Kmflett's Blog

Lenin, b 22 April 1870 d 21st January 1924. Cats, dogs & socialism

Making a connection between the politics of Lenin who died 102 years ago this week with cats and dogs is a complex and dialectical question.

Lenin however was certainly a cat lover, having several in his Kremlin apartment from 1918.

John S Clarke who was a professional lion tamer visited Moscow in 1920 and reportedly helped to train and organise cats. However while attending the Second Congress of the Comintern Clarke cured Lenin’s dog of an illness. Clarke went on to become a Labour MP (those were the days)

The picture of Lenin with a cat was taken in the village of Gorki in 1922

We should however be cautious about assuming an automatic link between cats and any particular trend on the left, Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.