|

MARXIST THEORY
& DISCUSSION
EDITION #27

1917-2017
REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER
SOCIALIST REVOLUTION &
ITS ENDURING LEGACY
G R E AT O C TO B E R S IM PACT ON T H E WORK ERS M OVEM ENT IN CA N A D A
THE OCT OBER REVOL U T ION & T H E NAT IONAL QU ESTION
H O W B O L SHE VI K W O ME N O R GA NIZ ED FOR SOCIAL ISM & T H EIR OWN EM ANCI PATION
 ABOUT

Detail from The Bolshevik | Boris Kustodiev (1920) [Public Domain]

E D I T I O N T W E N T Y- S E V E N | FA L L 2 0 1 7
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2

ARTICLES
THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF GREAT OCTOBER
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA
Central Executive Committee
Celebrating Great October for its great achievements, for
its historic lessons and for the unequalled inspiration it has
created for the future of humanity.
REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION
& ITS ENDURING LEGACY 10
Greg Godels
Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, it has left us a rich
legacy. Thanks to its more than seven-decade existence, we
have many notable achievements to celebrate, and many
signposts to a just, peaceful world free of capitalism.
CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN 18
Jeanne McGuire
The struggle for a new world will be stunted and debilitated
if women are not part of the struggle to build it. Delivered at
International Womens Day, 2017.
THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION &
ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN
CANADA 24
Liz Rowley
From the Winnipeg General Sympathy Strike to the founding of
the COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA, Great Octobers impact has
been electric, spurring Canadian workers to action over the
past hundred years. Delivered at the Pacific North-West Labour
HIstory Conference, May 2017.
THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION &
ITS IMPACT ON BC LABOUR 30
George Gidora
The example of the Russian Revolution captured the
imagination of BC workers and demonstrated it was possible
for workers to seize state power and build a socialist economy
and society, ending exploitation. Delivered at the Pacific North-
West Labour History Conference, May 2017.
BOOK REVIEWS
BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION &
LENIN: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES:
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VERY UGLY 61
Roger Perkins
The explosive events of October 1917 still resonate strongly, if
not always consciously, in the political practices of the present
day. Capitalist ruling classes want to erase all favourable
memory of October from public consciousness. Thus the
CONTENTS
4 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & THE NATIONAL
QUESTION 36
Pierre Fontaine
Consisting of fifteen national republics, comprising dozens of
national groups, the USSR yields many insights for Communists
in responding to the national concerns of the oppressed
nations and peoples in Canada.
WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: HOW
BOLSHEVIK WOMEN ORGANIZED FOR SOCIALISM
& THEIR OWN EMANCIPATION 41
Rozhin Emadi
It is important for us, as revolutionaries of this generation,
to honour the crucial role women played in both building the
revolution and shaping the politics of the Soviet Union in the
years following.
THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION, SOCIALISM &
LGBTQ+ RIGHTS 51
Adrien Welsh
Despite some historical errors by socialist governments,
Communists have played and continue to play an important
role in the struggle for equality and the emancipation of
LGBTQ+ people.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WIND ENERGY & OIL
IN THE USSR & IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA 54
Dennis Bartels
Lenins slogan, Communism is Soviet power plus
electrification, is well-known. What is largely unknown,
however, is that the GOELRO plan included a significant wind
energy component.
THE WORKING CLASS & SOVIET STATE POWER 58
Danny Goldstick
Why socialism was overturned, and capitalism restored, after
more than seventy years in the USSR demands the most
searching thought and discussion, and that discussion is far
from over. These thoughts are meant as a contribution to the
discussion.
capitalist ruling class and the working class must do battle
over the meaning of October and utilize all available weapons
one of which is the published and promoted book.
Reviewer Roger Perkins provides a survey of
contemporary literature about the Great October Socialist
Revolution in celebration of its hundredth anniversary.
3
 STATEMENT

Revolution (The Storming of the Winter Palace, 7th November 1917) | Kiriakov [Public Domain]

T H E 1 00 t h A N N I V E R SA RY
OF GREAT OCTOBER
Statement of the Central Executive Committee,
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA | October 2017

T
hroughout November, celebrations
around the world will mark the centenary
of the outstanding political event of the
20th century: the Great October Socialist
Revolution of 1917. By overthrowing the
Russian capitalists, landowners and aristocrats,
the workers, peasants and soldiers of the Czarist
empire opened the door to a new society in
which humanitys dreams of peace, equality
and democracy began to become reality. The
storming of the Winter Palace, signalled by the
The Central Executive Committee of the COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CANADA.
guns of the Aurora cruiser, began the historical
epoch of the transition towards a socialist
society, based on cooperation and social justice,
not the exploitation and oppression inherent
in the profit-driven capitalist system.
The October Revolution was far
more than a change in government. It was a
fundamental social upheaval, a sharp break
with thousands of years of class-divided
societies. For the first time, the working class
took lasting political power, shattering the
myth that only the owners of wealth can rule.
Under the slogan Peace, Land, Bread
and with the support of the overwhelming

4
 THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF GREAT OCTOBER
majority of the working class and poor peasants,
the Bolsheviks (the Russian Social Democratic
Labour Party, which the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union was then called) began
the long and complex effort to build a new
system of civilized cooperators, as the great
revolutionary Vladimir Lenin described the
essence of socialism.
The new Soviet government
immediately issued its famous decree on
peace, taking Russia out of the imperialist
slaughter by the leading capitalist countries
for the redivision of wealth and colonial
possession they had plundered from the worlds
peoples. Land was transferred to millions
of impoverished peasants, and industrial,
financial and other capitalist companies
were nationalized. Workers were guaranteed
employment. Education and health care
The October Revolution proved that socialism could become more than a utopian
ideal. The working class and its allies could move beyond sporadic resistance to
challenge the capitalist system as a whole, and achieve social emancipation.
became universal and free. Nations oppressed
under the Czarist heel were guaranteed equality
and self-determination, including the right to
secession. Patriarchal laws were replaced by the
full legal and social emancipation of women.
The imperialist countries, including
Canada, sent armies to crush the young Soviet
state while the baby was still in its cradle,
as Winston Churchill said. Surrounded by
counter-revolutionary forces and invading
imperialist armies, the Soviet government and
the Red Army triumphed, with the support
of workers around the world acting under the
slogan Hands off Russia! The heroic example
of Soviet Russia inspired working class
struggles and insurrections throughout the
world, including the Winnipeg General Strike
and the formation of the Communist Party of
Canada in this country.
The Soviet revolution shook imperialism
as never before. Yet it stood on the shoulders of
5
more than one hundred years of working class
and national liberation struggles. Millions of
workers had supported the First and Second
Internationals, whose goal was world peace and
socialism, in sharp contrast to the imperialist
strivings of the leading capitalist countries.
The Internationals were inspired by the
slogan Workers of all lands, unite! and by
revolutionaries such as Karl Marx and Frederick
Engels who declared that the working class was
the agent of socialist revolution. The working
class movement was steeled by persecutions,
and educated by the bloody vengeance of
the French and Prussian capitalists in 1871
against the Paris Commune the worlds
first working class state. When opportunist
leaders of the Second International backed
their own imperialist governments during the
First World War, the revolutionary sections of
the working class movement, including Lenin
and the Bolsheviks, courageously struggled
against imperialist war. Nearly fifty years after
the Commune, the October Revolution gave a
new impetus, content, and energy to the world
revolutionary movement.
Great October holds a unique and
honoured place in history, as the first socialist
revolution to achieve and retain political
power, withstanding both internal counter-
revolution and foreign intervention. It
dramatically changed world politics, breaking
the hegemony of imperialism, and establishing
a new and fundamentally different approach to
relations between peoples, nations and states.
The October Revolution proved that
socialism could become more than a utopian
ideal. The working class and its allies could
move beyond sporadic resistance to challenge
the capitalist system as a whole, and achieve
social emancipation. The exploited and
 THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF GREAT OCTOBER
oppressed, through conscious and united
struggle, could shape their own destiny. It was
this truth about the Russian Revolution that
filled the privileged classes with a fear and
hatred of socialism, from the earliest days of
the Soviet state.
Despite unremitting imperialist hostility
and subversion, the Soviet Union endured
for over seven decades, scoring many great
achievements, overcoming unemployment,
illiteracy, and social deprivation. Socialism in
the Soviet Union transformed an economically
and culturally backward country into one of
the worlds leading powers, and made great
advances in culture and science.
It was the Soviet Union which led the
heroic military struggle to defeat Hitler fascism
on the battlefield, creating the conditions for the
emergence of other socialist states in Europe.
Despite unremitting imperialist hostility and subversion, the Soviet Union
endured for over seven decades, scoring many great achievements, overcoming
unemployment, illiteracy, and social deprivation.
The Soviet Union championed the cause of
anti-racism and decolonization, gave crucial
material and political support to liberation
movements, and provided vital assistance
to the former colonies as they won their
independence. The changing international
balance of forces was a key factor in helping the
peoples of China, Korea, Vietnam and Cuba to
carry out their own socialist transformations.
The USSRs peace policy also restricted
though it could not entirely suppress
imperialisms tendency to military aggression.
The gains achieved by workers under
socialism inspired the working class in the
advanced capitalist countries, compelling the
ruling class to concede reforms around labour
rights, the 40 hour work week, unemployment
insurance, health care, public education, and
pensions. The progress toward economic and
social equality by women in the USSR was a
powerful stimulus to the struggles of women in
6
the capitalist countries for pay and employment
equity, and for child care and other social
programs which would weaken the patriarchal
double burden of capitalist exploitation and
unpaid domestic labour.
Ultimately, however, the first workers
state was overturned and capitalism restored,
due to a combination of interrelated internal
and external circumstances and contradictions
which culminated in the temporary victory of
counter-revolution.
The defeat of socialism in the USSR
became a powerful ideological weapon in the
hands of monopoly capitalism. We categorically
reject the bourgeois contention that the causes
of the crisis and defeat of the Soviet Union
were rooted in the intrinsic nature of socialism.
Rather, that historic setback resulted from the
extremely difficult conditions under which
socialism was built, especially the destructive
impact of decades of imperialist pressures
and subversion, and from distortions and
departures from Marxist-Leninist theory and
practice.
Whatever the failures and mistakes
which occurred during that first great
experiment in building a new, higher form of
society, these do not detract from the enduring
significance of Great October. Socialisms
historical balancesheet was overwhelmingly
positive, not only for the people of the Soviet
Union but indeed for all humanity. The misery
and impoverishment which have befallen
millions of people in the former Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe since the early 1990s
(especially women, whose equality gains were
rolled back), and the massive profiteering by
those who took advantage of the restoration of
capitalism, is painful evidence of what happens
when counterrevolution succeeds.
 THE 100th ANNIVERSARY OF GREAT OCTOBER

Despite its so-called victory, capitalism
itself remains in profound systemic crisis.
The widening gap between rich and poor,
the endless wars and conflicts spawned by
imperialism, and the environmental crisis
which threatens human civilization, all show
that the private-profit system, driven by
personal and corporate greed, cannot meet the
fundamental needs and interests of the people
and the global environment.
As capitalism generates war, austerity,
and catastrophic climate change, people
everywhere are yearning for freedom.
Struggles against imperialist globalization
have grown sharper, and in many countries,
the working class is mounting fierce resistance
against the corporate drive for higher profits.
The powerful example of Cubas socialist
revolution continues to inspire workers, youth
and oppressed peoples around the world.
Imperialism is responding with growing
reaction, militarism and war. In the US,
Canada, Europe, India and other regions, far-
right, racist and neo-Nazi forces aim to divide
and weaken the working class movement, and
to roll back the equality gains achieved by
trade unions, women, LGBTQ+ people, and
immigrants. But the forces of imperialism
and reaction cannot hold back the irresistible
power and attraction of socialist ideas, the
growth of the international working class, and
the striving of the vast majority of humanity
for social progress, a sustainable environment,
and peace.
Not least, the Great October Socialist
Revolution proved the importance of creating
the revolutionary party of a new type -
solidly grounded in the working class, and
based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism
and the principles of democratic centralism. At
a time when working people increasingly reject
both the old-line capitalist parties and social
democratic opportunism, it is more critical
than ever to strengthen the revolutionary
political parties which can win the working
class for a genuine socialist alternative.
Nothing can erase the accomplishments
of Great October. The Communist Party of
Canada will celebrate Great October for its
great achievements, for its historic lessons and
for the unequalled inspiration it has created for
the future of humanity a socialist future! n

W HOSE EA R T H?
Marx in Capital, Volume 3, chapter 46:

From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of

particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property
of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously
existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply
its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to
succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].

Penguin translation by David Fernbach (London, 1981), page 911.

7
 GALLERY

Lenin delivers speech in Petrograd after returning from exile. (16 April 1917) [Public Domain]

A scene from July Days. Street demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt just after troops of the Provisional Government have opened fire with machine guns. (4 July 1917) [Public Domain]

8
 GALLERY

The storming of the Winter Palace as depicted in Grigori Aleksandrov & Sergei Eisenstein's "October: Ten Days That Shook the World". (1928) [Public Domain]

Bolsheviks distribue Pravda after the Revolution. (1917) [Public Domain]

9
 FEATURE

V.I. Lenin | Detail from Bolshevik Poster [Public Domain]

REMEMBERING THE GREAT

OCTOBER REVOLUTION &
ITS ENDURING LEGACY
Greg Godels

TO THE CITIZENS OF RUSSIA!

The Provisional Government is deposed. The State Power has passed into the hands of the
organ of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Peasants Deputies, the Military Revolutionary
Committee, which stands at the head of the Petrograd proletariat and garrison.
The cause for which the people were fighting: immediate proposal of a democratic peace,
abolition of landlord property-rights over the land, labour control over production, creation
of a Soviet government-- that cause is securely achieved.
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION OF WORKMEN, SOLDIERS AND PEASANTS!

