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Ninety years ago, the Russian working class shook the world with the Bolshevik Revolution. After it, relations between the classes would never be the same again...

The October Revolution – humanity's greatest achievement

WORKERS, DEC 2007 ISSUE

The capitalist state of affairs has, since its beginnings, been projected as the natural way, the only way. God-given and reinforced by the church, to break away from it was to invite social disaster and chaos. This prevailing attitude of mind was smugly conveyed by the famous 19th-century hymn, All Things Bright and Beautiful in its now rarely-sung later verse:

The first serious jolt to the complacency of the ruling classes came in 1871 with the uprising of the Paris Commune. At the beginning of 1871, after Emperor Napoleon III of France's unnecessary war with Prussia had resulted in invasion, the Parisian crowds proclaimed a republic. But the people of Paris were busy planning social reforms rather than getting to grips with the main threat – the Versailles government of Thiers. The commune was violently overthrown.

To the ruling class, the Paris Commune was a fleeting alarm. Quite soon, they forgot, thought it an aberration and went back to their old ways. World War One commenced with the conviction of the ruling class that their respective working classes would go down in mutual slaughter for the greater benefit of capital, for the heady growth of its armament companies and for the reconfiguration of its maps of empire.

Why was the Russian October Revolution so different? Above all because it smashed the complacent arrogance of rulers everywhere and brought a new set of factors to the equation of governance. From that date, and for many decades on, the exploiters looked anxiously, nervously, over their shoulders.

The events that took place six months earlier, in the February Revolution, were significant. Petrograd, the capital of Russia at the time and the centre of huge military garrisons too, was taken by workers and peasants in uniform who refused to continue in the Tsar's war. Consequently the Tsar fell, abdicating.

Though the Soviets had the armed force and the support of the masses, yet the power fell into the hands of the bourgeois Provisional Government. A dual power, rare in history, emerged. Although the Soviets in February and March voluntarily ceded the power won by the soldiers and deputies – a position advocated and pursued by the Mensheviks – the Bolsheviks were not prepared to stop at the victory of the bourgeois revolution.

In August 1917 a Party Congress called for preparations to be made for the transfer of power to the working class and peasantry. By early autumn there was a growing financial collapse and the rouble lost 37 per cent of its value in the period August-September 1917. Workers were paid wages in "falling roubles" – money that simply melted away in their hands.

Revolutionary militia
Revolutionary militia on the streets of Petrograd, Russia, 1917.

By October the rouble went into tail-spin, depreciating at headlong speed. Supply of foodstuffs to the cities declined and grain speculators benefited. The government was using armed force against the peasants and backing the big landlords.

In September and October there was a huge upswing in revolutionary strike action with metallurgy and textile workers taking the lead. It began and was strongest in the Bolshevik factories. Demands for the transfer of power to the Soviets began to grow stronger. The Bolsheviks now were returned as the leading force in the overwhelming majority of workers' soviets. Morale in the army was disintegrating and Bolshevik ideas were coming to the fore. The Bolshevik party had great influence amongst the Kronstadt sailors and the Black Sea Fleet.

And the October Revolution produced two of the best, pithiest calls to action ever: "Peace, Bread and Land" and "All Power to the Soviets" – calls which appealed to millions desperate for power to resolve their problems.

The October Revolution overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and gave the power to the Soviets dominated by Bolsheviks. The revolution was led by the Bolshevik party but with the support of the Left Social Revolutionaries, who had links with the peasantry. At this moment, Lenin made sure that everyone remembered the lessons of the Paris Commune. Strategic buildings, communication facilities, banks, the railways, the fleets, etc. all needed to be secured for the people. Troops of revolutionary workers and soldiers began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October. On 25 October the Winter Palace (seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured.

The success of the October Revolution transformed the Russian state from parliamentarian to socialist in character.

What is its significance?
The rulers always denigrate the October Revolution as a coup d'etat. But the evidence is clear that the working class (2 million for instance in Moscow and Petrograd) eagerly adopted the policies of the Bolsheviks during the course of 1917. The brushing aside of the Provisional Government was a popular move and was the only course of action able to address their ability to survive and progress.

For the first time a country detached itself from the ramifications of a capitalist world and began the process of building a socialist society, largely independently, largely out of its own efforts and resources. It was living proof we do not need capitalists. There is another way.

As against current capitalist society's obsession with celebrity, the October Revolution was the first to put the needs of the mass of workers in central position.

The October Revolution was characterised by its boldness and was an expression of the human spirit that has still not been vanquished.

What events did it set in train?
A coalition of anti-Bolshevik groups including invading armies from the victorious Allies attempted to unseat the new government in the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1922. It failed. A new army formed from workers' detachments proved itself in this conflict. Imperialism could not inflict defeat on the fledgling state. The Soviet Union was formed in a mood of victory.

Another capitalist response was the sponsorship of fascism and corporatism, in the form of Hitler and Nazi Germany, and of Mussolini in Italy. All of which grew out of fear of the working class, and of the Soviet Union in particular.

In the subsequent epic struggle of World War Two, the Soviet Union smashed fascism, changed the tide in the world in favour of theworking class. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war; two thirds of all Germany's military divisions served on the eastern front and there was no second front until 1944 when the Soviet Union had turned the balance of the war irrevocably in their favour. This was all at an immense cost to the Soviet Union with an estimated 24 million dead.

Are there still valid lessons for us from those times?

Bourgeois democracy versus revolutionary – Lenin's formulations. Bourgeois democracy and universal suffrage is not the final culmination of politics. It is a very poor instrument. Sitting back, voting for someone else to represent them, the ancient Greeks listened to debate and then shifted their stones to indicate approval or rejection. Informed participation, constant involvement: the Soviets were the first essay into the arena.

The Soviet Union was not vanquished by capitalism. It withstood everything ranged against it for 73 years. By the 1970s the Soviet Union was producing a fifth of the world's industrial product.From the Paris Commune's 72 days to the Soviet Union's 73 years: noticeable progress for working class power surrounded by adverse, unfriendly powers. Not a coup. A coup doesn't resist all-comers for 70 years. It collapsed from within. Workers were no longer prepared to be a revolutionary class, exerting leadership over its society.

This article is an edited extract from a speech given at a Workers/CPBML meeting in London in November, celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

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