Did Lenin say: “The capitalists themselves will sell us the rope on which we will hang them”?

On the Web, a statement attributed to the leader of the world proletariat is popular that the thirst for profit inherent in capitalism will help to win it. We checked whether the politician said something like that.

Indicating the authorship of Lenin, the phrase on the purchase of a rope from the capitalists for their execution can be found in "Wikitate", On sites With selection quotes and aphorisms, in social networks ("VKontakte" X, Facebook, Instagram), on the blog-platforms (Livejournal, "Zen") And in services questions and answers. Her also Included In print collections of quotes of famous personalities. In some sources, the statement is presented in another formulation - for example, “capitalists Ready to sell us the rope on which we will hang them ”or“ if we offer good price, the capitalists will also sell the rope itself, on which they will be hanged. ”

Not any “tested” publication found with this phrase is indicated when and under what circumstances Lenin said or wrote it. However, it is not difficult to check whether this or that quote has come out from the pen of a revolutionary. Even in Soviet times, all his works, public speeches, personal correspondence and other documents were carefully collected and studied, and subsequently digitized. The electronic catalog of the Russian National Library has published a 55-volume Collected works Lenin, which includes his written heritage from 1893 to 1923. There is and others, earlier publicationsIn which you can find some other documents. In none of them, the statement of the rope sold by the capitalists was “verified”. Nothing similar was found in the database National Corps of the Russian Language, where a collection of texts is collected with a total volume of more than 2 billion words. 

One of the earliest sources in Runet discovered “verified”, where this quote is mentioned along with the name of Lenin, is digitized Collection “Anthology of aphorisms from King Solomon to Stanislav Lem” edited by Konstantin Dushenko, published in 2001. The annotation indicates that it is compiled by Russian and foreign sources, and under the statement of the rope - that it is attributed to Lenin. IN reference book “Quotes from Russian history. From the calling of the Varangians to the present day ”, released four years later, Dushenko clarifies that this phrase was attributed to the revolutionary in the English-speaking press in the mid-1950s. The authors of the portal agree with this Quote investigator. In the magazine The Commonwealth, they found an article of October 31, 1955, in which an American military and ardent anti -communist George Reisi Jordan I attributed to Lenin a quote "When the time comes to hang the capitalists, they will compete with each other for the contract for the supply of ropes." Jordan did not indicate where and when exactly Lenin said this, but this is the earliest famous source in which the author of the phrase is called the leader of the world proletariat. Considering that the article in The Commonwealth was published 31 years after Lenin’s death, the likelihood that such an attribution is erroneous is extremely high.

Talking about the origin of the quote, Dushenko also mentions the outline of the artist Yuri Annenkov "Memories of Lenin", Where he gives a similar statement:“ The capitalists of the whole world and their governments in pursuit of conquering the Soviet market ... will open loans that will serve us to support the Communist Party in their countries and, supplying us with materials and techniques that are missing with us, will restore our military industry necessary for our future victorious attacks against our suppliers. In other words, they will work to prepare their own suicide. ” Annenkov indicates that he met this quote in unrelated documents at the Institute of V.I. Lenin in Moscow in 1924, immediately after the death of the leader. The essay was published in 1961, that is, its author from memory quotes several rather voluminous statements, supposedly belonging to Lenin, decades after he read them. Even if Annenkov saw something similar, there are doubts exactly. Be that as it may, a bright image with a rope in the statement is not given, although the meaning is really close.

Even later, in 1975, the writer and Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his speech in Washington told About such an episode from Lenin’s life: “And in difficult moments, at the party congress in Moscow, he said this:“ Comrades, do not panic when we are very bad, we will give the bourgeoisie a rope and she will strangle itself. ” And then Karl Radek - maybe, you know, there was such a resourceful wit, - said: "Vladimir Ilyich, where will we get so much rope so that the whole bourgeoisie will strangle?" And Lenin answered without difficulty: "And the bourgeoisie itself will sell it to us ...". " Although Lenin’s replicas in this dialogue are similar to the said statement, Solzhenitsyn does not specify how he learned about this episode, which congress was being discussed and when he passed. The writer could hardly attend him - at the time of Lenin’s death he was only five years old. So, most likely, Solzhenitsyn simply retold a bike heard earlier.

In English there is a similar quote. saying: "Give him enough ropes - and he will hang." However, the meaning is somewhat different: if in the option attributed to Lenin we are talking about greed and thirst for profit, then in the saying - rather, that by his rash actions a person will destroy himself if he provide him with freedom of action. Probably, in the English literature, some real statements by Lenin (or other opponents of capitalism) that the bourgeoisie itself will lead to death, mixed with this saying, and as a result a bright statement appeared, to which the leader of the world proletariat has no relation. 

Note that this proverb was used in such a context long before the quote attributed to Lenin appeared. So, in 1896, a British socialist Samuel Edward Kibble In his book “Industrial dreams: research on industrial ethics and economics” wrote: “According to the German socialists, deliverance is the very success of capitalism - if you give him enough ropes, he himself will hang. He will so concentrate in his hands the tools of production and distribution - land, cars, railways, etc., that an expropriated society - a disciplined, formed and frustrated by capitalism itself - will ultimately rise, in some countries quietly, in others, and "expropriately" expropriations ". This is the statement at the same time about stupidity and recklessness, as in the original saying, but at the same time about the greed of the capitalists, which leads to these reckless acts.

Thus, there is no reliable evidence that Lenin is the author of the phrase "The capitalists themselves will sell us the rope on which we will hang them." In the collections of his works, nothing like this is found. Some authors, writers and researchers attributed to him this or similar quotes, but several decades after his death. In addition, those who attributed Lenin a statement of rope were not closely familiar with him or his labors.

Photo on the cover: Bain News Service, Publisher, Public Domain, Via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect attribution of quote

What do our verdicts mean?

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