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p Comrades, let us turn in our mind’s eye to the nineteenth century. That was a time when capitalism ruled supreme. The rulers of the capitalist world garnered fabulous profits from exploitation of the masses, colonial plunder and wars of aggrandisement. The ideologists of the bourgeoisie vied with each other in prophesying the advent of the "golden age" of capitalism.

p But beneath the surface of bourgeois prosperity powerful social forces were already burgeoning to overthrow the exploiting system. In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 254 in their immortal Manifesto of the Communist Party, proved that the revolutionary substitution of socialism for capitalism was inevitable, and gave the working-class movement its fighting slogan—"Workers of all countries, unite!" ’( Applause.) In 1871, the first proletarian revolution Hashed across the horizons of our planet: the Paris Commune raised aloft its red banner. The Communards suffered defeat, but the cause for which they had fought could not be defeated. The ranks of the proletariat multiplied, its organisation and consciousness were enhanced, and class hatred for the oppressors became more acute. Marxist ideas spread ever wider within the working-class movement.

p At the turn of the century, capitalist society entered its last, imperialist stage of development. The epoch of revolutionary storms and social upheavals was at hand.

p The prerequisites for revolution were coming to a head most swiftly in Russia. Oppression by the landowners and the bourgeoisie of Russia and of other countries, the deprived condition of dozens of oppressed nationalities, arbitrary rule by bureaucratic officials and police strong-arm methods, and the chronic abomination of the autocracy, as Lenin put it— all this caused growing indignation among the masses, and made Russia the ganglion of socio-political contradictions and conflicts of the coming epoch of imperialism. It was the proletariat of Russia that was destined to undertake the fulfilment of the most revolutionary of all the tasks of the international working-class movement of the time—to blaze mankind’s path to socialism.

p There was need for a man capable of continuing the cause of Marx and Engels, of obtaining a profound insight into the substance of the imminent revolutionary change, and of giving a lead to the social forces destined to carry out this change. This man was Vladimir llyich UlyanovLenin. (Prolonged applause.)

p What Lenin confronted as he was faced with a choice of a way in life was the tragedy of lone revolutionaries, who had stormed the autocracy from generation to generation, and had gone down in the unequal battle. But for Lenin that choice depended on the way that was to take the whole of Russia out of the dead end into which the protracted domination of darkest reaction had led her. Lenin found the answer to this question in the works of Marx.

p On the basis of Marxist theory, Lenin demonstrated that 255 Russia was developing according to the same laws as any other capitalist country. Lenin gave the scientific backing for this conclusion in a number of fundamental studies, including such of his works as What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats and ’The Development of Capitalism in Russia.

p Indeed, Russia was moving along the capitalist way, and the working class was becoming the chief revolutionary force. That is why Lenin fought the Narodniks, who were proponents of an “original”, i.e., petty-bourgeois, socialism. But even as he dealt his blows against Narodism Lenin was aware of another danger: the attempts to use Marxism to embellish capitalism in Russia. This meant another battle, this time against the "legal Marxists”, who sought to turn Marx into a common liberal, and against the “Economists”, who sought to make the young working-class movement politically blind.

p That was the start of the formation of Leninism in the struggle to safeguard the revolutionary teachings of Marx and Engels. That was the beginning of the preparation of revolution in Russia, an endeavour to which Lenin gave 30 years of his life.

p Lenin undeviatingly responded to Marx’s call not only to explain but also to change the world. Solving theoretical problems in close connection with practice, with the class struggle, was a quality of Lenin’s genius which met the fundamental need of the revolutionary movement in the 20th century, when the proletarian revolution came on the order of the day.

p Revolutionary thinking on a high plane and unsurpassed skill in organising the class struggle of the proletariat were both part of Lenin’s make-up. As no other man he was aware that victory of the revolution and construction of a new society demanded a militant working-class party equipped with the theory of Marxism. In his well-known work, What Is to Be Done?, he wrote: "Give us an organisation of revolutionaries, and we will overturn Russia!"  [255•1 

p He made it his life’s work to create and temper such a party, the Bolshevik Party. What was required was a party capable of leading the masses and taking them into battle against tsarism, a party prepared not only to win Russia 256 from the landowners and the bourgeoisie, but also to rule Russia, and ensure the triumph of the proletarian dictatorship. It was to establish such a party that Lenin waged a relentless struggle against the Mensheviks, the Trotskyites and opportunists of every stripe. The new type of party is, comrades, the supreme embodiment of the indissoluble unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. It is the greatest legacy that Lenin has bequeathed to the world revolutionary movement, to the builders of socialism and communism. (Applause.)

