Did Lenin call Western supporters of Soviet Russia useful idiots?

Often the author of the expression “useful idiots”, which characterize sincere supporters of a particular regime abroad, believe Vladimir Lenin. We decided to check if he came up with this term.

Lenin as the author of the term “useful idiots” mention both blogs and in the media. In Livejournal, this phrase with reference to the leader of the world proletariat is applied to Mikhail Saakashvili, then to Ukrainian politicians. Often it is found in the media. So, on the site Radio "Freedom" The statement of publicist Andrei Piontkovsky, who said the following: “V. I. Lenin, who, in the servant, was either a cook or a guard, the grandfather of Putin served as a guard, loved to repeat: "Comrades, we need useful bourgeois idiots." The reference to Lenin was in article Columonist New York Times Slavomir Serakovsky “Putin's useful idiots”.

In the complete collected works of Lenin, the word "idiot" Found Quite often. He calls idiot of Nicholas II ("some kind of idiot of novels", volume 35), Writeshow important it is to study the documents (“who believes on the word, the hopeless idiot on which they wave”, Volume 81), Leaves notes On the fields of read books ("Idiot Author", Volume 23). But the expressions “useful idiots” related to the pro -Soviet tuned Western bourgeoisie or intelligentsia are not in Lenin’s works.

But the expression close in meaning is attributed to some associates of Lenin. Often the author of the term called Member of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), one of the leaders of the Comintern Karl Radek, who later arrested and killed in prison. But in the main works of Radek - ""Foreign policy of Soviet Russia", Publications, dedicated Comintern, biographical "Portraits and pamphlets" - there is no this phrase. It is mentioned in connection with Radek only in the journal "Policy"(Publication of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Estonia) in January 1990 without reference to the source.

Another source of the same time - memories former secretary of Stalin Boris Bazhanov, who fled from the USSR. Bazhanov uses a slightly different form of the same term - “well -intentioned idiots”, and not Lenin or Radek, but the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov. The secretary of Stalin recalls the conversation of members of the Politburo about how to admit the debts of tsarist Russia, but at the same time nothing to pay and not lose face. Litvinov answers this: “Nothing can be easier. We declare the whole world that we recognize royal debts. Well, there all sorts of well -meaning idiots will immediately raise the noise that the Bolsheviks are changing, that we become a state, like any other, and so on. We extract all possible benefits from this. ” Bazhanov’s memoirs were published in France in 1930 and became a source many others Fastened in journalism, but not confirmed by the stories.

But the term “useful idiots” is fixed after the Second World War in the English -speaking press. In 1987, William Safir, a well -known journalist and lexicographer, a former speaker of President Nixon, wrote in the New York Times article About the origin of the expression. The earliest mention discovered by him dates back to 1948. In the same New York Times was published note About the coalition of the Social Democrats and the Communists, who appeared in Italy. In this article, the term Useful Idiots was used in the usual sense: naive sincere supporters of the Communists, whose activity is beneficial to Moscow.

In 1959, at a meeting of Congress, representative of Illinois Edward Dervinski brought This is the already spreading expression and attributed it to Lenin. Subsequently, during the Cold War, representatives of the Western intelligentsia, admiring the Soviet Union and friendly regimes (as, as, For example, Jean-Paul Sartre), or pacifists, speakers Against NATO initiatives (as an anti-war traffic in Germany in the 1980s).

Thus, we were not able to find any reliable sources confirming that Lenin came up with the expression “useful idiots”. Initially, it was mainly used by Western politicians and the media, and the term has already received distribution during the Cold War.

Photo on the cover: Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Bovoir during a visit to China, 1955. Xinhua News Agency / Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

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