Russia

The Russian Revolution remains a landmark event in history. For the bourgeois historians, the October Revolution is thought to be a tragedy that set back the achievements of the "democratic" February Revolution, and allowed the Bolsheviks to wreak havoc on their citizens and the world. For the Stalinists, the events of 1917 paved the way for the birth of the USSR, which they point to as a prototypical example of "socialism in one country". In reality, the February and October Revolutions were both part of the same proletarian revolution.

This work is divided into two parts. The first demonstrates that in its historically-discovered form of government: the soviets, the Russian Revolution provided a lasting gain for the working class everywhere. We also demonstrate how, despite its inevitable subjective errors (much magnified by our class enemy), the Bolshevik Party became a genuinely revolutionary weapon of the Russian proletariat. On the way we debunk the myth that the October Revolution was a carefully planned coup by a bunch of professional conspirators, and demonstrate the profoundly mass character of October 1917.

The second half analyses how the revolution that began with so much promise of working class emancipation slid step by step into the creation of a one party state.