Dear friends and comrades,

I am very happy and honored to welcome you very warmly in the name and on behalf of the ICC, the Central Coordination of the revolutionary World Organization ICOR. The 100^th anniversary of Lenin’s death was taken as an occasion to organize this Seminar for the future. It has been prepared on all continents during the whole year with events, study movements, schooling and discussions among the masses.

In the hundred years since Lenin’s death the world has experienced enormous processes of transformation; and today the entire capitalist-imperialist world system is shaken by enormous crises. We commemorate all revolutionary fighters around the globe who gave their lives to realize Lenin’s and our dream for a new socialist and communist world liberated from all exploitation of humanity and nature. We call out to all imprisoned liberation fighters like those in Israel or Iran that they are not alone, that we reserve space for them at this assembly. We especially commemorate all murdered martyrs in the struggles for freedom, democracy, national liberation and socialism, like in the struggle of the Palestinian people. For this I ask all of you to rise for a minute of silence.

With his mischievous smile that we know from the few existing film recording we have of him, Lenin surely would have been pleased about who has assembled here: youth, high school and university students, academics and artists, migrants, and especially a great number of workers. Many of them have arrived straight from the steel mills and auto factories, where trade-union and independent strikes against the planned destruction of tens of thousands of jobs and the shutdown of entire plants are forging ahead. All of them will exchange views with very experienced revolutionaries and fighters coming from 34 countries. A warm welcome to all!

The Seminar will realize on a small scale many things that Lenin’s teachings represent:

• This Seminar is class struggle! It does not take place in an ivory tower but everybody here comes from the midst of the struggles against exploitation and oppression, against the growing fascist danger, against preparation of a world war and the global environmental catastrophe that has begun, and for the only realistic prospect for the future: socialism and communism. The Seminar takes place in the German federal state of Thuringia, where a short time ago the fascist AfD became the strongest force in the state elections – for the first time since the Second World War in Germany! Therefore this Seminar is a militant challenge against the fascists as the fiercest enemies of socialism and communism.

• This Seminar does theoretical work and trains Lenin’s dialectical method. His teachings are foundation and yardstick for our current assessment of reality and our prognoses for the future. His dialectical method helps us not to ossify dogmatically but recognize and qualify the new phenomena and essential changes in imperialism as highest and last stage of capitalism.

• This Seminar lives socialist priniciples and breathes the spirit of proletarian internationalism with its540 participants from 34 countries on four continents.

• This Seminar can only become a reality because it is built on the idea of the communist subbotniks of the socialist Soviet Union Their idea of voluntary, self-sacrificing and unselfish work including overtime for the community became reality in the 15 teams of brigadists. From tent construction, to our food and our security they were and are active untiringly.

• This Seminar is a challenge for youth and an incentive for its revolutionary potentials to thrive. The young studied Lenin, have taken him as a role model and will present their contributions here, and, as a climax their revue about Lenin which they wrote themselves.

• This Seminar will takeLenin’s combative spirit as an example – his proletarian culture of debate, his irreconcilability against opportunism, revisionism and dogmatism – always linked with the creative power to develop further scientific socialism in theory and practice.

• This Seminar practices a fraternal and sisterly culture beyond national, religious and ideological borders and differences in historical, political and cultural background – of course on an antifascist basis.

Lenin’s life was a model for all of us. He studied law; and with his clever mind he surely would have been able to pursue a well paid career. But he decided to live the modest life of a professional revolutionary. He went to Petersburg, a city with the largest factories, and gave his full attention – and deep affection – to the still small industrial proletariat.

His first articles and strike calls could not be hidden from the secret police. He was arrested, banished to Siberia, and had to flee into exile. Untiringly and loyal to principles he formed alliances with other refugees in the European countries.

His theoretical writings in newspapers and books often found a secret gateway into Russia with the help of his partner, Nadeshda Krupskaya as “mail officer”.

Lenin, the internationalist, even in the bloodbath of the First World War never lost sight of the revolution in Russia and the worldwide union of the revolutionaries against any domestic peace. After the February Revolution in 1917 he smuggled himself there, had to flee again, wrote theoretical books, to this day irrefutable and far-sighted – and became the genial leader of the proletariat, the October Revolution and the first building of socialism in one country.

He was only 53 years old when he died much too early from the late effects of an anarchist assassination.

With its eight blocks, this Seminar will enable us a deeper understanding of his teachings – never as dogma or nostalgia, but in the way how he always pressed forward analyzing and evaluating new phenomena and essential changes in the world and drawing conclusions from them for the work of the revolutionaries.

Participate actively, self-confidently with your experiences in the critical and self-critical debate in the spirit of a proletarian, that means open, principled and always respectful culture of debate. Then we will all depart from here to our great challenges, encouraged and strengthened with a great advance in knowledge, filled with Lenin’s revolutionary optimism – depart to whatever place or country on this globe.

I hereby declare the ICOR Seminar “Lenin’s teachings are alive” to be open.