Lenin's Final Fight: Speeches and Writings, 1922-23

As capitalism in the twenty-first century enters its deepest economic and social crisis since the decades spanning the first and second imperialist world wars, programmatic and strategic matters in dispute in the communist workers movement in the early 1920s once again weigh heavily in prospects for the working class worldwide to advance along its historic line of march toward the conquest of power.

—From the introduction


In 1922 and 1923, V.I. Lenin, central leader of the world’s first socialist revolution, waged what was to be his last political battle. At stake was whether that revolution would remain on the proletarian course that had brought workers and peasants in the former tsarist empire to power in October 1917—and laid the foundations for a truly worldwide revolutionary movement of toilers organizing to emulate the Bolsheviks’ example.



‘Who will win?’ Lenin asked in March 1922. Could the workers and peasants, emerging from years of war, devastation, and famine, continue to hold off the hostile capitalist world surrounding the Soviet republic? Above all, could they under those conditions prevail at home against rising bourgeois layers and their self-serving allies within the state and Communist Party apparatus?


Lenin’s Final Fight brings together, for the first time, the reports, articles, and letters through which Lenin waged this political battle. Many were suppressed for decades, and some have never before appeared in English.



Introduction by Jack Barnes and Steve Clark, abbreviations and initials, chronology, notes, index.

BookNews

Following the Bolshevik Revolution, a major split erupted in the Communist Party concerning the proletarian nature of the state and the internationalist outlook of the communist movement. This work from Pathfinder presents a collection of late writings by Lenin in order to answer the question of what his views on these matters were as he suffered illness and finally death brought on by multiple strokes while this political battle was being waged. The collection aims to demonstrate that Lenin was opposed to the trajectory that the politically victorious Stalin and his allies were to embark upon following Lenin's death. Several articles and letters appear in English for the first time. Jack Barnes, the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, and Steve Clark, Pathfinder Press editor, provide an introduction and analysis of the history of the struggle. (Annotation 2010 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)