#lenin100

By Gary Wilson

Today’s socialists are coming up against the questions that confronted earlier generations of socialists, both in the U.S. and worldwide, especially this question of imperialism and imperialist war. What is the meaning of the word “imperialism”?

From United Communist Party of Russia:

"Today, January 21, activists of the United Communist Party (OKP), Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP) and other communist organizations laid flowers at the mausoleum of the founder of the world's first socialist state, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, on the centenary of his death.

The consciousness of the workers of the whole world cannot grasp this fact; for the enemy is still very strong, the way is long, and the great work, the greatest of history, is unfinished; for the working class of the world needed Lenin as perhaps no one in the history of the world has yet been needed.

How shall we advance, shall we find the way, shall we not go astray? For Lenin, comrades, is no longer with us!

Lenin is no more, but Leninism endures. The immortal in Lenin, his doctrine, his work, his method, his example, lives in us, lives in the party that he founded, lives in the first workers' state whose head he was and which he guided.

May the pain we feel, that stabs our harts each time we think that Lenin is no more, be for each of us an admonition, a warning, an appeal: Your responsibility is increased. Be worthy of the leader who trained you!

L.D. Trotsky, Tiflis Station, January 22nd, 1924

"Lenin dead"

Great Lenin! One hundred years after your passing, on January 21, 1924, we continue the struggle to which you dedicated your life — the struggle to liberate the workers and oppressed peoples of the whole world.

Thanks to you, the trail was blazed. You taught us that the struggle has many twists and turns. In times of upheaval, some who seemed like opponents will become your best comrades in arms, while many who seemed solid will lose their way, and still others will emerge to pick up the red banner they abandoned.

To hold onto your revolutionary principles and history, while never surrendering your ability to think critically using the tools of Marxism; to combine these unflinching principles with the greatest flexibility in strategy and tactics; to always maintain a class analysis of imperialism and the state; to uphold the struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples; to build a revolutionary combat organization that can lead the workers to power — these are just a few of your teachings that we cherish and struggle daily to uphold.

Darya Mitina: Comrades, 100 years ago the heart of the greatest man on the planet stopped beating. Tomorrow, Sunday morning, January 21, 2024, we plan to lay flowers at his mausoleum in Moscow and invite you to join us.

January 21, 2024, marks 100 years since the death of V.I. Lenin, the leader of the first successful socialist revolution in history, the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Newly released on this centennial is Gary Wilson’s “War and Lenin in the 21st Century.”

Lenin identified imperialism’s key features: monopoly capitalism, finance capital, the export of capital, and colonialism, leading to the competitive division of the world among the imperialist powers.