Quotes From Vladimir Lenin:
You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.
Any cook should be able to run the country.
Liberty is so precious that it must be carefully rationed.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
In Anya Von Bremzen’s book, “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing,” the reign of Lenin during the 1920’s was a decade of fractured chaos of contradictory Utopian experiments and schemes leading nowhere. With the Bolsheviks in power, the Soviet citizen was about to be turned into Novy sovetsky chelovek, The New Soviet Man. The Bolsheviks believed that Soviet member should be productive, selfless, strong, unemotional, rational, and ready to sacrifice everything to the socialist cause. And with this new mindset, Bolshevism would abolish private life in more ways than one. Everyone was to live in communal apartments, sharing a kitchen and bathroom, with only 9 square meters allotted for each person. Not only were families privacy taken away, but they were also forced to eat at communal kitchens because it was believed that nutrition was thrown out the window when families cooked for themselves. Yet rotten sauerkraut and unidentifiable meat (horse) was the Bolshevik’s idea of a properly balanced meal.
The concept of The New Soviet Man brought nothing but rats, scurvy, and filth. In 1921, there was a grain shortage causing the people to start several revolts. Famine swept across the Soviet people like a disease and killed 5 million.
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
While Vladimir Lenin despised capitalism, he was forced to come up with the NEP (The New Economic Policy), which allowed for small scale private trade (capitalism), because socialism wasn’t working, and thousands were dying. By 1923, bread was supplied by private sources, helping alleviate the food shortage. Lenin not only wanted to have the The New Soviet Man, but he also pushed for the idea of The New Soviet Women. Lenin believed that housework only degraded women, and that they should be active members in the idea of a Utopian society, and that every man and woman should be elevated equally, as well as be active participants in the government and the cause. In 1924, with the death of Vladimir Lenin came the erection of his mausoleum, and the embalming of his body, that way he would be forever idolized. Lenin carried with him a cult of personality, lots of embalming salt and nothing more.