p Comrades, in the history of mankind there have been many revolutions that swayed the destiny of peoples and social development. Among them the October Revolution occupies a special place because of its nature and historical consequences. It put an end to exploitation of man by man and 9 started the reorganisation of society in the interests of the working people themselves. It ushered in the era of the liberation of the working class and all working people from the calamities, sufferings and humiliations stemming from the millennia-long rule of oppressors.

p Past developments evoke different feelings. However important and instructive, some are seen only as pages of history. Others, even after decades, remain part, as it were, of our present, kindling the interest of historians and of all the people active in the political struggle of our days. The October Revolution was precisely such an event.

p During the 50 years that have passed since the October Revolution the world revolutionary movement has accumulated extensive and many-sided experience, which has broadened out the notions of the ways and means of revolutionary struggle and shown how important it is to take into account the entire range of conditions under which revolutions of the working class mature and are accomplished. At the same time, in the light of this experience the significance of the general laws of the socialist revolution looms larger than ever before. Owing to the fact that the October Revolution brought these laws to light with such fullness and clarity the powerful impact that it made on the world revolutionary process has not relaxed over the past half century.

p The road that brought Russia to socialism is the highroad of world history and of the whole of human civilisation. Despite the purely Russian conditions under which it was accomplished the October Revolution mirrored the basic, principal trends of a whole epoch, the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, a transition that was prepared by the entire course of world socio-economic development.

p The replacement of capitalism by socialism became necessary and inevitable when private ownership of the means of production became an obstacle to the development of the productive forces. Capitalism created its own grave-digger— the working class. The long and persevering struggle waged by the international proletariat gave birth to battle experience which became labour’s formidable weapon in the class clashes with capitalism.

p The development of advanced social thinking prepared the ground for the Great October Socialist Revolution. This development reached its peak in Marxism. By their truly creative feat which turned socialism from a utopia into a 10 science, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the great thinkers and revolutionaries, showed all oppressed and downtrodden people the road to freedom and happiness.

p The socialist revolution matured in the bosom of the old world. And it broke out in its weakest link—in Russia, which was the storm-centre of all the basic contradictions of imperialism at the beginning of the 20th century.

p In Russia the rapid development of capitalism gave rise to numerous insolvable problems and increasingly aggravated class antagonisms. Under the semi-feudal system the working people suffered not only from capitalist exploitation but also from landowner tyranny, ruthless political coercion and national oppression. In no other country at that time were the social and political contradictions of the epoch so acute and inflamed.

p The First World War speeded up developments. It brought the privations and sufferings of the working masses to bursting point and laid bare the rottenness and helplessness of the tsarist autocracy and then of the Provisional Government. Lenin wrote that in those days the old machine of state was sitting on a volcano; great rumblings were beginning to rise from the depth of the people’s consciousness and the air was becoming charged with electricity which unavoidably had to burst forth in a cleansing thunderstorm.

p The experience of October thus demonstrated that a revolution triumphs only when the objective conditions for it have taken shape. Nobody can repeal this immutable law. At the same time, the October Revolution showed that besides the favourable objective conditions needed for the overthrow of the old system, the working masses must be properly prepared and organised for decisive battles with the class enemy.

p The working class of Russia successfully coped with that task. (Applause.} It took shape as the most revolutionary contingent of the world proletariat. Its political role in the country’s life was immeasurably greater than its numerical strength. It proved to be a worthy successor to the finest revolutionary traditions of the peoples of our country and it creatively assimilated the revolutionary experience of the world proletariat. It formed its own militant vanguard, the Bolshevik Party, which integrated socialism with the working-class movement and the spontaneous indignation of the masses. The teaching of Marx and Engels became the world 11 outlook of the foremost workers in Russia. BolsheviksLeninists upheld the purity of this teaching and developed it in conformity with the new historical conditions, the conditions engendered by imperialism, with the specific tasks of their revolutionary struggle.

p Bolsheviks have always taken as their point of departure the fact that far from being either a coup at the top or a conspiracy by a group of heroes, a socialist revolution is a movement of the broadest masses of working people. By constantly being in the very thick of the masses and leading their struggle, the Party united millions of workers, peasants and soldiers into a single army of revolution. Bolsheviks tirelessly moulded the alliance between the working class and the working peasants, and this alliance became the bulwark of the revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country. In the Soviets, brought to life by the masses as far back as 1905, the Party of Lenin found a new form of political power of the working people.

