state apparatus we must at all costs set oat* first, to learn, secondly,
to learn, and thirdly, to learn, and then see to it that learning shall not
remain a dead letter, or a fashionable catch-phrase...that learning shall
really become part of our very being, that it shall actually and fully
become a constituent element of our social life.".
Lenin pointed out the extreme importance of the national liberation movement,
the inevitability of the dismembering of the colonial system from imperialism, and foresaw that the struggle of the peoples of the colonies, firstly
directed towards national liberation, will turn, in its development,
against capitalism. He also foresaw that the national liberation wars
against imperialism would lead to an imperialist war of the "great" imperialist powers.
These are just a few points in the immense work of Lenin We have chosen
them because it is already possible to see the relevance of these ideas
to our revolutions we also want a total revolution; ours is a people's
revolution, with the full participation of the masses; we had to resort
to violence, because the Portuguese colonialists refused to give us back
voluntarily our freedom and independence; we face problems of organisation,
unity and development of a party; we had (and continue to have) comrades
who desert by seeing that the enemy is stronger than us and seeing independence still far away; we had to fight (and are fighting) against those who
wanted to take the place of the colonialists; we give education fundamental
importance; we are experiencing the direct and indirect aggression of the
imperialist powers.
The fact that the problems we are facing today were experienced by other
revolutions and were overcome constitutes a source of encouragement for
all of us. The Mozambican revolution is essentially Mozambican. It is
not copied from any other revolution, but is dictated by the interests
of our people and by the solidarity with the other peoples who are also
fighting against colonialism and imperialism.  But a people's revolution
has characteristics in common with other people's revolutions, no matter
in what time or in which place; the experiences of other revolutions
help us to find solutions for certain of our problems, to foresee certain
phase's of our revolutionary process, to find the most suitable formulas to
characterise our situation at each moment.
It is because of this that we honour Lenin, and the centenary of his birth.
He was a great, revolutionary fighter and thinker, a man whose vision
went beyond that of his own generation and society into our own age and
place. He inspires* us who fight against imperialism and exploitation of
man by man, for progress, justice and peace.
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