ON LENIN'S BIRTHDAY

A Very Timely And Befitting Quote

“Lenin has been  pictured by some writers  as a man of  irascible temprament who could not work with others, and the splits and controversies among Russian socialists have been attributd to this cause. Certainly he did not mince words when he felt deeply. But there seems little doubt that the sharpness of controversy in which he indulged was due, not to personal ill-will, but to his sense of the overwhelming importance of the issues involved. For him controversy was the forge of truth. It is clear that he parted from such colleagues as Plekhanov and Martov only with personal distress ; and when a  comrade, in the dark period of 1908, chided him for isolating himself by his strictness of principle, he replied simply - “There are occasions when a leader must stand alone to preserve the purity of his flag”.

                                               ----- Morris Dobb