Centenary of Lenin’s Death

[ndrosen]

I’m about fifty minutes late, but January 21 was the centenary of V.I. Lenin’s death, as reported by Ilya Somin on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. I remember reading a biography of Lenin as a teenager in high school; I used it as a source for a paper I wrote in high school about whether history depended on great men and chance contingencies, or only on broader forces and trends. I came down in favor of the former. The biography was by Robert Conquest, if I recall correctly, and he was assuredly no admirer of Soviet Communism or of Lenin, nor is Ilya Somin.

At a time when many young people are favorably inclined to socialism, we should remember what it was really like, especially in extreme form, and pass the information to those who never knew.