Wednesday, November 09, 2016

*A SLICE OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY UP CLOSE

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive copy of his 1917 pamphlet "The Struggle For State Power".

BOOK REVIEW


THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION: CENTRAL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY, AUGUST 1917-FEBRUARY 1918, PLUTO PRESS, LONDON, 1974


Those readers whose knowledge of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 is through the prism of Stalinism will be surprised to find in this book of the minutes of the Central Committee, leading body of the Bolshevik Party, not the monolithic party of Western perception but a lively and contentious party even at the height of the struggle for revolutionary power. And if one really thinks about it all the great revolutions of history tend to display that same dynamic. I would further argue that revolutions can not succeed otherwise. That said, this is not a book for beginners but for those who know something about the Russian Revolution. For those who do not, Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution- Volume Two can help up until the October Revolution itself. For the period from October 1917 to February 1918 E. H. Carr’s three volume set titled the Bolshevik Revolution is invaluable.

As background, this volume begins at a time when the Bolshevik’s were just coming out of a period, known in history as the “July Days”, when the major leaders, including Lenin, were in hiding, laying low, or in jail and Bolshevik publications had been suppressed. The period continues through the abortive coup attempt by General Kornilov in late August, the various attempts by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to crib some non-Soviet democratic institutions together in order to put off the convening of a Constituent Assembly in August and September, the fight for the Bolshevik seizure of power in October , and in the aftermath the fight to end Russian participation in World War I and make peace with the Germans through the first part of 1918.

As is to be expected not one of the above-mentioned events was without its effect on Bolshevik policy and led to the creation of different factions and tendencies reflecting different moods, constituencies and personalities within the party. The most famous, and for today’s militants the most important, are the fight within the party over the question of the seizure of power and the more intense fight over how to and on what terms to end Russia’s participation in the war after power was won. To a great extend these various tendencies, in one form or another, existed for the next ten years after the revolution until the final Stalinist clampdown in the late 1920's. Of course, many of the leading personalities who came to the fore here did not have long-term consistent policies. For example, Bukharin a leader of the self-styled Left Communists in the fight over capitulation to German peace demands argued for revolutionary war against that country as act of revolutionary internationalism but later proved to be a key ally of Stalin on the question on the rightist policy of ‘socialism in one country’. If one wants to get a glance at the way revolutionary policy is made in the heat of revolution here’s a good place to start. Read on.

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