Who was the real Lenin, a bloodthirsty criminal, an opera lover or a person with a mental disorder? Or all three?
Russian state television will soon start showing a documentary series that will show the leader of the Bolshevik revolution in a much different light than Soviet clichés, Hina agency reports.
"We will put an end to the myth of Vladimir Uljanov," said screenwriter Igor Lipin, using the revolutionary's real name.
The research was led by the former chief archivist of the FSB, General Vasiliy Khristoforov.
"The legend of the good Lenin against the evil Stalin turned out to be absolutely false, because it was Lenin who launched the Red Terror," Lipin said, referring to the brutal purges that followed the 1917 revolution.
The series will feature a letter in which Lenin called for the "death" of two million kulaks, rich peasants who were the target of bloody repression in 1918.
Shortly thereafter, concentration camps began to be built in the country to isolate the "enemy classes".
The authors say they will also show documents that reveal that Lenin had mental health problems, including his mother's opinion on the matter.
The tone of the series promises to be significantly different from the idolatry that Lenin enjoyed during the existence of the USSR, the state in which he was considered a deity, reports Hina.
He was celebrated in songs, on film, in painting and literature. His thoughts were written on the walls and taught to children in schools.
According to one joke, as reported by Hina, in the USSR they should have started producing double beds for three because "Lenin was always with us".
Contrary to Stalin, whose mass purges were partially condemned by his successor Nikita Khrushchev, communist propaganda described Lenin as an altruist and humanist who led an almost ascetic life.
With the fall of the USSR in 1991, Lenin largely disappeared from public discourse, but still retained some popularity.
A survey by the Levada agency in 2017, a century after the revolution, showed that 56 percent of respondents think positively of Lenin.
Four out of five Russians oppose the removal of his monuments, of which there are still many across the country. The issue of removing his embalmed body from the mausoleum on Red Square never took off.
During Putin's rule, Lenin fell into the background, while Stalin returned to the focus as a war leader against the Nazis.
"Lenin has been forgotten, he has fallen into Stalin's shadow," said film director Vladimir Hotinenko, whose latest film "The Lenin Factor" has been showing in cinemas since October.
The director portrays Lenin as a member of the petty bourgeoisie who, living in Zurich, went out with a top hat and a bow tie and watched Wagner's operas.
The film focuses on Lenin's life in exile in Switzerland and his return to Russia in April 1917.
His train journey through Germany, a country that was at war with Russia in the First World War, would not have been possible without the permission of the German Emperor.
Six months later, revolutionaries overthrew the Russian Tsar, and in March 1918, Lenin signed a peace treaty with Germany and abandoned Russia's international allies.
Yevgeny Mironov, one of the leading Russian actors, plays Lenin in Hotinenko's film. He does not have a good opinion of the leader of the Bolsheviks, especially because of the suspicion that he financed the revolution with German money.
"Lenin was not attached to Russia and did not like Russians at all, he considered them lazy peasants," said Mironov in an interview with the newspaper Izvestia.
"For him, winning power in the country was only the first step in his plan to rule the world".
The spokesman of the Russian Communist Party, Alexander Yushchenko, says that these are attempts to discredit Lenin at a time when social and economic inequalities are driving people to the streets of Russia and other countries.
"It shows that Lenin's ideas are still winning over the masses and inciting them against the world of capital," Yushchenko said.
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