Was Lenin a Communist?

Today I have lost the last shred of respect I had left for the New York Times, thanks to its ridiculous character assassination article on Lenin "Russia Weighs What to Do with Lenin's Body."

C.J.Chivers does quite a stomach turning dance around facts and I'm sure is making the likes of Charles Krauthammer grin with pride. This article is the same sort of slop that Chucky dishes out, filled with innuendo and non-facts masked as real news and even sympathy.

Well C.J. congratulations on being able to string together a series of third-hand comments on and disguising it as "reporting." Generally I find it useful to actually:

1. know something about a topic,
2. doing real research and using accurate statistics,
and
3. actually interviewing people who have something intelligent to say and some credentials to back their comments up

Clearly you have surpassed my skills by being able to skip all these rules of thumb I find so handy.

You state in your horrid little story that "Time has been unkind to Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins." As it turns out, the CPRF (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) is the largest independent party (non-coalition) in Russia, holding 12.7% of the seats in the state Duma. United Russia, the ruling coalition, is the only group that holds more seats.

You close the article by asking whether Lenin was a Communist. I'm no authoritarian, but I find it amusing to imagine whether you'd have dared to write such drivel when Stalin was still in power.

Lenin made his share of mistakes, the most unforgivable in the eyes of the capitalist press of course was that he wanted to create a socialist nation free from the wage-slavery inherent in the capitalist system. Lenin was the first successful leader of a socialist revolution, and was followed by many others the world over, and many still follow his lead today. Certainly he made decisions I disagree with, and his methods were not always completely democratic. But it would be very difficult to argue that the methods of most American presidents, especially in times of war, are or were completely democratic.

No, C.J. had one mission and that was to demonize Lenin. Its a testament to Lenin's true power that the New York Times finds it necessary to muckrake the fate of a 80 year old, fungified corpse. For me this proves the old axiom that the powers that be tremble when they think of the people organizing for a better world, for they know their days are numbered. They are few and we are many! The spirit of Lenin lives!

Thanks to Counago & Spaves for brining this to my attention. This nonsense is cross-posted at The Uncapitalist Journal.