I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent images.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Russia is now very far from being a communist country, but when I walked around Moscow, I kept glimpsing these haunting images. There were statues of Lenin and some neon signs of the hammer and sickle. I remembered myself then as a little girl, living under that oppression.
Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power.
Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.
Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it.
My father was convinced, I think rightly, that if he stayed in Russia, he would have trouble with Lenin.
Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive.
I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too.
I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.
I still think like a Marxist in many ways.
Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.