An educational take on one historic photo, as featured on this thread.



A NOTE TO PROGRESSIVE COMRADES WHO MAY INQUIRE ABOUT THE MEANING OF THIS SEQUENCE:

It reflects the popular progressive belief that communism was a good idea in general, but it didn't work out because Stalin distorted Lenin's brilliant plan - solely as a result of his own stupidity, viciousness, and megalomania. Observe a cigarette in Stalin's hand. He was a dedicated smoker, while Lenin only tried smoking once as a little boy, but then quit and never tried again. But that's not what killed him.

By Robert William Service (1874 - 1958)

This is the yarn he told me
As we sat in Casey's Bar,
That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
In the Land of the Crimson Star;
That Soviet guy with the single eye,
And the face like a flaming scar.

When I went to the Soviet equivalent of college in the USSR (1978-83), Marxist classes were a requirement for staying in school and graduating. We had to read a lot of writings by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, plus their quotes were often written on posters and propaganda banners everywhere.

Historical data and quotes are as I remember them from "the old days" and are verified from my knowledge of Lenin's works. To the best of my knowledge quotes and historical data are accurate.

But if you're some petty-bourgeois academic who doesn't take my word for it and needs an exact provenance of the quote (you know who you are), go here and read Lenin's books yourself - because someone was motivated enough to translate them all into English!



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A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
-- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Glorious lack of oxygen distributed equally through brain.

Brain parts shut down like proletarian workers laying down tools to paralyze bourgeois factory owner

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT TO ITS FULL GLORY!!!

Many readers have asked us how come Lenin's Earth Day resurrection passed unnoticed by the mainstream media. If it wasn't covered in the New York Times it never happened. The bloggers remained silent as well. Some doubted the veracity of our statement because in this day and age all people have cameras. They litter the blogosphere with digital images much less significant than the rebirth of the Great Leader of the Toiling Masses.

Oh well. Here goes our first installment of the life and deeds of the Great Lenin risen in the year of 2005.

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Shake those chains, rattle those cages! Note to self: I'm escaping through the back door of the most valuable piece of real estate in all of Russia. Is freedom really worth this sacrifice? But who cares about individual freedom if the freedom of millions of toilers is at stake? Besides, I can always go back. I think.

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I must walk as if I'm just a regular human, not the Great Supergenius with superpowers who has spent the last 80 years on public display in a glass casket.

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Honey! I'm home!

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Where are all the agitprop posters? I clearly remember the one that said, "Communism equals the Soviet power plus the electrification of all of Russia." Have the capitalists taken back the power? Do I need to start giving light bulbs to peasants all over again?

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Louis Vuitton? I knew it! The bourgeois filth is polluting the pure proletarian consciousness in broad daylight! Comrade, give me that brick!

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Peace to the shacks, war to the palaces! We must burn down this decadent mall! Workers and peasants! Hello? Anybody?

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Time to use superpowers and summon Karl Marx for consultations!

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Karl Marx extends a helping hand. However, upon a brief examination of history of Marxism in Russia and the world at large he apologizes and asks to be put back to grave as soon as possible.

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But first - a snapshot of two Great Leaders in preferred communist position for ThePeoplesCube.com

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You can't trust anyone these days, even Karl Marx! Maybe I should just summon another instance of myself!

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What does Lenin say to another Lenin when they meet in the time-space continuum?
"My mummy can beat up your mummy!"

Just kiddin', Vladimir. But seriously, remember what Herbert G. Wells told us in 1920 in the Kremlin as we discussed how time travel could help the revolution? He said, meeting your own self while traveling in time can be fatal. But hey, would you trust a Marxist? My guess is as good as yours.

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Screw the time-space continuum! It is a purely bourgeois concept invented to keep the masses at bay! We'll keep summoning more of ourselves until we have an army of Great Supergeniuses armed with superpowers!

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You thought the Matrix Revolutions was awesome? We'll show you what real revolutions look like!

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Oops...

