One hundred years ago on the fateful night of 6-7 November, the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, through a revolutionary insurrection. The greatest victory of the toilers in the class struggle since human society was first divided into classes several millennia ago. Leon Trotsky describes Lenin’s entrance in the Congress of the Soviets during those eventful moments of victory in his epic, History of the Russian Revolution: “Congress remained standing, a fused human mass enchanted by the greatness of that which they had experienced. Even those nearest to Lenin in the party, for the first time fully realised what he meant to the revolution. It was he who had taught them; it was he who had brought them up… Somebody’s voice from the depth of the hall shouted… Long live Lenin! The anxieties endured, the doubts overcome, pride of initiative, triumph of victory, gigantic hopes — all poured out together in one volcanic eruption of gratitude and rapture.”
The revolution ushered in a new era of socioeconomic transformation. Landed estates, heavy industry, corporate monopolies, financial institutions and commanding heights of the economy were expropriated by the nascent workers’ state. The dictatorship of the financial oligarchy was broken; the workers state had a monopoly on all foreign trade and commerce. Ministerial perks and privileges were abolished, and the leaders of the revolution lived in the most modest conditions. The new government was based on the most democratic system ever seen in history, the soviets, ie workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ councils. These were devised to manage and democratically control economy, agriculture, industry, army and society.
The revolutionary American journalist John Reed, who witnessed the stormy events first hand, wrote, “No matter what one thinks of Bolshevism, it is an undeniable fact that the Russian revolution is one of the greatest events in human history, and the rule of the Bolsheviki is a phenomenon of worldwide importance.”
Reed pictures an inspiring anecdote in his book, Ten Days that Shook the World: “Across the horizon spread the glittering lights of the Capital, immeasurably more splendid by the night than by the day, like a dike of jewels heaped on a barren plain. The old workman who drove the wheelbarrow held in one hand, while with the other he swept the pavement, looked at the far gleaming capital and exclaimed in an exulted gesture, ‘Mine!’ he cried, his face all alight. ‘All mine now! My Petrograd!” The revolution had instilled a social, a cultural and psychological transformation in working class consciousness unforeseen in history.
However, Marxists have a historical responsibility to scientifically explain the degeneration and collapse of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Lenin had never envisaged the accomplishment of socialism in one country. Internationalism for Lenin was not merely a sentimental phrase. He understood the inevitability of the degeneration of the revolution, in the event it remained isolated in backward Russia. On March 7, 1918, Lenin weighed up the situation, “Regarded from a world-historical point of view, there would be no hope of the ultimate victory of our revolution if it were to remain alone, if there were no revolutionary victories in other countries… if the German revolution does not come, we are doomed.”
From 1913 to 1963, despite two world wars, foreign intervention and civil war total USSR’s industrial output rose more than 52 times. The corresponding figure for the USA was less than six times
Western imperialists tried to crush the epicentre of these revolutionary upheavals with a ferocious military aggression attack on the nascent Soviet state with twenty-one imperialist armies. The revolution itself was a relatively peaceful affair. Only nine people died during the actual insurrection. The imperialist onslaught brought drastic carnage, bloodshed, mayhem, starvation and destruction to an economically backward country already devastated by the First World War. But was defeated by the revolutionary forces. The defeats of revolutions — in Germany (1918-19 and 1923), China (1924-25), Britain (1926) and several other countries — were enormous blows to the Bolshevik Revolution intensifying its isolation leading to its nationalist degeneration.
Lenin and Trotsky struggled against this degeneration till the end of their lives. But the revolutionary tide had ebbed. However, despite this Stalinist degeneration, the planned economy proved its superiority over the market economics. From 1913 to 1963, despite two world wars, foreign intervention and civil war total USSR’s industrial output rose more than 52 times. The corresponding figure for the USA was less than six times. Stalin’s nationalistically caricatured socialism and the lack of workers’ democratic control of economy were the real causes for the Soviet Union’s collapse, not the so-called ‘failure of socialism’. What had actually existed in the USSR at the time of its breakdown was not socialism or communism but its distortion, i.e. Stalinism.
Despite its degeneration and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik revolution still stands as the greatest icon for the class struggle to emancipate the human race. Serious strategists of the capitalism are deeply worried of the real threat posed to capitalism by revolutionary socialism. The Economist’s prestigious annual magazine, ‘World in 2017’ wrote, “Centenary of the revolution is too big an event to cover up… as the economy stagnates the ghosts of the Bolshevik revolution are getting restless. Lenin might allow himself a smile.” Lenin had pledged that the Russian Revolution would expand and grow across the world uniting all peoples of this planet into one single USSR. In today’s turbulent times, the revolutionary victory of socialism in any major country would unleash a mighty revolutionary storm across the world. Thus, Lenin’s pledge would be redeemed and the ultimate cause of humanity’s cosmic existence — the conquest of universe by the human race shall commence.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, November 6th 2017.