Russian Revolution

For those who want to end capitalist rule, much can still be learnt from the October Revolution because its experience critically poses key political questions. The second in this two-part series by Jonathan Strauss seeks to respond to the question: What can it tell us about organising for social change?
For those who want to end capitalist rule, much can still be learnt from the October Revolution because its experience critically poses key political questions. The first in this two-part series by Jonathan Strauss seeks to respond to the question: Was the October Revolution a coup?
Seiya Morita — The English translation of Leon Trotsky’s “1905” is brilliant as a whole, but it has a problem, in particular when it comes to the translation of his repeated used of the term “hegemony”.
Seiya Morita — Judy Cox's 'The Women's Revolution' deftly reveals how important a role women revolutionaries, women Bolsheviks and women workers played in the Russian Revolution, its preparatory process, and in the civil war that followed.
Paul Kellogg — To students of twentieth-century Russian history, the name Vladimir Il’ich Lenin is a constant, and inevitable, presence. But the name Iulii Osipovich Tsederbaum—better known through the pseudonym “Iulii Martov”—is either entirely absent from view or present only as a mysterious, and often unsavoury, figure.
How did World War I impact the Russian Revolution? Why did patriotic enthusiasm quickly give way to disillusionment? Or did the enthusiasm ever exist? Historian Konstantin Tarasov explains how the attitude towards war changed in Russian society as events unfolded.
Sotsialnyi Rukh - The people of Ukraine have been facing hard challenges, yet they have proven their ability to fight for the right to decide on their own fate, and their determination to defend the country and to end the war as soon as possible. A party is needed to implement an alternative vision of Ukraine — democratic, social, and socialist.
Image removed.

By Mike Taber

November 14, 2021 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist Essays and Commentary via World-Outlook — Eric Blanc is a serious and dedicated socialist historian and activist who doesn’t hesitate to jump into the fray and take positions he knows are controversial. Such an attitude is commendable, even if I disagree with his conclusions. His latest article, “Socialists Should Take the Right Lessons from the Russian Revolution” — published in Jacobin and reprinted on John Riddell’s website — is no exception and merits careful examination.

In his article Blanc aims to set the record straight on V. I. Lenin and the Russian Revolution, and to demolish the “myth of Bolshevik exceptionalism,” which he asserts is “wrong for our own time.” Instead, he seeks to establish the “right lessons” socialists should take from the history of the fight for “socialist transformation.”

Image removed.
Review of Paul Le Blanc, October Song:Bolshevik Triumph, Communist Tragedy, 1917-1924, Chicago: Haymarket, 2017, 479 pp., US$19.56.

By John Riddell

Ocotber 26, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from John Riddell's Marxist Essays and Commentaries — Amid a flock of volumes marking the Russian revolution’s centenary last year, Paul Le Blanc’s October Song is set apart by its unique method. Working from English-language sources, Le Blanc offers us an anthology of assessments and viewpoints on the revolution with “a strong inclination to privilege older things” – that is, testimony and opinions from its early years. The result is a kaleidoscope of observations, some by respected historians and many by unknown or forgotten voices, which, taken together, constitute a far-ranging debate over the meaning of these world-shaking events.
Image removed.
By Doug Enaa Greene April 25, 2018
— Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Left Voice with the author's permission — Whatever their differences, Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, and Trotsky all saw the Russian Revolution as following in the experience of the French Revolution of 1789. The Russian revolutionaries also modeled themselves on the different parties of the French Revolution, whether consciously or unconsciously, as guides for action. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed they were modern-day Jacobins – stalwart revolutionaries who would organize the working class and take power. By contrast, the Mensheviks were moderate Girondins. Menshevism was committed to gradualism and opposed to the “historical impatience” of a socialist revolution. Like the Girondins, the Mensheviks were honorable, but like their predecessors, they lacked faith in the revolutionary abilities of the people. That was the root of their failure in 1917.