p In the course of many years of class struggle and in the battles fought during bourgeois-democratic revolutions, Lenin and the Leninists steadily improved revolutionary strategy and tactics. While preparing for the October upheaval the Party gained vast experience of all forms of struggle—legal and illegal, peaceful and non-peaceful, underground and open. It was prepared for a swift change from one form of struggle to another and had the skill to lead the working class in the most complex and tangled situation through all obstacles and twists and turns of history. And when the decisive moment came the workers and peasants of Russia, having seen for themselves that the policy of the Bolsheviks was correct, followed the Bolshevik Party, accepted its slogans and emerged triumphant. (Applause.)

p The October armed uprising was prepared and accomplished with such consummate skill and understanding of the sentiments of the worker, peasant and soldier masses that it has rightly entered history as a model of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The flame of Revolution, ignited in Red Petrograd, enveloped the entire country, spreading to its remotest outskirts.

p The triumph of the October Revolution was the result of the persevering and painstaking work and the heroic and tense struggle carried on by the Bolsheviks-Leninists over many years. The lesson of the October Revolution is that 12 even when conditions are most favourable the working class can accomplish a socialist revolution only if it is led by its vanguard, the Marxist Party, which has firm bonds with the masses and has mastered all forms of revolutionary struggle. That is another immutable law of revolution. ( Applause.)

p It will be recalled that at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century opportunism, whose chief exponents were the leaders of the Second International, sank deep roots in the world working-class movement. There was a great debate on how to move towards socialism: through revolution or through reformism reducing the tasks of the working-class movement to a struggle for partial demands without affecting the foundation of the capitalist system. It was up to historical practice to decide this debate, to say the last word in it. This word was said by the October Revolution. It showed that the working class could achieve victory only through revolution, no matter in what form it was accomplished. (Applause.)

p The October Revolution signified more than a change of political power. It signified a most profound socio-economic upheaval that virtually ploughed its way through the life of the nation and affected all aspects of Russian reality. By bringing the working class to power the October Revolution delivered the working people from exploitation, turned the factories, banks and railways over to them, gave land to the peasants, abolished national oppression that weighed heavily on half of Russia’s population and took the country out of the imperialist war.

p In face of incredible difficulties caused by the resistance of class enemies and by economic dislocation, the young Soviet state, as soon as it came to be, started to reorganise society. The tasks with which Soviet power began its activities were the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, the abrogation of all estate privileges, the introduction of an eight-hour working day, the granting of equality to women, a democratic reform of public education, the organisation of a public health service for the people, and concern for the advance of science and art.

p All this was of fundamental significance. The peoples of the world, who witnessed the epic of socialist construction, could from the very outset see that the proletarian revolution was not confined to the destruction of the old. Its 13 underlying purport and grandeur was the building of a new life.

p Marxists-Leninists have always based themselves on the fact that the key issue of any revolution is that of power. But for them the conquest of power has never been a purpose in itself. They have always regarded the dictatorship of the proletariat as the basic vehicle for the building of the new, socialist society, for promoting the well-being and happiness of the working people.

p The entire experience of the class struggle teaches that a revolution is worth something only when it can defend itself. The Great October Revolution has demonstrated how important this truth is for a socialist revolution, against which all the forces of the old world take up arms. During the grim time when counter-revolutionary and interventionist hordes attacked the young Soviet Republic, when she found herself up against blockades, wrecking and kulak revolts, revolutionary Russia had to face the hardest tests. She passed this test and won the right to live. She passed it because in the Civil War, in the food requisitioning teams and on the labour front the workers and peasants fought for a cause that was dear to them, for a cause on which depended their own destinies, their freedom and their future. (Applause.)

p The Red Army, born in the flames of the October Revolution, won unfading glory in those days. The heroism and devotion of the soldiers of the Revolution, their willingness to sacrifice themselves and endure any privation for the sake of victory to this day command the admiration of the world. The battles at Perekop, Kakhovka and Volochayevka, the heroes of the Chapayev division and of the Cavalry Corps are lauded in song. The feat performed by them is an example on which all the new generations of Soviet people are brought up. For us, heirs of the October Revolution, the traditions of self-sacrificing struggle for the socialist Motherland built up during the Civil War will always be an inexhaustible source of courage, staunchness and will for victory. (Stormy applause.)

