p Like Marxism as a whole, the theory of scientific communism is not a collection of immutable, fossilised principles accepted as a faith. It is a developing and creative science, which mirrors objective reality, social life with all its contradictions and complexities, in its movement and development. It is not a stagnant science. It moves forward, keeping in step with constantly changing life, daily becoming enriched with the latest achievements of science and practice. It closely scrutinises life, reality, profoundly studying all aspects of the processes in the capitalist and the socialist worlds, and developing and specifying theoretical conclusions and bringing them into line with the requirements of life.

p While studying and generalising the development of capitalist society, the aggravation of the contradictions in that society, and the growth of the communist and working-class movement and of the national liberation struggle and the struggle for democracy, scientific communism works out the ways and means of overthrowing capitalism with due consideration for the constantly changing conditions and the concrete situation. It studies the development of socialist society, the experience of building socialism and communism in different countries, and the role and importance of the Communist Parties in building the new society, with the purpose of working out the ways and means of building that society in conformity with 45 the concrete stage of history. In this work scientific communism rests on the achievements of other social sciences, synthesises these achievements and uses them in the revolutionary practice of reorganising the world along communist lines. This intimate unity with life, with practice determines the creative nature of scientific communism and of Marxism-Leninism as a whole.

p Scientific communism emerged when capitalism was on the ascendant. Deep-going changes took place in the world at the close of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Capitalism reached its last stage of development—-imperialism. The economic and social contradictions in it became unprecedentedly acute. A period of relative peace gave way to a period of social storms, of revolutionary upheavals.

p The period witnessing radical changes in social relations approximately coincided with the period when mankind embarked upon a new scientific and technical revolution sparked off’ by phenomenal achievements in science and technology—the discovery and utilisation of atomic power, large-scale penetration by science, particularly chemistry, into production, the development of automation, electronics, rocketry, and so forth. These advances made it unmistakably clear that capitalism was falling behind the times, that it was becoming a growing obstacle to social, scientific and technical progress. The historical need for replacing capitalism by socialism was becoming more and more urgent. The new conditions, quite naturally, demanded a new approach to the cardinal social problems and a creative development of Marxism. The new experience of the revolutionary working-class movement, the experience of the national liberation and democratic movements and the latest scientific and technical achievements had to be generalised. This became all the more necessary in view of the fact that forces hostile to Marxism were reanimated under the new conditions, and they became particularly savage in their attacks on the theory and practice of scientific communism, which was winning the hearts and minds of more and more working people throughout the world.

p At the close of the 19th century, the centre of the international revolutionary and, in particular, the working-class 46 movement began to shift to Russia, which had become the focus of the contradictions of imperialism. The socialist revolution matured in Russia, which became the home of Leninism, of Marxism enriched and developed in the new historical conditions. The further creative development of Marxism, of scientific communism is firmly linked up with Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), the great leader of the Russian and international proletariat, of all working people.

Lenin’s work in scientific communism is so vast and many-faceted that it comprises an entire phase of the development of communist ideas, a phase embracing the entire period from the close of the 19th century to the present.