 Yesterday was 100th anniversary of Lenin. Lenin died on January 21, 1924. He was relatively young. He was 53 years old. He had been severely weakened by three strokes. He was already kind of bedridden, starting in 1922. He was, as you know, there's a Muslim in his honor with his body there. Lenin got shot. So Lenin, of course, is responsible for the Russian Revolution. I mean, Lenin is a truly extraordinary figure. He comes out of complete obscurity. And basically it takes over the largest country in mass, in geography, in the world. He leads a revolution of a tiny minority and yet leads them to victory in a civil war against the military force of the aristocrats during the Russian Revolution. I mean, before 1917, very few people knew who Lenin was. Certainly in Russia, pretty much nobody knew him. The Russian secret police had no idea what he looked like. Germany, who kind of sent him to Russia, were shocked by his success. And he basically revolutionized the world in his short time in power. I mean, he came to power in 1917. In 1924, he was already dead. Seven years, two of those years, he was bedridden. So he basically, within, you know, five years, completely changed the world. I love Nikos from the Iron Man Institute's take on this. He says, by late 1922, well, no. In these five years, Lenin left his mark on so much that was to follow. Without Lenin, there's no Soviet Union. Without the Soviet Union, there's no Communist China. No Korean War. There's no Cold War. There's no 45 years lost for Eastern Europe. There's no lavish aid to Arab nationalism, anti-colonial movement, Vietnam, Algeria, etc. Also, look quite differently. Without Lenin, there's no Comiturn. Without Comiturn, there's no Communist movement in the West. History of Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Greece would be different. Including, by the way, I'll add, the rise of Hitler. Also, without the USSR, most of the things we associate with Stalin are already there with Lenin. That is, Stalin is not an originator here. And this is the thing that so many people evade about Lenin. And you don't see written about him when people are commemorating his death. The censorship was already there. The authoritarianism was already there. The labor camps were established by Lenin. Starving people, starving the farmers, was a political tool. Yes, Lenin was more practical or pragmatic, in a sense, than Stalin. And was willing to tolerate some level of private property and some level of privatization in order to get the economy going. But basically, all the components of what later became Stalin's brutal authoritarianism were laid there by Lenin. The whole history, it's not clear that anybody else could have brought about the Russian Revolution. It's not clear what happens to Russia, if not for Lenin. What direction it takes, if not for Lenin. It was probably heading towards some kind of civil war, some kind of revolution, but where? What the nature of that revolution is hard to tell. So much for the people's denial of the theory of great man. Great man do shape history. And Lenin is an evil monster of a great man, but he has a shape of history. And without him being there, doing particularly what he did. Not only that, I just saw this recent academic research that looks at Marxism. How popular was Marx from the period where he wrote his famous books in the mid-19th century to today? What are the key events that made Marx the dominant intellectual force that he became? And it turns out that if you look at citations, if you look at references, Phil Magnus has done this work. If you look at citation and references, then pre-Lenin, pre-1917, Marx is just not that important. He's just not that big. By the way, this was published in one of the top economic historic history journals. This is kind of mainstream journal. This is not like a lot of Austrians published in second class, third class, fourth class journals. This is in the first class journal. The first class is termed by the profession. You could argue that Lenin made Marxism by taking control over Russia and inspiring people out of the world that a Marxist communist revolution was possible. Lenin elevated Marx in ways that did not exist before. So the whole history of the 20th century, which to a large extent is shaped by communism. Shaped by communism's dominance of Russia and Eastern Europe, but shaped by communism as an intellectual movement as opposed to the liberalism of the West, but also as opposed to the fascism of Hitler and the fascism of Mussolini, who presented themselves as saviors of the West against the evils of the left. So Lenin changed the world, single-handedly changed the world. For the worst, we'll go down in history as one of the worst people in history, or the most damaging people in history. Contemplating the world without Lenin is interesting but impossible, of course. Somebody should do an alternative history. But yeah, Nikos nailed it in an excellent tweet. You can follow Nikos at Nikosunderscore17 at Nikosunderscore171717. I wonder if that's 17 in commemoration of the Russian Revolution. Anyway, Nikosunderscore17, of course a fellow at the Android Institute, has great tweets. I'm jealous of his tweeting ability. He has really, really good tweets. His tweet on Lenin is excellent. I encourage you to follow him on Twitter.