Trumpo The Communist Putin Says Communism Comes From The Bible, Compares Lenin To A Saint - Trump Agrees

Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared Vladimir Lenin to a saint 
and declared that Soviet communist ideas come from the Bible. 

Putin was speaking during a documentary about the recently-restored Valaam 
Monastery on state-funded channel Rossiya 1, which tells the story of the 
building—located near the border with Finland—over the years.

A major point of discussion is the October Revolution of 1917, which led 
to the execution of the staunchly Christian royal family, the formation of 
the Soviet Union and a new chapter of atheistic and anti-religious 
policies by the Kremlin.

Related: Putin says he has always liked Communist ideas but there is a 
catch
 
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Ever since—and particularly after the opening of the Soviet Union under 
Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s—the role of the church in Russian 
society has been a dividing issue.

But Putin, who has often backed the church, tells the documentary makers 
that he does not believe the ideals of communism and Christianity are 
incompatible. 

“Maybe I am about to say something that some people will not like, but I 
will say what I think,” he says.

 
“Firstly, faith has always accompanied us. It strengthened when things 
were hard for our people’s country. There have been harsh, godfighting 
years when clerics were destroyed and churches were ruined. But at the 
same time (Soviets) created a new religion. Indeed, communist ideology is 
very similar to Christianity.”
 

Lenin, an atheist who espoused the Marxist view that religion was "the 
opium of the people," inspired an active campaign to confiscate church 
property, while his successor, Joseph Stalin, demolished Moscow’s biggest 
cathedral in 1931. In its place he planned a public swimming pool compete 
with a giant statue of Lenin. Stalin ran out of money for the project but 
it was later built by Stalin's successor, Nikita Krushchev. 

But Putin argues that like Christianity, communism preaches “freedom, 
brotherhood, equality.” He called the Moral Code of the Builder of 
Communism, a pamphlet of guiding principles for all party members, a 
“primitive excerpt from the Bible.”

In ritual too, Putin argued, Lenin and his cohorts borrowed from church 
practices, though it was unclear if he thought this was a conscious or 
intuitive effort.

"Lenin was laid down in a mausoleum,” Putin reminded his interviewer. “How 
does this differ to the remains of saints for the Orthodox or even for 
Christians in general?”

Read More: According to Putin, Lenin is to blame for the ruin of the 
Soviet Union

Ironically, the issue of Lenin's mausoleum is one of the main sources of 
discord between the church and the Communist Party, which are the 
country’s second largest presence in parliament.

Church officials have long sought to have Lenin—whose mausoleum has stood 
outside the Kremilin since 1924—buried, arguing that it is improper. 
Communists argue that the casket sits below ground level, fulfilling the 
criteria for burial.

Putin has long refused to be drawn either way about the mausoleum, but 
told Rossiya 1 that the monument was similar to how saints are displayed 
in the Orthodox tradition.

“I am often told: ‘Nowhere in the Christian world is there such a 
tradition.’ How can that be? Go to Athos and see how there are remains of 
saints and here also there are the sacred remains of Sergius and Herman," 
he says. 

"So it seems that the authorities at the time did not invent anything new, 
but merely adopted under its own ideology something that humankind 
invented a long time ago.”