This Revolutionary Socialist Movement leaflet is printed and is availiable at today’s Lenin Centenary Conference in Abuja, Nigeria
The Revolutionary Socialist Movement (RSM) welcomes you to the International Lenin Centenary Conference. This event is taking place during a period of global turmoil, and when the world is in desperate need of revolutionary solutions. The situation in Nigeria mirrors this crisis, with rampant killings and kidnappings; a clear manifestation of a failed state. The ongoing attacks on the standard of living and the escalating inflation have made life practically unbearable for ordinary people. These two days present an opportunity to discuss how we can mobilize for a socialist change.
Who was Lenin?
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870 – 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian socialist revolutionary. He was the key leader of the Russian Revolution and served as the head of the Soviet government.
Lenin was hugely radicalized after his brother’s execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Tsarist government, he pursued a law degree in the subsequent years. In 1893, he relocated to Saint Petersburg. Arrested for sedition in 1897, he was exiled to Shushenskoye in Siberia for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya. After his exile, Lenin lived in exile in Western Europe and became a prominent theorist in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). In 1903, he played a key role in the RSDLP ideological split, leading the Bolshevik faction against Martov’s Mensheviks. After the 1917 February Revolution ousted the Tsar and established a Provisional Government, Lenin returned to Russia and played a leading role in the October Revolution, overthrowing the new bourgeois regime and establishing workers’ power.
In 1901, he adopted the pen name “Lenin” to avoid arrest. Lenin joined workers in their daily struggles and built the political alternative known as the Bolsheviks, later forming the Communist Party of Russia. Under Lenin’s leadership, the economy was nationalized, the capitalists were kicked out, and an unheard-of level of freedom was given to workers on social issues. The then Soviet Union, initially hugely underdeveloped compared to the United States, became the second most developed country globally within a generation. After he died in 1924, and following an internal battle inside the CPSU, Stalin and the bureaucratic caste around him prevailed against the Trotskyist Opposition. They established a deformed workers state which eventually led to the collapse of the whole Eastern Block in 1989.
How is this connected with today’s Nigeria?
In Nigeria, abundant resources exist to end poverty, but they have been misappropriated to fund capitalist profiteering and the political elite. This must be stopped!
Comrade Segun Sango, a spirited socialist revolutionary in Nigeria, emphasized the ideals of Lenin. He quoted Leon Trotsky, the second key leader of the Russian Revolution after Lenin, warning that a nationalized economy requires workers’ democracy to effectively function. He also called for social transformation and revolution, emphasizing the need for a determined working-class party. The need for a party that serves the interests of the working class was one of the keystones of Lenin’s ideal. We at RSM totally support and align with this. We acknowledge the difficulty of this task and call for support and solidarity to begin to implement it – a working class party – as this will give a broad platform to educate, share and spread the ideas of Lenin and an opportunity to build a movement capable of achieving a socialist revolution.
If you are a student, public servant, peasant, farmer, artisan or trader and also dissatisfied with the current situation, join us in the RSM. We welcome you, we are committed to fighting alongside the working class to fulfil the work started by Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, and Engels. The new generation of revolutionaries must delve deeply into their ideas and work. Now is the time to immerse oneself in the incredible richness of Marxism, the synthesized experience of the working class, and a guide to action for the socialist revolution.
The RSM is part of the Internationalist Standpoint, an initiative of revolutionary socialists worldwide. If you support our mandate to aggressively manifest the ideas and policies of Lenin, contact us to discuss and organise a fightback. After all, as Marx and Engels wrote, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all countries, unite!”
Contact us:
revolutionsocialist.ng
07069411796, 07032069383, 07035225037
contactrevolutionarysocialist@gmail.com
