Lenin's Legacy
Vladimir Lenin; April 22nd, 1870 – January 21st, 1924
On January 21st, 1924, Vladimir Lenin passed away, leaving behind a legacy that has inspired waves of struggle for a new world, from Palestine to Vietnam, Cuba, China, and Guinea-Bissau.
We honour Lenin through the words of revolutionaries the world over:
Fidel Castro, Cuban revolutionary
“We had the ideas of Marx, and very specially, we had the extraordinary work of Lenin... Without Lenin, without Lenin’s ideas, without Lenin’s work, the Cuban Revolution would not have existed.”
Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese revolutionary
“There is a legend, in our country as well as in China, on the miraculous ‘Book of the Wise’. When facing great difficulties, one opens it and finds a way out. Leninism is not only a miraculous ‘book of the wise’, a compass for us Vietnamese revolutionaries and people: it is also the radiant sun illuminating our path to final victory, to socialism and communism.”
Amílcar Cabral, Bissau-Guinean revolutionary
“Lenin left behind more than just his works. He was, and continues to be, a living example of a fighter for the cause of humanity, for the economic — and therefore national, social, and cultural — liberation of man. His entire life and his conduct as a human personality contain useful lessons for all of us fighting for national liberation. Among these lessons, we deem most relevant to the struggle those that relate to moral behavior, to political action, and to revolutionary strategy and practice.”
Nadezhda Krupskaya, Russian revolutionary
“Whatever Vladimir Ilyich did, he always did thoroughly. He did a lot of spade work. The more important he thought a job, the more he delved into the minutest details.”
Langston Hughes, US-American poet and communist activist
“Lenin walks around the world.
Frontiers cannot bar him.
Neither barracks nor barricades impede.
Nor does barbed wire scar him.
Lenin walks around the world.
Black, brown, and white receive him.
Language is no barrier.
The strangest tongues believe him.
Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn.
There rises a red star.”