There’s been a bit of hoopla lately about Lenin’s body, which nowadays tends to sprout mushrooms and in earlier, more spry times, liked to kill people.

Bryan Caplan has a suggestion:

The economically sensible and morally beautiful choice would be to auction off Lenin’s corpse on eBay, and use the proceeds to pay down Russia’s national debt. I bet it would fetch millions. And there’s no finer way to hammer in the point that Communism is truly dead.

Personally, I think we should lop off his head, mount it, and hang it on the wall of the New York Stock Exchange.

http://www.catallarchy.net/blog/

10/11/2005 10:41:36 PM

communism may be dead, but the dead could come back....

10/11/2005 10:48:09 PM

haha, that would be awesome

Then hopefully someone like rupert murdoch or a walton would make the winning bid and not some shitty museum.

10/11/2005 10:51:04 PM

Lenin will stay right where he is. They should have put Khrushchev right next to him.

And where do you get the idea that he liked to kill people? I'd say he had no more a penchant for that the George Washington or the like.

Quote :

"And there’s no finer way to hammer in the point that Communism is truly dead."

You could try killing it first. Meanwhile in the real would the whole western hemisphere tends in and out of communism while good old cuba stays strong.

10/11/2005 11:02:18 PM

^Have you looked at Cuba lately? I wouldn't say the Cuba is going stong. Yeah, it's still communist, but they have their fair share of problems.

10/11/2005 11:34:22 PM

you know, hes still admired in Russia from what I've heard from people who've been over there.

sure, the revolution he led failed eventually, probably in spite of his efforts.

10/11/2005 11:38:39 PM

stalin didn't last very long on display. They really hated him.

10/11/2005 11:41:01 PM

Few people hated him. Please to watch less of "Enemy at the gate" and similar garbage which probably gave you this idea that 100% of population in totalitarian countries "love freedom".

10/11/2005 11:44:09 PM

I think I remember reading that several hundred people died trying to get a glimpse of stalins body while it was there.

[Edited on October 11, 2005 at 11:47 PM. Reason : ]

10/11/2005 11:46:50 PM

During the funerals actually.

10/11/2005 11:50:18 PM

He did save the world from nazism. I personally think he's a dick and shouldn't be near lenin, but I don't deny the good work he's done.

Quote :

"Have you looked at Cuba lately?"

I've been over there before, I try and keep up with things over there.

Quote :

"I wouldn't say the Cuba is going stong."

And why would you say that?

10/11/2005 11:58:34 PM

Yea, I'll bet you guys were real proud of that murderous piece of shit. Especially since you quietly buried his rotting ass only 8 years after he was placed on display.

[Edited on October 12, 2005 at 12:03 AM. Reason : you=the average Soviet citizen in the 1960's, of course]

10/12/2005 12:00:11 AM

He did some very terrible things. He's no Lenin or Khrushchev.

10/12/2005 12:00:54 AM

*HE* didn't save the world from shit. Please red up on Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact circa 1939. Pay particular attention to secret chapters. Splitting of Poland etc. Had Hitler never attacked the USSR, Stalin would have been his ally.

10/12/2005 12:01:25 AM

^^haha. Saints, all of them.

[Edited on October 12, 2005 at 12:02 AM. Reason : .]

10/12/2005 12:01:57 AM

Quote :

"Had Hitler never attacked the USSR, Stalin would have been his ally."

Irrelevant. A fireman's motives for saving a child do not make the saving of the child any less wonderful.

And besides, hitler would have never allied with the soviets, he hated communism, and his idealogy was diameterically opposed to it

10/12/2005 12:06:23 AM

Quote :

"Yea, I'll bet you guys were real proud of that murderous piece of shit. Especially since you quietly buried his rotting ass only 8 years after he was placed on display. [Edited on October 12, 2005 at 12:03 AM. Reason : you=the average Soviet citizen in the 1960's, of course]"

His body was buried because Khrushchev was trying to de mystify stalin's legend to some extent not because the people hated him.

If you doubt that there is a human propensity to worship at the feet of murderous tyrants then you only need to look at one of the posters in this thread for an example of it.

10/12/2005 12:08:03 AM

oh burned!

10/12/2005 12:09:24 AM

Quote :

"Yea, I'll bet you guys were real proud of that murderous piece of shit. Especially since you quietly buried his rotting ass only 8 years after he was placed on display."

sigh

Quote :

"You don't know shit (C)"

It is well known that during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR where Khruschev made his now famous THEN TOP SECRET speech about Stalin's "Person Cult", many attendees fell unconscious (literally!) because they couldn't believe their ears.