p When Lenin started on his activity as revolutionary, there were only a few dozen Marxists in Russia. When Lenin’s party came to power, it had 350,000 men in its ranks followed by millions. It was a victory for Lenin and the Leninists, a victory which enabled Russia—and the whole world with her—to take a step into a new historical epoch. (Applause.)

p The battles of three Russian revolutions produced and put to the test new theoretical conclusions and generalisations, and new strategic and tactical propositions which made up the basis of Lenin’s theory of socialist revolution.

p The 1905-07 revolution was the first test. The works which Lenin wrote in that period constitute eight great volumes. Among them are such fundamental works as ’I wo Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution and The Agrarian Programme of Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905-1907, his speeches at the Third, Fourth and Fifth Congresses of the RSDLP, together with hundreds of articles ranging over every aspect of the revolutionary struggle, without exception.

p Summing up the experience of the masses in struggle, to counter the dogmatic schemes of the Mensheviks, Lenin pointed to the real possibility, in the conditions of imperialism, of the bourgeois-democratic revolution growing into a socialist revolution. Lenin’s teaching on the hegemony of the proletariat in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, on the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, on the attitude to other classes and parties, and on the tactics of the proletarian party in periods of revolutionary upswing and downswing—all of this even today constitutes the Bolshevik "model tactics for all" who have still to overthrow the exploiting system.

p Lenin’s theoretical thinking is so penetrating and profound and carries such general significance for the world 257 revolutionary movement because his ideas were shaped on the sound basis of dialectical and historical materialism, and have themselves always contributed to the creative development of the latter. Lenin regarded the party, class approach to social phenomena as an organic principle of Marxist ideology. He taught Communists to look beyond every political trend, programme and declaration, beyond every social and moral doctrine to the interests of definite classes, and to determine their attitude to them from the proletarian standpoint.

p Lenin held the connection of theory and practice, philosophy and politics to be a law governing the activity of the whole party. That is why after the defeat in the 1905 revolution, when the sway of reaction in the country, and the confusion and vacillation in.the Party posed a threat to the theoretical foundation of the proletarian movement, Lenin turned the whole power of his genius to the defence and further development of the philosophical legacy of Marx and Engels.

p Lenin saw the scientific discoveries of his day as the start of a deep-going revolution in natural science, which has assumed such a tempestuous pace in our day. The ideas and conclusions formulated in his book, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, have been brilliantly confirmed by the subsequent development of science. To his dying day Lenin gave unflagging attention to providing the theoretical grounds for the Party’s activity, ceaselessly enriching and developing Marxist philosophy.

p With splendid mastery of the whole arsenal of Marxist theory, a brilliant strategist and tactician, a man totally free of the slightest semblance of dogmatism, Lenin was prepared to meet any turn in historical events. He clearly saw that the imperialist world war had started a general crisis of the capitalist system pregnant with a revolutionary explosion of tremendous force. From then on Lenin devoted the whole of his activity to show that the revolution was near, and to prepare it.

p From the beginning of the war, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, issued a challenge to the forces of chauvinism and opportunism. Just think, comrades, of the strength of purpose, of the courage, the faith in the justice of one’s cause, in the certain victory of the revolutionary cause that were required to proclaim, in the atmosphere of supreme 258 chauvinist intoxication, a slogan urging the defeat of "one’s own" government, and to issue a call to transform the imperialist war into a civil war! That is what Lenin and the Bolsheviks did. They declared an implacable struggle against the leaders of the Second International, who had betrayed the workingclass cause. They began to rally the healthy, internationalist forces in the world working-class movement, the forces which were destined to become the basis of the new, Communist International.

p It is to the period of the imperialist war more than to any other period of Lenin’s life that these words of his best apply:

p “There it is, my fate. One fighting campaign after another—against political stupidities, philistinism, opportunism and so forth.

p “It has been going on since 1893. And so has the hatred of the philistines on account of it. But still, I would not exchange this fate for ‘peace’ with the philistines."  [258•1  ( Applause.)

