7. The Russian Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 7: The Russian Revolution¶
The Russian Revolution erupted on 23 February 1917, when women workers in Petrograd struck against war, famine, and misery, igniting a general strike that toppled the Tsar within five days. The movement was spontaneous; the Bolsheviks had initially advised against action. From this upheaval emerged dual power, an unstable arrangement between the bourgeois Provisional Government and the soviets. As the war dragged on and promises went unfulfilled, the masses radicalised, gravitating towards the Bolsheviks. Lenin returned in April with his April Theses, arguing for workers to seize power—a position initially opposed by the Bolshevik leadership but eventually adopted. The July Days saw an armed demonstration brutally suppressed, forcing Bolsheviks into hiding. Yet when Kornilov attempted a coup in August, the Provisional Government was compelled to seek Bolshevik help; the Bolsheviks armed the workers, defeated Kornilov, and won majorities in the soviets. In October, they organised an armed uprising; the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets deposed the Provisional Government, established a Soviet government, and issued decrees on peace and land. The seizure of power was remarkably peaceful, owing to prior Bolshevik agitation.
The new regime inherited a devastated economy and a collapsing state apparatus, facing civil war and foreign intervention. Elections to the Constituent Assembly, based on pre-October lists, gave a majority to the Socialist Revolutionaries—but the party had split; right-wing candidates, hostile to October, dominated the lists. When the Assembly rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, it was dissolved. The choice was between Soviet power and a return to unstable dual power; accepting the Assembly would have annulled the revolution. Counter-revolutionary White Armies formed, supported by the bourgeoisie and Allied powers. The Soviet government had no army; its first action was an appeal for a general democratic peace. France and Britain remained silent; Germany responded, leading to the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. The Russian army was dissolving, leaving Petrograd exposed. Germany demanded vast territory and reparations. A split emerged: the ‘left communists’ demanded revolutionary war; Lenin argued acceptance was the only practical option. Trotsky’s position, “neither war nor peace”, won a majority, but Germany launched an offensive, forcing Russia to sign the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Left SRs withdrew from the Council of People’s Commissars.
The revolution inspired workers globally, proving that society could function without capitalists or landlords. Consequently, a deluge of literature aims to smear the revolution, including misuse of Rosa Luxemburg’s article ‘The Russian Revolution’. Yet Luxemburg’s article begins and ends with unconditional support for the Bolsheviks. Writing from prison in autumn 1918, aware of dire civil war conditions, she praised the Bolsheviks as the only party to grasp the revolution’s true interest. She argued that in revolution, the choice is between counter-revolution or proletarian dictatorship; the Bolsheviks solved the problem of winning a majority through revolutionary tactics. She stated they contributed everything possible under “devilishly hard conditions”, and that the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’. The article was an unfinished draft for private discussion.
Luxemburg’s critique that equal land distribution was not socialist was answered by Trotsky: the Decree on Land deliberately avoided defining the new form of property, distributing landlords’ land to peasants to prevent a feudal-monarchist restoration and secure peasant support. Socialist agriculture could only follow after consolidating Soviet power. On the national question, Luxemburg condemned self-determination as opportunism; Trotsky countered that opposing it would have appeared as Great Russian chauvinism, whereas granting the right to secession won the trust of oppressed nations. Luxemburg argued that socialism requires broad democracy, not dictatorial force; without free elections and press freedom, only a bureaucracy remains. The text counters that her critique is misused to falsely link Lenin’s regime to Stalin’s dictatorship, which arose from the revolution’s isolation in a backward country, not from Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks’ restrictions on democracy were temporary civil war measures; the early soviet state was democratic. Luxemburg herself understood that harsh measures resulted from the world war and the failure of the German proletariat. Her critique was revolutionary, aimed at learning from the revolution, not at condemning