Analytical Summary: "The Russian Revolution: The Greatest Event in History"

Spectre Of Communism · 2023-11-07

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the Russian Revolution of October 1917 represents the first successful working-class seizure of power in history, and that its achievement was not a coup by a conspiratorial minority but the culmination of a mass political process in which the Bolsheviks won the majority of workers, soldiers and peasants to their programme. The argument has three interconnected claims:

First, that revolutions are not made by small groups but by the self-activity of the working class. The February Revolution was spontaneous — the women workers of Petrograd ignored the cautious advice of local Bolshevik leaders and took to the streets, overwhelming the Tsarist state. This demonstrates that when the working class is organised and mobilised, no state power can resist it.

Second, that the period between February and October was a struggle over leadership and consciousness. The paradox of February was that the workers were strong enough to overthrow Tsarism but not yet conscious enough to take power themselves. This created the condition of dual power — the Soviets held real power on the ground, but their reformist leaders (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries) handed it back to the bourgeois Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks' task was political: to win the majority of the Soviets to the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" through patient agitation around the demands of peace, bread and land.

Third, that the October insurrection itself was almost bloodless precisely because the Bolsheviks had already won the masses. The seizure of the Winter Palace — famously dramatised by Eisenstein — involved no casualties, because nobody was willing to defend the Provisional Government. The real preparation for insurrection was nine months of political work, not the accumulation of arms.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on classical Marxist theory of the state and revolution, specifically:

The question of revolutionary consciousness and spontaneity. The episode emphasises that the working class can spontaneously create new organisational forms (the Soviets) and initiate revolutionary action, but that spontaneity alone is insufficient. The February Revolution was spontaneous; the October Revolution required conscious leadership. This reflects Lenin's What Is To Be Done? argument about the necessity of a revolutionary party, but without the mechanical opposition between spontaneity and consciousness that some critics attribute to that text. Here, the relationship is dialectical: the masses teach the party, and the party provides strategic direction.

The theory of dual power. This is Lenin's concept from The Dual Power (April 1917), describing a situation where two states exist side by side: the official bourgeois state (the Provisional Government) and the embryonic workers' state (the Soviets). The resolution of this contradiction requires the transfer of power to the Soviets — not through a coup, but through winning the majority within them.

The united front tactic. The Bolsheviks' response to the Kornilov revolt — offering joint action against the counter-revolution while maintaining political independence — is presented as a model of the united front: "March separately, strike together." This is a settled position of the Marxist tradition, distinguishing revolutionary from reformist conceptions of working-class unity.

The critique of reformism. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries are criticised not for being insufficiently radical in their demands, but for their theory: they believed Russia had to pass through a prolonged period of bourgeois democracy before socialism could be attempted. The Bolsheviks rejected this stagist conception, arguing that the bourgeoisie could not complete its own democratic tasks (land reform, peace, democratic rights) and that the working class, in alliance with the peasantry, must take power to accomplish them.

The analysis sits firmly in the Trotskyist tradition, drawing on Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution and his theory of permanent revolution. The emphasis on the peasantry being won through the army, the critique of Stalin's role in March 1917, and the recognition of Trotsky's central role in the insurrection all reflect this lineage.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode connects the Russian Revolution to the present conjuncture in several ways:

The question of revolutionary possibility. The argument that the Russian Revolution seemed "absolutely impossible" on the eve of February 1917 — with Lenin himself doubting he would live to see it — is used to counter contemporary defeatism. If a revolution could occur in backward, semi-feudal Russia under conditions of world war, then no situation is permanently closed to revolutionary possibility.

The critique of bourgeois democracy. The episode draws a direct line from the Provisional Government's lack of democratic mandate to the contemporary British state's treatment of Gaza protests, arguing that "the democracy is just a fig leaf to cover the real dictatorship of the big capitalists." This connects the historical analysis to current struggles over democratic rights.

The Soviet Union's economic achievements. The episode defends the planned economy through the Soviet Union's industrialisation, victory in World War II, and space programme. The claim that the CIA admitted the Soviet space programme was "many years ahead of the United States" even in the 1980s is used to argue for the superiority of planned economy over capitalism — a direct intervention into contemporary debates about economic alternatives.

The war in Ukraine. The reference to Russia still launching Western satellites into space "up until very recently" before "the war in the Ukraine" situates the historical analysis within current geopolitical tensions, though the episode does not develop this point.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode explicitly leaves open several threads:

The degeneration of the Soviet Union. The episode acknowledges that "there was a reaction against Bolsheism carried out by Stalin and the bureaucracy" due to "the isolation of the Soviet Union in conditions of terrible backwardness," but states this is "another story which we'll have to discuss in another episode." This points to the broader Marxist analysis of Stalinism as a bureaucratic counter-revolution, developed in Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed and in other Against the Stream / Spectre of Communism episodes on the Soviet Union's degeneration.

The first year of Bolshevik power. The episode promises a separate discussion of the decrees and policies of the early Soviet government, which would develop the argument about what a workers' state actually does in practice.

The broader theoretical tradition. The episode references Lenin's Letters from Afar, Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World, and Alan Woods' own Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution as texts that develop the argument further.

Connections

Primary texts: - Lenin, Letters from Afar (1917) - Lenin, The Dual Power (1917) - Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (1930) - John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) - Alan Woods, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution (1999)

Related episodes and texts: - Other Spectre of Communism episodes on the Paris Commune (referenced as a heroic but defeated precursor) - Episodes on the degeneration of the Soviet Union under Stalin - Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936) — for the analysis of bureaucratic degeneration - The IMT's theoretical magazine In Defence of Marxism, issue 43, referenced in the episode for articles on the planned economy and the German Revolution of 1923

Key Quotes

1. "There is a force in society which is more powerful than any state, any police force, any army, any secret police that you care to mention — that's the force of the working class, once the workers are organized and mobilized for the purpose of changing society."

2. "The February Revolution was not led by anybody in that sense. It was a spontaneous movement of the working class itself. Nobody told them to do this. Nobody told the women to come out and do what they did."

3. "You can't take power as a minority. It's ABC of Communism, if you like, of Marxism. You can't take power as a minority. Long before you take power, the prior condition is not the conquest of power — the prior condition for that is the conquest of the masses."

4. "Nine-tenths of the preparation for the insurrection had already been carried out in the previous nine months. This was a political preparation. It wasn't a question of gathering guns and ammunition — that was the easy part."

5. "History has never known such a fantastic transformation as took place in Russia following the Russian Revolution. Tsarist Russia was an extremely backward, illiterate, semi-feudal country dominated by other imperialist countries. And yet in a few decades, thanks to a nationalised planned economy, Russia became a powerful modern industrial nation."