Military Revolutionary Committee Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies

Proclamation (Nov-7-1917)

(from Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed)

10
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
T
he Bolshevik Revolution-- the Revolution
of workmen, soldiers, and peasants was
the signal event of the twentieth century.
Over the last century, no other event shaped
the fate of the peoples of the world as decisively
as the rebellion of the peoples of Russia and
the aftermath of that rebellion.
Literally for centuries, working people--
those creating societys wealth-- longed for a
time when they could share the wealth as well
as the work with their overlords, with those
appropriating the results of their labor. From
ancient times, the creators of wealth resisted,
even rebelled, against their masters. The slave
revolts against Roman domination, the peasant
risings of the Jacqueries and the cohorts of
John Ball and Jack Straw, the middle European
rebellions of Hus and Mntzer, the radical
stance of the Levellers and the Diggers in the
English Revolution, and the frequent actions of
The Bolshevik Revolution-- the Revolution of workmen, soldiers, and peasants
was the signal event of the twentieth century.
workers in the nineteenth century culminating
in the heroic, but short-lived Paris Commune
of 1871, were all historical landmarks in the
never-ending yearning of working people to
control both their destiny and the fruits of
their labor.
Sympathetic to the cause of poor and
working people, a host of writers wrote of a
world free of the bondage of worker to master.
Early Christians like Jerome and Pelagius and
the anonymous author of On Riches understood
that if you get rid of the rich you will find no
poor.
Medieval preachers like William
Wycliffe discovered, when written Christian
texts became available, that the message of
Jesus was less one of fire and brimstone and
Greg Godels lives in Pittsburgh. He often writes under
the pen-name Zoltan Zigedy.
11
more one of social justice. Visionaries, like
Thomas More, foresaw a time when property
would no longer be held privately, and where
equality would reign.
The industrial era brought a flurry of
writings addressing the ravenous appetite of
the owners of capital for greater profits and the
consequent desperate impoverishment of the
workers. Early socialist writers like Saint-Simon,
Charles Fourier, tienne Cabet, and Robert
Owen took up the cause of exploited workers
and called for a new society based on egalitarian
principles. And of course, the nineteenth
century spawned the great collaboration of
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the two giants
who constructed a comprehensive science of
society and rationally established the demise of
capitalism and its replacement with socialism.
So, the Revolution in Russia was not a historic
anomaly; it was not the accident, the rare
unpredictable event that its detractors would
like us to believe. Instead, it was the culmination
of a long process, an evolution in the thought
and actions of working people to bury once
and for all the exploitation of labour and its
crushing weight on millions of people in the
distant past.
It was an audacious move. On November
7, 1917, a raw, chill day, in the words of author
John Reed, the members of the Petrograd
Soviet took the step that would set them on
an unprecedented, perilous course. They were
embarking on an experiment unlike any in
history and one that all of the worlds great
powers were determined to quell.
The people of the Russian empire had
suffered indignities for centuries. The non-
Russian people of the vast empire were under
the harsh boot of a tyrannical royal family that
lived in splendor with its entourage, courtiers
and other hangers-on. The majority of the
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
people were tied to the land under conditions of
semi-feudalism. The Russian peasant existed,
little more than existed. Peasant life was bleak,
poverty-ridden, and oppressive, held in place
by the Russian Church and the Czars whip.
Capitalism had gained momentum in
Russia over the previous several decades before
World War I, but lagged behind the other
great powers in many areas. Nonetheless, the
workers were restive. The dress rehearsal for
the 1917 revolution the failed 1905 revolution
brought 440,000 workers into the streets--
on strike-- in the first month!
The outbreak of war in 1914 only brought
more despair and discontent. With corrupt,
sycophantic generals, inferior equipment and
weapons, the workers and peasants of the
Empire were bled dry by a war that had little to
do with their lives, except for universal tragedy.
It was in this fertile ground of discontent
that the seeds of rebellion grew. But it took
a political organization and fearless leaders
to nourish their growth towards a new and
decidedly different society. From a host of
political parties representing every social class
or stratum, only the Bolshevik Party, the party
of Russias Communists, representing the
most politically advanced workers, properly
gauged the revolutionary potential of the
moment. Only Vladimir Lenin and a few of
his comrades fully envisioned breaking with
the old and constructing something entirely
new a socialist society, free of exploitation
and devoted to peace and social harmony. As
Rosa Luxemburg acknowledged in 1918:
The party of Lenin was thus the only one in Russia
which grasped the true interest of the revolution
in that first period. It was the element that drove
the revolution forward, and, thus it was the only
party which really carried on a socialist policy.
It is this which makes clear, too, why it
was that the Bolsheviks, though they were at
the beginning of the revolution a persecuted,
slandered and hunted minority attacked on all
sides, arrived within the shortest time to head of
12
the revolution.
Of course, November 7, 1917 was a watershed,
an unforgettable date signaling the fall of an
old government and the establishment of a
new one. But revolution is a process and not a
mere event. New institutions, new government
bodies, and new rules must be constructed.
New people must be trained and organized to
lead a government built on the ruins of the old.
Food, shelter, jobs, and security must be found
for Russias 130,000,000 people.
But before those tasks could be
vigorously pursued, the new Soviet government
had to contend with counter-revolutionary
armies bent on restoring the old order. In
addition, the new-born Soviet Union was
invaded by forces from 14 different countries
bent on smothering the baby in its cradle, to
paraphrase the reactionary Winston Churchill.
It should come as no surprise that the
capitalist powers sought to destroy the Soviet
Union. As Stepan Georgevitch Lianozov,
known as the Russian Rockefeller, explained
to John Reed on October 15, 1917:
Revolution, he said, is a sickness. Sooner or
later the foreign powers must intervene here-
- as one would intervene to cure a sick child,
and teach it how to walk. Of course, it would
be more or less improper, but the nations must
realize the danger of Bolshevism in their own
countries-- such contagious ideas as proletarian
dictatorship, and world social revolution...
This hatred and belligerence towards the
Soviet Union continues to this day. It is easy to
underestimate how violent anti-Communism
was a persisting backdrop throughout the
following decades of the Soviet Unions
existence.
With the defeat of the counter-
revolutionaries in 1921, the Soviet Union began
the daunting, unprecedented task of building
socialism. Since the beginning of the World
War, there had been 14,500,000 deaths and the
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
Soviet economy was reduced to one-seventh
of its prewar output. Nevertheless, the Soviet
people embarked on an ambitious program
to not only rebuild the country, but construct
an economy with the power to repel the
many hostile capitalist countries threatening
its existence. This had to be accomplished at
breakneck speed, requiring great sacrifices and
enormous energy.
Meeting the challenge, the people of
the Soviet Union achieved an enormous feat
by 1940: industrial production was 750% of
that of 1913! A war-torn, backward country had
become an industrial powerhouse in a span of
19 years, a triumph enabling the first socialist
country to resist and defeat Nazi Germany and
its allies assembled into the greatest invasion
force in history.
While achieving an unprecedented
...the people of the Soviet Union achieved an enormous feat by 1940: industrial
production was 750% of that of 1913! A war-torn, backward country had become an
industrial powerhouse in a span of 19 years...
growth in production, the Soviet Union
was empowering its working class with
free, universal education, vast new housing
construction, full employment, free healthcare,
cultural immersion, the promotion of minority
national identities, and new institutions of self-
governance. The first steps were taken towards
building the workers state that millions of
oppressed, exploited working people had only
imagined.
Mikhail Kalinin, Chairman of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union put it
succinctly on May Day, 1938:
We are not a land flowing with milk and honey.
We are a workers state. Our state started from a
beggarly existence. Perhaps we are making many
mistakes. This is possible. Perhaps, sometimes we
are not doing what we ought to do; this is also
possible. But I would like to tell you one thing--
we are building a proletarian world.
13
The successes of socialist construction were
many and impressive; the effort and sacrifices
of the Soviet people were heroic; but many
mistakes were made as well. An enterprise as
daunting as the complete reconstruction of
society on a new social, political, and economic
basis could not but endure mistakes, lost
opportunities, failings, and accidents. The
fervent, unwavering defense and preservation
of the gains could not but invite excesses. Such
is the history of all epochal change. But socialist
morality and socialist legality must concede
that in the throes of these great changes, tragic,
avoidable errors were made that cost far too
many lives and brought harm to far too many
honest participants in the socialist project.
At the same time, it must be noted that the
enemies of socialism-- the capitalists, the lapdog
politicians, the security services, the academic
hirelings, and the media mudslingers-- are
united in unswervingly demonizing the history
of the Soviet Union and presenting, often in a
caricatured way, only the failings of the Soviet
Communists. Since the revolution, distortions,
innuendos, and outright lies have fed the great
anti-Communist ideological machine. Ruling
classes understand that a real, historically
viable example of socialism imparts confidence
and vision to the working-class movements of
every country. They do everything to quash
any positive example. That is why a defense
of the achievements of the Soviet Union is
vital to any movement for radical change, any
movement for socialism. It is an illusion to
believe that radical change can be won while
siding with capitalism in wholesale rejecting
the Soviet legacy.
The Second World War left the Soviet
Union devastated. Nearly 27 million Soviet
citizens gave their lives in the victory over
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
fascism. Much of the heavily populated,
industrial sector of the country was destroyed
by the Nazi invasion. And within a few years, the
United States and its capitalist allies initiated
a resource-draining, peace-threatening
Cold War that multiplied the hardships of
reconstruction.
But the Soviet people again sacrificed
to rebuild the country while also defending
the homeland of socialism against NATO and
the other military pacts organized to surround
and threaten the Soviet Union and its socialist
allies.
A little more than ten years after the
end of the war, the Soviet Union stunned the
world with its technological advancement by
launching the first artificial satellite.
Despite the fact that the Soviet Union
continued to advance economically, politically,
and culturally in the following decades, anti-
socialist forces were growing in size and
influence, particularly with the development
of a second, private economy parallel with
the socialist economy. Keeran and Kennys
invaluable book, Socialism Betrayed, contains
estimates as high as 20% for the portion of
Soviet economic activity conducted illegally
and semi-legally. They argue that this was the
material basis for the demise of the Soviet
Union:
The Soviet counterrevolution occurred because
the policies of Gorbachev set in motion a process
by which social groups with a material and
ideological stake in private property and the free
market eventually overpowered and displaced
the formerly dominant socialist economic
relations, that is, the planned, publicly owned,
first economy.
It was this betrayal of the bold Soviet experiment
that temporarily delayed the struggle to once-
and-for-all emancipate the world from the
rapacious grip of capitalism. But that struggle
will continue with the lessons learned from the
Soviet legacy.
14
D
espite the demise of the Soviet Union,
it has left us a rich legacy. Thanks to its
more than seven-decade existence, we
have many notable achievements to celebrate,
many signposts to a just, peaceful world free of
capitalism:
We know now that a society dedicated to ending
labour exploitation, a society free of capitalists
is possible.
The Soviet experience shows that a country can
grow and prosper without capitalists. During
the Great Depression, when the capitalist world
was on the brink of collapse, the Soviet Union
attained extraordinary growth. While millions
were idled, and impoverished by capitalism,
the socialist system enjoyed full employment
and rising living standards. When capitalist
managers and financial parasites were leaping
to their death in desperation, Soviet workers
and peasants were learning the skills to run
the rapidly growing and newly created socialist
enterprises.
The Soviet experience taught that a modern
socialist society could function well, guided by
workers and peasants and without professional
strata of managers and politicians from the
idle class, without consultants and marketers,
without advertisers and sales hucksters, without
financial managers and insurance sellers.
In a mature socialist society, the creation and
stimulation of false needs are eliminated with
the effort and resources redirected to satisfying
real needs. Brand duplication and model
changes are dictated by popular demand and
scientific improvement and not by marketing
schemes and costly advertisements. The
capitalist profit-driven services of finance,
insurance, and real estate are handled through
efficient, fair, and transparent government
agencies without the distorting, corrupting
influence of systematic personal gain.
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
A mass meeting in the Putilov Works in Petrograd during the 1917 Russian Revolution. [Public Domain]
We have seen that public ownership can replace
private ownership and competitive markets
and it can be rational, efficient, creative, and
motivated.
Soviet Communists expropriated the
appropriators. The owners of the productive
assets who exploited the labour force were
invited to join that labour force; their
assets were given to the people collectively.
While capitalist apologists argued that public
ownership without markets would inevitably
result in the inefficient and irrational allocation
and usage of resources, the Soviet Union
proved that a modern economy servicing
the third or fourth largest population in the
world can grow at unprecedented rates while
providing its people with an equitable and ever
growing standard of living. By those standards,
it was certainly more rational than its capitalist
counterparts.
Contrary to naysayers, the Soviet people
proved more than able to create their own way
forward. Denied the technological innovations
developed by their capitalist counterparts,
Soviet scientists and engineers nevertheless
15
modernized the socialist economic engine
apace with its adversaries, many times
advancing well beyond the levels achieved in
the West.
The Soviet experience showed that
a planned economy could match, often
dramatically exceed, the performance of a
competitive market economy. The fetishism
of markets that is a pillar of capitalist ideology
denies that human forethought and calculation
can produce better results than the anarchy
and waste (the so-called creative destruction)
of competitive markets. The apologists for
capitalism ignore the vast misuse of productive
assets in product duplication, the enormous
waste of resources produced by mindless model
changes, and the crude manipulation enacted
by the promotional and sales industries.
Capitalist efficiency reaches its zenith with
zombie-like consumerism.
If planners were today armed with the
fruits of the modern computational revolutions,
they could easily conquer the complexities of
the most sophisticated, complex economic
interactions and demonstrate the superiority
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY
of planning over market uncertainties.
Unfortunately, Soviet planners never had the
technical means to do so before the demise of
the Soviet Union.
The Soviet century demonstrated the possibility
of a consistent commitment to peace, national
liberation, and internationalism.
Before the Soviet Union, no government
embraced and codified the doctrine of non-
interference in the affairs of other nations, a
doctrine sorely missing in the international
relations of our time. Lenin elevated the right
of national self-determination to the highest
tier of human rights and fought for its basis
in the molding of sovereign nations into the
USSR.
The Soviet Union saw the right of self-
determination as the touchstone of its peace
policy. In an era of predatory imperialism, the
fight for national liberation and independence
is indissolubly tied to the fight for peace. There
can be no enduring peace with imperialism. The
fight for peace is the fight against imperialism.
A lasting peace is the absence of imperialism
in all of its forms. At the same time, the Soviet
Union sought to eliminate the threat of global,
catastrophic war between differing social
systems.
This doctrine formed the basis for the
Soviet concept of internationalism-- the duty
of Communists and all progressive forces
to support and aid the victims of imperial
design and aggression. No moment better
demonstrated the Soviet commitment to
internationalism than its mobilization in the
1930s behind the young Spanish Republic in the
face of counterrevolution and fascist aggression.
An entire generation of revolutionaries drew
inspiration and understanding from that
selfless initiative.
Soviet material aid to anti-colonial,
national liberation struggles was a consistent
feature of nearly the entire history of the USSR,
a vital fact of history ignored by many left
critics of the Soviet Union. Soviet solidarity
16
was a critical factor in struggles in Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and Latin America. The map
of the world would be vastly different without
the Soviet commitment to independence and
social justice.
Those who are determined to bury
the Soviet accomplishments would like us to
forget the victory over fascism in World War
II and the liberation of Eastern Europe. They
wish to erase any memory of the role of the
Soviet Union in leading the fight to eliminate
colonialism in the post-war world, especially
in the construction of the United Nations
Charter. They willfully forget the generous and
unconditional aid to emerging nations at a time
when the Soviet Union was itself rebuilding
from unimaginable devastation.
A
ny twenty-first century project bent
on escaping the clutches of modern
capitalism that fails to objectively draw
on the Soviet experience is doomed to abject
failure. Its a fools errand to strive for an
answer to the ruthless reign of state-monopoly
capitalism without heeding the lessons-- both
good and bad-- from the building of the first
workers state.
Yet today, twenty-six years after the
demise of the Soviet Union, far too many
have succumbed to the easy lure of capitalist
triumphalism-- the idea that revolutionary
socialism, decisive rule and ownership by
working people, and a rational, humane
economy is beyond reach. Far too many
surrender to pessimism and the notion that
only modest reforms are possible.
A recent article on the popular website
Counterpunch illustrates the commonplace,
easy dismissal of the Soviet experience:
Revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat,
the one party state, centralized state planning
and much else is dead. It was tried. It didnt
 REMEMBERING THE GREAT OCTOBER REVOLUTION & ITS ENDURING LEGACY

