Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Nicolai Lenin, His Life and Work (1918).djvu/11

 done for the international and Russian Labor movement. Every proletarian knows that Lenin is the leader, Lenin is the apostle of world Communism. (Applause). But I think, comrades, that we cannot pay a greater honor to our teacher and leader to-day than if I, who am acquainted with the biography of Comrade Lenin somewhat intimately—I have had the good fortune to work side by side with Comrade Lenin in the closest collaboration for more than ten years—if I take advantage of the present occasion in order to share, though it be only in brief, with younger friends and older comrades who have never had the opportunity of observing so closely the work of Comrade Lenin, my authentic knowledge of the life of Comrade Lenin. (Numerous voices, Please do!)

Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin-Ulianoff is now 48 years old. He was born in the year 1870 on the 10th of April, at Simbirsk. And out of the 48 years of his life, Comrade Lenin has devoted nearly 30 years work to the cause of freedom.

The father of Comrade Lenin, by birth a peasant, was director of the elementary schools in the Volga provinces, and enjoyed great popularity among the teachers of the town and village schools in his district.

The mother of Comrade Lenin I knew personally. She died in the year 1913. Alexander III had executed her eldest son, Alexander Ulianoff. From that time she concentrated her maternal tenderness on Vladimir Ilyitch. And Comrade Lenin, in his turn, tenderly loved his broken-hearted little mother.

Living in exile, hunted by the Tsar's Government, Comrade Lenin would tear himself away from the most urgent work in order to make a special journey to Sweden to pay a visit to his mother and to brighten for her the last days of her life.

After leaving the classical "gymnasium," Lenin en-