Quote Investigator says that Major George Racey Jordan was the source of this wording in 1955, but he attributed it to Lenin. In 1931, however, S. Dmitrijewski wrote something similar (while talking about Maxim Litvinov):
> In the autumn of 1905 he founded, together with Krassin, the newspaper New Life; the necessary money being given by millionaires, who thereby helped weave the rope from which many of them should hang later on.