work. It was an historical/practical shambles.
Furthermore, the Marxist heresies of Leninism,
Stalinism, and Maoism were outrageous and
ultimately deadly caricatures of Marxism. They
did everything they could to earn themselves the
name Red Fascism.
Quite simply, what does not serve to enhance
humanity should, at any time, be unceremoniously
jettisoned and that goes for much of past socialist
doctrine too.
(Rethinking Socialism in the Twenty-First
Century, Dan Corjescu, August 30, 2017)
Sadly, this cavalier rejection of the entire
Marxist-Leninist tradition and the scoffing
at the dedication and sacrifices of millions of
militant workers is far too prevalent among
todays activists. Of course, it is born from
ignorance, an ignorance produced by a massive
capitalist ideological campaign that followed
European socialisms fall. It reflects the loss
of the unswerving determination maintained
by generations of workers to remove the
unbearable weight of grinding exploitation
and create a better world. It reflects a jaded
vision that cannot see further than the return
to a mythical lost, more humane capitalist past.
It too easily accepts the inevitability of the
capitalist slogan There is no alternative.
By denying the legacy of the Bolshevik
Revolution, would-be leftists are left with faith
in a bankrupt social democracy. In Corjescus
words:
I think once we give up premature fantasies of
Capitalisms imminent demise (after all it has
survived for approximately six centuries!) we
can fruitfully pick up the work of the reformist
Social Democratic parties of the late Nineteenth,
early Twentieth centuries
Of course, this is the reasoning behind the
reinvention of social democracy in Europe. The
collapse of support for the traditional social
democratic parties has spawned the birthing
of new ones, (SYRIZA, PODEMOS, Five Star
Movement, La France Insoumise, etc). But with
no radical alternative challenging it, capitalism
is not inclined to grant the concessions to social
democracy that it did during the 1950s and
1960s when socialism presented an existential
challenge.
The future of a left alternative
to capitalism, the future of a genuine
movement towards socialism lies in building
organizations-- Communist organizations--
that defend the legacy of the Bolshevik
Revolution and draw the lessons that the
Bolshevik legacy offers. n

R U S S I A N S S TI L L DONT HAT E C OMMUNISM

Last week Russias Public Opinion Foundation released the results of a survey in which the
respondents were asked to share their views of life in the former Soviet Union. Almost 2/3
of those interviewed viewed communism in a favorable light. For just 7% of those surveyed
the word communism has negative connotations, while 5% dismissed communism as a
mere fairytale. A resounding 69% of respondents over the age of 60 viewed life under the
old Soviet system in a positive light, as did nearly 50% of those polled between the ages
of 18 and 30.
James W. Carden in The National Interest, online, October 23, 2013.
Carden served as advisor at the US State Department 2011-2012.

17
 ARTICLE

Detail from Emancipated Women Build Socialism! (1920) | Strakhov [Public Domain]

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM
& WOMEN
Jeanne McGuire
International Womens Day 2017

I
d like to begin by discussing ideas ideas
about the other other race, ethnicity,
nationality, class or caste, sometimes religion,
and of course gender.
Those others who are designated as less
less intelligent, less capable, less rational, less
responsible, less controlled having less of
those qualities adds up to being inferior. Being
less able to cope with certain jobs, stresses, and
decision making. They are also designated as
being more more emotional, more intuitive,
Jeanne McGuire is a progressive educator and past
president of the Congress of Canadian Women, living in
Toronto.
more natural (less civilized), more child-like,
more manipulative.
We all know that these descriptions are
false when we hear them applied to other races,
ethnicities, etc. But unlike the way it is with
most victims of these slurs, there is no country
where women are not the other.
However, these descriptions are equally
false when applied to women. I wont drown
you in historical or cross-cultural data to prove
my point you are here, you know it isnt true.
Ill refer to one myth women belong in the
home not in the workplace. The reality is that
women have always worked poor women,

18
 CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN
peasant women, working-class women. The
rice paddies of China were planted by women,
the fields of Ukraine were plowed by women
who, when the family could not afford horses
or oxen, pulled the plow themselves. In the
early days of Canadian colonization it was
understood that indigenous women were the
ones with the necessary stamina and knowledge
to be guides over long distances. All over the
world, the houses of the rich, the children of
the rich were tended by women poor women
who cooked, cleaned, fed, laundered, and
scrubbed for the rich.
In Canada today, 82% of women between
the ages of 25 and 54 work and women make
up 47% of the workforce. In 1953, only 24% of
women worked.
But if this idea isnt based on reality, what
is it based on, why is it believed? As is the case
with many ideas, it is based on social structure
Even being a university graduate doesnt level the playing field-- the majority of
university graduates are in fact women, but they earn almost $30,000 a year less
than their male counterparts.
not on nature. During the age of slavery, most
people believed slavery was natural. When
there is a monarchy, most people believe in the
rightness of having a king. If you look at the
world and see that women occupy a position of
inferiority within society, it is easy to assume
that the inferiority is within the woman herself,
not a reflection of social structure.
These ideas also reflect the values,
behavior, affectations of those who hold power
and position in the society, the rich, the owners,
the rulers. The rich always want to distinguish
themselves from the masses whether it is
long fingernails in China, or wives who didnt
work. And their long nails, their non-working
wives became the role model for all even if
the reality for poor women was not the same.
How can such useless, counterproductive
ideas continue in the face of todays reality?
Religion, the press, the educational system,
movies, and other forms of popular culture
19
like music transmit and reinforce the ideas of a
social system. But ideas take on a life of their
own, they have substance and consequence.
And they need to be confronted and defeated
they may die on their own, but we cannot wait
for that, we must make it happen.
Who loses from the ideas about womens
role in society? The Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives issued a report this year women
earn 80% of the male wage packet and they
earn less even if they do the same job.
45% of Canadian women work in one
of 20 low-paying positions so, for instance,
in 2011 a truck driver, usually male, earned
on average $45, 417 and an Early Childhood
Educator, usually female, earned $25, 252.
And women make up 47% of the workforce but
make up 70% of the part-time workforce. And
despite those differences, less than one-third
of the difference in wages is due to differences
in education, occupation, years of experience,
sector worked or the number of hours worked.
The rest is due to wage discrimination.
Even being a university graduate
doesnt level the playing field the majority
of university graduates are in fact women, but
they earn almost $30,000 a year less than their
male counterparts.
Who benefits from this discrimination?
Men? Well, some men those who reap the
super profits from paying women less than
they would have had to pay a man. Those who
benefit from the tensions and conflicts within
the workforce created by ideas about womens
role and place.
Do other men benefit? In some ways;
they have higher status, greater self-regard, they
are released from much of the petty drudgery
done by the females in the household.
BUT they also suffer. Family income is
less, so they know greater insecurity, and their
 CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN
childrens future may be restricted as a result.
They suffer a decrease in household income
when their mothers, sisters, wives/partners
and daughters earn less.
And when these ideas about the
inferiority of others combine, when prejudice
with respect to women is added to prejudice
based on race, class, ethnicity, or religion, the
result is truly ugly violence, sexual abuse,
discrimination. Witness the outrageous
treatment of immigrant women, women
of colour, and women workers in foreign
subsidiaries of Canadian companies like Joe
Fresh.
One of the most horrendous examples
of this coming-together of a number of
variables is the situation confronting
indigenous women in Canada. The problem of
sexism is multiplied by the issue of racism and
again by poverty and isolation. It is multiplied
again by the legacy of colonial occupation and
subjugation, in some cases genocide (as in the
case of the Beothuk in Newfoundland). It is
multiplied again by subsequent government
policies of exclusion, followed by policies of
assimilation, which included the horrors of the
residential school system. The violence and
sexual abuse, the prejudice and discrimination
that all indigenous peoples in Canada, but
particularly indigenous women, face goes
beyond shameful. There is no greater stain
on Canadas history than the treatment of its
original inhabitants.
And, as to the violence visited on
women, let me make this point. Men in prison
live in fear and apprehension of the possibility
of physical and sexual violence by other
inmates. Women spend their entire lives in
that prison. They are always aware, they always
know, not that they will, but that they can be
violated, not that every man is a rapist, but that
they are vulnerable should he be. They spend
their entire lives in a prison of apprehension,
the prison of awareness of vulnerability. And
we cannot fail to notice that, when there is a
war; one of the battlefields always seems to be
20
the bodies of women.
But people have tried to bring about
change; women have tried to bring about
change. This year is the 100th anniversary
of one such effort to change the future the
October Revolution, the Russian Revolution.
And since the Soviet Union is gone, we need to
assess whether that effort to change the world,
to make it a better place, was misplaced or
foolishly expended. Did it offer any positive
alternative to capitalism?
So I think we should compare. The
Soviet Union, as described by its most
determined detractors, invaded two countries
in its 70 year history, three if you consider its
support for the fledgling socialist-oriented
regime in Afghanistan an invasion.
Compare that to the first 70 years
of capitalism and the record of invasion by
capitalist countries. In fact, capitalism was built
on the backs of those it invaded, conquered,
enslaved, colonized, stole from. The biggest
imperial power of the nineteenth century was
of course Britain and it was rapacious in its
reach. In Canada, by 1857, the Hudsons Bay
Company had extracted 20 million pounds
sterling from the fur trade alone. Timber,
grain, meat and other produce, and the sale of
land to which they had no right garnered many
millions more. And the products they sold to
those they had dispossessed and those to whom
they had sold the land were priced from 100 to
400 times their cost.
And of course, Canada was nothing
compared to the wealth drained from the
jewel in the Crown India. The estimates
of the pillaging differ only in the magnitude
of millions plundered. Without question, it
exceeded one million pounds sterling per
year in direct transfer for which nothing was
returned. If you include the fact that the
country had to pay taxes to cover the entire
cost of its own subjugation administrative
and military subjugation the theft of
valuables and historical treasure (one ship that
sank on the way to Britain and was later found
 CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN
contained 150-million-pounds-sterling-worth
of silver); along wih other charges for the
period 1757 to 1815, the estimates range from
15.9 million pounds to 17.2 million pounds per
year. Thats one billion pounds sterling during
that period alone. And it went on for 190 years.
And then you have to calculate what it would
mean in todays dollars the numbers are
mind-numbing and incomprehensible.
Another feature of early capitalism
was the slave trade. The trans-Atlantic trade
alone saw 12.8 million Africans loaded on to
boats, at least 1 million of whom died en route.
And once again, the convergence of sex and
race produced unconscionable brutality and
violence, with rape and torture commonplace.
And we havent even touched on the role of
France in Canada, the Caribbean, Africa and
Indochina; Belgium, which was one of the worst
the ideas of the October Revolution when it came to women, broke the mould of
the day-- challenged the very foundation of sexist ideas.
in Africa, the Netherlands in Indonesia. It is a
picture of brutality beyond comprehension
and always against THE OTHER.
And is it different in the modern era?
Lets look at what has happened since the end
of WWII. No, step back to the end of the war. In
Hiroshima 100,000 were incinerated instantly
and 50,000 died from radiation poisoning.
And even if one accepts the doubtful argument
that Hiroshima was necessary, Nagasaki
three days later certainly wasnt. Another
70,000 were killed instantly. The women of
Japan died, their children died and continued
to die or be born deformed and mutilated by
the unnecessary use of a weapon that is truly
one of mass destruction.
And since then, the list of countries
where the Western world has intervened
is a long one. The West, primarily the US
but including Britain, France, Canada and
others, have manipulated elections, financed
the overthrow of governments, assassinated
21
or tried to assassinate the leaders of many
sovereign nations. The author William Blum
in his book Rogue State identifies 71 occasions
in which the US alone has interfered in one
of those ways. They have meddled in the
elections of allies and enemies alike. They have
organized or condoned the killing of leaders
when they feared their influence from Patrice
Lumumba in the Congo to Salvador Allende in
Chile. They have orchestrated the overthrow
of governments from Jacobo rbenz in
Guatemala and Juan Bosch in the Dominican
Republic, Sukharno in Indonesia, Mohammad
Mossadegh in Iran, Cheddi Jagan in Guyana,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, directing
and supporting the military coup in Greece,
funding the Contras in Nicaragua. They
invaded Cuba, napalmed women and children
in Vietnam, used depleted uranium weapons in
the first invasion of Iraq, funded the Mujhidn
in Afghanistan against the only government
that had ever offered any rights to women,
defeating that government one million dead,
three million disabled, five million refugees
half the total population of that time. And
of course, 10 years later, invading again this
time using the plight of women to bolster their
claim to legitimacy to rescue the women they
had put in fundamentalist prison.
And since then they have invaded Iraq
destroying the infrastructure and its cultural
heritage, along with hundreds of thousands
of its citizens, turned Libya into a wasteland,
sent drones to Yemen, unleashed on the people
of the Arab world a blight of reactionary
fundamentalism all the while pretending
to abhor that fundamentalism, while they
attack and destroy every state that was secular,
progressive in its attitudes to women, developed
in its educational and health policies, protective
of its cultural and historical legacy.
 CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN
Is it different today? Have they stopped
the looting? In 2012 the developing world
received $1.3 trillion in aid, investment and
income from abroad. In that same year the
developing world sent $3.3 trillion to the
developed world. The bleeding continues.
Compared to the carnage of Western
behavior, the foreign policy of the Soviet Union
looks like a birthday party with gifts all around.
Its International Womens Day let us ask who
helped the women of Vietnam, the women of
Cuba, the women of South Africa, of Angola,
of Palestine?
On the other hand, who described
ANC as a terrorist organization and aided the
South African regime in its efforts to defeat
the aspirations of the majority population?
Who funded Jonas Savimbi and delayed the
capacity of the new Angolan Government to
address issues of the health and welfare of its
the degree of the emancipation of women can be used as a standard by which to
measure general emancipation
people? Who supported the state of Israel
against the Palestinians, condoning Israels
illegal settlements and occupation of the Golan
Heights?
And Canada has been a part of that
Western policy, supporting the state of Israel in
its war against the Palestinian people, leading in
the bombing of Libya, joining the war against
Afghanistan, endorsing the overthrow of the
elected government of Haiti, of Honduras,
of the Ukraine by recognizing the regime
which overthrew the democratically elected
one. Even with its new leader, who aspires to
be the poster boy for progressive policies and
womens rights, Canada has acceded to these
policies condemning thousands to continued
conflict, misery, death and destruction. And in
Canada we have not seen any concrete action
being taken to alleviate the problems facing
indigenous women the issues of clean water,
mercury poisoning, inadequate housing,
inferior education, and continued racial and
22
sexual violence.
The people of the world, the women
of the world have not been the beneficiaries
of US foreign policy, no matter the rhetoric
the oil companies, the mining companies,
the manufacturers, the fruit companies they
have benefitted. I remember the slogan of the
Chilean Solidarity movement in speaking to
the role of Canadian mining companies in
Chile the companies got the copper, Chile
got the shaft. And it is still true today. The poor
countries of the world continue to get the shaft.
The Soviet Union did support the attempts
by many people to throw off the yoke of
colonialism, to improve their lives and living
standards.
And the ideas of the October Revolution,
when it came to women, broke the mould of
the day challenged the very foundation of
sexist ideas.
The degree of the emancipation of women
can be used as a standard by which to measure
general emancipation, wrote Marx and Engels.
In speaking of the demands for womens
rights, Lenin said, We demonstrate thereby
that we recognize these needs and are aware of
the humiliation of the woman, the privileges
of the man. That we hate, yes hate, everything
and we will abolish everything which tortures
and oppresses the woman worker, the
housewife, the peasant woman, the wife of the
petty trader, and yes, in many cases the women
of possessing classes. And The proletariat
cannot achieve complete freedom unless it
achieves complete freedom for women.
Did they succeed in addressing the
shameful humiliation of women? Certainly
there were advances. And not only did the
women in the Soviet Union and in many
developing countries benefit from the role of
the Soviet Union. Women in the West used the
advances of the women in the Soviet Union to
 CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM & WOMEN
batter down the doors of opposition to womens
rights in Canada and elsewhere. Maternity
leave, daycare, equal pay if they could have
all of that in the Soviet Union, why not here?
The working class as a whole used the
same argument to open the door to publicly
funded health care, to compensation for
injured workers, to Old Age Security and a
government-funded pension plan. If they
could have it there, why not here?
But the Soviet Union failed it exists
no longer. And we can ascribe the blame to the
fact that it was the first attempt and errors were
made, or to the fact that they bore the brunt
of Nazi aggression in World War WII, or to the
fact that they were forced into an arms race
that depleted their coffers and distorted their
economy, or to the fact that the West meddled
in their affairs just as they meddled in so many
others. To whatever we ascribe the blame we
now live in a world where there is no Soviet
Union.
Was it a failure? Only if one thinks that
trying to alter the world to make it better is a
worthless endeavour.
Will we try again? The idea of making
the world better will not go away. How can it
when we were told this year that eight people
now have as much wealth as the poorest 50%
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA contingent marching at International Womens Day in Torono (2017) | Jay Watts
23
of the worlds population. How can we not try
again?
Will we make errors again? Were
human how can we not make errors?
Will it be better than what we have?
Given the ecological disasters, the climate
change, the increasing gap between rich and
poor, the growing arrogance and power of
the corporations, the threat of war, the racism
at home and abroad, the sexism, peoples
insecurity, the debt, the fear, the cynical use of
peoples aspirations to defeat their goals how
can it not be better than what we have?
Will women be equal when we try again
to build a world based on different values?
We dont know. What we do know is that the
struggle for a new world order will be stunted
and debilitated if women are not part of the
struggle to build it. We do know that it is not
necessary for women to achieve equality
before they join the struggle for a new world.
We know also, it is not necessary to wait for
the new world in order to struggle for, and to
achieve some of the goals in the struggle for,
the equality of women in our workplaces,
our homes, our organizations, including the
organizations dedicated to changing the world.
But, as to whether women will be fully equal
know this it isnt over until they are! n
 ARTICLE