p An impassioned fighter of the revolution, Lenin was also its most profound thinker. During the war, he carried on a vast amount of scientific work in analysing the essence of monopoly capitalism, which had started the worldwide slaughter. The result of Lenin’s economic research over many years was the creation of a coherent theory of imperialism as the highest and final stage of capitalism. Marx’s economic teaching was raised to a new stage.

p The theorists of opportunism probed the new phenomena of the imperialist epoch to find justification for their assertions that capitalism had become “organised” and " regulated”, and justification for abandoning the revolution. Lenin started a relentless struggle against these apologists of imperialism. He proved that it was precisely the new features of capitalism that opened up fresh possibilities and fresh prospects for the proletariat’s victorious struggle against the bourgeoisie, and demanded an intensification of this struggle; he proved that imperialism is the eve of the socialist revolution. One of the discoveries of Lenin’s genius in this context is the conclusion that the socialist revolution can win initially in a few countries or even in one country.

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p All this has become a part of the treasure house of Leninism, and is being used as a victorious weapon by our Party and other Marxist-Leninist parties.

p The February Revolution of 1917 confronted the Bolshevik Party and the proletariat of Russia with a host of totally new problems. Today it is clear to everyone that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was bound to grow into a socialist revolution. However, we should bear in mind the highly confused and contradictory situation at that time, and the great diversity of views then concerning the further way the revolution was to take, in order to appreciate afresh Lenin’s wisdom, perspicacity and strength of purpose, and to sense the real proportions of his achievement. His April Theses, which marked out a clear prospect for transition to the socialist revolution, was not only an event which marked a fundamental turning point in the political history of our country but also another step forward in the development of the Marxist theory of revolution as a whole.

p Upon his return to Russia, Lenin threw himself into the practical effort of preparing the socialist revolution. He was the acknowledged proletarian leader, and the focus of all the multifarious Party activity, which abounded in unforeseen events and dangers. In his works the principles of strategy and tactics which he formulated and which helped the Bolshevik Party to display such unsurpassed skill in leading the masses from February to October, are elaborated into generalisations on a much broader plane. Lenin made it clear that in Russia the economic and political prerequisites for socialist revolution had matured, and prepared the Party for the most diverse forms of political and armed struggle to overthrow capitalism. In such of his works as Marxism and Insurrection and Advice of an Onlooker, among others, he sets out a coherent theory of armed uprising as an art.

p At the same time Lenin saw in the development of the revolution in Russia and pointed it out to the Party an extremely rare possibility offered by history, which, he said, was extremely valuable, the possibility of the peaceful transition of power into the hands of the working class. Events took a turn that sent the Russian revolution along a different, non-peaceful way. But the very fact that he posed the question of a possibility, in principle, of the revolution developing along one of two ways is in itself an 260 achievement of Lenin’s thinking which is meaningful to this very day.

p On the very eve of the October Revolution, during his last period underground, Lenin concentrated on working out such problems crucial for the victory of socialism as the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialist democracy, and the two phases of communist society. That was the origin of ’the State and Revolution, one of Lenin’s outstanding works.

p Relying on the creative initiative of the revolutionary masses, Lenin worked out the theory of the Soviet state as a form of the proletarian dictatorship. The basic principles of Soviet power, which Lenin worked out, retain their significance for every working people’s state supplanting the bourgeois state. This has now been proved by the experience of socialist revolutions in other countries.

p The victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, won under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party headed by Lenin, was an event of world historical importance. It marked the start of the revolutionary transformation of the world. At the same time, it was the culminating point of the whole of Lenin’s preceding theoretical and practical activity. Some days, and even hours, in the lives of men are equivalent to decades. Such was the period of the October Revolution for Lenin. All his knowledge, all his vast political experience, all his willpower and energy were concentrated on preparing the uprising.

p In that period, Lenin repeatedly recalled the famous slogan of the revolutionaries of the past: "Boldness, boldness and yet more boldness!" (Applause.) A consistent opponent of any adventurism, a flexible and circumspect politician, Lenin was a model of revolutionary boldness, resoluteness, and purposefulness, and taught the Party to act likewise. When it became clear that the situation had matured and that the uprising was inevitable and necessary— everything had to be thrown onto the scales of history. The Party did so at the call of Lenin and the Central Committee, which he led—and won. The Great October Revolution is a real triumph of the Leninist strategy and tactics of the class struggle, of the Leninist theory of revolution. (Applause.)

