Sunday 21 January marks 100 years since the death of history’s greatest revolutionary. Join Alan Woods and Rob Sewell, authors of the upcoming biography In Defence of Lenin, at the launch of a global campaign to commemorate Lenin’s life and works. The meeting will take place at Hanover Primary School Sports Hall, N1 8BD in London at 15:00 GMT and will also be streamed live on our YouTube channel. You can buy tickets to the in-person event here.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was described by John Reed – author of Ten Days that Shook the World, an eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution – as the most loved and most hated person alive, and this remains the case even a century since his death. Lenin was loved by hundreds of millions of people who wanted to change society, but hated by the ruling class and their apologists.
The reason for this hatred is because Lenin was successful. In October 1917, for the first time in history, the working class took power and held it. They showed that they could run society without the help of bosses and bankers. This was all possible because the working class had a leadership in the Bolshevik Party that was able to guide the revolution to success.
[The livestream will play here at 15:00 GMT on 21 January]
Lenin once said that capitalism is horror without end. Capitalism today offers us nothing but poverty, suffering and war. For that reason, the campaign of slander against Lenin continues. Workers and young people can’t be allowed to think that a better future is possible, and so the name of Lenin and the Bolsheviks has to be smeared with all kinds of lies.
We think the time has come to set the record straight. The International Marxist Tendency is therefore launching a campaign to celebrate the life, works and legacy of this great revolutionary.
Far from being old and outdated, Lenin’s ideas are more relevant than ever. They provide an invaluable tool in the hands of revolutionaries today. As Lenin once said, “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”. It is up to revolutionaries of today to study the works of Lenin and to build a revolutionary party much like the Bolsheviks in order to make the struggle for Communism successful.
We call on all our supporters to not only attend the meeting, but help us spread it far and wide. Invite your friends, family and colleagues, and help us reach an even wider audience by sharing the event on social media.
Lenin may have died 100 years ago, but his ideas live on today. In the words of the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky: “Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin is to live forever!”