Crowd gathered outside old City Hall, at Main Street and William Avenue, during the Winnipeg General Sympathy Strike. (21 June 1919) | L.B. Foote [Public Domain]

THE GREAT OCTOBER

SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS
IMPACT ON THE WORKERS
MOVEMENT IN CANADA
Liz Rowley
Delivered at the Pacific North-West Labour History Conference | May 2017

P
rior to the Great October Socialist monopoly capitalism or imperialism, the
Revolution in Russia, socialism was just highest stage of capitalism was still in its
a theory in the workers movement in youth, and when the USA was just on the cusp
Canada. of becoming the most powerful imperialist
Socialist theory ran the gamut from country in the world.
utopian to scientific socialism with plenty of The Canadian trade union movement
anarcho-syndicalist ideas thrown in. before 1917 was largely comprised of craft
This situation reflected the workers unions, headquartered in the US, with
struggle at the turn of the century, when state conservative leaderships narrowly focused on
wages and conditions of work and opposed to
Liz Rowley is the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY OF independent labour political action.
CANADA. World War One changed all that. For

24
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN CANADA
their part, the capitalist war profiteers made
a killing supplying the armies in Europe with
munitions, and all the other things needed to
feed, clothe and supply the armies fighting to
win the war to end all wars. As prices increased
at home, wages stagnated, and workers were
told to sacrifice for the war effort, it became
obvious that the profiteers had made fortunes
while workers had sacrificed their livelihoods
-- and the actual lives of loved ones who had
gone to war and never returned. By the Wars
end, over 600,000 Canadian troops had been
sent to Europe.
Conscription had been imposed,
resulting in massive protests and demonstrations
across the country, with the epicenter in
Quebec. It was evident that the Conservative
Party, supported by some Liberals, aimed to
extend the war as long as possible including
by conscription -- in order to support the war
To be masters of in their own house included nationalization of the banks, an end to
landlordism, land to the farmers, equality rights to women, and the national right to
self-determination up to and including the right to separation...
profiteers, who were amassing fortunes with
every day that the war continued.
The Revolution in Russia, which came
with the Bolsheviks demand for Peace,
Land and Bread, followed by Lenins Decree
on Peace, had an enormous impact on the
workers movement globally and in Canada.
Instead of the division and re-division of the
world, based on competing capitalist interests
among the imperialist powers, the Bolsheviks
proposed a just peace without annexations
and indemnities. In other words, a peace that
guaranteed the mutual security of all peoples,
nations and states. They further proposed that
the wealth of Russia belonged to the workers
and farmers of Russia, in a socialist system to
be administered by the workers and farmers
through the local Soviets. To be masters in
their own house included nationalization of
the banks, an end to landlordism, land to the
farmers, equality rights to women, and the
25
national right to self-determination up to and
including the right to separation from Russias
multi-national socialist state. From a prison
house of nations, Russia became a galvanizing
example of what a workers state could look
like.
These ideas and actions were met with
wide support among workers in Canada, who
began to identify their interests as workers
with those of the Russian workers and
revolutionaries. The impact was electric,
spurring Canadian workers to take action to
support the Russian revolution and Soviet
power.
On the one hand, a movement to
support and protect the Russian revolution was
formed, with financial and material support
being raised across the country by the labour
and progressive movements. Over half a
million dollars was collected for food, medical
supplies, technical support, and aid to orphaned
children. The Save the Children Fund played
a significant role raising money during this
period with the support of widespread public
sympathy.
This support extended to the Hands
Off Russia Campaign in Canada a global
campaign by the international workers
movement against the invasion of Russia in
1918, by 13 countries, including Canada. In
February 1919, the Alberta Federation of
Labour passed a Resolution in Support of the
Russian Revolution, which read, in part:
Resolved that that this convention of the Alberta
Federation of Labour places itself on record
as being in full accord and sympathy with the
aims and purposes of the Russian and German
socialist revolutions, and
Be It Further Resolved that this convention
gives the incoming executive officers full power
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN CANADA
to call a province-wide general strike should
the allied powers persist in their attempt to
overthrow the Soviet administration in Russia
or Germany or in any country in which a Soviet
form of government is or may be established.
The resolution was passed unanimously amid
cheers and a standing ovation, and $2,100 -- an
enormous sum in 1919 was collected from
delegates to be sent to support the Russian
revolution.
The Great October Socialist Revolution
also galvanized the workers movement in
Canada to fight for fundamental changes in
Canada that would benefit workers here. This
included radical demands for wage increases,
for the right to unionize, for unemployment
insurance, and for social, economic, and
political rights.
The Tory government responded
with the War Measures Act, the banning of
public meetings, and the banning of books
and publications thought to be revolutionary,
including the Communist Manifesto, The
Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and Platos
Republic. The ban also included all of Lenins
pamphlets and speeches, though his famous
Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
was smuggled into Canada and reprinted,
in sections, in The BC Federationist -- the
newspaper of the BC Federation of Labour.
The BC Federationist also reprinted
Lenins famous Letter to American Workers, in
which Lenin said:
The contours of a new world, the world of
socialism, are rising before us in the shape of the
Soviet Republic. It is not surprising that this
world does not come into being ready-made ,
does not spring forth like Minerva from the head
of Jupiter
We are banking on the inevitability of the
world revolution We know . [t]hat before
the world revolution breaks out a number of
separate revolutions may be defeated. In spite
of this we are firmly convinced that we are
26
invincible, because the spirit of mankind will not
be broken by the imperialist slaughter. Mankind
will vanquish it.
And the first country to break the convict
chains of the imperialist war was our country.
We sustained enormously heavy causalities in
the struggle to break these chains, but we broke
them. We are free from imperialist dependence,
we have raised the banner of struggle for the
complete overthrow of imperialism for the whole
world to see. In short, we are invincible, because
the world proletarian revolution is invincible.
The government accused Lenin of being a
German agent, while the Roman Catholic
Church pronounced him to be the devil.
Winston Churchill famously called for
governments to smash the bolshevik eggs in
the nest and not wait until bolshevik chickens
are hatched all over the world.
Increasingly, workers in Canada were
identifying their interests with those of the
Russian revolutionaries. Class consciousness
began to generate political consciousness.
This had a big impact on the labour
movement and on the political organization
and demands of the workers movement.
The Western Labour Conference held in
Calgary in March 1919, also passed resolutions
supporting the Russian revolutions, and
demanding the repeal of the War Measures Act:
Resolved this conference places itself on record
as being in full accord and sympathy with the
aims and purposes of the Russian Bolsheviki and
German Spartacan revolutions, and declares
its full acceptance of the principle of proletarian
dictatorship as being absolute and efficient
for the transformation of capitalistic private
property into communal wealth, and that
fraternal greetings be sent to the Russian Soviet
Government, the Sparticist League of Germany,
and to all definite working class movements in
Europe; recognizing that they have won first
place in the class struggle.
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN CANADA
Winnipeg General Sympathy Strike. On June 10 the federal government ordered the arrest of eight strike leaders. (10 June 1919) [Public Domain]
The Western Labour Conference also passed
a resolution demanding repeal of the War
Measures Act, and
Resolved that this Convention demand full
freedom of speech, press and assembly, and
demand the release of all political prisoners and
the removal of all disabilities and restrictions
now upon the working class organizations.
The three issues that dominated the agenda,
after support for the Russian and German
revolutionaries, were: coordination of
struggles west of Winnipeg, the problem of the
international unions and the issue of secession
or autonomy, and the job of replacing the
craft unions with industrial unions. While
the Conference was vital in the development
of a militant working class movement, it was
also unable to get past the issue of secession
from the international unions, which became
known as the split at the border. This was
the influence of anarcho-syndicalism in the
movement at the time, which also influenced
27
the leadership of the Winnipeg General Strike.
Both the international unions and the
American Federation of Labor in the US, and
the anarcho-syndicalists in Canada, shared
the view that independent labour political
action was verboten. No Politics was the
rule. This effectively hand-cuffed the labour
movement and limited its activity to strikes
against employers. But, as delegates to the AFL
Convention pointed out: strike action without
an organized systematic struggle for political
change was not enough.
The Winnipeg General Sympathy
Strike, involving 200,000 strikers at its height,
was inspired by the example of the Great
October Socialist Revolution and the desire for
real, urgent and fundamental social, economic
and political change in the country. It was a
magnificent demonstration of working class
unity and solidarity, but its anarcho-syndicalist
leadership was defenseless when the federal
government ordered the RCMP to break the
strike using weapons and ammunition and
imprisonment of strikers, their families and
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN CANADA
supporters. That ended the influence that
anarcho-syndicalism had in the Canadian
trade union movement.
The fight for labour to have it own
political voice and demands, and its own
independent political action, could not be so
easily dismissed.
The progressive labour and farm
movements in Ontario (the Ontario Labour
Party and United Farmers of Ontario) elected
the first Labour-Farmer government in North
America in October 1919. Shortly after,
progressive farm organizations in Alberta,
Saskatchewan and Manitoba followed suit,
forming the Progressive Party and electing
progressive governments right across the
prairies.
Liberal leader Mackenzie King, in
hopes of winning the next federal election,
tried to situation himself and the Liberal Party
as friends of labour, creating a false flag in
the labour movement that persists up to the
present.
Delegates to the Liberal Convention on
the other hand, openly supported the Russian
Revolution and cheered when a delegate
attacked the Conservative government for
having turned machine guns on the workers
in Winnipeg.
Mackenzie King was forced, as a result,
to detail an election platform that promised
to deliver a national Medicare program in
Canada, unemployment insurance, and other
policies which were subsequently abandoned.
It would take another five decades to secure
Medicare in Canada.
The drive to form a revolutionary
Communist Party in Canada was also an
important consequence of the great October
socialist revolution. However, with the
War Measures Act in effect, Communist
organization and activity was illegal. As early
as February 1919, Marxists and Leninists in
Canada attempted to form a CP, but the first
meeting was broken up by the police and
participants were jailed, including two who
28
were deported to Germany.
In August 1919, another attempt was made
this time involving the Canadian-based
affiliates of the Communist Party of America
and the Communist Labour Party. But the
Palmer raids in the US scuppered this effort as
well, with many progressive immigrants who
had become union and political activists in
the mines, mills and factories during the War
being arrested and deported -- some to their
subsequent deaths in fascist concentration
camps.
In May 1921, the Communist Party
was formed, illegally, in Guelph, Ontario. It
affiliated to the Communist International
and adopted a program and constitution that
identified it as a working class party whose goal
was socialism, with a Marxist-Leninist world
outlook, based on proletarian internationalism
and the Leninist principles of organization.
Its policies were remarkable for their time, and
many continue to be urgent demands of the
peoples movements today.
Because of the War Measures Act and the
secrecy in which the CPC had to function, the
Party organized the Workers Party of Canada,
which reflected the policies of the CPC, in
February 1922, at 167 Church Street in Toronto.
By 1924, the WMA was no longer in effect,
and the Workers Party renamed itself the
Communist Party of Canada. The CPC has
existed continuously for 96 years since then,
though it has been forced underground on two
subsequent occasions. The first was during the
1930s under Prime Minister RB Bennett, when
the partys leadership was jailed and an attempt
was made by Kingston Penitentiary guards
to murder the Partys leader Tim Buck. The
CPC was also declared illegal for a time during
World War II, when the Party was once again
forced underground, later operating openly
as the Labour Progressive Party of Canada,
and electing MPs and provincial members in
Manitoba and Ontario.
Lenins Letter to American Workers did not
presage the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN CANADA