p The Winter Palace was taken by storm. The last bourgeois government of Russia had fallen. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin became the head of the world’s first workers’ and 261 peasants’ government. A tireless fighter for the triumph of socialist ideas, Lenin became the architect and the builder of the majestic edifice of socialism. (Applause.)

p Lenin directed the defence of the Soviet Republic and the formation of the Red Army. He found the solution of the most complex questions of development of the socialist economy and laid the foundations of the political economy of socialism. His ideas became the basis of the first Constitution of the RSFSR and of the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He had in his field of vision every sphere—culture and education, science and technology, the destiny of classes and the destiny of nations. In a little over six years after the victory of October, the leader of our revolution performed a gigantic amount of work, whose content and results will long continue to exert an influence on the course of world history.

p But whatever the questions Lenin dealt with, whatever the problems he tackled, his attention was always focused on the Party, on the tempering and strengthening of its ranks. He regarded factionalism and group action in the Party as the greatest evil, which had to be fought resolutely and relentlessly. Lenin’s brilliant speeches at the Party Congresses after the October Revolution, permeated with the breath of the revolution, to this day continue to be models of the principled political analysis, and the implacable attitude to ideological and political vacillation. The unity of the Party, for which Lenin worked with such fervour, was, is and will continue to be one of the most important sources of all our victories. (Prolonged applause.)

p Lenin gave much energy to developing the world communist movement, to preparing the political army of the world socialist revolution. The Communist International was set up on his initiative. This marked a turning point in the history of world communism. Lenin has left us an integrated concept of the world revolutionary process in the new epoch of which the pivot is the struggle between the two social systems. He developed the Marxist propositions on proletarian socialist internationalism. Lenin’s speeches at the Congresses of the Comintern, and his classical work, “Left-Wing” Communism—An Infantile Disorder, to this day continue to be an encyclopaedia of the strategy and tactics of the world communist movement.

p Marxism-Leninism is a coherent international teaching, 262 it is a theory which belongs to all Communists and all revolutionaries, and serves them as a guide to action.

p Historical experience has left nothing of the attempts by bourgeois and revisionist ideologists to set Lenin against Marx, to contrast Leninism and Marxism, depicting Leninism as a specifically Russian, national phenomenon. Indeed, Lenin had been born in Russia and had fought for a socialist Russia. But he had never regarded the revolution in Russia otherwise than as a component part and factor of the world revolution. (Applause?) Lenin’s teaching incorporated everything that had been produced by mankind’s best minds, generalising and fusing into a single whole the worldwide experience of the working people’s class struggle.

p Lenin watched with great attention the development of the economic and political struggle of the working class of Europe and America, painstakingly comparing and evaluating the various forms of this struggle. He took a keen interest in the problems of the national liberation movement. He made a deep study of the various aspects of the life and struggle of all working people, drawing on the practice of the class struggle in the various countries for lessons to apply to the revolutionary theory and tactics of the world liberation movement.

p It was natural, therefore, that representatives of the revolutionary workers of the whole world should turn to Lenin, the great theorist and leader possessing a vast wealth of knowledge and experience.

p In our own day, all those who are fighting for the victory of socialism and communism turn to Lenin and his teaching. (Applause.} "Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions,” as the Centenary Theses of the CPSU Central Committee say, "the epoch of the collapse of colonialism and the victory of national liberation movements, the epoch of mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism and the building of communist society.” (Applause?)

p Leninism is the most advanced and influential ideology of the modern world, the invincible ideology of those who have the future with them. (Applause.} The works of no other man have been so widely read as are those of V. I. Lenin. They have been published in 117 languages of the world. Lenin’s books have been printed in hundreds of millions of copies. They are being read by men in all 263 countries and on all continents, helping them to live and struggle.

