Don’t remember my source, but I didn’t make it up. Prove your negative
The source is that it’s all over the internet. And yet no one can actually find it in any of Lenin’s writings.
“The goal of socialism is communism.” -—
If you find an attribution (good luck and let us know please) the quote would not mean what we are projecting on to it. If anyone has a copy of the Communist Manifesto please weigh in. Socialism was the idea of using government structure to bring about the eventual workers paradise. But then, the members of the communes, all the workers would share and participate and ultimately government would no longer be necessary. So the goal of the temporary government programs, socialism, is the ultimate and inevitable progress, progressivism, toward the worker’s paradise, communism.