TI M B U CK O N THE R USSIA N R EV OLUT ION

Tim Buck (1891-1973) was the leader of the COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA from 1929 to 1962.

It is not surprising that bourgeois ideologists try to represent the Great October Revolution as a
peculiarly Russian phenomenon, due solely to conditions that were characteristic of Tsarism. Such a
premise is a necessary basis for their treatment of the remarkable achievements by the Soviet people
since 1917 as simply the advance of another state. An ideologist who explained the fundamental
lessons of the socialist revolution and its dynamic influence in the historic awakening of the Soviet
people, especially if he showed their universal validity, would very quickly be recognized by the
powers that be as an anti-capitalist ideologist and would be treated accordingly. After all, it was a
socialist revolution; the first successful attempt to advance socialism from a theory into living reality
and, thereby, create a realistic perspective for the socialist transformation of society all over the
world.

Those who misrepresent it as a peculiarly Russian phenomenon are careful not to venture, at least
not so anyone would notice, into an examination of the differences between the socialist revolution in
Russia and the spontaneous revolution which swept over Germany and ended the war on November
11th, 1918.

That spontaneous revolt of sailors, soldiers and workers, supported by masses of middle-class
people, was so widespread that it was literally unopposed. Kiel, the great naval base, was controlled
by the Seamens Revolutionary Council. Workers and Soldiers Councils seized control of mines and
factories. The red flag was flying over the headquarters of ruling Revolutionary Councils of Workers
and Soldiers in eleven hundred municipalities including all the biggest. The soldiers at the front laid
down their arms.

A great national constituent convention was convened in the city of Weimar in February 1919 to chart
the future course of the revolution the path to socialism. A clear majority of all the delegates in that
convention looked to the Social-Democratic Party to show the way. They voted for the proposals of
that party against the left socialists as well as against the open defenders of capitalism. The Social-
Democratic Party 'wrote its own ticket' in the Constituent Convention and headed all the governments
which followed it for several years. What were the results? Instead of a socialist economy, monopoly
capital was revived with a great deal more power in the national government than it had ever been
able to exercise under the Kaiser. Instead of marching forward to socialist society the German people
drifted back, first to liberal, then to openly reactionary capitalist government, and then to Hitlerism
only thirteen years after the Constituent Convention which was supposed to have set the course to
socialist society.

(Horizons, The Marxist Quarterly, No. 23, Autumn 1967)

his statement that revolutions will also suffer
defeats before the global revolution succeeds
were prescient. Yet imperialism is not stronger,
though it is more dangerous than ever, as the
transition from capitalism to socialism on
a global scale continues, encountering new
problems, new dangers and new challenges.
The working class struggle continues, however,
and is growing in strength and conviction.
The future for humanity remains: socialism or
barbarism. The struggle continues. n

29
 ARTICLE

The Industrial Workers of the World, on strike against the Canadian Northern Railway, Yale District. (17 April 1912) [Public Domain]

THE GREAT OCTOBER

SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS
IMPACT ON BC LABOUR
George Gidora
Delivered at the Pacific North-West Labour History Conference | May 2017

B
ritish Columbia and the Pacific Northwest
are well known for their long history of
labour militancy going back to the late
1800s. In Vancouver even before the citys
Charter was granted in 1886, workers were
already organized by the Knights of Labour,
who were early champions of the industrial
form of unionism embracing all workers, skilled
and unskilled. They based their organizational
principles and labour philosophy on Robert
George Gidora is the British Columbia leader of the
COMMUNIST PARTY OF CANADA.
Owens Grand National Consolidated Union in
England. Although it was primarily for workers,
its rules opened membership to anyone over
the age of 18 years who worked or had at any
time worked for wages, except individuals
who made a living manufacturing, selling or
handling intoxicating liquor. Doctors, lawyers
and bankers were also barred. The leadership
was opposed to strikes, but the militancy of the
membership usually resulted in their being
a leading force in most of the great militant
strikes of that period, with the exception of the
battle for the eight-hour workday, although

30
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON BC LABOUR
they did play a major part in that struggle as
well. Samuel Gompers described them as
undertaking to wipe out the lines of industry
and make one whole organization of all classes
of labour.
The craft unions were not much in
existence out on the west coast at that time.
There was a printers union and a shipwrights
and caulkers union, both of them in Victoria.
The Knights of Labour played a pivotal
role in many political and social battles in
the early 1900s, organizing emergency relief
wherever communities were faced with
disaster, such as when the Great Vancouver Fire
was started by the CPR slash fires in the bush.
The Knights of Labour were instrumental also
in defeating wealthy business representatives
in many local elections. They campaigned for
funds to provide relief for workers involved in
labour battles all around North America and
internationally.
At the beginning of the 1900s there were 160 trades locals in BC, and in Vancouver
there was nearly a 100% organization of skilled workers.
They were directly involved in electoral
politics, fielding a candidate for the commons
from a workers party, the Reform Party in
New Westminster. In Victoria and Nanaimo
they ran candidates under the Workingmans
Party banner. These were the very first labour
candidates in the west.
The unfortunate bad mark on their
history was their decidedly racist attitude
towards Chinese labour. They played a major
role in institutionalizing the racist two-tiered
wage system for the Chinese which lasted
for decades. They even initiated blacklists of
businesses that employed Chinese and called
for boycotts.
The craft union movement started
making major progress in British Columbia
around 1880-90. Almost all existing trades
were represented by 1889, when the Vancouver
Trades and Labour Council was organized.
The influence of the Knights of Labour began
31
to decline as the Trades and Labour Council
became the direct connection to the main
current of labour activism in Canada. There
were numerous battles at this time relating to
winning the nine-hour workday and the eight-
hour workday. These struggles were led by the
craft unions for the benefit of their members.
As the Knights of Labour receded into the
background, so did efforts to organize unskilled
workers. The major influence now became
the craft union organizations, represented in
Canada by the Dominion Trades Conrgress.
At the beginning of the 1900s there
were 160 trades locals in BC, and in Vancouver
there was nearly a 100% organization of skilled
workers. This was an era of almost continuous
labour strikes for wages and better working
conditions. Working conditions did gradually
get better, but not without struggle, and political
action to secure provincial labour legislation,
which finally recognized some basic conditions
that we take for granted today.
At the same time there was another and
growing movement that was clearly socialist in
its outlook, the Western Federation of Miners,
which rivalled the Trades and Labour Council
of Vancouver for leadership of the labour
movement in BC and the West. They actually
officially adopted as their own the entire
program of the Socialist Party of America at
their Denver Convention in 1902. There was
also a difference of attitude between the Trades
and Labour Council of Vancouver, on the one
hand, and the Dominion Trades Congress and
the American Federation of Labour, on the
other. The main difference was the Trades and
labour Councils call for independent labour
political action.
During this time there was continuous
pressure from outside the organized trade
union movement in BC for industrial unionism
and political independence from the old line
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON BC LABOUR
capitalist parties. There was a lot of sympathy for
the idea of non-craft industrial unionism, and
the Trades and Labour Council of Vancouver
was among those who were in support of this
idea. They passed a resolution instructing their
organizational committee to affiliate any new
unions organized for which there was no craft
union to the American Labour Union.
In 1905 the Industrial Workers of the
World made their appearance in BC and right
away the Western Federation of Miners and
the American Labour Union affiliated to the
new group. 1906 saw the first IWW chapter
organized in Vancouver. The history of the
IWW all over North America, including BC,
was one of brave and heroic struggles, with
many martyrs to the class struggle. Fighters
like Joe Hill, Frank Little, Wesley Everett.
Historic labour battles were led and won by
the IWW, improving wages and working
The Vancouver Trades and Labour Congress distributed a number of Lenins
pamphlets, and many workers proudly proclaimed themselves Bolsheviks.
conditions for many thousands of workers.
There are many books written about the IWW
and their battles.To recount everything here
today would take many, many hours. However,
it is worth looking at what ended the influence
of the IWW in conjunction with the Russian
Revolution, because that event brought to a
head the simmering differences that had been
debated for many years in the world socialist
movement, and workers in BC were not
immune to these trends.
The First World War brought to the
fore one of the most divisive issues facing the
socialists in the Second International, over the
question of war and peace. Significant sections
of the Second International were prepared to
take a nationalist position and support their
native capitalists and imperialists in what was
clearly another imperialist war. Many others,
true internationalists, quite correctly pointed
out that workers would be killing workers and
32
the only winners would be the capitalist system
and imperialism. This destroyed the Second
International as an effective revolutionary
socialist voice. The IWW to its credit was
opposed to the War.
Locally, capitalists took full advantage
of the war to ship thousands of young workers
off to Europe to be slaughtered and used the
draft laws to weed out trouble-makers at home,
such as Ginger Goodwin. The leaders of the
IWW split into two factions over whether to
be a political movement or to be simply an
economistic job union. This battle raged for
a number of years, through the end of the
war and the Russian Revolution. It was never
resolved within the organization and was a
factor ending the major influence of the IWW.
Despite a huge anti-war protest in
Canada, the official, non-IWW trade union
movement made no unpatriotic noises and
would not take issue with the War. They
neither supported nor opposed it, making no
effort to resist the blood-bath that was taking
off many of their members. However, in BC
the Federation of Labour and the Vancouver
Trades and Labour Council called for a general
strike when the first draft resisters were
arrested, but it never took place, largely owing
to a lack of support from the Dominion Trades
Congress and therefore the local craft unions.
This almost resulted in the BC Federation of
Labour and the Vancouver Trades and Labour
Council withdrawing from the Dominion
Trades Congress. In the West there was a large
anti-war resistance among workers, but there
was no appetite for resistance on the part of the
Dominion Trades Congress and the American
Federation of Labor.
However, the Russian Revolution caught
the workers imagination, as representing
a major victory for the working class amid
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON BC LABOUR
the slaughter and carnage taking place in
Europe. The name Lenin became well known
to workers in BC. The Vancouver Trades and
Labour Congress distributed a number of
Lenins pamphlets, and many workers proudly
proclaimed themselves Bolsheviks.
When the First World War ended,
and the imperialists turned their attention to
destroying the new Soviet state, the Trades
and Labour Council unanimously passed a
resolution demanding that Canadas troops
be withdrawn from Russian territory, and all
aggression and intervention be stopped. The
BC Federation of Labour did the same, but
unfortunately no direct action was taken to
prevent the shipment of war materials from the
west coast to trhe counterrevolutionary forces
in Russia, although some individuals refused
to handle war cargo, and several longshoremen
had unfortunate incidents where artillery parts
[A union] cannot be a revolutionary party, though it may by majority vote give its
active support to particular governmental measures and campaigns, and so help the
revolutionaries struggle.
accidently dropped into the water.
There was great enthusiasm for the
new Soviet state, and the weakening of the
IWW as an organization left the field open
for yet another attempt to organize industrial
unions, unfortunately from outside the main
labour movement. In 1919 the One Big Union
(OBU) was formed as a joint project of the BC
Federation of Labour and the most progressive
elements of the Alberta Federation of Labour.
Resolutions passed at the 1919 Calgary
conference demonstrated the revolutionary
spirit of the founders. Revolutionary greetings
were sent to the new Soviet republic and to the
Spartacus League of Rosa Luxembourg and
Karl Liebknecht in Germany. The conference
embraced the slogan of the dictatorship
of the proletariat. These bold provocative
declarations opened the new OBU to wide
attacks from the capitalists, who were extremely
hostile to anything remotely revolutionary
33
following the Russian Revolution. They were
able to make the argument that the OBU was
starting a revolution. The Winnipeg General
Strike and sympathetic strikes in Vancouver
and other Western cities were described as
attempts to set up soviets in our democratic
country. The OBU was doomed before it was
born. With then help of all the reactionaries,
particularly those in the labour movement, it
was utterly broken, and many good militant
unionists were once again on the outside of the
main labour movement.
The IWW and OBU made the same
fundamental mistake, in my opinion. They
tried to combine a revolutionary political
program with the task of an ordinary trade
union, the fight for better wages and working
conditions. They tried to be a political party
and a trade union all in one package. A union
should take in all workers in a given workplace
or occupation, regardless of their attitude
towards politics. It cannot be a revolutionary
party, though it may by majority vote give
its active support to particular governmental
measures and campaigns, and so help the
revolutionaries struggle.
A significant number of trade union
activists in BC who were inspired by the
Russian Revolution began to take more interest
in the revolutionary writings of Lenin and the
Bolsheviks, and, together with revolutionary-
minded members of the Socialist Party of North
America and the Socialist Party of Canada,
they came together to form the Communist
Party of Canada, at first known as the Workers
Party of Canada. In Vancouver some of the first
members were J. Kavanagh from the OBU, J.M.
Clark from the Lumberworkers, Bill Farnham
from the Canadian National Union of Ex-
servicemen, Bill Bennett from the Socialist
Party of Canada and Dick Higgins from the
 THE GREAT OCTOBER SOCIALIST REVOLUTION & ITS IMPACT ON BC LABOUR
IWW.
The new Party took an active role in
promoting the unity of all labour and advocated
not only organizing industrial unions, but
uniting the entire labour movement, both
the craft and industrial unions. They took
immediate steps to gather the workers into one
organization. Their first action was to invite all
trade unions, unemployed organizations and
working-class political parties to a conference
to discuss the setting up of a labour party that
would be all-embracing. These efforts proved
unsuccessful, but the idea was correct.
The example of the Russian Revolution
demonstrated to many revolutionary-minded
activists that it was possible for workers to
seize state power and build a socialist economy
and society, ending exploitation. This
fundamentally changed the outlook of labour
activists, who were struggling with the ideas
faced by generations before them over what the
relationship should be between political action
and trade union action. The ideas of anarcho-
syndicalism had proven to be untenable, but
Factory workers in Petrograd pose for a photograph after an organizing meeting. | Viktor Bulla (1917) [Public Domain]
34
their organizations had demonstrated the power
of organized labour. The ideas coming from the
Communist International put forward a more
logical approach. The working class must have
its own independent organizations to defend
wages and working conditions and to represent
the interests of workers in government and
society. The working class potentially has the
power to bring down the capitalist system and
put an end to war and poverty forever. There
needs to be an all-encompassing revolutionary
movement that includes all revolutionary-
minded organizations, including those political
parties that work for the same goals.
The principles of unity, struggle and
peace first put forward by the Workers Party
of Canada and later the Communist Party have
not changed, although tactics and strategies,
alliances and many other conditions constantly
change and evolve. But the basic needs and
principles involved in building a movement
for social change remain the same. n
 EXCERPT

