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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).

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  • 99
    The cat belonged to the people.
    – Clint Eastwood
    Jul 29, 2019 at 16:09
  • 11
    @ClintEastwood the cat was Lenin's ruler. As we all know, cats rule the world through their humans.
    – jwenting
    Jul 30, 2019 at 7:37
  • 22
    I know that he only drank coffee. Because all proper tea is theft.
    – Richard
    Jul 30, 2019 at 12:38
  • @Richard Coffee is just tea made with ground coffee beans.
    – corsiKa
    Aug 1, 2019 at 8:27
  • 2
    No. Some cats may have had Vladimir Lenin, however.
    – WBT
    Aug 2, 2019 at 2:58

2 Answers 2

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37

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.

  • (p 367)

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.

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  • 24
    I think you mean that Lenin was owned by several cats? Your answer seems to have it backwards. My cats told me I may have to downvote you for that! ;)
    – Marakai
    Jul 30, 2019 at 1:34
  • 26
    @Marakai Non-adopted humans have a hard time understanding the difference. They have to be domesticated by a cat first.
    – John Hamilton
    Jul 30, 2019 at 5:00
  • 15
    @Marakai Ah, but as the saying goes, in Soviet Russia...
    – anaximander
    Jul 31, 2019 at 12:45
  • 1
    The cat was his familiar
    – user27618
    Dec 12, 2019 at 22:41
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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.

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