Vladimir Lenin: The Founder of the Soviet Union 

Only leader whose body was preserved for decades. Egyptian kings: Are we a joke to you?

Wow...he did all that AND he was in the Beatles???

In my travels around Moscow and St. Petersburg, I saw at least ten statues of Lenin. I do not believe that all Russians see him as a villain, but rather a liberator from the Tsardom holding the Russian people down. One thing is for certain: Stalin is certainly viewed significantly less favorably than Lenin.

Who's talking about me?

Nicholas : Who would try to overthrow the Russian Empire and start a socialist revolution 3 A.M. ? Lenin : *OH BOY 3 A.M.*

Lenins brother attempted to assassinate Alexander III. The serfs were freed by Alexander II. Neither of these were Nicholas II and they occurred in different periods of time than implied.

Ouch. His brother was hanged for plotting the execution of Tsar Alexander III - not Nicky 2. This basic error makes me doubt the facts here -- so for the sake of fans, fact check your work. Thanks!

Grand Duke Dmitri: "Who will be in charge of Russia, while you're off fighting the Germans?" Czar Nicholas: "My German wife, and a homeless wizard, DUH!" -- Oversimplified.

I usually don't pick up on stuff like this... But, to say that "no one liked Lenin" or that "the people loved the Romanovs" is quite f*cked up.

Lenin isn't really remembered as a villain in Russia, and Lenin's statues are still standing in Moscow

0:55 - Chapter 1 - Early life 3:25 - Chapter 2 - Sparks that ignited a revolution 7:35 - Mid roll ads 9:10 - Chapter 3 - The bolshevik revolution 15:20 - Chapter 4 - Lenin's violent reign 19:35 - Chapter 5 - Death & legacy

Thank you Simon! However, serfdom was abolished not by Nicolas II (whose photo you showed), but by his grandfather, Emperor Alexander II in 1861.

Sorry to be one of those people noticed a mistake a 3:29. It was not Tsar Nicolas II that released the peasants but Tsar Alexander II his grandfather. He did so via the emancipation edict of 1861

Ngl; Stalin was a looker when he was a young man. All of Russian history can be summed up with this phrase, "and then it got worse."

Gorbachev: ends Soviet Union Lenin in the afterlife: *bruh*

errrr dude I visited Saint Petersburg in July/2019 and you can literally guide yourself in the city by counting the monuments dedicated to Lenin. you don´t need a GPS or GLONASS just count his momuments. Russians may not be a big fan of him but they do recognize him as a very historical person and played a gigantic part on Russia´s history

You kinda got it wrong. Lenins brother actually tried to assassinate Alexander III, and that he would spare Lenins brother if he repented and asked for forgiveness. But Lenins brother said “That would betray the revolution.” So he got hanged

By the way, it was Alexander II, Nicholas II's grandfather, who ended Serfdom in Russia. He did so in 1861.

Philosopher: "Can one man change the world forever?" Lenin: "Da, comrade."

*They are churning out way too many of these "Biographics" videos and not doing proper research. Many people who have written comments prior to this one have rightly pointed out its many inaccuracies.*

Nicholas the 2nd never freed the serfs, that was Alexander the 2nd

20:56 "In 1991, the Soviet Union, it collapsed, and all of the statues of Lenin, they were torn down." False. The first time I was in Russia was 1999, two days in St Petersburg as part of a choir's tour of the Baltic. It was no longer Leningrad, but I saw at least 3 or 4 Lenin statues. I didn't see any statues of Stalin. The second time I was in Russia was 2005, and I spent 3 weeks in Moscow, Vladimir, Suzdal, Yaroslavl, Kazan, Tver, Novgorod, St Petersburg, Petrozavodsk, and Kizhi. During this trip, I saw dozens of statues of Lenin, I'm sure at least 30. I even saw a few statues of Stalin. If you are a Russian reading this, please reply with how many statues of Lenin are in your city/town. Cпасибо.

