Dear comrades,

First of all, I would like to thank you on behalf of my organization for inviting me to this panel discussion. As socialist youth, it is an honor for us to be able to discuss with revolutionaries and especially with young people from all over the world in the centenary year in memory of Lenin. First of all, it is fair to say that even a hundred years after his death, Lenin's teachings continue to inspire generations of young people, and even after a hundred years they still offer a perspective for the future that is the source of every will to fight. Few people have shaped world history and the dreams and courage of young people as much as Lenin over the last hundred years. 20 years after his death, thousands of young Red Army soldiers joined the victorious fight against fascism: Under the banner of the party and the socialist republic that Lenin was instrumental in creating. A few years later, we experienced a wave of student revolts and, furthermore, anti-colonial revolutions in several countries around the world. These movements were also largely driven by young revolutionaries whose role model was Comrade Lenin.

1. What did Lenin giveus along the way?

let's start with the classic: “The task is to learn.” Lenin tells us this - just as our teachers told us at school. In contrast to the bourgeois school, however, Lenin makes a completely different point, which is essential for the development of communist youth, namely that youth can only study communism if they link every step of their training, education and upbringing to the uninterrupted struggle of the proletarians against the exploiting society. Today more than ever, young people must link their own future with the future of the proletariat. This means that the youth must unite around the Marxist-Leninist vanguard.

Our generation often considers itself weak and powerless in the face of the cruelties of this system. But the pioneers of the revolutionary movement in Turkey - Deniz Gezmis, Mahir Cayan and Ibrahim Kaypakkaya - were also only in their early 20s when they broke with the prevailing reformism, started an armed struggle against fascism and took a revolutionary leap! How many 15-year-olds are taking their place in the defense of the Rojava revolution and the Palestinian national liberation struggle?

2. learning is (also) manual labor

Just as we will learn unswervingly with the goal of socialism and revolution, we must do so first and foremost in practice. There are two reasons for this: Those who learn away from the reality of life, hiding only behind their books, are anything but revolutionary. For example, when the Rojava revolution began, organizations dedicated to socialism spent their time explaining their distance from this revolution with quotes from the book, while in real life, young revolutionaries dedicated their whole lives to this revolution and thus really fulfilled their service to the workers and the oppressed. Today, the international youth movement is asking itself the same question in relation to the resistance of the Palestinian people: do we want to watch, read and comment? Or do we recognize that the conditions and slogans of the struggle are different in different countries, must be understood in their context and our own role in it must be recognized and fulfilled? The international youth movement in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle is a hopeful step in this direction. From the universities of the USA to Sonnenallee in Berlin. It is precisely in international solidarity for Palestine that youth play a dynamic and pioneering role. While Palestine has shown the limits of bourgeois democracy in the imperialist centers, young people have recognized the injustice of Zionist oppression and the justice of resistance and have set their hearts on fire. They defied the repression, such as the young women's organization Zora in Germany, which was the first to be affected by house raids and court hearings. At one of the hearings, the lawyers who expressed the legitimacy of solidarity with Palestine were even told by the judge that the case should be dropped, but that he could not. Solidarity with Palestine is legitimate, the national liberation struggle of Palestine is just and we must all stand together against the repression and oppression. That is Lenin's way.

Just as Lenin discussed at eye level with the communist students over 100 years ago which parts their movement should include, which demands they should fight for and how, in order to pull the entire student body forward as a communist vanguard - we must sharpen our analyses today in the same way.

3. create a new generation, a generation of victories!

The revolutionary youth of today face great tasks. At a time when the worldwide revolutionary movement must meet today's demands, when imperialist wars and environmental catastrophes threaten our future, we want to bring the concept of “hope” back into people's minds. Lenin shows us that even out of the horror of the First World War a glorious October Revolution can be born. That thousands of young people can regain their courage after the hardships of war and hunger. But Lenin also recognized that one thing above all was necessary for the success of the revolution and socialism: the creation of a new generation whose characteristics would provide the answer to the challenges of their time. In times of the construction of socialism, it was particularly important to educate young people who would put all their energy into social progress. The one who faces completely new questions of a new society without hesitation.

The times in which we are fighting are getting tougher.

One example that we can learn a lot from in such times, when the climate is getting rougher, is the socialist youth of the SGDF in Turkey. In 2015, a brutal attack was carried out against them by ISIS in collaboration with the Turkish state, in which 33 people were killed. This attack was one of the biggest attacks on the revolutionary movement in Turkey in recent history. It was a horrific massacre aimed at wiping out the youth who had made their way to Rojava from Turkey to build a bridge between the youth of Gezi and Kobane. Despite the loss and pain, this attack was repelled with renewed fighting determination and political consciousness.

Today, as revolutionary youth all over the world, we must take a stand against imperialism and fascism, raise the right slogans and fight side by side. For freedom from the river to the sea, from the mountains of Kurdistan to the cities of Europe.

The youth in particular will play a very decisive role in the struggle against imperialist war, militarism and racism. While the growing fascism is a harbinger of imperialist war preparations for the renewed division of the world and instrumentalizes the refugee question for itself, the youth is faced with the task of raising the banner of internationalism. Imperialism and fascism threaten the future of the youth the most.

We can see from the uprisings in Iran, Bangladesh, the Arab uprisings that started in Tunisia, etc., that the popular youth is one of the driving forces of revolutionary and insurrectionary movements in the world. Today, the fronts are sharpening and if we do not organize these young people, reaction will.

The main task of communist youth today is to offer the masses of youth a perspective for struggle. As communist youth, we must not wait to be taken by the hand and prepared for everything. Our school is the street, is the revolutionary struggle. We must study the classics, but not as a hobby detached from reality - but in order to understand the methods of Marxism with which we can find answers to the questions of our time and apply them in practice without hesitation.

You are never too young to organize a revolution. However different the conditions of youth movements may be, class struggles are intensifying all over the world and the fronts of revolutionary struggle are becoming tougher. What we need today are young revolutionaries who, with the same courage, optimism and spirit of renewal as Lenin, always keep their eyes on the ruling class and seize every political opportunity. When Lenin put forward the April Theses, everyone thought he was crazy. A few months later, power was in the hands of the young Soviet people. In a rapidly changing world, we must learn to analyze the contradictions in the political struggle just as quickly, adapt our slogans and tactics and, as youth, take the front ranks in the struggles and uprisings in order to lead them to revolution.

Last but not least, our task is to create a new generation: one that fights for socialism and leaves capitalism and all its rotten characteristics behind. Experience shows us that by standing in the midst of political struggle, not shying away from risk and always taking aim at the enemy, we can create a generation that is aware of its enemies, that steels and develops itself in political struggle and learns everything it needs for the struggles to come.