p Lenin’s name has come to symbolise the victory of the Great October Revolution and those immense revolutionary advances which have radically changed the face of society on earth and signify the turning of mankind to socialism and communism.

p From the Address of the International
Meeting of Communist and Workers
Parties, Moscow, 1669

p Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. His name is infinitely dear to hundreds of millions. This name, known in the remotest corners of the globe, has become a guiding star to the working folk of all lands. It will live on in the hearts and minds of all progressive people, inspiring them to strive ceaselessly for a radiant future, for a free and happy life, for peace, national independence, social progress, democracy, socialism and communism.

p Lenin’s life was a constant, daily feat to achieve a great aim the liberation of the working class and all the working people from exploitation and oppression, the transformation of society on communist principles.

p Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the great continuer of the cause and teaching of the founders of scientific communism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Lenin’s theoretical and political activities heralded a new age in the development of Marxism, the international liberation movement of the working people. In his activity Lenin based himself on the theory and method of Marx and Engels. While resolutely thwarting all attempts under the pretext of discussing “dogmatism” to subject Marxism to revision and declare it “ inadequate and obsolete”, he always fought for a creative approach to the theory and practice of the revolutionary movement, maintaining that one must be guided by the principles and method of Marxism in elaborating current problems.

p He was fond of repeating that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action; all his theoretical and organising activity confirms this idea. In all his works he approaches Marxism in a creative spirit, as an undying, developing doctrine which demands 6 fidelity to principles but rejects all that is dogmatic and stereotyped, a doctrine which always demands that the actual historical conditions be taken into account. Marxism demands a most precise and objectively verifiable analysis of the balance of class forces. Lenin saw “a concrete analysis of a concrete situation" as the very essence, the heart and soul of Marxism.  [6•* 

p A brilliant thinker and great revolutionary, Lenin fought hard against bourgeois ideology, the right and “left” opportunists and revisionists, to defend the revolutionary principles of Marxist theory, developed Marxism in relation to the new historical conditions, and raised it to a higher level. Lenin’s contribution to the teaching of Marx and Kngels Marxist philosophy, political economy, and the theory and practice of scientific communism is of inestimable importance.

p Russia is the birthplace of Leninism. But Leninism is not an exclusively Russian teaching, not a Russian interpretation of Marxism, as bourgeois ideologists and revisionists maintain. It is an international teaching rooted in the world development. Lenin generalised the experience and gave correct expression to the objective needs of the whole liberation movement of the working people in the age of the collapse of capitalism and the transition of mankind to socialism and communism.

p In the late 19th and early 20th century world capitalism entered its last, imperialist stage of development. Free competition in capitalist society was replaced by the rule of the monopolies and finance capital. The exploitation of the working people and social inequality were greatly increased. In the capitalist countries there was a turning to reaction on all lines-in home and foreign policy and in ideology and culture. The world began to be carved up between international cartels, trusts, and syndicates, the dividing up of world territories by the leading capitalist countries was completed, and the colonial system of imperialism developed. Together with the overt forms of colonial exploitation of countries that lost their political independence, there appeared many forms of semi- colonial dependence and financial enslavement of many countries and peoples by the imperialist powers. The contradictions of capitalism between labour and capital, between the colonies and dependent countries, on the one hand, and the metropolis, on the other became extremely acute; the increasingly uneven economic development of the main capitalist powers aggravated the struggle 7 between them for markets and sources of raw materials, spheres of the export of capital and re-partition of their plunder. International conflicts and military clashes became more frequent, which led to imperialist wars.

p The new age posed new problems of social development and the international liberation movement, on the solution of which depended the fate of mankind. The leaders of the Second International, alien to the revolutionary, creative spirit of Marxism, proved incapable of solving these problems. The West European Social- Democratic parties were dominated by opportunists who wanted to revise the teaching of Marx and Engels and denied the need for a revolutionary struggle against capitalism. Lenin’s great service lies in the fact that he provided an answer to the basic questions raised by the new, revolutionary age and worked out fundamental philosophical, economic and political problems of the revolutionary theory, and the strategy and tactics of the international proletariat.

p Bourgeois ideologists, social reformists and revisionists argue that the emergence and content of Leninism were determined by the “special” conditions of Russian reality, the "economic and cultural backwardness" of Russia. Historical facts refute these assertions completely.

p Russia was a country with an average level of development of capitalism, which was growing intensively into the monopoly phase. Lenin noted that Russia held fourth place in the world in industrial production. He placed Russia in the same group of countries as France and Japan, rating it above Italy and Austria-Hungary in terms of level of development and role in world politics.  [7•*  Russia had a highly concentrated industry and a strong working class. The Russian proletariat had been tempered by long years of class struggle. Its consciousness was growing steadily, as were its experience and determination. In Russia, too, Lenin wrote in 1899, “we see the same basic processes of the development of capitalism, the same basic tasks for the socialists and the working class”.  [7•**  The working-class movement rose to a new level when the revolutionary Marxists led by Lenin created a proletarian party in Russia.

p Lenin skilfully applied Marxism to the solution of questions confronting the Russian proletariat. This not only does not provide 8 grounds for limiting the importance of Leninism to Russia, but, quite the reverse, confirms its international nature.