100 years today since he passed.

You kind of simplified things too much and got quite a few things wrong. Serfdom wasn't abolished by Nicholas II but by his grandfather Alexander II. It is also unclear as to who actually ordered the firing upon demonstrators on Bloody Sunday, yet there isn't evidence to demonstrate that Nicholas II gave the order, and if we look at his personality as a ruler, this conclusion does not fit.

Next, could we do Leon Trotsky? Complete the communism trio lmao

I think you might’ve understated Trotsky’s importance in October 1917.

I'm not convinced this is accurate

The cooko clock sound over Rasputin's face was gold.

Do a video about yourself Simon Whistler

This video is full of inaccuracies. Way too many to list in a RU-vid comment. It makes me wonder how inaccurate all of the other videos are.

The brazen lies in this video are countless. I wonder where the author got half the facts, did he come up with them himself or did he just copy propaganda? For example, who told him that the Lenin monuments were demolished? Every city in Russia has at least one monument to him, and the people have great respect for him. Recently a poll came out where 60% of respondents had a positive view of his figure and 20% were neutral.

I think one statement that everyone will agree on. Russia has a very interesting history....God bless you all

one big lie here. Every Russian city on this date 2019 with exception of moscow has a lenin square asmain square ( st petersburg it's secondary square at finland railway terminal) and every city's main street ( exception moscow and st pete's ) is named ulitsa lenin or lenin prospect . Thousands of statues of Lenin remain including in Moscow. check your facts . Google map will show it.

This video misses out sooo much tho. Lenin tried to prevent Stalin from taking power, he wanted all his statues tore down, claiming that these things were false idols and that icons such as these dampened the desire to change. He didn't want people to see the revolution as something that succeeded but as an on going process. 1st the violent tearing out of old ideals and power bases followed by the slow building of a new nation and idealolgy. He even wanted his own body to be cremated for these reasons (not that Stalin cared what he wanted). Also he never saw Russia as being fully communist under his rule, that was the whole point of Lennism, he saw his philosophy and rule as a stop gap on the way to true communism. He believed, same as Marx did, that communism could only be achieved through the proletariat. The idea was that the lower classes would educate themselves and , guided by the Bolsheviks, one day form their own government. There's so much more to delve into here. Don't get me wrong I love the channel but you simply can't do a 20 min video on Lenin and the Russian revolution and paint a clear picture there's so many characters, philosophers, poor management (seriously the Tsar was just terrible at ruling a country), then the impact of WW1, the civil war, the building of the trans Siberian railway, foreign interference, the 4 Dumas etc. And it just ends up being a "communism bad" "boo russia" video.

"He had absolutely no patience for people who did not agree with him %100" Sounds familiar.

6:38 I like how he didn’t even attempt to say Lenin’s girlfriend’s name 😂

I am sorry, but you history of Lenin is quite inaccurate. And too much speculation.

Vladimir Lenin, otherwise known as Vlad the Lad

Seriously, Simon, your comments and discussion about the ad and game in the middle of your video really got me onboard. Where I would usually skip further in the video to get past the ad, I stopped and just let it play. I get it. Well done 👍🏼

Lenin calling people his enemy for not agreeing with him sounds very familiar today.

A pity, this one was articulated rather biasedly.

"In Soviet Russia, you not go to party - Party come for YOU!"

"Lenin did nothing about this." Lenin didn't prevent a large-scale famine by himself, what a monster.

I missed the point where he left the Beatles because of Yoko.

Im not a soviet supporter or a communist or a socialist, but this video sounds kinda biased in its wording.

Thanks for creating a biography about me.

The craziest thing about this video is when he essentially said “ this is history and it is, however RU-vid doesn’t like it because children. So they don’t pay you.”

To be fair, the Russian Empire in 1914 although lagging behind the west, was catching up and quickly. One of the reasons the German Empire entered WW1 was because they thought they would not be able to defeat Russia later.

