Did Lenin admit that capitalism is the better system before his death?Or is this bogus?

by asskisser

I read this online, is it bs?

mizzamir

This is one of the fun inventions of fundamentalist Christian evangelical "history" that's taught in homeschool courses; that he had a deathbed conversion to Capitalism and to Christianity, and said "I've made a great error. My nightmare is to have the feeling that I’m lost in an ocean of blood from the innumerable victims [of socialism]." I'm aware of no evidence he ever said any such thing, or referred to Francis of Assisi. It's common among evangelicals to claim falsely that a well known figure converted on their deathbed.

Lenin was in a coma when he died.

What can be treated as his actual last words is referred to as his Last Testament, which was a letter to the Party in which he pretty thoroughly eviscerated Stalin and Trotsky, and laid out specific recommendations for ensuring the continuing Revolution was not mishandled by either.

eliphas8

This did not happen as according to any written sources available. With the NEP Lenin shifted his theoretical ideas towards "state capitalism" in his own words, but that was always in his words a concession to practicality and the isolation of the soviet state from the wider industrial world. That might be what the claim is based on an and running with. But he never actually had an end of his life conversion to capitalism.

If Lenin had a late in life transformation in his thinking it was against bureaucracy rather than socialism specifically, at least this is corroborated by primary sources (most thoroughly by Trotsky, but there's a lot of statements which make more sense in light of that claim).