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LENIN SHOT

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was shot today while preparing to give a speech. The preliminary reports report no serious harm: one would in the arm, one in the shoulder, and a grazing wound to the side. Lenin has been hospitalized.
The would-be assassin, Fanya Kaplan, has been taken into custody.
Our staff wishes Lenin a speedy recovery and hopes that this will send a message to the enemies of Communism: You cannot stop historical inevitability so easily.

-Pravda, 30 August, 1918


I must say, Comrade Lenin was one of the most resilient people it has ever been my pleasure to treat. Within twenty-four hours of his stroke he was up and moving. It was all I could do to keep him away from his work. I tried suggesting to him that it would be best for him to ease up on work just a little, but the man was stubborn as a mule. I don’t know what I’d have done if Kamenev didn’t come up with the ‘Meet Lenin’ program for pioneers. Sure, on the surface it looked like just another way to encourage them to collect materials for recycling and plant trees and whatnot, but the truth is, it was more for Vladimir Ilyich’s benefit than for their. I’ve never seen him as happy as he was when running around with those kids, playing tag, or getting pelted by snowballs. Between the reduced stress and the exercise, I can’t tell you how many years it added to his life.

-The Personal Memoirs of Otfreid Foerster.


…Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc…


-Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The Collected Speeches of the Middle Twentieth Century.



Well, of course, the New Economic Policy was working. Anyone with eyes could see that. But it didn’t sit well with the left wing of the Party, and it bred speculators. So Lenin had to implement some reforms. Get things under tighter government control, make sure no-one was getting rich off peasant labor. Worked like a charm, of course.
Now, the industrialization, that was harder. It obviously had to be done, but what you have to understand about capital goods and consumer goods is that they’re both bound by the Law of Scarcity. So if you try to get more coal mined, or more iron produced, you have less food, or fewer pairs of pants. And even then you have to be really careful to try to see how much you need. Now, Lenin was never willing to place undue burden on people, and so capital accumulation wasn’t as fast as it could have been. But I tell you, he sure pulled a shrewd move once the Capitalism in America and Britain showed its true colors. With their customers too scared to buy anything, they were willing to sell to anyone – and we could even dictate the terms. Decent wages for the workers, that sort of thing. Of course with the inflation rate, it was difficult to figure out what constituted ‘decent wages’, and to tell you the truth I’m pretty sure we got it wrong sometimes. But hey, it worked. They got a place to sell their goods, Soviet people got furniture, clothes, and electronics, and we got the metallurgy industry going. And our bread sales helped us stay out of too much debt. We were really glad to have the most fertile land in the world right then, I’ll tell you.


-Alexander Shlyapnikov, The Economy of Communism


TOP SECRET:
As per assignment, I have infiltrated the inner circle of revolutionaries. The people here are eager, but untrained. Have been conducting daily exercises and am now attempting to soften the security of arsenals. The event will go down in three years.
[FONT=&quot]Agent MUHA
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