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According to Wikipedia:

He [Lenin] was... fond of pets, in particular cats.

So did Lenin, at some point, have a cat? I have seen some pictures of him holding cats, but I guess they could just be him holding someone else's cat (for popularity points).

maninthecomputer
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    The cat belonged to the people. – Clint Eastwood Jul 29 '19 at 16:09
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    @ClintEastwood the cat was Lenin's ruler. As we all know, cats rule the world through their humans. – jwenting Jul 30 '19 at 07:37
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    I know that he only drank coffee. Because all proper tea is theft. – Richard Jul 30 '19 at 12:38
  • @Richard Coffee is just tea made with ground coffee beans. – corsiKa Aug 01 '19 at 08:27
  • @corsiKa that's not 'proper tea' – mcalex Aug 01 '19 at 09:35
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    No. Some cats may have had Vladimir Lenin, however. – WBT Aug 02 '19 at 02:58
  • He did, his cat's name was Мисюсь (Misyusy, mee-SOOS), I even wrote a surrealistic metaphysical short film script about them, in Russian, called "Nitrous Kremlin". A translation into English is rather problematic, since, unlike Russian, in English "nitrogen" and "Azoth" sound completely different, but their total similarity in Russian is the main point of the plot. :) – Yellow Sky Aug 30 '19 at 17:02
  • @YellowSky So I've been discussing the plot of your film script with a friend and we're both interested: what is it about? It sounds like it's about lenin and his cat making nitrogen and Azoth? sounds weird, could you explain your project a little more, just out of curiosity. The main point of the plot is a pun? – Féileacán Nov 09 '19 at 00:15
  • @Féileacán - Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/notes/olexa-stomachenko/хф-кремлёвская-закись/1200951853264674/ – Yellow Sky Nov 10 '19 at 22:32

2 Answers2

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It appears that Lenin did indeed own several cats over the years.

According to Louis Fischer's The Life of Lenin (the source cited by the Wikipedia article):

He had had a brown cat in Geneva. During her visit to Lenin at Gorky shortly following the August 30, 1918, attempt on his life, Angelica Balabanoff saw two cats in the household. Lincoln Eyre, an American journalist who went to Lenin's Kremlin apartment, noted that the dictator was "fond" of his several cats.

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One reasonably well-known image that you may have seen is this one:

Lenin with cat (click to enlarge)

According to this article in the Guardian newspaper, the photograph was taken in 1922 by Lenin's sister "at his residence in the village of Gorki", and so could very well show one of the two cats seen by Angelica Balabanoff in 1918.

sempaiscuba
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Victor Sebestyen's book 'Lenin the Dictator' says that after the Bolsheviks had seized power and Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya were living in a flat in the Kremlin, Lenin, despite his many other responsibilities as a ruthless Communist Dictator, always remembered to feed their cat, which his wife would often forget.

Sebestyen does not say what the cat was called or what colour it was.

Timothy
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