Lenin the Liberator: 22 April 1870

Lenin the Liberator: 22 April 1870

On 22 April 1970, the underground organisation of the South African Communist Party – SACP – carried out a nationwide, illegal distribution of educational material among the working people of South Africa where the Party had been outlawed since 1950. Among the materials circulated was a special miniaturised leaflet, titled “Lenin the Liberator”, commemorating the centenary of his birth. The full text of the leaflet is reproduced below – own additions in brackets and minor modifications.

“This year (1970), all over the world, men and women who love human freedom are celebrating the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest of men. Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin was born in Russia on April 22, 1870. The Russia into which he was born was a land of suffering. backwardness and oppression. Over this huge country – the biggest in the world – the Tsar (the Emperor) ruled by terror and absolute decree. The masses of peasants and workers had no votes, no say in making the laws under which they lived. They were starving and mostly illiterate.

“Opposition parties and trade unions were banned and leaders who fought for the people’s rights were arrested tortured, exiled and killed by the political police. The non-Russian peoples of the tsarist empire were nationally oppressed, insulted and degraded. In many ways it was just like South Africa today (under apartheid).

“Tsarist Russia was known and hated for its oppression. Its government was called ‘the policeman of Europe’. But there was another Russia – one which longed and struggled for freedom. All the best and bravest among the working people and the intellectuals thought only of revolution. One of these was Lenin. His elder brother, Alexander, was executed for taking part in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. This incident made a profound impression on the young Lenin. He thought deeply about the problem of how to bring about a revolution. To kill a bad leader is not by itself good enough. He could be replaced by one even worse – as Verwoerd was replaced by Vorster.

“If the masses of people were to overthrow oppression, Lenin realised, they had to be guided by a correct revolutionary theory. This theory existed in the teachings of the great German socialist Karl Marx and his lifelong comrade Frederich Engels. Marx showed that all progress in history came about through the struggle of classes. In modern society the most advanced class was the working class. Together with the masses of poor people in the countryside, the workers could defeat the rich – the owners of factories, mines and big farms – take power into their own hands, and build a new and better society, socialism.

“But to do this the workers must organise; they must build their own revolutionary party; they must fight by every possible means including if necessary armed struggle for liberation.

“Lenin developed Marx’s brilliant ideas and applied them to the actual situation in Russia and the world. He built up the Russian Bolshevik (Communist) Party. As the tsarist dictatorship would not allow this to be done legally, the Party had to work ‘underground’, in secret. Many brave communists suffered imprisonment torture, exile and death. Lenin himself was forced to live abroad for many years of exile. The tsarist government and its secret police, together with an army of spies and informers did their utmost to supress the ideas of Lenin, of communism. But truth cannot be destroyed.

“The triumph of Lenin and his comrades came with the Great Socialist Revolution in Russia on November 7, 1917. The workers and peasants formed their own government. They took over from the capitalists and landlords the factories, mines and big farms, and developed them for the benefit of the people. The old tsarist empire was transformed into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – a family of free and equal socialist nations. Exploitation of many by man was abolished. From being the most backward, economically and politically, Russia became the most advanced of countries.

“Lenin was the great champion of the oppressed peoples of the world. All his life he hated and fought ideas and practices of racialism, such as those of Hitler and Vorster, which claim that one race is superior to others and entitled to privileges. That is one great reason why the memory of Lenin is dear to hundreds of millions of people, whether they are communists or not, especially in Africa and Asia, who have suffered because of their nationality or colour.

“All over the world, new parties grew up, Communist and Workers Parties, who upheld and put into practice the theories of Marxism-Leninism. Some of these Parties in a number of countries of Europe and Asia and in Cuba, have led the workers and peasants to conquer state power and are following Lenin’s path to socialism.

“These countries, together with the revolutionary working class led by Communist Parties in the developed capitalist countries, are the strongest friends and allies of the national liberation movements of Africa and Asia. It is largely because of such powerful friends that most of the peoples of these continents have been able to end colonial rule and win independence. This is a part of the debt we all owe to the memory of Lenin, the Liberator.

“In South Africa for many years the truth about Lenin’s teachings was brought to the people by the Communist Party. Like the tsarist government of old Russia, the white rulers of South Africa fear the truth. For twenty years (to 1970) the Communist Party has been illegal. It is a crime even to advocate Lenin’s ideas.

“Hundreds of brave South African Communists, men like Bram Fischer, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, were sentenced to life imprisonment and, other harsh sentences, banned, exiled, even murdered by Vorster’s fascist dictatorship. They can kill Communists, but they cannot kill Communism.

“The South African Communist Party is carrying on, and will do so until victory. Today the main struggle in our country is to overthrow the tyranny of white domination, to win the National Democratic Revolution for the liberation of the African and other oppressed peoples. The Communist Party, following Lenin’s ideas, is In the front ranks of the struggle. Its members will be found together with other members of the African National Congress and its allies, in the ranks of the liberation army, Umkhonto we Sizwe, which mauled the enemy in Rhodesia and will soon do so in the Republic as well. The Party calls upon the workers to unite to educate, organise and inspire the people for struggle.

“Whatever Vorster and his Nazi thugs may do or try, the Communist Party will survive and in the end be victorious because its ideas are true, human and in accordance with the needs of the great majority of our people.

“Lenin is dead but his ideas will never die. His books will be read: our revolutionary youth will find their way to read Lenin. His memory inspires us as we struggle for a free South Africa. Who do Vorster and his bullies think they are to imagine they can ‘suppress’ Leninism? They can no more stop these ideas than they can prevent the sun from rising in the morning. Lenin’s ideas inspire the 1 000 million people of the socialist countries – one third of mankind. They inspire the workers of Europe, America. Asia and Africa.

“They inspire the heroic people of Vietnam who – though a small nation – had already beaten one big imperialist country, France, and later defeated the biggest of all, the United States of America.

“Lenin was more than a great thinker: he was a man of action, a fighter. His ideas are weapons in the fight for freedom. Let us honour Lenin by fighting even harder for a free South Africa, where all men are equals and the land and its wealth restored to the people.

“Lenin’s ideas cannot be kept out by laws and police. Our South African people too will come to Leninism for the truth is mighty and will prevail.”

FORWARD TO SOUTH AFRICAN FREEDOM!
LONG LIVE OUR REVOLUTION!
LONG LIVE LENINISM!

Source:
Documents, “Lenin the Liberator”, The African Communist, No. 42, Third Quarter, 1970.

Castro Khwela
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