Re-burying of Stalin in 1961 was also a top secret operation because there was a genuine concern about possible people's reaction.

I'm sorry you've been brainwashed into thinking that government and other propaganda ain't shit. If people paid attention to reality, maybe... they wouldn't support the war in Iraq for one.

10/12/2005 12:14:56 AM

I find it hard to believe that a sizeable number of people didn't know what Stalin was up to, if from nothing but firsthand accounts of those affected.

I don't deny the power of propaganda though.

10/12/2005 12:28:44 AM

dumbass Soviets

if they'd just turned on FOX News or something they could have found out what Stalin was doing in a fair and balanced manner

10/12/2005 12:49:44 AM

Quote :

"I find it hard to believe that a sizeable number of people didn't know what Stalin was up to, if from nothing but firsthand accounts of those affected."

Well, a certain percentage did. The overwhelming majority didn't.

10/12/2005 1:18:26 AM

look at the cult of mao. the height of his popularity came after the great leap forward.

10/12/2005 1:53:23 AM

My understanding was that the Soviet people thought that all the bad shit was going on behind Stalin's back. Someone would get fucked up, and they would say, "Oh, if only Stalin knew about this, he would fix it and give these bastards what they deserve!" The Soviet propaganda machine worked quite well in the regard of convincing people that the leader didn't have any blood on his hands, save that of the Nazis and other legitimate enemies.

Then Kruschev came along afterwards and to some extent broke the truth about who was responsible for all the terrible shit that had gone down. At the end of the day, I don't have much against Kruschev. I can't really blame him for trying to stick missiles in Cuba, and his judgment in withdrawing those missiles was praiseworthy. On the whole, he was probably my favorite Party leader. I don't particularly dislike Lenin, either; I think he was genuinely concerned with the welfare of the Russian people rather than power, and if my country was as fucked up as his was at the time, I can't honestly say Communism wouldn't have really appealed to me, either. Besides, he also had the good sense to know that Stalin was a psychopath.

In the long run, if Lenin or Kruschev were around today, I can think of a decent list of people I'd rather bomb than them.

10/12/2005 2:14:34 AM

I bought a bust of Lenin on Ebay. It was shipped straight to me from St. Petersburg. It sits on my mantle and makes women horny.

10/12/2005 2:49:48 AM

Quote :

"At the end of the day, I don't have much against Kruschev. I can't really blame him for trying to stick missiles in Cuba, and his judgment in withdrawing those missiles was praiseworthy. On the whole, he was probably my favorite Party leader. I don't particularly dislike Lenin, either; I think he was genuinely concerned with the welfare of the Russian people rather than power, and if my country was as fucked up as his was at the time, I can't honestly say Communism wouldn't have really appealed to me, either. Besides, he also had the good sense to know that Stalin was a psychopath. In the long run, if Lenin or Kruschev were around today, I can think of a decent list of people I'd rather bomb than them."

An unbiased look at the soviet leaders, I'm speechless Grumpy!

10/12/2005 11:21:06 AM

^^^ my sentiments exactly.

10/12/2005 11:28:43 AM

I just enjoy the irony of Khrushchev's speech before the UN saying America's grandchildren would be communist and then his own son ended up becoming an American resident.

[Edited on October 12, 2005 at 12:04 PM. Reason : ]

10/12/2005 12:04:23 PM

I think he's right. We will bury you. It may not be today, but someday.

10/12/2005 12:32:35 PM

communism certainly has been gaining steam over the last 20 years.

10/12/2005 12:36:05 PM

^^ Actually, the grave comes for us all, communist and alike.

10/12/2005 12:51:29 PM

I talked to a prof. in the History dept. (here being in Florida, for the time being) today that actually specializes in post-revolution Russia. The conclusions:

-Lenin will be buried with all the other Soviet leaders b/c his mausoleum just isnt as revered and popular these days, what with the USSR (and especially the era of Lenin, and even Stalin) fading from the nation's collective memory, moreso due to time than actual sentiment. The USSR means about as much as the Austro-Hungarian empire these days in Europe.
-Stalin was never vandalized or anything like that, not sure if some of you were clear on that.

the rest of the truth has been covered already by MathFreak

case closed

10/12/2005 3:59:06 PM

Bryan Caplan is a dick.

10/13/2005 12:07:07 AM