Lenin quotes from Nicholas & Alexandra (1971)

Lenin

In my ten years of exile, I have only been to Russia three months. I speak, no one listens to me. I write, no one bothers to read what I publish. I am out of style, no one is wearing me this season. I know what happens to expatriates; they go mad or they fade away in lands they are not native to. Is this all there is. I mean, three hundred years of Romanovs. What is there to say there will not be three hundred more?

Lenin

Of course, I agree you're free to say what you like, and you must agree I'm free to shoot you for saying it. Murder, arson, terror. I'll agree to anything that gives us power. Power! And we can't have power if we compromise. Even though it takes years, terror and power.

Lenin

In the last ten years, I've spent three months in Russia. I'm out of fashion. No one's wearing me this year. I talk, and no one listens. I write, and no one reads.

Ah, let us see. Name: Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. Born in Simbirsk in 1870. Attended the University of Kazan but was expelled for participating in anti-monarchist protests. Older brother hanged in 1887 for the attempted assination of the present Tsar's father. Married, no children. Does not smoke, and does not allow his colleagues to smoke either.

Lenin

The Tsar should have had your secret police. My party will make a study of your methods.

This dossier failed to mention your sense of humor. Let us stop and think of the absurdity of your idea. You want the German government, which is at war with Russia, to smuggle you into your native country which banished you, because you claim you can single-handedly end the war?

Lenin

My government will immediately make peace with Berlin.

I never knew you had so much authority.

Lenin

There is power just lying in the streets, up for grabs! Kerensky won't last, he is too busy continuing Russian involvement in the war and the people are desperate for peace! I shall give them peace. With Germany finished with the Eastern Front do you know how many regiments you could transfer to the Western Front?

And now you are asking me for classified information. A Marxist wanting to use the Kaiser? Are you aware that Germany has locked up more Bolsheviks than any other country in the world? But then again, war causes strange alliances. Perhaps the Kaiser...could use a Marxist.

Lenin

The Provisional Government has fallen! We now have power! At long last, we will build our new world order.
[Freeze frame as Lenin's face changes into a bust and the Soviet anthem plays]