p Explaining the reasons for the successes of scientific communism, Lenin wrote: Marxist teaching is all-powerful because it is true. These words fully apply to the teaching of Lenin himself. The truth of Lenin’s teaching has been confirmed by life itself, by the whole experience of political development in the 20th century. (Applause.}

p Progressive mankind pays the tribute of profound respect to Lenin, the brilliant theorist and the great architect of socialism. At the same time, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a man whom we all cherish and whom many generations after ours will continue to cherish for his supreme qualities as fighter and revolutionary, a man of spotless purity, and of exceptional personal charm. (Prolonged applause.}

p Lenin had great affection for men, he fought for their happiness, and for the sake of this took an implacable attitude to oppressors and exploiters, to their hired servitors, whatever their make-up, to renegades and traitors to the revolutionary cause.

p A principled approach, straightforwardness and truthfulness in everything were the distinctive features of Lenin’s style of work. He was an irreconcilable opponent of loud talk, "revolutionary idle chatter”, and communistic selfconceit. Whatever the situation, whatever the circumstances, Lenin retained his clear and realistic approach to facts and events, an ability to discover and expose any mistakes in good time, and determination to secure their correction.

p Maxim Gorky wrote that "one half of Lenin’s great soul lived in the future”. That is, indeed, very true. Lenin had the rare gift of seeing in the present the future destiny of mankind. Never out of touch with life, with practice, with the real conditions and possibilities of the given historical period, Lenin projected his thought far ahead, into the future. He shed the light of scientific foresight to illumine the way lying ahead of the working class for many decades.

p Lenin resolutely fought against any playing down of revolutionary theory, any emasculation of its creative character, or its reduction to a set of ready-made recipes. The whole of Lenin’s life was ceaseless creative effort, creative effort in theory, in politics, in organising the class struggle, and in building up the Party and the state. This quality of always taking the creative approach he also 264 fostered in the great Party which continues honourably to carry Lenin’s banner, the banner of communism. ( Applause.)

p Lenin was unequalled in his ability to create an atmosphere of real collectivity in any work. While maintaining his standpoint with fervour, conviction and insistence, he valued the opinion of his comrades and was sensitive to what they said. He educated and united around himself a whole host of outstanding revolutionaries, political leaders and statesmen who came from the ranks of the people. Under Lenin’s guidance, the Party’s Congresses and the sittings of the Central Committee, its Politburo and the Council of People’s Commissars were models of collective elaboration of policy, expressive of the interests of the working class and of all working people.

p It sometimes seems inconceivable, surpassing the bounds of human possibility, that one man, even a genius, was able to perform the titanic work done by Lenin. He was a great and tireless worker, a man with a staggering capacity for work. To become a Communist, Lenin said, one has to assimilate the knowledge accumulated by mankind. That is the rule Lenin followed all his life. Wherever he was, be it the village of Shushenskoye in Siberia or the British Museum, a tsarist prison cell, Munich or Poronino, the libraries of Paris or Geneva, he continued to study works in philosophy and natural science, economics and sociology, history, military questions and international relations. All this wealth of human knowledge Lenin turned to the benefit of the revolutionary cause. Dozens of books and pamphlets, thousands of articles, reports and speeches, letters and notes—such is Lenin’s boundless literary legacy which contains his political and revolutionary experience, his thoughts and observations.

p Lenin lived for men and in their midst. He was closely connected with the revolutionary working-class movement in Petrograd, Moscow, and other proletarian centres of Russia. Wherever destiny took Lenin, wherever he found himself, and whatever he did, he was in touch with the people through a thousand links. Lenin felt an organic need to meet and talk with workers and peasants, soldiers, scientists and workers in culture. This was the politician’s need to compare his own conclusions with the experience of the masses, to test the broad generalisations against what 265 appeared to be the particular cases and the personal destinies of those who carried out the revolution and built socialism. At the end of December 1921, while sketching out the draft theses on the role and tasks of the trade unions, Lenin wrote: the thing is to live in the midst of the masses, to know their moods, to know everything, to understand them, and to know how to approach them. These words best reflect Lenin’s style, which has become a model for the Party he founded, for the Communists of the whole world. (Applause.)

p Modesty and simplicity, genuine humanity, respect for and trust in men, and a personal concern for their destiny were combined in Lenin with a principled firmness, and exactingness towards himself and others; wisdom and foresight with a tireless, persevering efficiency and indomitable will; the erudition and keen mind of the great scientist with a sincere love of life, of its true values and joys.

Such was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, thinker, revolutionary, man. His teaching will always be a call and a guide to action, and his life’s work an inspiring example for Communists and for millions of other men. (Prolonged applause.)