Lenin's great achievement

From Pseudo-Polymath [who found it at Telic Thoughts]: Christopher Hitchens, who does understand the evil of totalitarianism, and can usually be counted on to defend the persecuted, totally loses it when confronted by religion. Hitchens:

One of Lenin's great achievements, in my opinion, is to create a secular Russia. The power of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition, is probably never going to recover from what he did to it.

Lenin, of course, created the GULAG [See Gulag: A History by Applebaum]. By the time he died it has been estimated that it contained 70,000 prisoners, and many others were already dead. What he started, Stalin would expand. And the Orthodox Church was among the victims. A summary from Wikipedia:

Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. In 1918, the All-Russia Emergency Commission under Felix Dzerzhinsky executed over 3000 Orthodox clergymen of all ranks. Some were drowned in ice-holes or poured over with cold water in winter until they turned to ice-pillars. In 1922, the Solovki Camp of Special Purpose, the first Russian concentration camp was established in the Solovki Islands in the White Sea. Eight metropolitans, twenty archbishops, and forty-seven bishops of the Orthodox Church died there, along with tens of thousands of the laity. Of these, 95,000 were put to death, executed by firing squad.

Lenin was the creator of perhaps the most murderous regime in history:Pseudo-Polymath: A Dumber Thing is Rarely Said, Wikipedia: Interbellum Persecution of the Church, Democide in Totalitarian States