The Key Question: Where Does the Road Lead? : Reagan Misquoted Lenin, Kremlin Says

The words of V.I. Lenin, the founding father of Bolshevism and the closest thing to a saint in the officially atheistic Soviet Union, are venerated in this part of the world.

The complete works of Lenin run to 55 volumes, plus a two-volume index, and he is quoted as the final authority on a great variety of matters.

So it was only natural that the Kremlin would wince when President Reagan invoked Lenin’s name, and what he said were Lenin’s words, in a speech Sunday at the Statue of Liberty in New York.

Vowing to support the anti-government forces in Nicaragua as long as he is President, Reagan said the Soviet goal in Central America is clear, and he quoted Lenin as saying:

“The road to America leads through Mexico.”

According to Pravda, Lenin, the Soviet Union’s most authoritative interpreter of Communist thinking, did not say and could not say what Reagan said he said. Pravda accused the President of distorting history.

Offers to Eat His Hat

Gennady I. Gerasimov, the chief spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, took a different approach. At his regular briefing for the press Tuesday, he pointed to the works of Lenin stacked on a nearby table and offered to eat his hat if anyone could find the “road to America” reference anywhere therein.

No one volunteered.

“Lenin spoke of Mexico several times, but he said the road to Mexico goes through America,” Gerasimov said.

He cited no volume or page, as Pravda generally does when quoting from Lenin.

Gerasimov, with a shrug, went on to say that this was not Reagan’s first offense of this sort. On another occasion, he said, the President referred to Lenin’s “10 commandments,” although there is no such thing.

“I doubt,” Gerasimov said, “that (Reagan) ever read Lenin’s works.”