Vladimir Lenin is not Sir Patrick Stewart, which I have been requesting FOREVER!

Alexander Ulyanov tried to kill Czar Alexander III with a bomb, not Nicholas II. Nicholas was still a prince at that time.

There's so many inaccuracies and straight up lies in this video that I can't even begin to sum them up. But the one that struck me the most was the "bolsheviks-mensheviks" one. This was a party dispute about which tactics to follow. It was also a discussion within the whole of the 2nd internationale! With factions and tendencies all over the place. Kautsky, Plechanov, Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Trotsky, the list goes on. They all chose sides on whether capitalism was able to surpass its inherent contradictions. That's the reason for the split. Not a stupid one time argument. Read a book before you make these vids please.

Biographics - Can you please do a very accurate detailed biography video of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (1918 - 2013)?

Can you do Abraham Lincoln please , I love your videos

Great video Simon & team. Always interesting and informative 👌👏

Lenin’s statues were absolutely not all torn down in Russia.

This is quite possibly the shittiest and most historically inaccurate explanation of the Russian Revolution I have ever heard or seen.

**international intensifies**

Thank you for everything you gave us Lenin.

This video tries to paint Lenin as a joke. He wasn't.

Lenin’s brother, Alexander, never tried to assassinate Nicholas the 2nd

Wait a second.... Vladimir Lenin looks like a white Jamie Foxx!

Your narration and video content is the fascinating thing which draws me to you channel every time.

So Lenin was a pampered rich kid lecturing the working man on how to live his life?

Here's an old Soviet joke about food: . . . . None.

To anyone who actually wanted a better take on lenin, watch "History vs Lenin" on Ted-Ed RU-vid channel.. In 4 minutes, that video gives a better view. I'm usually never disappointed by this channel. But this time, you definitely failed.

"He wanted the people to be angry" "He made up a variety of different pen names, so it seems like multiple intellectuals" Lenin was nothing but a troll.

RIP Comrade

Rebels come from all kinds of backgrounds, Che was quite well off, and he's the most famous revolutionary of our time. (At least his t shirt is).

I’d. love to see you do a Ho Chi Minh biographic. Most of the info/bios/history in your videos I’m already familiar with but I enjoy the way you present it.

Where did you get the part that you said " people needed to start dying as the worse things become the better it would be. He knew people needed to start dying before people get angry for a revolution. "

One fact that I think is incorrect in this video is that the Tsar did not order his soldiers to shoot the people during Bloody Sunday, but I think he was away for holiday. The soldiers got confused and anxious about what to do, so the attacked people instead.

There is a statue of Lenin in Rue des Plantaporets, in Geneva; I believe it is where he lived for a while.

Serfdom was abolished in 1861 by Alexander II the grandfather of Nicolas 2

No worries mate, a game accurately representing A WWII as your sponsor sounds amazing!! As a matter of fact I will download it soon!!

Actually I been to Russia and there are statues of Lenin everywhere. But no statues of Stalin

'You're out of your element Donny!'

So many mistakes...

'Who did I leave in charge of giving out jobs?' 'That would be Stalin, sir'.

It was Alexandr II that emancipated the serfs. Also, the Tsar wasn't present for Bloody Sunday. His uncle gave the order to the Cossacks under his command to shoot. Loved the video! Please do more about Russian political figures like Sobchak or Aleksandr II!

@2:35 Lenin's brother didn't attempt to assassinate Nicholas ll. He wasn't Tsar at the time. He attempted to assassinate Nicholas's father Tsar Alexander III.

Adios .. Do one on Benito Juarez from Mexico

The condensed biography I have been searching for.

What I'd also love to see is biographies of Thomas Sankara and Fred Hampton.