T H E I N TE L L ECTUA L & T HE R EV OLUT ION ( EXC E R P T S)

Pablo Neruda - Chilean poet, Communist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature writing in 1967.

The October Revolution, developments in the Soviet Union and the socialist
orientation of many other countries are exerting a profound influence on world
culture. We can safely say that these factors wrought a revolution not only in culture
as such, but also by shaping ties between the intellectuals and the people.

If we look back at the past and especially at the beginning of our century, we shall
see the intellectual almost completely isolated from the masses. A glance at the
past reveals that many intellectuals took this as a personal tragedy, while others
evolve theories of the autonomy of art. [...]

Fresh hope came with the October Revolution. A new trend appeared among
intellectuals, one that is still developing. I mean the trend towards closer ties with the
people. It seems to me we should view this trend from two angles: first, as a revival
of the ideals of democratic humanism which suffered eclipse at the beginning of the
century and, second, as the emergence of a new intelligensia closely associated
with the people and their struggles. I have in mind the revival of the humanist
tradition which has always, though in different degrees, prevailed in society. I have
in mind also the new literature brilliantly represented by Vladimir Mayakovsky, the
outstanding poet of the October Revolution and the immediate post-revolution years.

Fifty years of heated discussion about the purpose of art, fifty years of controversy,
have stiffened the intellectuals loyalty to the world revolution. Yet the question of
form and method will forever be the subject of debate. For many, Maxim Gorkys realism
is the most consummate novel-writing of the pre-revolutionary and revolutionary
period. Others believe that audacious search does not conflict with the social role of
art, of the artist, writer or poet. A violent controversy is under way between the two
main trends in our century that of realism and of experimentation. [...]

The consciousness of writers and artists has been awakened. They stand for
progress, the chief reason being that historys biggest revolution took place in the
Soviet Union, siding with the peoples oppressed by colonialism and stimulating by
virtue of its very existence the worldwide liberation movement to which it renders
moral and material support. This is changing the historical picture and making us
approach the culture of our time with a deeper sense of responsibility and laying the
foundations for new art forms whose contours are perceptible even today.

(World Marxist Review, Volume 10, No. 10, October 1967)

35
 ARTICLE

Detail from Long live unity and friendship among all nationalities of the USSR! [Public Domain]

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION &

THE NATIONAL QUESTION
Pierre Fontaine

T
his year we celebrate the centenary of the
October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. This
is probably the most significant event in
the history of humankind. This event was a
major turning point in human evolution. For
the first time, an exploited class seized political
power. It was the Russian working class that,
in alliance with the peasantry, placed itself at
the forefront and set an example for all the
Pierre Fontaine is the leader of the PARTI COMMUNISTE
DU QUBEC, a distinct entity within the COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CANADA.
working class throughout the world. It will be
the beginning of the socialist revolution which,
as it ripens towards communism, is called on to
put an end to the exploitation humans by other
humans.
But if the socialist revolution is
international in nature, because socialism is
the result of capitalism, it remains national in
form. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
was based on the former czarist empire
and consisted of fifteen national republics,
comprising dozens of national groups, and
could never have existed without a program

36
 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & THE NATIONAL QUESTION
responding to the national concerns of the
oppressed peoples.
It was up to Lenin, the leader of the
Soviet revolution, to develop and elaborate
the fundamental principles on which the
Communist parties still today base their
programs and actions concerning the national
question. It was he who, particularly through his
polemic against Rosa Luxemburg, elaborated
the fundamental principle of the right of
nations to self-determination.
It emerges from this that the
Communists in considering national matters
place above all else the interest of the working
class, not only of the oppressed nation, but
of the entire international working class
in its struggle against the bourgeoisie and
for socialism. To this end, the Communists
seek, above all, national peace and the most
favourable context for the unity which is
To realize the unity of the working class, [Communists] must fight for recognition
of the right to self-determination of the oppressed nations, including the right to
separate and to constitute an independent state.
indispensable to the working class in order to
carry out its class struggle and the struggle for
socialism. This peace between nations can only
be ensured by the broadest democracy and the
equality of nations in law.
By contrast, national inequality and
oppression aim precisely at dividing the
working class into national detachments which
support the interests of their respective national
bourgeoisies, rather than defending their own
class interests, thus seriously hindering the
struggle for socialism. This is precisely what
can happen, for example, when we see Spain
categorically denying Catalonias right to self-
determination, while right-wing governments,
both Spanish and Catalan that have attacked
workers harshly with their neoliberal policies
manage to rally them under their national
banners.
The Communists of the dominant
nations must counter this division and allow the
37
unity of the working class to unconditionally
defend the right of the oppressed nations to
separate. The Communists of the oppressed
nations, for their part, must
attach prime significance to the unity and
alliance of the workers of the oppressed nations
with those of the oppressor nations; otherwise
these Communists will involuntarily become the
allies of their own national bourgeoisie, which
always betrays the interests of the people and
of democracy, and is always ready, in its turn,
to annex territory and oppress other nations.
(Lenin, The Revolutionary Proletariat and
the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,
in Collected Works, Volume 21, pages 407-
414)
These principles applied to the situation in
Canada imply that Communists must strive
to unite the working class throughout the
country to achieve socialism and end national
oppression. To realize the unity of the working
class, they must fight for recognition of the right
to self-determination of the oppressed nations,
including the right to separate and to constitute
an independent state. And that is precisely the
current program of the Communist Party of
Canada.
The Communists are fully aware that
only socialism can lay the foundations for the
complete abolition of national oppression, like
all other types of oppression:
It is impossible to abolish national (or any
other political) oppression under capitalism,
since this requires the abolition of classes, i.e.,
the introduction of socialism By transforming
capitalism into socialism the proletariat
creates the possibility of abolishing national
oppression. (Lenin, The Discussion on Self-
 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & THE NATIONAL QUESTION
Determination Summed Up, CW, Volume
22, pages 320-360)
The Communists, however, are struggling to
win immediate reforms.
The Communists cannot be content
in the meantime with asserting that only
socialism will resolve the question, which
amounts to waiting and doing nothing on this
front. This would almost be the same mistake
that Lenin criticized Rosa Luxemburg for
making. Communists must fight immediately
for maximum democracy in order to ensure
the best political environment for the socialist
revolution, helping to bring down the mistrust
between the oppressing and oppressed nations
workers and demonstrate to them all the
seriousness of the policies of the Party:
The more democratic the system of government,
the clearer will the workers see that the root
evil is capitalism, not lack of rights. The fuller
national equality (and it is notcomplete without
freedom of secession), the clearer will the workers
of the oppressed nations see that the cause of
their oppression is capitalism, not lack of rights,
etc.. (Lenin, A Caricature of Marxism and
Imperialist Economism, CW, Volume 23,
pages 28-76)
The CPC therefore proposes democratic
reform that is now feasible under capitalism:
a new constitution in Canada based on an
equal and voluntary association of nations,
guaranteeing their full equality in law, and their
right to self-determination, up to the point of
constituting themselves, if they so desire, as
sovereign states.
However, the acknowledged intent of
the CPCs proposal is to avoid the separation of
Quebec, as well as the other nations of Canada.
This
democratic solution to the national question
will create conditions to preserve the unity of
Canada and to revalue the common struggle
38
of the working class of Canada against the
domination of monopoly capital. It is precisely
the democratic solution to the national question
which will create the conditions necessary for the
strengthening of the unity of the workers and the
realization by the working class of its historical
mission, socialism. (William Kashtan, For the
Self-Determination of Quebec, The Marxist
Case, ditions Nouvelles Frontires, 1978,
page 24)
The recognition of the right to self-
determination of nations, including the right to
separate, does not mean that the Communists
are obliged to support the separation:
it is not the business of the proletariat to
advance such demands, which inevitably
amount to a demand for the establishment of an
autonomous class state. It is the business of the
proletariat to rally the greatest possiblemassesof
workers of each and every nationality more
closely, to rally them for strugglein the broadest
possible arenafor a democratic republic and for
socialism. And since the state arena in which
we are working today was created and is being
maintained and extended by means of a series
of outrageous acts of violence, then, to make the
struggle against all forms of exploitation and
oppression successful, we must not disperse but
unite the forces of theworking class, which is the
most oppressed and the most capable of fighting.
(Lenin, On the Manifesto of the Armenian
Social-Democrats, CW, Volume 6, page
326-329)
This does not mean that the Communists
can never support the call for separation,
but it is only under certain conditions and in
exceptional circumstances that they can do so:
We must always and unreservedly work for
the very closest unity of the proletariat of all
nationalities, and it is only in isolated and
exceptional cases that we can advance and
actively support demands conducive to the
 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & THE NATIONAL QUESTION

establishment of a new class state or to the
substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the
complete political unity of a state. (Lenin, The
National Question in Our Programme,
CW, Volume 6, pages 454-463)
The CPCs position has an advantage over the
cry for independence for this or that nation,
and in particular the independence of Qubec,
because it makes possible the creation of a broad
multinational united front of the oppressed
nations of Canada to win a sweeping reform
which would truly end national oppression,
rather than seek advantages or privileges for
one of them in particular.
The bourgeoisie always places its national
demands in the forefront, and does so in
categorical fashion. With the proletariat,
however, these demands are subordinated to the
interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, you
cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois
democratic revolution will end in a given nation
seceding from another nation, or in its equality
with the latter;in either case, the important thing
for the proletariat is to ensure the development
of its class. For the bourgeoisie it is important to
hamper this development by pushing the aims of
its own nation before those of the proletariat.
That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to
speak, to the negative demand for recognition
of the right to self-determination, without
giving guarantees to any nation, and without
undertaking to give anything at the expense of
another nation.
This may not be practical, but it is in
effect the best guarantee for the achievement
of the most democratic of all possible solutions.
The proletariat needs only such guarantees,
whereas the bourgeoisie of every nation requires
guarantees for its own interest, regardless of
the position of (or the possible disadvantages to)
other nations. (Lenin, The Right of Nations
to Self-Determination, cw, Volume 20,
pages 393-454) n

T H E S O CI A L I S T R E V O L U TI O N & T HE ST R UGGLE FOR DE MOC R ACY

Lenin, in The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1916):

The socialist revolution is not a single act, it is not one battle on one front, but a
whole epoch of acute class conflicts, a long series of battles on all fronts, i.e., on all
questions of economics and politics, battles that can only end in the expropriation
of the bourgeoisie. It would be a radical mistake to think that the struggle for
democracy was capable of diverting the proletariat from the socialist revolution
or of hiding, overshadowing it, etc. On the contrary, in the same way as there can
be no victorious socialism that does not practise full democracy, so the proletariat
cannot prepare for its victory over the bourgeoisie without an all-round, persistent
and revolutionary struggle for democracy.

