For over fifty years the story has circulated among economists, journalists, businessmen, politicians and bankers, sometimes in print but even more in oral tradition, that Lenin said that severe inflation was the surest way to destroy capitalism. The supposed statement by.Lenin, and its.widespread and continued circulation, raises several questions for the historically minded economist; (a) the first appearance of the story in English; (b) evidence that Lenin made such a remark, or anything resembling it; (c) the possibility of such a remark having been made by some other Soviet leader and. then attributed to Lenin; (d) the history and use of Lenin's alleged remark after its first appearance in England. The first attribution in English, and probably in any language, of such a statement to Lenin was in Keynes (1919). He wrote: