In online sources and in various literature you can often find a rather cynical quote from the leader of the world proletariat. We checked whether Lenin said this.

In 2008, the Rossiya channel aired the next episode of the “Name of Russia” project, dedicated to Vladimir Lenin. People's Artist of the USSR Ilya Glazunov in his speech stated: “Dear friends. I believe that fundamental for Lenin are his words: “I don’t give a damn about Russia, good gentlemen. Let nine-tenths of the population die, but the rest will live to see the world revolution.”

At different times, this quote in the wording “let 90% of the Russian people die, if only 10% survive until the world revolution» cited by writers Vladimir Soloukhin (“In the light of day", 1992), Igor Bunich ("Party Gold", 1994), Vladimir Potseluev ("Great Lenin. "Forever Alive"", 2014) and Agnes Kaprelyants ("Babel's Horse Road", 2017), as well as a politician Victor Aksyuchits. In 2018 quote in artistic design was demonstrated at the exhibition "Time of Cain"at the Church on the Blood in Yekaterinburg. It can be seen in various collections aphorisms.

First of all, it would be logical to find the phrase you were looking for in one of the collected works of Lenin published during the Soviet era. The last one, fifth edition the complete works of the politician were published in 1967–1975 and consisted of 55 volumes. In some sources the Internet even indicates the exact location of this quote: “PSS, vol. 11, p. 702". However, the last page 11th volume from the fifth edition has number 589. Moreover, this volume contains texts for 1905, while, for example, Vladimir Soloukhin claimed that the phrase was uttered in 1918. There is no page with this number in the 11th volume of the early ones (first And second publication) of the leader's collected works. “Verified” did not find such a quotation either in the 55-volume volume or in other archival documents related to Lenin’s personality and in the public domain. Moreover, during the existence of the Soviet Union, judging by the Google Books project, it was not published in the country - the phrase is found exclusively in emigrant publications (“Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of History and Culture of the USSR"(1953), "Cadet roll call"(1980), "Veche"(1984) and a number of others). Moreover, in not a single case are the circumstances under which it was said, or the text of the Soviet leader in which the statement is given, given. Does this mean that the quote was born somewhere outside the Soviet state many years after Lenin's death?

As it turns out, the chronological part of the assumption is incorrect. In his book ""Red Terror" in Russia 1918–1923”, first published abroad in January 1924, historian and anti-Bolshevik fighter Sergei Melgunov wrote: “If we remember Lenin’s catchphrase: “Let 90% of the Russian people die, if only 10% survive to see the world revolution,” then we will understand in what forms the imagination of the communists painted this “red revenge”.” Thus, by the time of Lenin’s death in the same January 1924, the quote attributed to him was known at least among the emigrants. Its earliest printed mention dates back to 1922, when it appeared as an epigraph to the preface of the book by another emigrant, economist and sociologist Andrei Terne “In the kingdom of Lenin: Essays on modern life in the RSFSR", published in Berlin.

At the same time, Ternet himself died a year earlier, so the epigraph could well have been added by the publisher of the book. As we noted above, there is no documentary evidence that Lenin wrote or said anything like this. However, there is a statement by another revolutionary, which could well serve as a prototype for this quote. As the Soviets already report sources, speaking on September 17, 1918 at the 7th citywide party conference in Petrograd, one of Lenin’s closest associates, Grigory Zinoviev, said: “We need to be like a military camp, from which detachments can be thrown into the village. If we do not increase our army, our bourgeoisie will slaughter us. After all, they have no other way. We cannot live on the same planet with them. We need our own socialist militarism to overcome our enemies. We must carry with us 90 million out of a hundred people inhabiting Soviet Russia. You cannot talk to the rest - they must be destroyed. Great responsibility lies with us before the world proletariat..."

Here, as we see, we are talking about the death of not 90, but 10% of the Russian population, and at the hands of the revolutionaries themselves. Nevertheless, it is very likely that this very statement of Zinoviev (by the way, leader of the Third International, and therefore the main person responsible for the world revolution) in subsequent years, in a modified form, was attributed to the Soviet leader.

Cover photo: Regnum