Ceremony honouring the 90th anniversary of Lenin's birth, Moscow, USSR 1960 -- Daily LIFT #1006
Lenin's greatness and the tremendous historic importance of his vital cause, are now clear to every-one. But representatives of the rising and middle-aged generation, perhaps, find it difficult to visualize the fascinating personality of this great leader, his exceptional tactfulness with regard to comrades, to all honest men and women coming from the midst of the people.
Talking with Ilyich, everyone felt how amazingly his personality combined warm humanity and strong revolutionary passion. One could speak with him without ceremony, just as with one's own father or an all understanding teacher. He would attentively listen and his alive, expressive face and his eyes reflected the rapid flow of thought and sentiments. And later, when he in brief, terse sentences concretely and pro-foundly explained the questions uppermost in one's mind, one was unwittingly amazed by the force of his genius. Everything complicated turned out to be easi-ly explained. It became immediately obvious where to go and with whom to go, what to do and what was the keystone of our policy in the given situation. Every-thing became clear as daylight. And one returned after a conversation with Lenin with the happy confidence in victory and a profound affection for him, for Lenin.
It means, if someone asked us - people of the older generation, in what we particularly felt the genius of Lenin, we could reply: he seemed to us a clairvoyant in the best sense of this word. As Maxim Gorky aptly put it, Lenin had the rare ability to look at the present from the summits of the future.
Speaking at meetings and rallies, Vladimir Ilyich overwhelmed the audience by his knowledge of life, his mighty will and force of conviction seizing the audience. The workers and peasants felt that Lenin took to heart their vital needs, lived for their interests and strongly hated any oppression and exploitation of working people. The people boundlessly loved Lenin just as Lenin loved the people.
Under Lenin's leadership socialism for the first time emerged from theory into living practice. Vladimir Ilyich did not live to see the victorious march of socialism in other countries. His life broke off pre-maturely. But the historic cause of Lenin and his ideas are immortal. The rays of his genius illumine the road of our Party today as well. Leninism — is Marxism of our epoch. -- from the speech by O. V. Kuusinen at the celebration.
Kuusinen was a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee at the time and a famed Finnish communist. He died in 1964 at age 82.