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Quite unexpectedly Lenin finds himself on a couch in a Brooklyn apartment, reading Nintendo Magazine.

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To be continued...

See also
Lenin Is Risen, Talks to Press

Have you beat up a protester today, comrade?

We can tell you privately on condition of absolute confidentiality that Comrade Lenin is currently traveling in Belarus collecting information on the successes of building communism in this last Soviet stronghold of proletarian dictatorship.

Judging by this news, progress is being made every day as more enemies of the people are getting arrested. Remember, the fewer people remain at large, the bigger slice of the common cake each one will get. That alone is a good incentive to denounce counter-revolutionary neighbors and colleagues.

We'll publish Comrade Lenin's report once it becomes available.

We thank comrade Kommentariat for the tip. You can count on your ration card when the revolution comes!

Quote:

MINSK, April 27 (Reuters) - A Belarussian court on Wednesday convicted 30 people for taking part in a rally denouncing President Alexander Lukashenko this week and sentenced them to brief jail terms of up to 15 days.

Police dispersed 300 demonstrators on Tuesday who had gathered on the 19th anniversary of the world's largest civil nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine, which also contaminated about a quarter of Belarus.

UPDATE (03/27/06)

You can now read regular updates on the situation in Belarus on Lenin's own blog!

http://russianmushroom.blogspot.com

Following up on our earlier interview with Al Gore, a TPC correspondent went to Moscow and met with the reanimated Leader of Workers and Peasants, Vladimir Lenin.

Looking younger than his age, the Leader was busy organizing the masses for the observance of Earth Day. He still found time to sit with me at a nearby bar with the view of Red Square and the Mausoleum.

His supporters remained outside, waving Lenin posters and staring at us through the freshly cleaned window.

Red: What makes you so popular with the masses?
Lenin: Do you realize that if weren't for me this country would still have no electricity? (the Great Thinker pointед at the Budweiser® neon sign over the counter).
Red: What are your plans for the nearest future?
Lenin: Use the Communist Party's assets to take over the railroad station, the telegraph, and the post office.
Red: Why?
Lenin: Those are the key elements of a successful uprising. Haven't you read my works, young man?
Red: What about the email and the Internet?
Lenin: That too. The revolution must control everything. What's Internet?
Red: t's that thing invented by Al Gore, the same progressive inventor who built time machine and brought you to the year of 2005.
Lenin: Give him my regards. Technological progress is important for building communism, as is raises labor productivity. That is why socialist labor productivity has always topped that of the West.
Red: It didn't, unfortunately.
Lenin: But weren't the Soviet workers more interested in the product of their work because it belonged to them, as opposed to the Western laborers who toiled for the hated capitalist employer?
Red: In fact, the Soviet workers were stealing everything as they thought it belonged to them anyway. They were also heard saying, The government pretends that it pays us, and we pretend that we do the work.
Lenin: Traitors! I'd have ordered exemplary executions at every workplace! Every office!
Red: Stalin did just that. But after his death the discipline has dwindled.

The Teacher of Toiling Masses went silent for a while, stirring a bag of NutraSweet® into the Styrofoam® cup of Starbucks® coffee with a Dispozo® straw. Then he continued quietly:

Lenin: Weren't the Soviet clocks the fastest, and the Soviet microchips the largest in the world?
Red: Exactly.
Lenin: What about Russia's natural resources? Couldn't they just rip everything out of the earth as fast as they could and outdo the West that way?
Red: I can't say they didn't try. They actually created a few environmental disasters that way.
Lenin: And what, nothing?
Red: They did make a nuclear bomb but the labor productivity didn't get better.
Lenin: Has there been any population growth?
Red: Sure.
Lenin: I knew it! I told them to stop having babies! Children are the enemies of progress!
Red: Why is that, Comrade Lenin?
Lenin: Socialism is a zero-sum game, comrade. The more there are people, the thinner slice of the cake everyone gets. That's why I never had children!
Red: I know. My domestic partner and I aborted every fetus we have conceived. I knew it was for the Greater Good, but I could never phrase it as beautifully as you just have.
Lenin: Just to think that those ugly, helpless, needy babies killed communism! Ruined my brilliant plan to build heaven on earth! There's one condition to living in heaven: you can't have babies. You've got to be sterile and immortal.
Red: Like your mummy?
Lenin: My mummy was a great role model for our youth! That's why it's got to be showcased on Red Square.

