Putin blamed Lenin for the collapse of the USSR

Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the activities of the head of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR Vladimir Lenin led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The President made this statement at a meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education, Interfax reports .

The head of state expressed his attitude towards Lenin in response to the speech of the head of the Kurchatov Institute, Mikhail Kovalchuk, who quoted Boris Pasternak's poem "The High Illness", in which there are lines: "He controlled the flow of thoughts, And only because of the country." The President noted the correctness of the idea to control the flow of thought, but emphasized that this thought should lead to the right results, "and not like Vladimir Ilyich", whose activities led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“There were many such thoughts: autonomy and so on. They laid an atomic bomb under a building called Russia, and then it exploded. And we did not need a world revolution. That’s the idea there,” Putin explained.

Commenting on the president's statement, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the head of state , said that the words about Lenin are Putin's personal point of view.

“This should hardly be a reason for reflection. Rather, this may be a reason for disagreement, but there is nothing to be outraged about, in fact, everyone, including the president, is free to have their own attitude to the role of this or that person in history, ”Peskov said.

At the same time, the press secretary stressed that the question of burying Lenin's body was not on the agenda.