Honour to Vladimir Lenin!
Last April 22, Communists around the world celebrated the day of Lenin's birth anniversary.
From having his statue given flowers in honour of him, to lectures featuring his life and writings as its topic, Vladimir Ilych Lenin got both praise and ire from every people around the world, who advanced an idea that until now, a spectre to a rotte, dilapidated order.
His life
According to his biography, via Novosti, Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) was born in the provincial city of Simbirsk (now Ulyanovsk) April 22, 1870, to a family of a secondary-school teacher. His family background were of a minor nobility, since his father was given a good post for his work in the government bureaucracy, and, after being appointed director of Simbirsk's primary schools in 1874, was entitled to wear a blue gold-embroidered uniform and be addressed as "Your Excellency".
However, In 1887, soon after the death of his father, Lenin's older brother Alexander was arrested in St. Petersburg for plotting against the Tsar. He was convicted and hanged. The tragic event affected young Vladimir deeply, laying the foundation for his revolutionary ideas. Alexander was a fervent follower of a populist group known as the Narodniks.
After graduating from high school with a gold medal, Lenin entered the University of Kazan later that year, but was soon expelled for his radical views. In 1895, he travelled to Switzerland, where he talked with Social Democrat Georgy Plekhanov. After returning to Russia in 1895, Lenin established the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class. He was soon arrested and exiled to Siberia, where he spent three years.
In 1900, Lenin left for Switzerland where he wrote a paper titled “Iskra”, to promote his ideas. Inspired by Lenin's views, his supporters began creating underground organisations across Russia. After the 1917 February Revolution overthrew Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin returned to his homeland. He came to power in October 1917 after a nearly bloodless coup. Lenin led the Soviet state until 1924. He died Jan 21, 1924, following a series of strokes.
Lenin's embalmed body has been displayed in a glass case in a mausoleum in Red Square since his death. His continuing presence in the heart of Moscow has been an ongoing source of controversy since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Contributions
From his writeups and speeches, of criticisms and appraisals, Vladimir Lenin gave a greater contribution in the development of Marxism. Unlike his rivals, Lenin spoke of a need for a vanguard party of dedicated revolutionaries to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers. Of advancing the struggle of the working class not just for economic, but political and social causes as what the 1917 revolution and its succeeding ones hath done to.
Lenin also stresses the importance of the peasantry as a revolutionary force.
According to the writeup "Foundations of Leninism" by Joseph Stalin, Lenin spoke about the Peasant Question, that Russia was a predominantly peasant country and that the toiling masses of the peasantry must be supported in their struggle against bondage and exploitation, in their struggle for deliverance from oppression and poverty. And in mind here is support for a movement or struggle of the peasantry which, directly or indirectly, facilitates the emancipation movement of the proletariat, which, in one way or another, brings grist to the mill of the proletarian revolution, and which helps to transform the peasantry into a reserve and ally of the working class.
Most critics tend to attack Lenin ideologically to personal affairs that in fact, irrational tendencies just to counter the growing struggle of the working class. But despite these, Lenin, as well as his followers and successors opted to advance the idea and remain youthful, that the working class should and must support the peasantry as part of advancing the struggle-like what Mao Zedong and the "Mass Line" in China, "All from the masses to the masses" so to speak.
And despite the events passed, of having his USSR being disintegrated, more and more students, of followers of Marxism-Leninism continue to study, of contributing to the idea, honouring and willing to continue the contributions of the man named after the river Lena. His birth anniversary may also serve as a signal for the coming event, that unites the entire working class: MAY DAY.
