Book Description

Lenin always paid great attention to the young generation of workers, peasants and intellectuals and laid emphasis on involving the largest possible number of them in the revolutionary movement, the struggle to build a new socialist society. Back in 1895, when he drew up the program of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party while in prison, he put forward the demand for universal suffrage for citizens at the age of 21 and over and for prohibition of employment of children under 15. While living in emigration on the eve of the first Russian revolution, Lenin closely followed the development of the students' movement in Tsarist Russia and in the pages of Iskra he stressed its importance for the general struggle of the Russian people against tsarism and called on the students to work out Marxist world outlook and actively assist the Social-Democrats in their illegal work. In August 1903, at the Second Congress of the Party, Lenin moved a resolution on the Social-Democrats' attitude towards students and made a speech on this question. Lenin did not confine himself to the youth movement in Russia only. As leader of the international proletariat, Lenin helped the young Social-Democrats of Switzerland, Sweden and other countries to arrive at a scientific world outlook and correct revolutionary tactics in the struggle against capitalism, passing on to them the experience of the Russian working class and its Party.The present collection includes Lenin's articles, speeches and letters on the youth, as well as those of his works which deal with problems facing the young generation.The various items in this collection are as a rule published in full, excerpts being used only when Lenin's statements on youth form part of his larger works.Lenin's works are distributed under the following heading: The Condition of Children and Young People under Capitalism, The Revolutionary Movement Among the Student Youth in Tsarist Russia, Participation of Young Workers and Peasants in the Revolutionary Struggle and Revolutionary Training of Youth and Participation of Youth in Socialist Construction - Education of the New Man.Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924) was the founder of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), inspirer and leader of Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and the architect, builder, and first head (1917-24) of the Soviet State. He was the founder of the organization known as Comintern (Communist International) and the posthumous source of "Leninism," the doctrine codified and conjoined with Marx's works by Lenin's successors to form Marxism-Leninism, which became the Communist world view. If the Bolshevik Revolution is - as some people have called it - the most significant political event of the 20th century, then Lenin must for good or ill be regarded as the century's most significant political leader. Not only in the scholarly circles of the former Soviet Union but even among many non-Communist scholars, he has been regarded as the greatest revolutionary leader and revolutionary statesman in history, as well as the greatest revolutionary thinker since Marx.