Long Live the Great October Socialist Revolution!
6 Comments Published by LeftyHenry on Monday at 8:43 PM.
Today I was walking home when I realized that this is October and October was when the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and established the world's first socialist state. when I got home, I went online, and coincidently, on October 23, 1917,* The Bolshevik revolution kicked off with a revolt in Talinn, Estonia. On October 25*, Lenin led his revolutionaries in an uprising in Petrograd (St. Petersburg), which was the capital of Russia at that time, and in a near bloodless battle, took control of various government buildings. On October 26*, the Red Guard stormed the Winter Palace and in about 6 hours, took control of the palace which was guarded by Cossacks.
A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.
- Vladmir Ilych Lenin
This event was not only crucial because of how the newly formed USSR would effect every aspect of 20th century history, but also because this event established the world's first worker state and in my opinion, the only one which really put the power in the hands of the workers. In the end, the USSR would give into outside pressure, Stalinist State-Capitalism, and eventually Free Market Capitalism, but at least for some time the workers and producers of society shook the world and took control of their country.
*October 23 by Julian Calendar, November 5 by Gregorian Calendar.
After Lenin died the USSR went to hell. There are a lot of apologists for Stalin (not referring to you) who try and justify actions he made, also by pointing out that certain aspects of USSR society were grand.
FACT: Stalin put hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions (although that number has always seemed a little higher than the stipulated proof has suggested) to death in the name of his "revolution".
FACT: The majority of those who survived the purges didn't live in any better conditions than that of pre-revolution days. Poverty was still a big factor in the USSR.
FACT: The USSR as a whole gave the biggest black eye to modern leftist movements than any other failed attempt at communism.
Still, I respect Lenin and Trosky for their visions and contribution to socialist thought, which you seem to admire as well. Perhaps I'll make a Lenin shirt to wear tomorrow for October 25th. Good reminder! I love hearing about all of the leftist "holidays" that many often overlook.
Reds is out on DVD this month. That is the movie Warren Beatty produced, about John Reed.
Dave,
I agree with what you say except for number 2. While Stalin was a dictator he did industrialize the country. Naturally living standards improved.
Also to be fair, the USSR was under loads of pressure from capitalists and fascists who were gaining power in Europe and elsewhere.
I like to think of the USSR like the US would be if Canada was North Korea, Mexico was Iran, and Cuba is some other extremely dangerous rogue nation...
But yeah sometimes I think, Stalin really fucked it up!
Ren,
wow, that looks cool. I'll try to rent that but first I have to read the Ten days that shook the world as I haven't yet because I've been in the middle of what's to be done.
Trotsky's The Russian Revolution is a good source and thanks for the reminder. We have to remember also how devestating WWI had been and then to have to fight the White army during a civil war put strains on the society that directed it towards totalitarianism.There was incredible economic growth for a while but lots of slave labor and rural deprivation as well.
For a brief time the workers held real power during the Spanish Civil War, more than the Soviets in my opinion.
Not only is it important to remember that the workers held real power in Spain from 1936 to 1937, but that it was the communists, backed by Stalin, that undermined the most advanced and progressive "true" socialist revolution in world history.
Bakunin was right about the "communists" in the Soviet Union and he was right about the "communists" in Spain.
"They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up."
The fundamental contradiction is that for the Marxists, "anarchism or freedom is the aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved."
"The world wouldn't be in such a snarl/If Marx had been Groucho, instead of Karl"