Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro received this year’s Order of Lenin award from the Russian government, the Epoch Times noted on Wednesday, before a crowd including American communists.

The award was presented by Yaroslav Listo, head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on youth policy on the final day of the “World Anti-Imperialist Congress.”

“We all have Lenin in our hearts,” Listo declared on handing out the award. “This is a commitment. A revolutionary commitment to building socialism in the 21st century.”

Once the highest award bestowed by the Soviet Union, Maduro joins a long line of communist spies, tyrants, and guerrilla fighters in being recognized for the immense suffering they have imposed on humanity.

Previous recipients include dictators such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro and North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung, as well as the likes of the Spaniard who assassinated Leon Trotsky, Ramon Mercader, and the British double agent for the Soviet Union Kim Philby.

Much like prior honorees, Maduro is largely responsible for the transformation of his country from one of the region’s most prosperous nations to a nation in a situation where millions of people have been forced to flee the country due to lack of the most basic living essentials such as food, medicine, and electricity.

In his acceptance speech, Maduro cited late Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, responsible for the deaths of around 50 million people, likely making him the greatest mass murderer in history.

“It is here that we are the vanguard of a model of socialism, of anti-imperialism that will transform the world for humanity,” Maduro declared. “Mao Zedong called U.S. Imperialism a paper tiger,” and said that “we will build the new world that is coming.”

According to the communist publication FightBack!News, which V events in detail, Maduro “shamed the human rights organizations of the world for not caring about the lives of Iraqis for the last seventeen years of U.S Imperialist murder, terrorism, and bombings.”

In a sign of solidarity to the U.S. delegation from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Maduro explained that he knows America well from his time working as a bus driver.

“I know the U.S well. I used to drive a bus from Boston to New York, to Philadelphia, to Washington DC.,” he explained. “I am not anti-American. I am anti-imperialist. We are anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-racist.”

Maduro was a professional bus driver before joining Hugo Chávez’s “revolution” and becoming foreign minister, then replacing him after his death.

It is not the first time that Maduro has received recognition for his destruction of Venezuela. As well as a range of Venezuelan awards presumably ordered by himself, he also has received awards from Cuba and Argentina.

He also holds the highest decoration in Palestine over his support for the anti-Zionist cause, while the dictator of Nicaragua Daniel Ortega and former President of Bolivia Evo Morales also awarded him their highest decorations as a signal of left-wing solidarity.

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