Catherine Merridale: Lenin on the Train

“Human dignity is something one need not look for in the world of capitalists."
- V. I. Lenin


As modern tyrannies are swept away (and every honest heart delights), the quick-thinking servants of the world’s great powers still proffer plans to intervene, to jostle, scheme and sponsor factions that they barely understand.


“Sometimes a scoundrel is useful to our party precisely because he is a scoundrel."
- V. I. Lenin


Kerensky he dismissed in yet another snappy line, describing him as ‘a balalaika on which they play to deceive the workers and peasants’.


The history of Lenin’s train is not exclusively the property of the Soviets. In part, it is a parable about great-power intrigue, and one rule there is that great powers almost always get things wrong.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn the use of weapons [the Russian word, oruzhiia, contains another wonderful long r], to practice the use of weapons, to own weapons, deserves to be mistreated … The demand for disarmament in the present-day world is nothing but an expression of despair.