Russian Support for Lenin Increasing Despite Putin’s Attacks on Bolshevik Leader, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 15 – A new poll finds that 67 percent of Russians have a positive attitude about Lenin’s role in Russian history, up from 40 percent only a few years ago and before Vladimir Putin began his attacks on the Bolshevik leader for putting a delayed action mine under Russia by establishing the union republics (t.me/oizmedia/3582).

            Moreover, the same poll found that support for taking Lenin out of the mausoleum and burying him in a regular cemetery is declining. In 2017, a majority of Russians – 58 percent – favored removing his body from the mausoleum on Red Square. Now, only 37 percent back that option, and nearly half – 45 percent – say Lenin should be kept in his current place of honor.

            And the poll also showed that younger Russians are have a more positive attitude about Lenin than their elders who experienced the state he set up. This pattern, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says, suggests that the Kremlin’s attacks on Lenin are backfiring by making him a kind of attractive forbidden fruit (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/17899).

            In this commentary, El Murid does not point to another factor that may be of equal or even greater weight. Putin has sought to promote a positive image of almost all Russian rulers in the past and so it is entirely possible that that propagandistic effort has been successful even for Lenin despite the current Kremlin leader’s attacks on him.