An extra Lenin Award of 50,000 SEK will be awarded this year and distributed equally between the war victims in Ukraine and Yemen.
One of Lenin’s greatest and most decisive historical contributions was his uncompromising opposition to Russia’s continued participation in the First World War, which he saw as an imperialist war of redistribution in which soldiers and war victims had to pay for the masters’ rival struggle for territories, markets, and world domination. In a similar way, wars are waged today between great powers without regard to the interests of the people. Russia’s attack on Ukraine has been preceded by vicious attacks against not only Lenin’s peace policy in general, but in the Putin worldview, Lenin has been repeatedly attacked in particular for his equally uncompromising support for the Ukrainian nation, culture, and language. At the same time, an even bigger and more extensive war- and refugee disaster is going on in Yemen, a war that could be ended at any time if the USA, NATO, and the Western countries had seriously demanded this. These wars show the total hypocrisy and lack of interest in the suffering of the peoples of both the US and Russia and make it especially important this year to oppose these wars in every way and support their many victims.