V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 22, page 144.

39
 EXCERPT

O C T O B E R , N ATI O N A L - L IB ER AT ION ST R UGGLE & C ULT UR E

( EXC E R P T S)
Faiz Ahmed Faiz - Urdu poet and political activist, jailed in Pakistan, 1951-55 and 1958-59, awarded
the Lenin Peace Prize, 1962, awarded the Order of Pakistan, posthumously, 1990 writing in 1967.

The Great October Socialist Revolution was an event of universal importance. For
our country, that is, India and Pakistan, which at that time was undivided India, it
had a little more direct significance, than perhaps for some of the other countries. It
is not generally known that in 1919, while the revolution had not yet been completed,
a large number of people from our country trekked across Afghanistan into what
are now the Central Asian republics in the quest of their romantically conceived
freedom. Many of them were religious people, others were liberals, but all of them
had an idea that the Soviet Union, after the revolution, was the place where you
went in search of support for your freedom struggle. And when these people came
back after staying in the Soviet Union for a long time, most of them became active
in the working-class and other progressive movements inside the country so they
brought back with them a more or less personal impact of the revolution.

Then the revolution coincided with the rise of the first great nationalist movement
in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent the movement against British imperialism. The
Soviet revolution gave to this particular movement a new kind of perspective, a
new clarity of thought. There began the formation of militant class organizations
of the nationalist movement. There also emerged an independent movement by
young people who were romantic revolutionaries and who wanted to overthrow
British rule by individual acts of force and resistance. Most of these young men were
killed within a comparatively short time, but on the youth of the country and on the
intelligentsia they had a very powerful impact. Also the October Revolution gave to
the general nationalist movement a new kind of hope, a new kind of optimism, a new
kind of feeling of confidence because such a large country occupying one-sixth of
the worlds land surface had come over to their side. These were political factors
which had their impact on the intelligentsia and through the intelligentsia on the
cultural development inside the country. [...]

If one sums it up, this whole process, the main impact of the October Revolution
through these agencies that I have mentioned was firstly to bring the intelligentsia
closer to the people, and, secondly, to establish closer links with the literature of the
whole world. [...]

(World Marxist Review, Volume 10, No. 10, October 1967)

40
 ARTICLE

International Working Womens Day march, Petrograd, Russia. (8 March 1917) [Public Domain]

WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN

REVOLUTION
HOW BOLSHEVIK WOMEN ORGANIZED FOR
SOCIALISM & THEIR OWN EMANCIPATION
Rozhin Emadi

O
ne hundred years ago, on February
23rd 1917, 50,000 women poured out of
factories and onto the streets, sparking the
first revolution in Russia that eventually led to
the downfall of the Czar. It was on International
Womens Day that textile workers organized a
labour strike with a strong anti-war message
to condemn the exploitative and oppressive
conditions most people were subjected to during
the Czarist era. Essentially, this movement not
Rozhin Emadi is the British Columbia leader of the
YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE.
only brought women together, but also masses
of people who simply called for bread and
peace. It became the catalyst for one of biggest
revolutions that historically changed the world.
However, the role of women and the womens
movement during the Russian Revolution, and
the years following, are often undermined by
bourgeois historians who tend to frame the
revolution as a masculine movement. Some
historians, such as Richard Piper, even go so
far as to argue that the revolution was a coup
by a small portion of radical, male intellectuals,
rather than it being a mass working class

41
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

movement. 1 This is because bourgeois as backwards segments of society, and this

historians do not focus and emphasize enough
that the working class was organizing for many
years, demanding basic rights. Therefore,
contrary to opinions that call the womens
movement and the protest of February
23rd minor or almost accidental, women
workers were in fact crucial to the Revolution.
They were organizing themselves, creating
unions and getting ready to fight militantly to
alleviate their hardships years before the 1917
Revolution. Furthermore, after the revolution,
the role Bolshevik women took in shaping the
Soviet Union is often overshadowed by the
role men played. Revolutionary women, such
as Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand and
Nadezhda Krupskaya were only some of the
many influential women that both shaped the
revolution and the Soviet Union in the years
misogynistic ideology justified the hyper-
exploitation of women in Russia, leaving many
without opportunities to get an education or
the training needed to become skilled workers.
Women were also known to be the key laborers
in the household confined to childbearing
and constantly providing for their husbands.
In the book, Women and Work in Russia, Jane
McDermid and Anna Hillyar mention that
the economic changes after the abolition of
serfdom in Russia resulted in many families
facing growing impoverishment, which
eventually increased the number of women
workers. 2 By the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century, many women became
textile workers or found jobs in domestic
services. Between 1901-1913, the number of
women working in factories had grown by

Bolshevik women fought hard within the Party to put womens emancipation on the
Soviet Unions socialist agenda.

following. As such, women not only played
an integral role in the Russian Revolution,
but their fight for emancipation and social
change became yet another revolutionary
development in the Soviet Union. Bolshevik
women fought hard within the Party to put
womens emancipation on the Soviet Unions
socialist agenda. This article will assess how
revolutionary women in Russia, particularly
those in the Bolshevik Party, began organizing
the working class for a historic revolution
that both improved their own conditions and
changed the course of the world.
To start, its important to recognize
that the increasing oppression working-
class women were facing led them to get
more involved in key labour movements.
During the Czarist era, women were marked
59%, whereas for men the increase was only
29%. 3 Even in industries where women were
predominant, such as the textile industry, they
were still paid less than men. Thus, not only
were working hours long and exhausting, but
the wages women received were barely enough
to make a living. Sexual assault and harassment
by both foreman and male workers in the
workplace was a common occurrence. In 1914,
the Bolshevik newspaper for women workers,
Rabotnitsa, complained about the brutal and
sexually abrasive treatment of women by men
within the workforce. 4 Historians such as Rose
Glickman tells us that the peasant legacy of
female subordination to men was perpetuated
in the sexual division of labour at the factory. 5
Subsequently, she argues that gender was
significant in the development of the Russian

1. Piper, Richard.The Russian Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

2. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Women and Work in Russia 1880-1930. London: Longman, 1998.
3. Ibid. P. 89
4. Rabotnitsa (23 Feb 1914) no. 1, p.11
5. Glickman, Rose.Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880-1914. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986.

42
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

working class because women became one
of the most exploited segments of society. 6
However, while women in Russia faced
increasing oppression and exploitation, they
did not remain passive. They began mobilizing
themselves for changes.
As industrialization and urbanization
began changing the economic system of Russia,
there was also a rise of Social Democratic
forces, which were predominately made up of
radical intellectuals at the time. 7 They began
stressing the importance of preparing workers
to both learn about their exploitation and how
to lead their own revolutionary movements.
Raising working-class consciousness was key
to some of the powerful labour movements
in Russia. Therefore, workers circles, such
as The Brusnev circles of 1889-1892, began
taking a vital role in the movement to raise
became a representative of the Bolsheviks in
trade union struggles after working with them
in workers circles. 11
Essentially, these organizations not
only increased the level of class consciousness
within the working class, but also became
vital tools that allowed workers to collectively
organize rallies and strikes, such as the 1890
general strike of textile workers, who were
organized under the Ivanovo-Voznesensk
workers union. 12 This strike lasted over two
weeks and successfully forced concessions
from employers. As Mcdermid and Hillyar
mention, women workers did not simply take
spontaneous action, but were organizers and
instigators of the movement, and thus, since
the dissatisfaction women felt continued to
exist after these strikes, women were once
again prepared to take to the streets a decade

...while some historians believe that the Russian revolution emerged spontaneously,
its clear that the ways in which women workers organized themselves in the years
prior to the revolution explain why they played such an influential role...
the consciousness of the working class. 8 later. 13 Therefore, while some historians
Women were joining these organizations in believe that the Russian Revolution emerged
small numbers, and from there, they created spontaneously, its clear that the ways in which
their own women workers circles. Their women workers organized themselves in the
organizations mostly concentrated on the years prior to the revolution explain why they
industries that women had greater roles in, played such an influential role in the large
such as the textile industry. 9 The womens mass movements that occurred in the early
circles also set up literacy workshops, which twentieth century. So it is important to stress
provided a space for women to read more about how labour activists put in tremendous effort
their own oppression. By the end of 1890, there in the years before the revolution to increase
were at least twenty workers circles. 10 Some the political consciousness of people and unite
of the women within these circles radicalized them under working class organizations and
and joined the Bolsheviks as communists took unions. Although women workers were less
leading roles within these organizations. For organized than men, many were still militantly
instance, Anna Boldyreva, a working-class leading strikes to combat poor conditions,
woman from the Maxwell Textile Mill, later which is why womens struggles were often

6. Glickman, Rose.Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880-1914. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986.
7. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Women and Work in Russia 1880-1930. London: Longman, 1998.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid. P. 63
10. Ibid.
11. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. P. 109
12. Ibid. P. 110
13. Ibid. P. 111

43
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

correlated with different mass movements in
Russia. For instance, women even played an
important role during the 1905 movements
that started some of the biggest protests against
the Czar.
On Bloody Sunday, thousands of
workers in St Petersburg marched to the Winter
Palace and presented the Czar of Russia with a
petition listing off their grievances. Because of
the Czars violent response to the protesters,
resulting in the death of several people,
strikes and protests escalated throughout the
country. The events of 1905 instigated more
labour protests that carried on into 1907
creating an atmosphere that made revolution
possible. In fact, the events that occurred
in 1905 led to another wave of localized
industrial unrest culminated in a general strike
of Ivanovo workers, which predominantly
included women. 14 This eventually led to the
establishment of the very first Workers Soviet
in the country. Among the 151 individuals
elected to represent striking factory workers,
25 were women. While this doesnt seem like
a large number, its still a victory for women to
be taking leadership roles in labour struggles
during a time when they were not seen as full
human beings. One of the factories, known
as the Kashintsev Cotton Weaving Mill, even
elected more women than men to the Workers
Soviet. 15 Seven out of the eight elected
were women workers. Additionally, within
these Workers Soviet, only 15.6% of the men
belonged to the Bolshevik Party, while 62.5% of
the women were part of the Bolsheviks. 16
Ultimately, many of the Ivanovo women
workers became interested in revolutionary
politics and the Bolshevik Party as they got
more involved with womens circles. Despite
there being a clash between the feminists
of the time and the Bolsheviks, there were
also correlations and connections being built
between these two forces. 17 Women were not
simply duped by the Bolsheviks, but made
the conscious choice of joining their ranks. In
fact, women workers were both the forefront
of strike actions and among the workers whom
the Bolsheviks were building a base with to
expand their party, and make it more relevant
to the working class. 18 Therefore, womens
involvement with the Bolsheviks was arguably
part of the reason why the Party became so
successful. In her book, Bolshevik Women,
Barbara Clements concludes that Marxism
appealed to young women because of its
systemic critique of patriarchy. 19 Marxism
and revolutionary political groups stood
out for women because they were the ones
who were properly assessing the historical
and structural ways in which women were
oppressed. Historian Richard Stites says that
the Russian feminists of the time did not have a
binding comprehensive ideology, other than
solidarity. 20 He even mentions that the question
of emancipation was not clearly moulded out
by feminists, whereas Marxists had a more or
less complete theoretical framework on the
question of womens oppression. 21 Therefore,
many working class women were drawn to the
Bolsheviks and began to view socialism as a path
towards their emancipation demonstrating
the growing connection between womens
struggles and the fight for socialism. And on
the other hand, the international communist
movement also began paying closer attention
to womens issues. As Rosa Luxemburg stated

14. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. P.111
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 289-305
18. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. P. 110-114
19. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. P. 51
20. Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 233
21. Ibid.