p The main laws of the world revolutionary process manifested themselves most strongly in the three Russian revolutions. The Revolution of 1905-1907 was the first people’s revolution in the age of imperialism, bourgeois-democratic in socio-economic content and at the same time proletarian, both in the sense that its leader was the working class and in terms of its means of struggle. It had an enormous influence on the international revolutionary movement. The February revolution of 1917 led to the overthrow of tsarism—one of the main bulwarks of world reaction. The short period from February to October 1917 provided the first example in world history of the development of a bourgeois-democratic revolution into a socialist revolution. The Great October Socialist Revolution opened up a new era in the history of mankind and laid the foundations for the transition from capitalism to socialism on a worldwide scale. “Stages like that of October 1905, February and October 1917 are of world-historic significance,”  [8•*  wrote Lenin. The problems put forward by the working-class movement and the revolutions in Russia were at the same time the basic problems of world revolution. This is why Lenin’s elaboration of the questions of Russia’s socio-political development acquired international significance.

p In pre-revolutionary Russia all manner of socio-economic orders were represented: “the latest capitalist imperialism”, as Lenin defined it, was combined with strong feudal survivals, areas with a more or less developed capitalism existed side by side with areas where pre-capitalist, semi-feudal social relations still predominated, and some peoples were on the level of patriarchal-gentile society. In fact one can say that on the eve of the October Revolution Russia was a kind of vast “model” of the whole capitalist system. Lenin wrote that in no other country was there such a variety of forms, shades, and methods of struggle of all the classes of modern society as in Russia; he stressed the tremendous importance of the experience of Bolshevism and considered it his duty to make this experience the property of Marxists of all lands.

p The leader of the Russian proletariat, Lenin was a great internationalist. He regarded the working class of Russia and its party as a detachment of the world army of labour, a detachment of the international working-class and communist movement. Lenin 9 considered the basic questions of the revolution and the building of socialism in Russia from the viewpoint of the interests of the international liberation movement of the working people.

p It is particularly important to stress that Leninism arose and developed as a generalisation of the experience not only of the Russian, but also of the world working-class movement, and also of the democratic and national liberation movements.

p In Lenin’s works we find a profound analysis of the economic and socio-political development and the revolutionary movement in such countries as France, Germany, Italy, Britain, the United States of America, and Japan. Many pages in his works are devoted to the national liberation and revolutionary movements in China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, the Middle East and the Latin American and African countries. In a number of his works Lenin studied the general laws of social development and of the liberation movement of the working people in the age of imperialism and socialist revolutions, the transition from capitalism to socialism. A considerable place is also taken up by problems of the world revolutionary process in works by Lenin devoted mainly to Russia, the Russian revolutionary movement and the building of socialism in the USSR.

p Proceeding from the teaching of Marx and Engels and developing it further, Lenin rose to heights from which he was able to survey the whole course and perspectives of social development, to detect the main revolutionary streams of the present day and to determine the alignment of forces in the main sectors of struggle.

p “Leninism is the Marxism of the epoch of imperialism and proletarian revolutions, the epoch of the collapse of colonialism and the victory of the national-liberation movements, the epoch of mankind’s transition from capitalism to socialism and the building of communist society.”   [9•* 

p The most important feature of Leninism is the indissoluble unity of revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice.

p “The purpose of our theoretical views,” said Lenin, “is to guide us in our revolutionary activity. The best place to test them is the revolutionary battlefield. For a communist the true test is his understanding of [how], where and when to put his Marxism into action.”  [9•**  Lenin’s activity was aimed at putting into effect the 10 conclusions of revolutionary theory, at making communist ideals come true.

p Lenin’s great service to the international working class is the creation of the world’s first proletarian party of a new type -the Bolshevik, communist party, which became a model for the Marxists of other countries. Lenin’s life and activity are inseparable from the history and struggle of the party.

p Lenin wisely led the Bolshevik Party, the proletariat and all the working people of Russia through the furnace of three revolutions. Lenin was the first world’s Marxist statesman, the leader of the working class who stood at the head of the victorious socialist revolution and took the helm of the proletarian state. Under his leadership the foundation stones of the new social order were laid, and the plan for the building of socialism began to be put into effect. Lenin inspired the formation of the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

p Lenin is the teacher and leader of the international proletariat and the working people of the whole world. The founder of the proletarian party of a new type, already at the beginning of the 20th century he was an eminent figure in the international socialist movement. By then Lenin had already been waging a resolute struggle against opportunism on the world arena, rallying the revolutionary, truly internationalist forces in the international working-class movement. On Lenin’s initiative in 1919 the communist parties created the Third Communist International-the international communist organisation. Under Lenin’s guidance the programme principles, the strategy and tactics of the international communist movement were formulated.

p The truly inestimable wealth of Lenin’s ideological legacy and the experience of Lenin’s practical activity have become and remain the property and a mighty weapon of our Party and of Communists the world over.

Each year the great vital strength and the all-triumphant nature of Lenin’s teaching are revealed more fully and clearly. "The ideas of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are embodied in the activities of the Communists, in the struggle of the working class and all working people, in the onward march of socialism and communism, in the irreversible social progress of mankind.”   [10•*