Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today and the Castro regime celebrated his legacy

Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today, bringing to an end a blood filled revolutionary career that killed millions in outright murders or politically engineered famines, and condemned the Soviet peoples to seven decades of tyranny.

Castro regime pays homage to Lenin.

Raul Castro's handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, today over Twitter observed the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin. 

Two days after a high-level delegation of American officials visited Havana to meet with the Castro regime's state security officials, the Cuban president praised Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

"Vladimir Ilyich #Lenin, eternal leader of those who fight for socialism and social justice, died this day in 1924, at only 53 years of age. His social and political work has not ceased to inspire millions of people around the world. #Cuba pays tribute."

The Russian communist revolutionary had several hundred aliases, but Lenin was the one he was best known for, and that he used politically. All the Bolshevik leaders used aliases.  

Soviet leader: Lenin worse than Stalin

Who was this man, whom the Castro regime remembered today on the 99th anniversary of his death?
Molotov, a contemporary who held a leadership position in the Soviet Union, was quoted in David Remnick's 2014 book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. 

"'You know its a pity that Lenin died so early. If he had lived longer, everything would have been normal.' But Molotov said, 'Why do you say that?' My friend said, 'Because Stalin was a bloodsucker and Lenin was a noble person.' Molotov smiled, and then he said, ' Compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb."

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin and took the revolutionary name Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was one of the few Bolsheviks in Moscow, and he was part of the group that successfully carried out a coup against the social democrats in October 2017, and he was in the leadership group with both Lenin and Stalin throughout. He held leadership positions in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1961, when he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Molotov could assess both Lenin and Stalin's ruthlessness. 

The Library of Congress has communications between Lenin and Molotov. For example in a letter dated March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, he outlined "a brutal plan of action against the 'Black Hundreds' clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not depose the Czar.  They overthrew the social democrats who had forced the Czar to abdicate and placed him under house arrest, and were navigating power through democratic processes that were unprepared for the terror and conspiracies of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's body count

From November 1917 until his death in January 1924, the publication Counting Stars provided a summary of the victims of Leninism.

"The figures of victims of Leninism, from November 1917 to January 1924

• More than a million people murdered for political or religious reasons.
• Between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks killed.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants killed for striking.
• 240,000 killed in the suppression of the Tambov rebellion.
• More than 50,000 white prisoners of war executed.
• Between 3.9 million and 7.75 million deaths from famines among Russians, Kazakhs and Tatars."
  

Lenin at a rally on March 18, 1918.

"A communist coup d'etat that aborted democracy in Russia

To demystify Lenin one must first break other myths. The most basic is that when the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out on November 7, 1917, the communists did not overthrow the Tsar - which no longer reigned - but aborted the incipient democracy in Russia, taking advantage of the crisis that arose between conservatives and socialists. After the violent assault on power by the communists, a civil war broke out that lasted five years, and in which - already in power - the Bolsheviks - who were victorious - faced all their rivals. It was the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would last more than 70 years, until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991."

Ideas have consequences 

The body count amassed by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks was not an accident, but the result of the ideas that animated them, and continue to animate the Cuban communists today.

On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: 

 "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." 

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." 

The Third International was founded by Lenin in 1915 and held its first of seven world congresses on March 2, 1919 and was also known as the Communist International, and was known by its abbreviated form the Comintern. It was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".  

The Soviet State was never abolished, but a new class created, "the nomenklatura" that spent decades ruling over the proletariat with a ruthlessness that led workers in communist regimes, to prefer a return to market systems and democracy. It is a historical irony that Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was brought to an end by the rise of an independent trade union movement in Poland. 

Castroism's Leninist continuity 

The Castro regime took a country with one of the largest middle classes in Latin America, in part due to a strong labor movement that had existed and grown more powerful for over 50 years. The Batista dictatorship was unable to crush it, but Castro's communist dictatorship over a couple of years crushed this workers movement, and 64 years later the nomenklatura lives with great wealth and privileges while the rest of the Cuban populace is immiserated. 

Fidel Castro, and the rest of the Cuban communists embraced Lenin's "communist morality" and "the big lie." Consider the late dictator's own words on the subject.

Fidel Castro on December 2, 1961 in a moment of frankness confessed: "If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."  He was able to "confess" that he had always been a communist because he had consolidated power and killed or imprisoned all his enemies, and shut down all independent media. He had imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Cubans.

Years later on March 26, 1964, Fidel Castro explained: "I conceive the truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth, as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist."  

Mr. Castro's philosophy is not original, but Leninism with tropical flair, and the speaking style of Benito Mussolini.

Cuban scholar and Christian Democrat Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from primary school and onward, concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

Terrorism and Communism

Author and Journalist Claire Sterling in her March 1, 1981 article in The New York Times,  TERRORISM  TRACING THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK touched on terrorism's links to international communism beginning with Lenin, but moved on to the pivotal role played by the Castro regime in Cuba.

"Lenin's definition -- 'the purpose of terror is to terrorize' -- is a useful beginning. The terrorist uses violence not to punish the victim but to intimidate the audience, to impose his political will by force when he cannot achieve it by democratic means".

The Castro regime fully embraced terrorism as a global strategy and built an international terrorist network.

..."Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks." ..."The roots of the terrorist network can be traced directly to the Tricontinental Congress held in Havana in January 1966. More than 500 delegates passed resolutions emphasizing the need for close collaboration between 'Socialist countries' --i.e., the Soviet Union and its satellites -- and national liberation movements." ...  "It was, unmistakably, a call for a Guerrilla International. And the call was heeded. Ten months later, a new cluster of more than a dozen training camps for guerilla fighters from all over the world was opened in Cuba." 

Bombing campaigns were carried out in the United States, and innocents were murdered.  Some of these terrorists were captured, placed on trial, but then broke out of prison and ended up being harbored by the Castro regime. They continue to advocate terrorism, and justify their violence. Worse yet, communist networks claim these killers are "political prisoners."

Lenin died 99 years ago today. The tragedy is that he was able to cause so much harm in his 53 years of life. He is the intellectual author of the Soviet Union,  a system correctly described as anti-human by British conservative Peter Hitchens.

Diaz- Canel is part of a regime that is a continuity of the system created by Lenin.

The Cuban communist channeled Lenin on July 11, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets nonviolently across Cuba demanding freedom: 

"The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries! ...They will have to walk right over our corpses. We are ready to do anything if they want to confront the revolution."

Díaz-Canel's call to violence had deadly consequences for Cubans. Regime agents went out into residential neighborhoods firing on protesters. Cuban protester Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back and killed on July 12, 2021 by police.