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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: mistermj who wrote (173959)11/2/2005 1:31:16 PM
From: epicure  Read Replies (1) of 281500
 
The term is sometimes claimed to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin to describe those western reporters and travellers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West. However, no reference to a communist being called a "useful idiot" was made in the United States until 1948, and not until decades later would the attempts to attribute the phrase to Lenin be made. Lenin never wrote it in any published document, no one has claimed to have heard him say it first hand, and it contradicts the opinions expressed in Lenin's published documents in reference to the Comintern.

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"Lenin, it is said, once described left-liberals and social democrats as ‘useful idiots,’ and for years anti-communists have used the phrase to describe Soviet sympathizers in the West, sometimes suggesting that Lenin himself talked about ‘useful idiots in the West.’ But the expression does not appear in Lenin’s writing. We get queries on ‘useful idiots of the West’ all the time, declared Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, in the spring of 1987. We have not been able to identify this phrase among his published works."

wolfgangvonskeptik.mu.nu
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