A faint smile touched the Great Philosopher's lips and disappeared in his reddish mustache. Then he he went on:

Lenin: I had a perfect housing solution. It was called peace to the shacks, war to the palaces. You know what a communal apartment is? It's a former palace that looks like a shack, filled with a dozen working families who all use one bathroom. We had a lot of palaces left over from the bourgeoisie, but the greedy capitalists had not built enough for everybody. My perfect solution worked only on condition of zero population growth.
Red: So Stalin was actually forced to decimate the population. That explains it.
Lenin: From what I hear, Stalin took it even further. He increased urban square footage by packing one half of the population in box cars and shipping them off to the tundra. Not a bad plan either. The resulting budget surplus was used to improve the living conditions for the rest, trough statuary projects and golden murals glorifying the Party's leaders. Beautiful proletarian art, really worth dying for. I'm known to be a connoisseur.
Red: Speaking of Stalin, when he died his body was also mummified and put in the Mausoleum. How did you feel about that at the time?
Lenin: What would you feel if they turned your private Mausoleum into a stinking communal apartment? For three years I had that ugly mummy lying right next to mine. I hope they found a good use for it now, like put it in charge of the Soviet entertainment industry or something.
Red: Nikita Khrushchev removed it and buried it in an individual grave.
Lenin: Khrushchev was an idiot. He released Stalin's political prisoners when prisons were the only solution to the housing problem.
Red: He also built a lot of housing projects. Of course, the apartments were so tiny that when the babushka was cooking nobody else could fit into the kitchen. In his defense, he put the fear of Marx in Western leaders when he promised to bury them.
Lenin: I've seen those fat-ass babushkas! They are the reason behind food shortages! I would have them all recycled for the Greater Good.
Red: Khrushchev also promised Communism by the year1980.
Lenin: There's nothing wrong with promises as long as they serve the Greater Good. We can always blame it on capitalist saboteurs later. I myself had lied that communism would happen in my lifetime. It was worth it. We've had a few good years. But I still can't believe those stupid babies killed my plan of achieving the Greater Good! I thought the Bolsheviks were supposed to promote free abortions for every woman!
Red: They did.
Lenin: And the stupid broads still had babies? Why would they do such a monstrous thing?
Lenin: Out of perverse selfishness, Comrade Lenin. Take America , for example. While our progressive women are selflessly sacrificing their fetuses for the Greater Good, there remain many breeders in need of re-education.
Lenin: Re-educate my ass, comrade! The Party has the means to control population growth besides abortion! Exterminate excessive population! Purge useless class elements like the industrialists, the kulaks, and the bourgeois intellectuals!
Red: About a hundred million of useless class elements in the USSR had been purged.
Lenin: Numbers don't matter as long as it's for the Greater Good. They should have kept killing until there was enough of everything left for everybody. Then we would've been ahead of the West economically and culturally.
Red: That's what the progressives in the West were hoping for.

An uncomfortable silence set in as we avoided each other's eyes, staring at the granite Mausoleum across Red Square. I tried to change the subject.

Red: Can you tell our readers about your personal life?
Lenin: I recently delivered a fiery speech at the Nudist Convention in the Palace of Congresses. But mostly my personal life is limited to political prostitutes inside the Politburo. Speaking of which, I really miss Trotsky!
Red: Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of the People's Cube?

Lenin stood up and extended his arm in a familiar gesture so dear to every working man's heart.

Lenin: Starving workers and peasants of America! The end of the dark era of capitalist oppression is near! Send us the money! Your sacrifice will be rewarded, I promise!

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See also Adventures of Lenin in 2005, Part I