Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0393/03935.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 21KB | 353 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03935}
$Pretitle{295}
$Title{Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
120th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Lenin}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Hippocrene Books, Inc}
$Affiliation{Embassy of USSR, Washington DC}
$Subject{lenin
party
congress
russia
lenin's
revolution
socialist
workers
committee
marxist}
$Date{1990}
$Log{}
Country:     Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Book:        USSR Yearbook '90
Author:      Hippocrene Books, Inc
Affiliation: Embassy of USSR, Washington DC
Date:        1990

120th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Lenin

     On April 22, 1990 people in the Soviet Union, as well as in the rest of
the world, will mark this remarkable date. Vladimir Lenin, the outstanding
thinker and revolutionary, the founder of the Soviet state and the Communist
Party of the Soviet republic, was born in the small town of Simbirsk (now
Ulyanovsk) on the Volga. His real name was Ulyanov, Lenin being one of the 160
pseudonyms used by him when he was forced to conduct his revolutionary
activities underground. It was as Lenin that he became known to his people
during the revolution, and, later, to the whole world. His parents were
progressive-minded Russian intellectuals. His elder brother, Alexander, a
student at St. Petersburg University, was executed in 1887 for his part in
attempted assassination of the tsar.

     After graduating in 1887 from a gymnasium, Lenin entered the Department
of Law of the University of Kazan, a town on the Volga. That same year, in
December, he was expelled from the university for his involvement in student
unrest and was arrested and banished to the village of Kokushkino in Kazan
Gubernia, to be held there under constant secret supervision.

     In the autumn of 1888 he managed to return to Kazan, where he joined a
Marxist group. By the age of 18 he was a dedicated Marxist. In the spring of
1889 the Ulyanov family moved to Samara. Studying on his own without attending
any regular lectures, Lenin passed all the exams for St. Petersburg
University's Department of Law. There he received top marks and was awarded a
diploma of the first degree. After that he started working as a lawyer's
assistant. In 1892 he organized a Marxist studies group in Samara. He also
prepared papers and familiarized himself with statistical data concerning the
position of the peasants. In 1893 he wrote an article entitled New Economic
Developments in Peasant Life. This article opens his Collected Works, which
consists of 55 volumes.

     In 1893, Lenin went to St. Petersburg where he established contacts with
Marxists. He immediately distinguished himself as a person not only
brilliantly versed in Marxist theory, but as someone capable of applying it to
Russia's conditions. In the winter of 1894 Lenin met a teacher of an evening
workers' school that met on Sundays. Her name was Nadezhda Krupskaya and she
later became his wife. Lenin established close contacts with progressive
workers in St. Petersburg, and headed Marxist groups, where he taught workers
the theory of Marxism connecting it with the conditions of the life of the
workers. He also wrote a number of theoretical works, the most prominent of
which was What the "Friends of the People" Are and How They Fight the
Social-Democrats. It was written in 1894.

     In 1895, on instructions of the Marxists in St. Petersburg, Lenin went
abroad to establish contacts with a group of emigre Russian Marxists headed
by Georgi Plekhanov and to learn about the working-class movement there.
In Switzerland he met Plekhanov, in France, Paul Lafargue, and in Germany,
Karl Liebknecht.

     In the autumn of 1895 Lenin and his comrades-in-arms formed the St.
Petersburg League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, which
actively introduced the ideas of socialism into the working-class movement.

     In early December 1895 Lenin was arrested. He spent over 14 months in
solitary confinement, after which he was exiled to Eastern Siberia, to the
remote village of Shushenskoye in Yenisei Gubernia, where the nearest railway
line was more than 600 kilometres away. In the years of his Siberian exile
lenin wrote over 30 works and completed his fundamental book, The Development
of Capitalism in Russia, which he had started in prison. In this period he
also thoroughly elaborated plans for creating a proletarian party in Russia.
His plan laid major emphasis on the founding of an illegal political
newspaper. After returning from exile, Lenin again went abroad (in July 1900),
where he started publishing newspaper Iskra, the Russian word for spark, with
Plekhanov and his group. At first Iskra was put out in Munich, and later in
London and Geneva.

     Vladimir Ulyanov started signing some of his works with the pseudonym
Lenin at the end of 1901. The newspaper united the social-democratic
organizations of Russia. "The best representatives of the politically aware
proletariat took the side of Iskra," Lenin wrote later. In July-August 1903
the Second Congress of the RSDLP (Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) was
held first in Brussels and then in London. At it a sharp struggle unfolded
against opportunistic elements, against the so-called Economists, the Russian
followers of Eduard Bernstein, and also against those who wanted to split the
Party along ethnic lines. The Second Congress witnessed the division of the
RSDLP into the majority and the minority. Lenin headed the Bolsheviks (from
the Russian "bolshinstvo", the majority). The Congress completed the process
of the unification of the revolutionary Marxist organizations of Russia on the
basis of the ideological, political and organizational principles worked out
by Lenin. He later wrote: "As a current of political thought and as a
political party Bolshevism has existed since 1903."

     Two works by Lenin-What Is to Be Done (1902) and One Step Forward, Two
Steps Back (1904)-were devoted to the ideological an organizational principles
underlying the Party. Armed with Lenin's ideas, the Bolsheviks improved the
forms of their work.

     The year 1905 marked the beginning of the first Russian revolution.
Lenin, then in exile, kept close track of the developments in Russia,
submitting them to a profound analysis and assessment. Lenin's articles, his
numerous letters to Party organizations and talks with Party activists
organizations and talks with Party activists who came from Russia guided the
Party's activities in the revolution. Lenin was especially interested in the
experience of the Paris Commune.

     Lenin returned to Russia in November of 1905. He headed the work of the
Petersburg Committee and Central Committee of the Bolsheviks. He made speeches
at meetings and conferences, and supervised the Bolshevik newspaper. Under his
leadership, the Bolsheviks were preparing for an armed uprising.

     The principled and courageous position of Lenin won him great prestige
among the Party's members. He was elected to the International Socialist
Bureau as a representative of the RSDLP. As a member of the RSDLP delegation,
Lenin took part in the International Socialist Congress held in Stuttgart in
1907 and was a member of its presidium. He also exerted much effort to unite
the left forces of the international Social-Democratic movement. The tsarist
government succeeded in suppressing the Revolution of 1905-1907, and Lenin was
forced into exile abroad again. He went to Geneva, where a Bolshevik newspaper
Proletary (the Proletarian) was then being published. At the end of 1908 this
newspaper began to be put out in Paris, at the time the centre for Russia's
emigre circles. Lenin also went to France.

     Russia wa then going through a period of reaction. The Bolshevik Party
was forced underground. Lenin spared no efforts to preserve and strengthen the
illegal revolutionary party of the working class, to fight the Mensheviks
(Russian for minority) who wanted to ruin the now outlawed party. Lenin worked
out and substantiated the Party's tactics for uniting forces for a new
revolutionary offensiv