Nous sommes les héritiers des révolutions du monde ("We are the inheritors of the revolutions of the world") contains five speeches given by Sankara during the four years of the Burkinabè revolution. This new booklet in French by Pathfinder Press was published in August of this year, just in time for the 15th World Festival of Youth and Students that took place in Algiers, Algeria. The pamphlet was one of the most popular titles at the literature table set up by members of the Young Socialists at the conference.

It's absolutely true to say, as the preface explains, that "this booklet allows us to hear the voice of one of the greatest revolutionary leaders of the modern international workers' movement."

Therein, Thomas Sankara explains how the peasants and workers of Burkina Faso established a popular revolutionary government and began fighting hunger, illiteracy, and economic backwardness imposed by imperialist domination, and women's oppression inherited through millennia of class society. The speeches bring to light how the accomplishments of the people of Burkina Faso during the revolution provided an example not only to workers and small farmers in Africa, but to those throughout the world.

In the Political Orientation Speech, given by Sankara on Upper Volta radio and television Oct. 2, 1983, Sankara explains the character and goals of the revolution that had just begun in Upper Volta, as well as the social forces underpinning it.

"Our revolution," he said, "is a revolution that is unfolding in a backward, agricultural country where the weight of tradition and ideology emanating from a feudal-type social organization weighs very heavily on the popular masses. It is a revolution in a country that, because of the oppression and exploitation of our people by imperialism, has evolved from a colony into a neocolony." Upper Volta gained independence from France in 1960.

Because of this, Sankara adds, "The August [1983] revolution has a dual character: It is a democratic and popular revolution. Its primary tasks are to liquidate imperialist domination and exploitation and cleanse the countryside of all social, economic, and cultural obstacles that keep it in a backward state. From this flows its democratic character.

"Its popular character arises from the full participation of the Voltaic masses," he said, "in the revolution and their consistent mobilization around democratic and revolutionary slogans that express in concrete terms their own interests as opposed to those of the reactionary classes allied with imperialism." The revolutionary leader pointed out the revolution was being made in a country whose population was overwhelming made up of a peasants.

The Political Orientation Speech became the basic document of the Burkinabè revolution. It contains a brief but striking section in which Sankara explains how the revolution and the liberation of women are inextricably linked. He explains how the Burkinabè revolution must create the conditions for "turning loose [women's] fighting initiative" and involving them on "all levels...from conceiving projects to making decisions and implementing them."

La liberté se conquiert ("Freedom can only be won through struggle") is the speech given by Thomas Sankara before the United Nations General Assembly Oct. 4, 1984. The revolutionary leader used this tribune to address the workers and farmers of the entire world.

He explains how, at the beginning of the 1980s, despite the fact that 90 percent of the active population lived in the countryside, Upper Volta suffered famine and was forced to import agricultural products from abroad. The infant mortality rate reached 180 per 1,000 live births, life expectancy was limited to 40 years, and the illiteracy rate hovered at 92 percent.

Sankara describes the first accomplishments of the revolution through a land reform, literacy campaign, and other social reforms aimed at responding to the most crying needs of the populace. And he declared the unconditional support of the Burkinabè revolution struggle against imperialism around the world.

"We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world," he added, "and of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World.... We draw the lessons of the American revolution.... The French revolution taught us the intimate connection between the rights of man and the rights of people to liberty. The great October [Russian] revolution of 1917 transformed the world, brought victory to the proletariat, shook the foundations of capitalism, and made possible the realization of the dreams of the Paris Commune," the first workers government in history in 1871.

L'impérialisme est le pyromane de nos forêts et de nos savanes ("Imperialism is the pyromaniac of our forests and our plains") is a brief speech given in February 1986 in Paris at the First International Tree and Forest Conference. Sankara describes a campaign initiated by the Burkinabè revolution to mobilize thousands of workers, peasants, and youth with the goal of stopping the encroachment of the desert. "This struggle to defend the trees and forest," he said, "is above all a struggle against imperialism," referring to the pillage of and innumerable economic distortions in the colonial and semicolonial countries.

In Le français nous permet de com-muniquer avec les autres peuples en lutte ("The French language allows us to communicate with other peoples in struggle"), likewise presented in February 1986, at the first francophone summit in Paris, Sankara explains, "French, for us has first and foremost been the language of the colonizer." But at the same time, he said, "It's through the intermediary of the French language that we have read the great educators of the proletariat." And it is through the French language that the Burkinabè people have been able to communicate with other peoples in struggle, like the Kanak of New Caledonia and the Vietnamese.

Finally, Nous sommes les héritiers des révolutions du monde concludes with On ne tue pas les idées ("Ideas cannot be killed"), a magnificent homage to Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara on the 20th anniversary of his death in combat in Bolivia. The speech was given a week before the overthrow of the revolutionary government led by Sankara and his assassination by the coup leaders.

In addition to a splendid color cover, the booklet contains eight pages of photographs.  
 
 
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