I'd kill to get you to do Carl Sagan just for my friend. Hes a big fan and of both Sagen and you

Way too westernized version of a biography

Your new subscriber here love your video✋

Wait, wasnt it Nochlaii's grandfather Alexander 2 who released serfs from serfdom? Also, his parents DID have to climb into the nobility status. They were not aristocrats. They had worked their way up which is why the rest of the bourgeois actually treated the family like pariahs. That was part of the reason why Lenin was radicalized. A He had left because Tsar's secret police was still keeping an eye on him. lso, Lenin did attend the meetings of the communists and marxists held all over Europe. He wasn't twiddling his thumbs in Europe. Also, his April Theses was actually pretty correct in predicting what was going to happen, the other Bolsheviks could not see it yet. When they saw the events unfold, they joined in pretty quick. Russian people "loved the Romanovs"? The same people who had been revolting against the incompetent czar and his "traitor German" Tsarina who they believed had "illicit affairs" with a madman named Rasputin? The same Czar who had been losing battle after battle and killing peasants by sending them into war without supplies, starving them and asking them to remove the boots and rifles of the first dead body of their fellow soldier in front of them? The same Czar who kept killing his own people in his country? Nope, they did not "Love him" egghead. They wanted him gone. It was only after the news of the Romanov Execution spread, that people could not believe that the innocent children of the Czar had also been murdered in cold blood. Man, you are the biggest idiot in the realm of history or you are just malicious. So, the deaths of the children were not confirmed or even made public untile 1919 and a woman tried to kill Lenin for that in 1918? Wow! Oh and no, it was not "Capitalism". Socialism is Capitalism by the gvt. Capitalism is just as bad as socialism - sometimes worse - ask any of the colonies that capitalist imperialists brutally crushed in the name of rule. This was democratic socialism or social democracy. Wait wait wait - do Socialism actually caused really bad conditions in Russia until Lenin practised a teeny weeny thing that you wrngly called capitalism. But his ideas led to Russia making more progress than the whole western world because of his ideas and reforms so much so that SU defeated USA in the space race? Yeah, SU defeated USA in space race - just putting a man first on the moon (after doing a coup to take out Russia's rocket expert) does not make USA a winner. Sadly, even today, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to ISS is way better than the mosntrosity calles the Space shuttle that we have. The cognitive dissonance on that one is monumental. Wait, so no one was listening to him so he had to escape but then he decides to come back and every person needed for the coup is ready to listen to him, already lined up and organized and are willing to risk it all in a coup? Did you get high and tumble down the stairs 5 times before hitting your head on a stone before recording this video? How does any of that even make sense? Man, this video has a lot of mistakes. I know you hate Lenin and I am not a fan of him either, but you cannot just revise history and twist facts to make it seem that everything about him was inflated and he did not matter or he was a nobody. This is exactly what the west does - try and minimize anyone in disagreement. But it is a classic case of projection.

Excellent episode, everyone! I appreciate all of the work you put in to making these videos for us. Keep up the great work Simon, Shell, and Crew! My suggestion for a future episode: Mel Blanc

*I think that most of Simon Whistler's videos are excellent--as far as videos go--but this one "misses the train" on several counts. If you are really interested in Lenin and what happened to the Russian Empire/Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries, please read a book about it. There are dozens of them, even among those written in English alone, that give a much more interesting and accurate account of Lenin and what formed his life's course. Mr. Whistler's video is riddled with inaccuracies, as has been pointed out by many of those who contributed comments to this particular video.*

10:36 slight problem, Nicolaus never told the troop to fire on the crowd. He told them to protect the palace and they fired on their own.

