Lenin at Tavrichesky Palace. Petrograd, April 1917. Marxists Internet Archive.

Author: Eduardo Freire Canosa

Introduction

The object of this website, "Collected Works of Lenin & Galiciana," is to offer a novel backdrop to selected English-language excerpts of Lenin's Collected Works (Volumes 2-33). The excerpts are juxtaposed with reports or articles from Galician newspapers of the day.

The source for the Collected Works of Lenin is the facsimiles (PDF files) scanned and created by David J. Romagnolo and available free of charge to every visitor of the excellent gargantuan Marxists Internet Archive.

I took the liberty of editing excerpts slightly to improve the readability or fluidness while remaining scrupulously true to Lenin's message.

Volume 1 (years 1893-1894) was neglected because its four works are dissertations. To borrow the words of its preface,

In these works, which are directed against the Narodniks and “legal Marxists,” Lenin gives a Marxist analysis of Russia’s social and economic system at the close of the nineteenth century, and formulates a number of programme principles and tasks for the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat.

Three other volumes were overlooked for the same reason. These are "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (Volume 3; years 1896-1900), "Materialism and Empirio-Criticism" (Volume 14; 1908) and "New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture" (Volume 22; 1915).

"Galiciana" is the name of the Digital Library of Galicia. The website is managed by the Central Library of Galicia and is sponsored by the regional government, the Xunta de Galicia, which launched it officially on June 15, 2012. By the close of 2013 the digital library stored more than 147,000 pages of monographs, charts and pamphlets, and more than 87,000 pages of historical Galician periodicals/newspapers. Access to the digital library is free of charge and open to everybody.

All Galiciana clippings are more than a hundred years old. The first one is dated December 10, 1895; the last one March 29, 1923.

Russian placenames/surnames sometimes appear woefully misspelled in the newspapers. If the intended name is guessable the misspelling is supplanted. If it is not, the offending word is reproduced inside quotation marks followed by (?).

Not least the venerable online encyclopedia Wikipedia afforded supplementary reference material.

Whether you are pro- or anti-Leninist or indifferent, the data, the news items and the articles presented should rivet your curiosity.

Lenin, a biography by Leon Trotsky. Marxists Internet Archive.

Trimmed photograph of Lenin and Krupskaya in Red Square on May 25, 1919. Colorized by Klimbim.

   Soviet song about Lenin.

  Clip from Lenin In October, a Soviet movie of 1937. The actor portraying Zinoviev is seated to Lenin's right, "Kamenev" sits to Lenin's left. "Sverdlov" and "Stalin" stand behind. The real Sverdlov had died in 1918, Lenin in 1924, Zinoviev and Kamenev in 1936 following the First Moscow Purge Trial. The part of Lenin was played by Boris V. Shchukin (1894-1939). Here he and Okhlopkov are shown larking on the set during a break. Filming "Lenin In October" was a difficult task obstructed by continual sabotage. Russian source: Kinopoisk.