@mammal
According to Trotsky, Lenin authorized the execution of the Russian Royal Family.
“Execution lists signed by Lenin authorized the shooting of 25 Tsarist ministers, civil servants, and 765 White Guards in September 1918.”
“in a 19 March 1918 letter to Vyacheslav Molotov and the Politburo, Lenin delineated action against defiers of the decreed Bolshevik removal of Orthodox Church valuables: ‘We must . . . put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. . . . The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing . . . the better.’ As a result of this letter, historian Orlando Figes estimates that perhaps 8,000 priests and laymen were executed.”
He helped create and prolonged the Russian famine of 1921, which killed some 3–10 million people.
“Lenin killed 4 million people – men, women and little children. He is the 5th greatest murderer of the 20th century (after Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Chiang Kai-shek).”