In network sources and in various literature, one can often find a rather cynical quote from the leader of the world proletariat. We checked whether Lenin said such.

In 2008, the next series of the Name Russia project dedicated to Vladimir Lenin was published on the Russia channel. People's Artist of the USSR Ilya Glazunov in his speech declared: “Dear friends. I believe that the words “on Russia, good gentlemen, do not give a damn for Lenin, let the nine tenths of the population die, but the rest will live to the world revolution”.

At different times, this quote in the wording “Let the 90% of the Russian people die, if only 10% survived to the world revolution" Cited writers Vladimir Soloukhin ("In the light of the day", 1992), Igor Bunich ("Gold of the party", 1994), Vladimir kisses (" "Great Lenin. "Eternally alive"", 2014) and Agnes Kaprelianz ("Horse Road Babel", 2017), as well as a politician Victor Aksyuchits. In 2018, a quote in decoration demonstrated At the exhibition "Cain time»In the Temple on Blood in Yekaterinburg. It can be seen in various collections aphorisms.

First of all, it would be logical to find the desired phrase in one of the collected works of Lenin, published in the days of the USSR. Last, Fifth edition The complete collected works were published in 1967-1975 and totaled 55 volumes. In some sources The Internet is even indicated on the Internet: “PSS, vol. 11, p. 702 ". However, the last page 11th volume From the fifth edition, it has number 589. Moreover, this contains texts in 1905, while, for example, Vladimir Soloukhin claimed that the phrase sounded in 1918. There is no page with such a number and in the 11th volume of the early (the first And second publication) collected works of the leader. “Verified” did not find such a quote in either the whole in the 55-volume, or in other archival documents related to the personality of Lenin and in the public domain. Moreover, during the existence of the Soviet Union, it was not published according to the Google Book project - 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),"Veck"(1984) and a number of others). Moreover, in no case the circumstances in which it was said, or the text of the Soviet leader in which the statement is given is given. Does this mean that the quote was born somewhere outside the Soviet state many years after the death of Lenin?

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, the historian and fighter with the Bolsheviks Sergey Melgunov wrote:" If we recall Lenin’s winged phrase: "Let the 90% of the Russian people die, if only 10% survived to the world revolution" - then we will understand in what forms the imagination of the Communists painted this "red revenge". " Thus, by the time of the death of Lenin in the same January 1924, the quote attributed to him was known at least in the emigrant environment. Her most press mention is dated to 1922, when she appeared as an epigraph to the preface of the book of another emigrant, economist and sociologist Andrei Ternna "In the kingdom of Lenin: Essays on modern life in the RSFSR"Published in Berlin.

At the same time, Tern himself died a year earlier, so the epigraph could well be added by the publisher of the book. As we noted above, there is no documentary evidence that Lenin wrote or pronounced this. However, there is a statement of another revolutionary, which could well serve the prototype of this quote. As the Soviet SourcesSpeaking on September 17, 1918 at the 7th citywide party conference in Petrograd, one of the closest associates of Lenin Grigory Zinoviev said: “We must become like a military camp from which detachments in the village may be thrown. If we do not increase our army, our bourgeoisie will cut us out. After all, they have no other way. We do not live on the same planet. We need our own socialist militarism to overcome our enemies. We must captivate 90 mili [ions] out of a hundred, inhabiting Soviet Russia. You cannot speak with the rest - they must be destroyed. Great responsibility lies with us to the world proletariat ... "

Here, as we see, it is said about the death of not 90, but 10% of the population of Russia, and at the hands of the revolutionaries themselves. Nevertheless, it is very likely that it is this statement by Zinoviev (by the way, leader of the III International, which means, the main responsible for the world revolution) In subsequent years, the Soviet leader was attributed in a changed form.

Photo on the cover: REGNUM