Correction right off the bat: 0:30 "He pushed his version of communism." That is incorrect. The label "communist" was not an indication of the system he or anyone else claimed to be creating or upholding, but a label to differentiate the Bolsheviks from others who claimed to be socialist (the Bolsheviks used to be part of the "Social Democratic" party, like Marx), but were far more moderate in that they sought to preserve the bourgeoisie in order to have capitalism take over and run its course until the people were "ready" for socialism. "Communists," then, were not people who had created communism or were part of a communist system, but were people who wanted to make it clear that they wanted to fight for a communist future *now* instead of *later.* That meant "democracy from below" (an oft-repeated slogan of Lenin), "all power to the soviets" (another slogan), and other bottom-up policies that would be necessary for the people to rule themselves through economic, social, and political democracy. "War Communism," the term used to identify what went on during their civil war, was not "communism," but just a label to describe it in a "patriotic" (?) way. 3:15 Statements made by his teachers and other staff, as well as looking at the records, Lenin had an immaculate record of behavior. People like to suggest that he was rebellious etc growing up, but that was very far from the truth. If you want to know about Lenin's life and politics, then "Lenin's Political Thought" by Neil Harding is a solid source. More than just saying stuff happened "because believe me," Harding references diary entries, pamphlets, testimonies, etc, some of which are really hard to find without knowing where to look (in other words, Harding did a LOT of work getting the best picture of Lenin that he could). 3:25 This action led to a lot of problems. Look up the 1861 Emancipation. Land was taken from the wealthy landowners and leased to the peasants, but the landowners got to choose which land they would keep and give up, meaning that they kept the best land for themselves. The peasants largely were unable to support themselves on what land they were given. The wealthy landowners were promised bonds that for giving up their land, which would pay out because of the new productivity, but because the productivity was low, the peasants couldn't pay their leases, and the landowners didn't get the money promised. Peasants were also not able to get rid of their land obligations, driving obscene numbers to move to cities (many dying along the way) to find work that would pay their debts. This, along with other things, was the start of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It is something Lenin wrote about, providing hard statistics and verified facts so that nobody could claim it wasn't so. 5:10 This is not accurate, but one of the common misconceptions people have based on what other people said about what Lenin wrote. If you read Lenin's works for yourself (I have, footnotes and all, without relying on another text to explain why he meant X instead of Y), and then compare it what Marx wrote (again, read it for yourself), you'll have a tough time differentiating between them. There are two main differences: 1) Lenin was writing about Russia specifically, whereas Marx was more proliferate and international, and 2) their writing styles are very different. Beyond that, they're almost identical. Lenin quoted Marx/Engels A LOT, and explained (to the approval of prominent Marxists, including Plekhanov and Kautsky) what a lot of it meant in simpler terms. Lenin was explicit about the role of the intelligentsia. It was to advise the people who would actually lead the revolution: the advanced workers. The advanced workers were nothing more than those workers who worked in factories and other jobs, crammed together in large numbers that allowed them to be more socially connected than others. The less connected the workers were to each other by proximity, the less advanced. Again, this is all stuff you can get from actually reading Lenin for yourself. 9:20 It was a long process, but "slithering" and the rest shows bias perpetrated by a lot of Menshevik propaganda from after the split (and right wing authors who came later, like Richard Pipes). The split between Bolshevik and Menshevik started small, but the ideological shift didn't happen until some time around 1914 (if I recall), when the Mensheviks became more blatantly in favor of more moderate reformism and other not-so-socialist things. Lenin did tend to make things black-and-white "you're either with us, or you're not," but this part of the video is pretty inaccurate. The rest after this also appears to be dripping with bias and full of inaccuracies based on biases and propaganda.

When are you going to make a video about Hitler?

I have actually been in the house where Lenin met Stalin for the first time. Officially atleast, could be that they where in a same place before, but they didnt notice each other. 🤔

20:30 Thank you so much for pointing this out to the viewers Comrade

I find most of your videos to be very objective and without excess bias, however this one was disappointing in that regard.

I’m British and never thought of Lenin as a villain

3:27 Technically it was Alexander II that abolished the practice of serfdom, but admittedly Nicolas II cancelled the redemption payments which were essentially a way of keeping the peasants under the yoke of the land owners.

Can you guys do Lyndon Baines Johnson?

Damn...

can i just say being drunk alone is made better with simons voice!