October Syllabus – Peoples School for Marxist-Leninist Studies

Welcome to autumn comrades! This October will be full of great classes that we’ve waited a long time to have. We’ll also begin reusing some old classes to remind older students of what we’ve learned and present it again for newer students. Please note we will not be having a class on Tuesday, October 31st.

First week of the new month will be a class on the 30th Anniversary of Black October of 1993. This was a class we did last year around the anniversary then, but we couldn’t miss it for it’s 30th anniversary this year, so it is the first class we’ll be reusing. Black October was the name for the events which took place in Russia in 1993 when the new, capitalist Yeltsin administration attacked the House of Soviets, arrested lawmakers, ended the regional and local Soviets and all their institutions and adopted a new constitution for the country, beginning a period of Yeltsinite “shock therapy” capitalism in Russia that severely impacted the Russian people. This class will be Tuesday, October 3rd, from 8 pm EST – 9:30 pm EST and Thursday, October 5th, from 9 pm EST – 10:30 pm EST. (Remember that there is a public staff meeting at 8 pm EST preceding Thursday’s class if you’re interested in volunteering.)

Next will be a class on the Juche Philosophy, something we’ve touched on a bit before in the Peoples School. Juche is the philosophy of self-reliance politically and economically, drawing from Marxist-Leninist theory and was developed by Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. This will be a great class as it will be a break from the seemingly constant history classes we’ve been having, and we’ll be able to talk about this theory and discuss it as Marxist-Leninists. This class will be Tuesday, October 10th, from 8 pm EST – 9:30 pm EST and Thursday, October 12th, from 9 pm EST – 10:30 pm EST.

Our series on U.S. Imperialism will have its 6th episode, this time on the “End of the Cold War” and going over the developments of U.S. Imperialism in between the years of 1975 and 1990, as the Cold War came to a supposed end and the counter-revolution in the USSR meant the rise of American unipolarity in the 1990s and 2000s. We’ll be going over topics like the U.S. support for the Mujahideen, the Iran-Contra Affair, invasion of Grenada, bombing of Libya, rise of “Reaganomics”, the threat of nuclear war etc. After this, there will be about 3 more additions to this series before we are caught up with the present reality of U.S. Imperialism. This class will be Tuesday, October 17th, from 8 pm EST – 9:30 pm EST and Thursday, October 19th, from 9 pm EST – 10:30 pm EST.

Finally, we will have a class on the Hungarian Counter-Revolution in 1956, the often overlooked or lied about historical context of the event and the justification of the Soviet response. This is very important to us at the school as we have always sought to combat the western anti-Soviet narratives and stand with the USSR, and this class has been one we’ve been wanting to do for an extraordinarily long time. This class will be Tuesday, October 24th, from 8 pm EST – 9:30 pm EST and Thursday, October 26th, from 9 pm EST – 10:30 pm EST.

Also, remember that we have an ongoing legal drive that we urge the comrades that support the school to help us with, which you can find here. Please give us whatever you can and share it around! Anything helps!