History - USSR - Interview with Lenin

A blast from the past..

An interview with Lenin: his cold, clear brain

WT Goode
Tuesday October 21, 1919
The Guardian

The interview with Lenin has been a matter of some difficulty to arrange; not because he is unapproachable - he goes about with as little external trappings or precautions as myself - but because his time is so precious. He, even more than the other Commissaries, is always at work. But at last I secured a free moment and drove to one of the gates of the Kremlin.

A small wooden office beyond the bridge, where a civilian grants passes, and a few soldiers, ordinary Russian soldiers, were all there was to be seen at this entrance. It is always being said that Lenin is guarded by Chinese. There were no Chinese here.

I hung up my hat and coat in the ante-chamber, passed through a room in which clerks were at work, and entered the room in which the executive committee of the Council of People's Commissaries holds its meetings. I had kept my appointment strictly to time, and followed into the room in which Lenin works and waited a minute for his coming.

Lenin entered. He is a man of middle height, about 50-years-old, active and well proportioned. His hair and pointed beard have a ruddy brown tinge. The head is well domed, and his brow broad and well raised. He has a pleasant expression in talking, indeed his manner can be described as distinctly prepossessing. He speaks clearly in a well-modulated voice, and during the interview never hesitated or betrayed the slightest confusion. Indeed, the one clearly cut impression he left on me was that here was a clear, cold brain, a man absolutely master of himself and of his subject, expressing himself with a lucidity as startling as it was refreshing...

I took up the thread by asking about the attitude of the Soviet Republic to the small nations who had split off the Russian Empire and had proclaimed their independence. He replied that Finland's independence had been recognised in November 1917... that the Soviet Republic had announced some time previously that no soldiers of the Soviet Republic would cross the frontier with arms in their hands...

For the third time I took up the questioning, asking what guarantees could be offered against official propoganda among the Western peoples, if relations with the Soviet Republic were opened. His reply was that they had declared... that they were ready to sign an agreement, not to make official propaganda. I asked if he had any general statement: he replied that the most important thing to say was that the Soviet system is best, and English workers and agricultural labourers would accept it if they knew it.