Vladimir Lenin Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Paul Le Blanc

Critical Essay by Paul Le Blanc

SOURCE: "Introduction: Authentic Leninism," in Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, Humanities Press International, Inc., 1990, pp. 1-13.

In the following essay, Le Blanc contends the core of pure Leninism is the revolutionary Bolshevik movement.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the foremost leader of the world's first working-class socialist revolution, which swept Russia in 1917 and continues to reverberate down to our own time. People throughout the world—longing for an end to injustice, war, and oppression—have looked hopefully to the example of the Russian Bolsheviks and to the ideas of Lenin as a guide for liberation struggles and social change in their own countries. As another leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, Leon Trotsky, explained: "The main work of Lenin's life was the organization of a party capable of carrying through the October revolution and of directing the construction of Socialism." Because of this, revolutionary-minded men and women have given special attention to...
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