In this article, first published in 2004, Rob Sewell deals with the important contribution Lenin made on the national question and how such a correct stand on this issue guaranteed the success of the Bolshevik Party in October 1917. The national question remains a key issue for Marxists in the current epoch of capitalist crisis.

Ninety years ago, on 21st January 1924, Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, died from complications arising from an earlier assassin’s bullet. Rob Sewell looks back at the life and ideas of Lenin, the great Marxist and revolutionary leader.

20th August 2013 marks the 73rd anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky. To remember the life of this heroic revolutionary, we are republishing Trotsky’s speech entitled “I Stake My Life!”, an address made for the opening event of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trials on 9th February 1937.