Statue In Fremont -- Lenin Is Falsely Equated With Stalin's Reign Of Terror

I was thrilled to see Lenin's statue when I went to the Fremont Fair. How refreshing to have the leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution in the heart of U.S. capitalism. These kind of international exchanges we could use more of! But as any host of a foreign visitor could attest, a little background information helps foster understanding.

Lenin gets a bad rap because he is falsely equated with Stalin's reign of terror. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Lenin, along with Leon Trotsky, fought for democratic socialism: a planned economy to benefit society as a whole under workers' control and with full rights for women and national minorities. They led a necessary revolt of oppressed people sparked by women textile workers whose families were starving.

Many would have us believe that Stalinism was the logical outcome of the Bolshevik revolution. Not so. Stalin came to power after annihilating the Trotskyist-Leninist opposition. Stalin's bureaucracy was able to get a stranglehold on the USSR because of the country's impoverishment and technological backwardness, coupled with invasions and blockades by Western capitalist countries. The bureaucrats led an assault on democratic socialism and communism in order to feed their privileges at the expense of the majority.

All the talk about the "70-year failure of Lenin's socialist experiment" belies the truth. Genuine, democratic socialism hasn't been tried in Russia since Stalin came to power. Gorbachev and Yeltsin follow in Stalin's footsteps, not Lenin's or Trotsky's. They are selling off the country and impoverishing the people to line their own pockets.

Today's laid-off workers, women waiting in food lines, and homeless - Lenin would be on their side whether in Moscow or Seattle. He would vehemently oppose the market economy of high living for a few at the expense of the rest. If only our politicians had so much compassion.

So, enough already of Lenin the tyrant. It's simply ahistorical and untrue. Mary Ann Curtis Seattle