A Russian leftist party has officially addressed the Federal Investigative Committee with a request to stop the production and sale of memorial coins minted in honor of the woman who almost managed to kill Vladimir Lenin in 1918.

The Communists of Russia party addressed the federal law enforcement agency for dealing with especially serious crime, the Investigative Committee, with an open letter in which they asked to stop the production and sale of a memorial coin minted in honor of the 100th anniversary of the failed attempt on Vladimir Lenin’s life made by anarchist Fanny Kaplan.

According to the letter, the coin is listed in catalogues as “Three Bullets for Lenin.”

In their letter, the leftists slammed the coin as terrorist propaganda, defiling the memory of the founder of the Soviet state, to which the Russian Federation is the heir.

They also asked investigators to take measures so that the sale and future minting of the coin are prevented and the people behind the stunt are found and brought to justice.

Read more

New Russian Communists and their mission

The Communists of Russia is a relatively small group that apparently started as a spoiler project in a bid to draw voters away from Russia’s largest opposition organization – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The new leftists claim their primary objective is the return of the Soviet Union to its previous borders and to put the nation back on the socialist track with real, old-school communism as the ultimate objective.

However, the Communists of Russia were so adept at attracting media attention that it eventually allowed them to register as a political party and even put forward their leader, Maxim Suraikin, as a candidate in the 2018 presidential election (Suraikin finished seventh with less than one percent of votes, while the candidate from the other, ‘real’, communist party came in second with over 11 percent).

Failed hit on Bolshevik leader

The failed assassination attempt against Vladimir Lenin by Fanny Kaplan (real name: Feiga Roytblat) took place in Moscow on August 30, 1918. The leader of the Bolshevik Revolution delivered a speech to a group of workers and was walking to his car when Kaplan approached and fired three rounds at him point blank.

The woman was immediately detained and put on trial, during which she explained that she wanted to kill Lenin because he had banned her party, the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SR), and she considered him a traitor to the working people’s cause.

The trial lasted just three days, after which Kaplan was executed and her body was burnt in a barrel.

Lenin survived the hit but the wounds seriously undermined his health and many researchers believe them to be the main cause of his subsequent stroke and death.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!