The majority of Russians have no interest in Vladimir Lenin's role in history

The Russian people are reconsidering Vladimir Lenin's historical role

The Analytical Center of Yuri Levada conducted a representative poll among 1600 Russian people in 128 settlements of 46 regions of Russia. The poll was taken on April 15-18th and was devoted to the role of Vladimir Lenin in world history.

Forty-one percent said that no one will remember Lenin, but historians. Fourteen percent believe that Lenin was a brilliant politician, who managed to impose his will on a huge country. Nine percent of respondents said that they thought about Vladimir Lenin as a brutal dictator, who was ready to sacrifice lives of millions of people. Five percent said that Lenin was a person, who did not like and did not understand Russia.

The results of the poll showed that Russian people's attitude to Lenin has become more restrained over the recent five years. People do not have as much negative emotions about the odious political leader as they did before. However, they emphasized Lenin's significance in history as the person, who greatly affected the historical process, but did not become recognizable as the creator of the still-actual ideological theory.

The poll showed that the Russian people are reconsidering Vladimir Lenin's historical role, and the process will apparently continue in the future as well. A recent opinion poll conducted among young people under 25 years of age, proved that the young generation does not give a positive estimation to Lenin as a political figure, philosopher and revolutionary leader. However, this point of view is common with people over 55 years old. Negative estimations of Vladimir Lenin's role in world history prevail in the modern young society of Russian people.

The Russian Public Opinion Fund said, however, that the Russian society still preserves a positive attitude to Vladimir Lenin. More than a half of the fund's respondents – 58 percent – positively estimated Lenin's historical significance, whereas only 21 percent expressed negative opinions on the matter.

The majority of respondents said that they positively estimated Vladimir Lenin's contribution in the Russian history (81%). People also think that Lenin was a good person in his nature. It is noteworthy that even those respondents, who treat Lenin's role in history negatively, agreed that the “the world proletarian leader” was a good person. On the whole, 59 percent of Russian people said that Vladimir Lenin was a good man; 11 percent disagreed with such a point of view. On the other hand, Russians do not have much interest in this particular historical persona: 68 respondents stated firmly that they would not like to learn more about Lenin, whereas 21 percent said the opposite.

The latter are interested in details about Lenin's biography, first and foremost: little-known details about his private life, why he had no heirs, the truth about his political activity, whether Lenin was working for Germany or not, how he managed to carry out the revolution in such a big country as Russia. People are also interested simply in objective information about Vladimir Lenin as a historical person too.

According to the Public Opinion Fund, two-thirds of Russian people stated that there was one (15%), or even several (17%) streets in their towns named in Lenin's honor. Twenty-nine percent of respondents added that there was at least one monument to Lenin in their towns, whereas 36 percent said that the number of Lenin monuments was larger than one in their settlements.