A giant of his era

• THE life and work of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin are worthy of admiration. Today as we celebrate the 141st anniversary of his birth, the continuators of his ideas are proud to describe them as ageless. He was the founder a new epoch, establishing the 20th century as the era of socialist revolution, breaking the power of the exploiters in backward Czarist Russia and creating, with the force of colossal tenacity and heroism, the first workers’ and farmers’ state in history, precipitating the rapid development of revolutionary and emancipation movements around the world.

Fidel on the 100th anniversary of this exemplary revolutionary’s birth said, "Lenin is one of those truly exceptional human beings. A simple reading of his life, his history, his work, the most objective analysis of the way his thinking developed and his attitude throughout his life make him in the eyes of all humanity, I repeat, a truly exceptional man.

No one was able, as he was, to interpret the depth, the essence and the value of Marxist theory. No one was capable, as he was, of analyzing this theory and taking it to its ultimate implications. No one was capable of developing and enriching it the way he did."

Among Lenin’s many significant contributions to Marxism and the progress of humanity, outstanding are his theory of imperialism as the final stage of capitalist development, the creation of a new type of party, the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the obligatory relationship between national and social liberation, the principles of peaceful co-existence and the path to the construction of socialism