The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-02-19
By MAX BEDACHT.

IA Words SO simple, and yet so
awe-inspiring. Slowly we learn to
grasp the full significance of the
news. The heart Of the greatest man
Of his time no longer beats. The
working class has lost it's greatest
thinker and ablest teacher. The
proletarian world revolution is rob
bed of its outstanding leader.
Lenin the revolutionist was a true
son Of Russia. Yet he was an inter
nationalist. He assimilated all the
experiences that the fertile soil of the
native struggle in Russia pro-
vided. And thru these experiences
he helped to open the eyes of the
workers of the world as to the real
character of the struggle they are
engaged in.
Scyl.a and Carybdis.
He led his party safely thru the
Scylla Of all kinds Of temporary al
liances into a position of leadership
over the working masses Of Russia.
He steered the ship Of the revolution
airy proletariat without loss thru the
carybdis of bourgeois revolution
and finally planted the banner of
victory of the working class over the
vast empire Of old Russia, now the
United Soviet Socialist Republics.
Lenin's tactical skill treated histo-
ry to the phenomenon Of two revoIu-
tons in one: The long delayed last
battle of the universal bourgeois re-
volution; and the first victorious
battle of the universal proletarian
revolution. And Lenin was the
master statesman of this fastest
period Of development of human
society.
Lenin's Childhood.
Lenin's cradle stood in Simbirsk
on the Volga. He was born just about
the time when Bismarck builtJ with
blood and iron, the foundation for the
upward flight of German capitalism,
on April 19, 1870. His father was
a teacher whose learning and under
standing fostered and encouraged
intellectual interests in his family
and especially among his children.
There even in his childhood Lenin
developed and showed already the
intellectual honesty which character
lied the great leader. The constant
spectacle of slavery in the masses
around him decided the future of the
man. On the goth of May 1886
Lenin's brother was hanged in the
courtyard of the Schluesselburg
Bastille, by order of the Gar, for
revolutionary activity. Deeply i'm
pressed though he was by this ter
rible event, the fate of his brother
could not shake the determination of
Vladimir Ilyich to dedicate his life
work to the movement of the ex-
plotted and downtrodden for their
liberation.
In Lenin the man of thought and
the man Of action found q most per-
feet unity. For Lenia all the theories
Of social change were Of value only
as they served the exploited in their
struggle for the change. Lenin per-
soniied reconstructed Markism.
In the rut Of stereotyped phrases
the socialist movement had lost all
substance And when the great clash
came that was to herald the bank
ruptcy of capitalism. when the crisis
of imperialism came in those memoir
able days of 1914, there was no revo-
lutionary spark to explode the great
fraud of capitalism, and crowd the
imperialist war off the stage of his
tory. Lenin created the spark. He
set off that great blast that tore
Russian absolutism to shreds, that
tore the basis from under Russian
capitalism, the state power, and that