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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: 25 Classic Books That Have Been Banned
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2025 17:22:21 -0400
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Scott Dorsey wrote:
> William Hyde  <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Didn't the Bolsheviks follow the same pattern?
>>
>> I don't think Lenin ever demanded mere toleration.  He did a pretty good
>> job of oppressing even when he was in the minority.
> 
> I think Lenin believed in democracy and in his slogan of "All power to
> the soviets" but things didn't work out quite the way he expected and
> running a country was much harder than he had thought it would be.
> He started out with a lot more toleration than Kerensky but then it all
> went pear-shaped.

That is really not the impression I have of him.  He was a man of 
incredible intellectual arrogance, utterly convinced that he was right, 
and that he alone knew what was to be done and that no sacrifice was too 
costly to eliminate what he considered to be the ultimate evil.

To be fair he sacrificed a lot himself.  He hated disputation, he hated 
the lies, distortions, and character assassinations that he knowingly 
used in arguments - anything for the cause although it cost him every 
friend he had.  After a period of such disputation he became unable to 
sleep, barely ate, developed an unhealthy look - I suspect his blood 
pressure was up.  His wife would take him to the countryside, where he 
would hike and swim until his health was restored.

Democracy was fine provided people voted the right way - consider the 
example of Georgia I gave an another post.

There was one time he expressed doubt.  He was in the UK during the 
series of very serious strikes in the early 1900s.  He said that perhaps 
the British working class had found the right way to gain a decent life, 
but also said that any such attempt in Russia would be futile.
> 
> Some of his associates, though, were very open about wanting to replace
> the old oppressor and become a new one.

It is true that, unlike the rest, Lenin lived modestly in a small suite 
of rooms in the Kremlin after gaining power, mostly eating his wife's 
cooking.  He had to be persuaded that the leader needed a dacha, so he 
took a small one while his subordinates had large estates.


   Stay away from people like that.
> They are not good to be around.

One one occasion in the civil war Stalin had executed many "opponents" 
in a given area and thought he had done enough.  He said as much to 
Lenin who told him to keep on killing.  Unlike Stalin, Lenin took no 
pleasure in killing, but he could be more ruthless.

William Hyde