Stalin — The Lenin of To-day.

By L. L. SHARKEY.

We know Comrade Stalin as a great organiser, a man of action and of indomitable will. We know him as a great military strategist in all of the campaigns of the Red Army, including the present colossal conflict with the Fascists.

Comrade Stalin led the Russian Communists and the toilers of the Soviet Union to Socialism, successfully pointing the way to the overcoming of incredible obstacles. We know Comrade Stalin as a practical leader of genius.

In this short work and in his more comprehensive works, Stalin appears before us also as a theoretical leader. He appears as the continuer of the theoretical labors of Marx, Engels and Lenin. He is the foremost living Marxist-Leninist scholar, the Lenin of to-day.

The trotskyite fascist agents tried to deny Stalin’s theoretical ability. They claimed that their defeat was brought about by organisational measures directed against them. But the struggle against the traitorous trotskyites was, in the first place, a theoretical and political struggle of decisive importance. The question involved was one of life or death, the continued existence of the Soviet Republic, the problem of whether Socialism could be built in one country.

Stalin brilliantly defended and elaborated Lenin’s teaching on the possibility of building Socialism in one country and, with a profound grip of Marxism-Leninism, refuted the “theoretical” arguments of his opponents, who, defeated, later sold themselves as Quislings to the Nazi and Japanese espionage services.

Socialism was built in Soviet industry and Socialist forms also triumphed in agriculture. Socialism is successfully resisting the attempt of brutal fascism to overthrow it. Socialism “in one country” is proving itself invincible, thereby vindicating the theoretical and practical stand taken by Stalin in his struggle against the enemies of Leninism.

In the difficult complicated task of building the new Socialist society, at every twist and turn of the long and hard road the Soviet workers had to travel, Stalin held aloft the “lamp of theory that lights the path for the feet of practice,” and solved the problems, in brilliant fashion, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism. In doing so Stalin has further developed and elaborated the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin.

The whole of the toiling masses of the world to-day acclaim this great work of the great statesman, Stalin, for it made the Soviet Union the invincible barrier between the peoples and fascist world enslavement.

This little book, “The Foundations of Leninism,” is as invaluable for us to-day as when it was first penned, especially for the understanding of the developing world-wide people’s movement; its organisation before and after its victory and, in particular, the role and form of organisation of the advance-guard of the working class.