Sri Lankan SEP and IYSSE commemorate Russian Revolution at Peradeniya University
By
our correspondents
11 November 2017
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka held a successful public meeting on the centenary of the Russian Revolution at the University of Peradeniya’s Arts Theatre in Kandy, the central province capital, on Wednesday.
The event was attended by about 40 people, including students, lecturers and workers. Organised under the patronage of the university’s Fine Art Department it was the first SEP/IYSSE meeting on the campus in a decade.
SEP/IYSSE members campaigned extensively at the university and in neighbouring areas prior to the meeting provoking animated discussions on the political lessons of the October Revolution. Thousands of leaflets advertising the event were distributed and copies of Sinhala translations of Why Study the Russian Revolution and Leon Trotsky’s In Defence of October Revolution sold to students and staff members.
A number of students also signed the International Committee of the Fourth International’s online petition opposing Google’s censorship of the World Socialist Web Site and other progressive Internet publications.
The campaigners defied anti-democratic threats by members of Peradeniya University Student Union, which is led by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP). Student union leaders claimed that campaigners needed permission from them to promote the event.
The meeting consisted of four elements: a lecture on the Russian Revolution, a screening of the documentary Tsar to Lenin, an introduction to the Sinhala version of Why Study the Russian Revolution, and a question-and-answer…