p A noteworthy feature of the October Revolution was its proletarian internationalism, which formed unbreakable ties between the workers of Russia and their class brothers throughout the world. There is every, justification for stating that the victory of the October Revolution was a triumph of the internationalist fraternity of working people, a triumph 14 of proletarian internationalism. (Applause.} In the Red Army along with the sons of the peoples of our country there were Hungarians, Poles, Serbs, Croatians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Austrians, Germans, Finns, Rumanians, Mongolians, Koreans, Chinese and men of many other nationalities. This was a fighting international of revolutionaries. (Stormy applause.)

p The Revolution was upheld not only by those who fought for it in the Civil War. The whole of Europe learned of the noble action of French sailors who forced the interventionists to withdraw their naval squadron from Odessa, and of the actions of English workers who moved forward the slogan "Hands Off Russia!”. Europe seethed. There was wave after wave of uprisings, strikes and demonstrations. This powerful upsurge of the working-class movement fettered the forces of the international counter-revolution and relaxed the pressure of the imperialist interventionists.

p On behalf of Soviet Communists and all Soviet people allow me to express profound respect and warm gratitude to our foreign comrades, to everybody who in those glorious years deeply appreciated the significance of the October Revolution, to those who helped our people defend their revolutionary gains. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)

p Comrades, the triumph of October was a triumph of Leninism. All the preparations for the socialist revolution in Russia, the founding and the history of our Communist Party and Soviet state, our victories on the military fronts and our achievements in peaceful construction are indissolubly associated with the name and work of the immortal Lenin. (Applause.)

p Vladimir Lenin has entered history as the founder of the Bolshevik Party, as the great leader and organiser of the working masses and as a scientist of genius. He was a revolutionary in the loftiest and most noble sense of the word. His whole life was one of unremitting struggle for the happiness and interests of the working people.

p Moreover, the leader of the Revolution is incomparable as a strategist of revolution and unsurpassed in political tactics. He intuitively sensed every change in the alignment of political forces and in the mood of the masses and knew how to translate this mood exactly into the language of highlevel politics, put forward the most effective mass slogan in the given situation and chart the surest way to the objective.

p He was irreconcilable with regard to questions of principle in ideology and politics. But this never hindered him from displaying maximum flexibility in the approach to specific problems. An ardent revolutionary, he mercilessly ridiculed pseudo-revolutionary phrase-mongering. A born fighter, he could when necessary agree to compromise and retreat in order to muster forces and then take the offensive more successfully.

p By his nature he could not tolerate anything smacking of bigotry or dogmatism. His creative approach to theory and politics enabled him comprehensively to develop and enrich the Marxist teaching of revolution and the science of building socialism. Despite being immersed in day-to-day work, in a host of urgent affairs, he mapped out the general line for socialist construction in Russia and laid down the principles underlying Soviet domestic and foreign policy.

p Both as a statesman and as a person Lenin was an extraordinarily modest man. The leader of the world proletariat, the man whom the Revolution placed at the helm of the world’s first state of workers and peasants was exceedingly exacting to himself, with absolutely no play-acting or vanity. (Prolonged applause.)

p Lenin was 47 when from the rostrum of the Second AllRussia Congress of Soviets he proclaimed the triumph of the socialist revolution. He was 54 when his heart stopped beating. But death was helpless before the greatness of Lenin’s genius. He was with us during the stirring period of the first five-year plans. He was with us on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. He is with us today when the peoples of the USSR have entered a new stretch of history, solving in practice the tasks of building up communism. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)

p The cause of Lenin was continued by the Party created by him. To its lot fell the difficult but honourable task of translating into reality Lenin’s immortal ideas, the deathless legacy of his thoughts. It may be said that our Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is coping with this task with flying colours. (Prolonged applause.)

p The 50th anniversary of the October Revolution is a triumph of Leninism, a triumph of the ideals and practical deeds of the Leninist Party.

Our Party and the Soviet people feel that the best way 16 to express unbounded respect to the memory of Lenin is always and steadfastly to follow the course charted by him. (Stormy, prolonged applause.)