IMMEDIATELY after alighting from the train in Petrograd station on April 3, 1917 Lenin addressed the thousands of workers who had gathered there to welcome him. He concluded his address with the rousing slogan, “Long Live the Socialist Revolution” and plunged into action from that instant.The immediate task undertaken by Lenin was to lay out a theoretical and practical map for the advancement of the revolution. It is in this background that he had written his famous ‘April Theses’.

The victorious October Revolution saw the gathering of the counter-revolutionary forces who unleashed a Civil War assisted by armed intervention by fourteen imperialist and capitalist countries.   For three years – 1918 to 1921 – a Civil War raged in Russia.  The class conscious workers of Petrograd and other cities became the core of the new Red Army which  battled the White Guards.  It is only after defeating the White Guards and the imperialist armed intervention that the new Socialist State was consolidated.  The Civil War saw the sacrifices of tens of thousands of class conscious w