A quote attributed to the Bolshevik leader is popular among Internet users and is often used to criticize people who left their country. We checked whether it appears in Lenin's texts.
At the beginning of August 2022, with this quote from Lenin, the politician Mikhail Svetov and Telegram channel "Nezygar" commented on the encouraging letter that political scientist Ekaterina Shulman* sent to politician Ilya Yashin*, who is in jail. In a similar context, the statement was used earlier: for example, at the end of August 2020, the EADaily publication mentioned a phrase attributed to Lenin, when criticized Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who from Vilnius advocated the continuation of mass protests in Belarus.
According to some Internet users, the phrase we are interested in is contained in one of Lenin’s letters, which he sent from abroad to Russia. All the famous letters of the leader of the world revolution, as well as his other texts, were included in the complete collected works, consisting of 56 volumes. In digital form it available on the website of the Russian National Library.
Lenin in Zurich lived from February 1916 to April 1917, later it was from there that he headed through Germany to Russia. Letters written during these 14 months presented in the 49th volume of the complete works. We also studied all other known texts written during the time Lenin spent in Zurich - they were included in 27th, 30th And 31st volumes
Judging by the letters presented in the 49th volume, Lenin, while in Zurich, actively corresponded with his correspondents throughout Europe - letters were sent to Bern, Geneva, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Christiania (now Oslo) and other European cities. However, the author of the letters ignored “hard labor in Siberia,” as well as Russia as a whole, and recipients with a similar “address” are not presented in this volume. Lenin did not use the word “hotel” at all in these letters, and the hotel was mentioned, for example, in letters to Moisei Kharitonov - the Bolshevik leader was still traveling to Zurich and asked to recommend a cheaper hotel.
No traces of the phrase we are interested in could be found in other volumes covering the 14 months of Lenin’s life in Zurich. However, since we are talking about a hotel, it is worth checking earlier letters - Lenin visited this and other Swiss cities on various occasions more than once. Although Zurich was mentioned many times in his letters before 1916, Lenin did not write anything about regret that he was in a hotel and not in a Siberian penal servitude. This quote could not be found either in academic works dedicated to Lenin or in the memoirs of his correspondents.
We found the earliest mention of the phrase “In spirit I am with you, in hard labor in Siberia, and in body, unfortunately, here in Zurich in a hotel” in LiveJournal - her used in his comment in September 2007, a user under the nickname mortang. Before 2012, this phrase was generally used quite rarely. For example, in 2009 her quoted a user of the Mail.ru Answers service - he cited this phrase along with his question: “I am with you in soul... And who is your soul with?” In early 2010, a LiveJournal user used supposedly Leninist phrase, talking about his departure to the island of Bali. Four times a statement attributed to Lenin mentioned Twitter users (one of them doubted the correctness of such attribution), and only once - a user "VKontakte".
Starting in 2012, the quote began to be used more actively - for example, judging by LJSearch data, on LiveJournal it brought already in ten publications. At the same time, the phrase (probably for the first time) appeared in the media - Gorod magazine published interviews with Moscow activists who “willfully improve the urban environment.” The quote in this publication was given by one of the journalist’s interlocutors, who left for Amsterdam.
Thus, the phrases attributed to Lenin about “hard labor in Siberia” and “a hotel in Zurich” are not found either in the complete works of the Bolshevik leader, or in the memoirs of his contemporaries, or in academic texts dedicated to the leader. The quote appeared on the Internet no later than the fall of 2007, became relatively famous in the 2010s, and was actively used only a few years ago. Probably, the attribution of the quote to Lenin was initially of a comic nature, but later some social network users began to take it seriously.
*Russian authorities think Ekaterina Shulman and Ilya Yashin as foreign agents.
Cover photo: Wikimedia Commons
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