Episode Details

An introductory speech by Becky Crocker on "Who was Lenin?" part of the "ABCs of Marxism" series of meetings by Workers' Liberty. Watch video: https://youtu.be/jNNjTbgqH_8 Upcoming online meetings: https://workersliberty.org/c19-online Russian Revolution: When Workers took power, at https://www.workersliberty.org/russian-revolution **Timeline** 1860s and 70s - Populism – Lenin’s brother attempted to kill Tsar Nicholas III - Tsarist autocracy 1880s Plekhanov founding Social Democracy for Russia Plekhanov vs. populism 1890s Class struggle in Russia Lenin joins Marxist group Russian Social Democratic Labour Party formed 1898 1902 What Is To Be Done? Written in preparation for 2nd Congress of RSDLP - another attempt to unify various Social Democratic groups in Russia 1903 2nd Congress **Reading** What they did to What is To Be Done, by Hal Draper: https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm All reading and a recording of the meeting for this and other sessions in the ABCs of Marxism series will be collated here: https://www.workersliberty.org/abcs-marxism Some more reading on Lenin on the Workers Liberty website at https://www.workersliberty.org/marxists/vladimir-lenin **Description** Lenin wrote that it was often the fate of revolutionaries that after their deaths their names were made into legends to console the oppressed, while their ideas — their real politics, what they had stood for in life — were thrown out and replaced by something else. Something very like that happened to Lenin himself. Stalinists, who lyingly call themselves Leninists, radically cut away what Lenin had really stood for and adopted anti-working-class policies — the very opposite of those which Lenin spent his life fighting for. Then after the fall of USSR , Lenin, who spent his last years fighting incipient Stalinism, is scapegoated for the discredited despotic system which rose up on the defeat of Lenin's last struggle, continued after Lenin's death by Trotsky and others. We discuss the real history of Lenin and what he stood for.