Wellred Books is proud to announce our second brand-new selection of Lenin’s writings in this centenary year of the great revolutionary’s death. The Revolutions of 1917 brings out the key writings in that seminal year, writings whose whole bent was towards one aim: the seizure of power by the working class. We publish here a review of this new book, and encourage you to click here to get your copy.

The world situation today is characterised by the opening up of a whole series of bloody conflicts: in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Congo, in Sudan. In the epoch of imperialism, the capitalist system which has outlived itself would sooner drown humanity in a sea of blood than peacefully go into the dustbin of history. On the other side, the world situation is characterised by revolutionary anger against war and imperialism.

In this instalment of our series, Lenin in a Year, we take a look at a short but very interesting text by Lenin, written in 1919, The Third International and its Place in History. This year represented the high water mark of a European-wide wave of revolutions. The foundations of capitalism were shaking. And to lead the European and world proletariat, Lenin led the founding of a new Third Communist International.

By October 1919, the soviet republic in Russia was approaching its second anniversary. Since 1917, the Russian workers had taken the first steps towards communism. This remains one of the most extraordinary periods in human history. For the first time – in a country covering one sixth of the Earth’s surface – the capitalists and large landowners were expropriated. The economy was nationalised and placed under the control of the workers' state.

It’s 1918 and the freshly minted Russian Soviet republic is facing invasion, sabotage, and rebellion. The monarchists, landowners, capitalists, and imperialists are incensed by the revolutionary conquest of power by the Russian workers and peasants. They’re dead set on crushing it.

The spring of 1918 was a time of unprecedented difficulty for the young soviet republic in Russia. The civil war and the recently-signed treaty with Germany had led to a drop in grain production. Combined with the collapse of the rail network, whole towns were left starving. Factories had to close down due to the lack of coal and unemployment was rising.

The Russian revolution of 1917 shook the world. For the first time in history, the oppressed and exploited majority wrested power from the parasitic minority and held it.

Revolutions are crises of the whole of society, in which none of its classes can go on living in the old way. Something must give and a crisis erupts. But revolutions are far from simple. They have ebbs and flows, and new crises within them. Six months into the Russian Revolution of 1917, and a new crisis was impending. How to cut through the Gordian Knot? This was the question to which Lenin turned his attention in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It.

In August 1917 the Russian Revolution stood at a crossroads. The Bolshevik Party had been driven underground. Lenin was in hiding, his life under threat. But it was at this perilous and uncertain moment that he delved into theory, producing arguably his most famous work.

After a brief break, we welcome the return of our series, Lenin in a Year, in which we explore the many writings – some more and some less well-known – of history’s greatest revolutionary, V. I. Lenin, in this centenary year of his death. 

This year's May School, an annual theoretical school organized by the Polish section of IMT, Czerwony Front, was held under the slogan ‘In Defence of Lenin’, and proved to be a great success! It gathered more than 40 people, and was full of lively discussions, both during the sessions and in the breaks between them.

We publish here a contribution by Alan Woods to the pre-congress debate of the Brazilian Communist Party – Revolutionary Refoundation. The PCB-RR gathers the comrades who were bureaucratically expelled from the PCB in July – August 2023, after they raised a whole number of political differences, including regarding the question of the character of the war in Ukraine. We would like to thank the Provisional Political Committee of the PCB-RR for the opportunity for this exchange of ideas amongst Communists and we wish them success in their congress, which is taking place at the end of the month.

In April 1917, Lenin returned to Russia, arriving into Petrograd’s famous Finland Station. This was the beginning of his one-man struggle to politically reorient the Bolshevik Party – a vital stepping stone towards the October Revolution.

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 left Lenin practically isolated politically, and in exile with very few contacts with the party in Russia. The Second International had solemnly voted at several congresses to oppose the imperialist war, and in the case of its outbreak to use all means at their disposal to accelerate the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Instead, all the major parties collapsed into social-chauvinism, each defending the interests of their own ruling class in the war.

Lenin’s position on the national question was a key element in the Bolsheviks’ success in the Russian Revolution. His article The Right of Nations to Self Determination, published in April-June 1914 as a polemic against Rosa Luxemburg and others, is one of his most outstanding works on the subject.