the room of the ministers.?
So Trotsky, in his History of the Russian Revolution, described the scene which took place 57 years ago this week, when the symbol of Russian autocracy and oppression, the Winter Palace, wus captured by the Russian peasants and workers, as the socialist October revolution triumphed.
Fifty seven years is a long time, and Russia is a lone way away -why is that victory so important to us today in a country very different from the Russia of that age?
The great historical signiticance of the October revolution, which is still vivid today, was that a section of humanity, in the shape of the Russian workers, consciously took hold of history by the scruff of the neck and put it on a new path.
For millions of years, the human race has been the object of history, victim of the blind for is of nature and the cconomic law of class societies. Now, for a brief time, men and women took their destinies into their own hands and became the drivers of history, not its helpless passengers. DEAD WEIGHT Of course, the dead weight of history came again to rest heavily on the shoulders of the Soviet state, as its isolation from revolutions elsewhere led it to falter and turn from its original Ideas and aims. One cannot take control of history and build socialism within the boundarles of one out-dated nation state - especially one as impoverished and underdeveloped as Russia.
However the first faltering steps were taken in revolutionary Russia. And those gains, those behind. The square pours into the court. The court pours into the examples, those vital lessons for the workers of the world, have not been lost or surpassed even to this day.
What was Russia like then? Most of the country was agricultural, with an oppressed peasantry starving for land and kept in check by an outdated mobility. It was a backward, primitive country.
Carl Gardner However in the cities ularly in Petrograd, Moscow and the coal-rich areas in the south there were pockets of extremely Intensive, highly mechanised industry. These areas had produced a small, but highly organised and class-conscious, working class.
The factories in which they worked were almost totally the product of foreign imperialist investment by France, Great Britain and the USA. As a result, almost entirely in the interests of foreign capitalists.
Lastly, and very importapt, we can draw the first main lesson of the revolution. Trotsky explained this in his famous theory of the *permanent revolution, and Lenin expounded it in his April Theses, wrilten on his return to Russia after the February revolution. Their conclusion was that all the problems which Russia faced (and which underdeveloped countries face today) peasants without land, lack of democracy or civil rights, MOST VALUABLE IN PURSUING THE HAD particforcien domination of the economy can only he solved within the framework of the struggle for socialism. This struggle must he led by the minority working class in alliance with the vast masses of the poor peasantry.
In countries dominated by imperialism, there is no possibility of a "democratic', capitalist stage of development, such as the North American and European powers have experienced.
LIBERALISED During the February mass upsurge against Tsardamn, because of the weakness and unpreparedness of the revolutionaries, middle-class and capitalist parties were thrown to the fore. They believed that Russia could be liheralised and develop its own native capitalist industry, within a stable parliamentary democracy. and that workers should do nothing which might endanger that.
Lenin quickly realised that these capitalist parties were completely incapable of solving the problems of the rausses, or breaking with imperialism and the bureaucratic state which defended It. They would only have thrown Russia even more firmly into the jaws of European capital. Only by struggling against all those who defended the private owner ship of capital could the workers and peasants effectively tackle their problems.
SOVIETS During February, soviets were within six months. precisely that.
DEMORALISED bourgeois state policies needed to solve the urgent, practical needs of the masses, they won a majority The main conclusion which Lenin and the Bolsheviks had drawn from 1905 and the carly months of 1917 was the need for the soviets to become real organs of workers power, independent of the bourgeoisie und its state. The Bolshevik slopan 'All power to the Soviets meant As for the armed forces, carrying on where they left off in 1905, the Bolsheviks waged. ceaseless agitation inside the ranks, urging them to join the side of the working class. They also advanced demands concerning democratic rights inside the army.
Their task was made much easier by the fact that Russia was up to its neck in a stinking, barbaric war witch had totally demoralised the troops. The soldiers were of peasant origin. and wanted nothing more than to return home to a small plot of land. The Bolsheviks throught the soviets, convinced these soldiers that they could achieve their hopes through uniting with the working class. At the same time, the soviets represented an alternative power that could defend the soldiers from the threats of the It was largely the successful Within the soviets, even before October, steps were being taken to reorganise production and Kerensky: *..completely incapable of solving the problems of the masses or breaking with imperialism
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"Workers, sailors, soldiers are pushing up from outside in chains and groups, flinging the junkers from the harricades, bursting through the courts, stumbling into the junkers on the staircase, crowding them back. toppling them over, driving them upstairs. Another wave comes on
palace and floods up and down stairways and through corridors... The junkers at the last guarded doors are disarmed. The victors burst into