the Western media, one can find a quote about the method of studying the alleged enemy attributed to the founder of the Soviet state. We checked whether Vladimir Lenin said this.

March 14, 2022 Bloomberg observer Edrian Wuldridge in article Under the name "The West underestimated Russia. You should not repeat this mistake with China ”wrote:“ Lenin advised his followers to “probe a bayonet. If you come to the pulp, continue. If you come to steel, stop”. ”

Wuldridge was far from the first to turn to this quote. Repeatedly her Used Journalists The Washington Post. In December 2021, also arguing about Russia's tactics in relations with the West, statement Conducted Rebecca Grant Fox News, and mentioned the specific year of its appearance-1917. The next month the phrase attributed Lenin is already a former Minister of National Defense of Poland Romuald Sheremetyev. And the most high -ranking person, from the mouth of which this maxim was sounded with a reference to Lenin, became In the far of 1977, ex-president of the United States Richard Nixon.

If we study the history of the spread of this phrase in the West, you can see that it The start of a wide walk It is after the series interview Richard Nixon British journalist David Frost in the spring of 1977. The interviews gained such popularity that many years later were processed first in a successful play, and then to the Five Oscars nominated for five Oscars, 2008 "Frost against Nixon". In 1978, Nixon "secured" this phrase in his Autobiographyand since then the “Lenin” way to determine the strength of the enemy was mentioned by American figures of a wide range - from a fighter for reducing taxes Crover Norquist to the Governor of Visconsin Scott Walker.

However, even before Nixon, the statement attributed to Lenin was quoted several times in the American press, and in most cases the same person - journalist Joseph Elsop (in particular, in most cases 1970, 1973 And 1975 years). In each of the cases, the article of ELSOP was reprinted by many regional newspapers, so it was thanks to journalist Richard Nixon who could find out about this phrase, especially when you consider that the 1973 article was dedicated to the impending resignation of the American president. It seems that it is Joseph Elsope that we owe to get a winged phrase about the “method of Lenin” with pulp and steel into a circulation in the West.

The article by Joseph Elsop in The Baltimore Sun of November 2, 1973.

But what about Vladimir Lenin himself? The study of the related literature shows that the leader of the world proletariat does not have such a quote. The fake did not fail to inform Russian resources such as "Ukraine.ru", "Red Spring", REGNUM - In the footsteps of the aforementioned statements by Wuldridge, Sheremetyev and Grant. But is the smoke this time was without fire? As it turns out, no. The transcript of Lenin’s speech with a report on the activities of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) was preserved at the IX conference of the RCP (b) on September 20, 1920. A significant part of his speech was devoted Soviet-Polish war, which began in 1919 after the departure of German troops from a significant part of the territory of Eastern Europe. And at once in two places Speech Lenin mentioned the notorious "probing with a bayonet":

“We decided to use our military forces to help Poland’s Sovietization. Further general policy also flowed from here. We formulated this not in the official resolution recorded in the protocol of the Central Committee and representing the law for the party to the new congress. But among themselves, we said that we should feel with bayonets - did the social revolution of the proletariat in Poland have matured? ”;
“How much did we manage to feel the readiness of Poland for the social revolution? We must say that this readiness is small. To probe a bayonet - this meant to get direct access to the Polish Batrasty and to the Polish industrial proletariat, since it remained in Poland. "

At the time of Lenin’s performance, the war was in full swing, and it ended in March 1921 by the signing of a rather painful for the RSFSR Riga agreement, according to which vast lands in the West of modern Ukraine and Belarus with the predominant non -Kolo population, as well as part of the territories of other provinces of the Russian Empire, departed to Poland. Later Lev Trotsky will write About this speech: “We were at risk-this time on the initiative of Lenin-probing a bayonet of bourgeois-Schlyakhetian Poland. We were discarded. "

Later, the phrase on “probing by the bayonet of Poland” diverged in literature, and, as obviously, it was from it that aphorism attributed to Lenin was born. It is easy to imagine how this very concretized statement was transformed into “advice to followers”, but where did the words about the pulp and steel come from? Most likely, the basis for the second part was the old Saperian practice. In times when mortars have not yet been widespread, these specialists went dense rows in the territory, pooping bayonets to the ground. While the bayonet was freely piercing the soil, it was lowered to the base, but if he stumbled upon something solid and metal, then the procedure should be stopped and checked to the touch, whether this was a mine.

Thus, the aphorism about the method of checking the enemy with a bayonet is a distorted statement by Lenin about Poland, to which the second part was added. In this version, the phrase was fame in the West in the 1970s-with the filing of American journalist Joseph Elsop and ex-president Richard Nixon.

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