Lenin Selected Works, Volume 2

Author: Central Committee of the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1995-06-01
Features: This volume selects and publishes 37 works of Lenin from 1908 to 1916, covering the period of the Stolypin reaction in Russia, the resurgence of the revolution, and the first half of World War I. After the failure of the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia in 1905-1907, the autocratic government led by Stolypin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers launched a frenzied counterattack against the revolutionary people, seizing the political and economic gains won by the people and brutally suppressing revolutionary parties and workers' and peasants' movements. The organizations of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and the legal mass organizations it led, such as trade unions, were severely damaged. Their leaders were arrested in batches, and the number of party members and trade union members plummeted. Faced with the reckless offensive of the reactionaries, some "allies" of the revolution fell into pessimism and vacillation, even openly abandoning the revolution. This volume includes three articles written by Lenin in different years commemorating the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, the revolutionary democrat Herzen, and the French worker poet Podvig. In these articles, Lenin uses Marxist viewpoints and methods to conduct a penetrating analysis of the works and thoughts of these three writers and poets, offering objective evaluations of their historical status.