Germany: Lenin comes to Gelsenkirchen!
On March 14, the Russian revolutionary, Marxist working-class theorist and leader of the October Revolution of 1917 will come to Gelsenkirchen, Germany. 150 years after his birthday he will move permanently into Gelsenkirchen-Horst – in the form of an over two meter tall, artfully shaped cast-iron statue in front of the Horster Mitte, the federal headquarters of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD).
“This will also be the start of a nationwide movement 'Don't give anti-communism a chance,'” says Gabi Fechtner, the chairwoman of the MLPD. “In times where monuments of the great communist thinkers and revolutionaries are still being torn down, where more and more right-wing governments, as in Hungary, ban communist symbols, we are consciously setting an example against anti-communism, which is also the state religion in Germany. The scandal in Thuringia, where a minister-president was elected with votes from the AfD, shows where anti-communism is leading. To direct the main thrust against communists and Marxist-Leninists, to equate right and left, to give anti-communism a legitimacy as an ideological justification of fascism – all this has only been made possible by the rightward development in society. We are therefore pleased to erect the first such monument in West Germany, and one of the westernmost in Europe, as a signal against this unspeakable anti-communism.”
The MLPD succeeded in acquiring an original Lenin statue from the 1930s, which was cast in the Soviet Union. Worldwide there were and are only a handful of statues from this mold. “This gives Gelsenkirchen a real rarity, which is not only a political signal, but is also of cultural and touristic importance,” says the chairwoman of the MLPD. Some people may see this as a provocation, others as a courageous sign against the rightward development. Like so much in the current social discussion, this event will polarize. “We welcome and want especially a broad discussion about questions that are often taboo in the bourgeois media: against anti-communism, about the merits of Lenin and the socialist construction in the Soviet Union, and also about the conclusions that can be drawn from the betrayal of socialism and from crimes in its name.”
In the weeks before, the MLPD will do broad public relations work in Gelsenkirchen so that the population learns even more about this revolutionary and why it is important to erect a monument to him. Particularly in times when capitalism is once again quite rightly coming into disrepute: as an exploitative and oppressive society that produces, inherently in the system, wars and environmental destruction.
The ceremonial unveiling will take place on March 14 between 4:30 and 5:30 p.m. at the intersection of Schmalhorststrasse/An der Rennbahn. It is part of the celebrations of “100 Years of the Red Ruhr Army,” which will take place in many cities of the Ruhr area that weekend.