Tear It Down! A Statue to a Mass Murderer Has No Place in Seattle!

Stalin is responsible for the deaths of 22 million people. Lenin, several thousand, probably. Certainly, fewer than George Washington (if by George Washington, you're personifying the American Revolution), and with similar reasons (a revolt against tyranny, but also in Lenin's case, against WWI which had already killed millions); definitely far far fewer than either Johnson or Truman, and with far better reason.

Only about 15 people were killed in the Russian Revolution. However, when the Monarchists and landlords launched the Civil War (backed by the British, French, American, Japanese, Serbian, Italian, Greek, Canadian etc etc governments and indeed armies) hundreds of thousands were killed. Lenin's fault? No. The capitalists' fault. The Red Terror that was launched against internal enemies during that period, killed many thousands. Lenin's fault? Yes, in that there was the alternative of surrender (at which point the far greater massacres that would have resulted would have been down to the enemy); but also a less 'if you are not for us you're against us' attitude, which would have been better but is difficult in wartime.

So was Lenin rsponsible for mass murder? I'd say so. Several hundred at Kronstadt for instance, attacks on the Anarchists, and such like. But as you say, there was a war going on not of his chosing. I don't always think he made the right decisions. But nothing like the murders committed under Truman (eg, Nagasaki, Hiroshima... I can't remember whether it was Truman or FDR who OKed the firebombing of Desden but up 1/4 million people might have died then); or Johnson's (Kennedy's, Nixon & Kissinger's) brutal war in SE Asia.

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