useful idiots?

Sand

I was killing some time at work on the internet and ran into the phrase "useful idiots" which is apparently attributed to Lennin - I say apparently because despite searching for a quote for the best part of 30 minutes I can find no quote by lennin that includes the phrase useful idiots though I can find plenty of people using the phrase and attributing it to Lennin.

Did lennin actually ever coin the phrase or is it just a popular myth? Im leaning towards the latter because I cant find a single primary source of evidence that he ever said it.

newgrange

Popular myth.
See
http://www.historyamericas.com/They_Never_Said_It_A_Book_of_Fake_Quotes_Misquotes_and_Misleading_Attributions_0195064690.html

From: http://civilization-calls.mu.nu/archives/011911.html

"The reference librarian, an articulate and helpful woman named Heather, called me back exactly as promised and read me the following:

"Lenin, it is said, once described left-liberals and social democrats as ‘useful idiots,’ and for years anti-communists have used the phrase to describe Soviet sympathizers in the West, sometimes suggesting that Lenin himself talked about ‘useful idiots in the West.’ But the expression does not appear in Lenin’s writing. We get queries on ‘useful idiots of the West’ all the time, declared Grant Harris, senior reference librarian at the Library of Congress, in the spring of 1987. We have not been able to identify this phrase among his published works."

The source of this passage is a work entitled "They Never Said It: a Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions", authored by Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George, published by Oxford University Press in 1989. The text goes on to explain that the phrase apparently first appeared in a John Birch Society pamphlet labeling President Ronald Reagan a "useful idiot" because of some agreement he had negotiated with the Soviet Union.