44
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Clara Zetkin (left) & Rosa Luxemburg (right) on their way to the SPD Congress. Magdeburg, 1910 [Public Domain]

in one of her speeches, womens suffrage is
one of the vital issues on the platform of Social
Democracy. 22 The international communist
movements growing interest in the womens
question also explains why women began
taking bigger roles within the Bolshevik Party.
Historically, misogynistic tendencies
persisted within the communist movement
as well. Many were even afraid of permitting
women to vote because of stereotypes that
marked them as the most backward segments
of society. 23 For some within the communist
and socialist movement, this implied that
women were more conservative and religious
in comparison to men meaning that they
could potentially vote for right wing forces. 24
Nevertheless, this was not the view of everyone
inside the revolutionary movement. Within the
Second International, Clara Zetkin, well known
German revolutionary and one of the founders
of International Womens Day, pushed to make
all socialist parties work for the liberation of
both men and women. Russian revolutionaries,
such as Alexandra Kollontai and Vladimir
Lenin, supported Zetkinss efforts, and also
worked hard to bring womens emancipation
to the attention of the Second International. In
fact, Russian communists were some of the first
to recognize the need to fight for the liberation
of women. While some parties were hesitant,
there was eventually a formal acceptance by
socialist parties of womens right to work, and
the need to create special organs within their
parties for womens political education. 25 Thus,
the fight to incorporate the struggle of women
into the socialist program led to revolutionary

22. Luxemburg, Rosa.Womens Suffrage and Class Struggle. N.p.: Marxists Internet Archive, 2003. Accessed on April 16th, 2017.
23. McShane, Anne.Did the Russian Revolution Really Change? Film of a Public Form. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, 2012.
24. Ibid.
25. Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 237

45
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

changes within the socialist movement itself.
Soon enough, Marxist literature on the
oppression of women, such as the works of
Zetkin, Engels and Bebel, was being translated
into Russian and distributed to women that
took an interest in revolutionary politics.
Furthermore, in 1899, Lenin suggested adding
the establishment of full equality of rights of
men and women into the Party Program. 26
At the Second Congress in 1903, this addition
was officially added. Lenin also demanded
that women have the right to maternity leave
and claimed that they should be guaranteed
work in safe conditions, even suggesting that
factories should hire women inspectors to
check and ensure that workplaces were not
harmful or dangerous spaces. 27 Meanwhile,
in 1900, Nadezhda Krupskaya, a well-known
revolutionary who is most notably referred
study groups, which is where she eventually
met Lenin. By 1905, she worked as the secretary
of the Central Committee of the Russian Social
Democratic Party, and the editorial secretary
of the Partys journal. For years, she exerted
herself to teach masses of people who did not
receive a proper education, which particularly,
but not exclusively, included women. As such,
Krupskaya wasnt only known as Lenins wife,
but as a true revolutionary who helped build
the Party.
All the while, Alexandra Kollontai,
another key revolutionary figure at the time,
was also putting in an immense effort to bring
working class women into the Party, or at the
very least, to support its aims. She wrote major
theoretical work on womens rights and its
relation to socialism. Additionally, she took
a leading role in organizing women labour

By 1913, International Womens Day was first introduced to [Russia]. To mobilize for
this day, Bolshevik women set up city-wide womens circles to push their anti-war
line amongst women workers and the wives of soldiers...
to as Lenins wife, wrote an article called The delegates, who had been elected from different
Woman Worker, which was one of the first factories to participate in trade union struggles.
pieces that analyzed the conditions of Russian To avoid harassment from authorities, Kollontai
women through a Marxist lens. 28 She wrote disguised her meetings as sewing circles or
about the overworked and undernourished health talks on the harmfulness of corsets. 30
village woman and peasant women, the She would also participate in feminist meetings
underpaid factory women who were often to draw women into the socialist movement. In
forced into sex-work, and pregnant working addition, other Bolshevik women also headed
class women who did not have job security unions. For instance, Sofia Goncharskaia
or the right to maternity leave. Krupskayas was the head of the Union of Laundry
article was being distributed to women who Workers. 31 In addition, Kollontai was one of
began participating in labour strikes in hopes the revolutionary women, along with other
of turning these labour movements from Bolsheviks like Konkordia Samoilova, who
economic to political struggles. 29 Near the pushed to bring International Womens Day
end of the nineteenth century, Krupskaya was to Russia. 32 By 1913, International Womens
involved in organizing underground Marxist Day was first introduced to the country. To

26.Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 233-277
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 254
31. McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. P. 110-114
32. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

46
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

mobilize for this day, Bolshevik women set up
city-wide womens circles to push their anti-
war line amongst women workers and the
wives of the many soldiers who were forced to
go to war. Moreover, women in the Bolshevik
Party also took leading roles in organizing
militant underground committees during
the Revolution. Rozaliia Zemliachka and
Elena Stasova were two Bolshevikichki who
headed underground committees in Moscow
and St. Petersburg. 33 Elena Stasova ended up
becoming the technical secretary of the St.
Petersburg committee from 1901-1906.
Around the same time, the Bolsheviks
launched Rabotniska, their first womens
magazine that was regularly distributed to
women workers. This was one of the first
attempts to create a Bolshevik womens organ
within the Party. Inessa Armand, another
strong support from Krupskaya, though other
Party members in the Central Committee
were initially skeptical of it. Ziva Galilis article,
Women and the Russian Revolution, explains
how several women within the Bolshevik
party worked hard to convince the Partys
male leaders, in particular V.I. Lenin, to direct
resources and energies to the organization of
women workers. The centerpiece of that effort
was the Bolshevik journal, Rabotniska. 36
History shows us that many women
in the Bolshevik Party played key roles in the
struggle for socialism. By 1907, 20% of the
Party leadership were women, and of the 20%,
more than 90% belonged to the Bolsheviks as
opposed to the Mensheviks. 37 One can even
say that the work many Bolshevikichiki put
into recruiting working class women led to
the growth of the Party itself. However, some

By 1907, 20% of the Party leadership were women, and of the 20%, more than 90%
belonged to the Bolsheviks as opposed to the Mensheviks
Bolshevik revolutionary, took a prominent
role in creating this journal. 34 Throughout
her life, Inessa was always attentive to the
poor conditions working class women were
subjected to because she herself came from
a poor working class background. Prior to
getting involved with the Bolsheviks, she did
charitable work for working class women
within feminist circles, and even organized
sex workers. Although she did tremendous
work to build the Party, to some, Inessa was
simply known as Lenins close friend. 35 But
the fact is, she was instrumental in making the
Party focus more on womens struggles. Her
idea to create a womens newspaper received
critics of communism, as well as feminists,
view the pro-woman stance of the Party as
simply a ploy to mobilize support for the
revolutionary regime. 38 While the Party didnt
explicitly declare that they were feminists,
many women within it did genuinely aim to
improve the conditions of women, and for
them, their emancipation correlated with
class struggle and liberation from capitalist
exploitation. For these reasons, some historians
refer to the entire 1905-1914 period as the time
of the proletarian womens movement. 39
Essentially, the ways in which
revolutionary women organized themselves
was ground-breaking. It was truly an avant-

33. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. P. 68-81
34. Elwood, Ralph C.Inessa Armand: Revolutionary and Feminist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. P. 105
35. Ibid.
36. Galili, Ziva. Women and the Russian Revolution.Dialectical Anthropology15, no. 2/3 (1990): P. 121
37. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. P.66
38. Galili, Ziva. Women and the Russian Revolution.Dialectical Anthropology15, no. 2/3 (1990): P.123
39. Stites, Richard.The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism 1860-1930. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 1978. P. 269

47
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
garde movement, and different from many of
the influential womens movements occurring
in other places at the time. Revolutionary
women in Russia were taking leadership roles
in trade unions, becoming head organizers
for committees within the Bolshevik party,
and writing innovative Marxist literature.
Some revolutionary women were even taking
part in armed struggle. Accordingly, these
women often found themselves leading mass
movements, which was radical for a time
when women throughout different regions of
the world were not even considered to be full
citizens. Most importantly, the womens fight for
emancipation during the Russian Revolution
led to material and systemic changes for
working-class women a development that
was yet to occur anywhere else.
After 1917, womens emancipation was
still on the Bolshevik agenda. The improvement
to womens conditions was arguably in
and of itself one of the most revolutionary
transformations in the world. In 1920, Lenin
stated in Pravda that the Soviet government
is the first and only government in the world
to have completely abolished all the old,
despicable bourgeois laws which placed women
in a position of inferiority to men, which
placed men in a privileged position. 40 When
the Bolshevik government took power, they
implemented legislation that guaranteed the
right of women to directly participate in social
and political activity. 41 Thus, they eradicated
institutional barriers that prohibited women
from engaging in politics. Only six weeks after
the revolution, civil marriage was introduced
to Soviet Russia. 42 One year after this, in
November 1918, Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa
Armand organized the first conference of
40. Lenin, V.I.To the Working Women (Pravda, No. 40. Feb. 21st 1920). Found in The Emancipation of Women: From the writings of V.I. Lenin. New
York: International Publishers, 2011. P. 78
41. Ibid. P. 317-346
42. For improvements to womens conditions see: Engel, Barbara A.Women in Russia 1700-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
P. 120-143
43. Ibid. P. 143
44. Ibid. P. 145
45. Kollontai, Alexandra. Communism and Family.Komunistka(1920).
48
working women, which over a thousand women
participated in. 43 Eventually, this conference
led to a variety of other changes in the country.
There was a new civil code on marriage,
which recognized equal legal status between
husband and wife. In addition, the discrepancy
between legitimate and illegitimate children
was eliminated. Regulations around divorce
were also minimized, making it much easier
to go through the process. In January 1918, the
Bolsheviks officially founded the department
for the protection of maternity and youth.
This department supported pregnant working
class women and new mothers by ensuring
a paid 16-week leave from work and setting
firm safety regulations at workplaces. The
Bolsheviks also created maternity clinics,
which helped women raise their children. In
the years following, the Soviet Union became
the first country in the world to legalize
abortion. Sex work was decriminalized in
1922. Sexual education programs were more
openly available to youth, and there were
health clinics that specifically treated sexually
transmitted infections. As time went by, there
was less stigma around sexual relations outside
of wedlock. The Bolsheviks also created strong
laws against sexual assault. Rape was finally
defined as non-consensual sexual intercourse
using either physical or psychological force. 44
One of the fundamental ways in which
the Bolsheviks successfully transformed the
lives of women was through changes they made
to the traditional family structure. In 1920,
Kollontai wrote an article called, Communism
and the Family, which went as far as calling
for free love and questioning the traditional
family structure. 45 She argues that housework
ceases to be a necessity under communism. She
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

Alexandra Kollontai (centre) with female deputies at the Conference of Communist Women of the Peoples of the East. (c. 1920) [Public Domain]

called for the creation of public restaurants and Furthermore, to bring more non-
communal kitchens, and thought that children politicized women towards socialism, the
should primarily be supervised by experienced Bolsheviks formed the Zhenotdel in 1919,
educators through public child care facilities an apparatus within the Party that focused
and maternity homes. Above all, she believed on womens issues. 46 Kollontai and Armand
in the withering away of the traditional family became the directors of this womens
household, which she thought chained women organization, while others, such as Klavdiia
to oppressive reproductive labour. Though her Nikolaeva, Konkordiia Samoilova and
perspective on the emancipation of women Nadezhda Krupskaya, also helped launch
was respected and publicized through womens it. The Zhenotdel was open to any women
circles, Kollontai didnt manage to influence interested, not just Party members, and it
the Bolsheviks as much as she wanted to. encouraged young women to think about their
Nonetheless, the Bolsheviks still created more struggles for full emancipation. Accordingly,
schools, kindergartens, day-cares, playgrounds, education and consciousness-raising were
and public gardens, which helped working- key programs of the Zhenotdel. 47 Krupskaya
class mothers by minimizing their work in played yet another major role in the revolution
the household. Because of her astounding by leading education programs initiated by
commitment to the development of socialism the Zhenotdel. Eventually, she helped initiate
in the Soviet Union, Kollontai eventually 30,000 adult education classes for factory
became the first ever woman ambassador. workers and peasants across the Soviet Union. 48

46. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. P. 262-267
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid. P. 215

49
 WOMEN & THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
The Zhenotdel also published pamphlets and
launched the Soviet journal, Kommunistka. In
general, women in the Bolshevik party wanted
every working-class woman to understand that
the victory of socialism is turning the women
worker, like the man, into the conscious creator
of her own life. 49 Within a short period,
membership in the Zhenotdel grew. By 1922,
there were 95,000 delegates, out of whom
24.2% were working class women, 58.5% were
peasant women, 9.4% were office workers, and
7.7% were housewives. 50 Thus, the Party itself
grew and attained 30,434 women members by
1924. 51
As time went by, certain obstacles halted
some of the developments that were being
made. While the Soviet Union progressed
in many ways, leaving even Western powers
shocked by all the changes made to womens
status in Russia, there were still many setbacks
because of the Civil War and imperialist
interventions in Russiaall in which put
heavy strains on the country and slowed down
the revolutionary progress that was taking
place. For instance, the Civil War led to mass
unemployment, leaving many women without
work. 52 Thanks to the Zhenotdel, vocational
training courses were arranged for women,
and more jobs were created for them. 53 The
Zhenotdel also provided women, particularly
single mothers, with housing benefits. 54 It
became clear that despite these hardships,
working class womens needs were still
being taken seriously by the Bolsheviks, who
continued to fight for socialism while half the
world tried to stop them.
Overall, women contributed immensely
to building socialism in Russia. Even though
bourgeois historians dont often associate the
49. Clements, Barbara E.Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. P. 211
50. Kozlova, Natalia.Solving the woman question: the case of Zhenotdels in Tver province. Found in Book: Women and Transformation in
Russia. New York: Routledge, 2014. P. 100
51. Ibid.
52. Kozlova, Natalia. Solving the woman question: the case of Zhenotdels in Tver province. Found in Book: Women and Transformation in Russia.
New York: Routledge, 2014. P.99
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
50
Russian Revolution with the many militant
women who led and started up some of the
first mass protests in 1917, it is important for us,
as revolutionaries of this generation, to honor
the crucial role women played in both building
the revolution and shaping the politics of
the Soviet Union in the years following. We
must remember that womens participation
and leadership in the labour movement and
workers circles during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries strengthened both the
working class struggle and the movement for
womens emancipation. We must remember
that revolutionary women were the ones
who organized an anti-war labour strike
on International Womens Day a strike
that became the initial outburst of the 1917
revolution.
Likewise, it would be profoundly
incorrect to argue that Bolsheviks solely paid
attention to issues pertaining to working-class
men. Not only does this erase the tremendous
amount of work revolutionary women took in
developing a strong Party line on the question of
womens oppression, but also it erases the work
many Bolshevik women put in towards their
own emancipation. These women dedicated
their lives to both socialism and womens rights.
While the Soviet Union was not perfect and
more certainly could have been done, as Lenin
states, a revolution can take one step forward
and two steps back. Even though the struggle
for womens emancipation was not close to
being over, the accomplishments that did
occur in the Soviet Union were revolutionary
and historic. n
 ARTICLE

Openly gay Russian Foreign Minister Chicherin (left) and Russian Ambassador Krestinsky (right) before a Visit to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. (1 September 1925) [Public Domain]

THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION &

LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
Adrien Welsh

T
he achievements of the October Revolution was considered an illness by the World Health
are numerous. People often cite abortion Organization. In Canada, it took until 1969
rights, free healthcare and education, for Pierre Elliott Trudeaus government to
or agrarian reform with regard to the Soviet decriminalize homosexuality through an
Union. Rarely do people think about LGBTQ+ Omnibus Bill. Before this time, homosexuality
rights. However, in post-1917 Russia, many was liable to prosecution and criminal
gains were made in this respect, gains which convictions, which forced LGBTQ+ people to
were advanced for the time, but also for many live underground.
decades afterwards. In 1968, Radio-Canada presented the
Indeed, up until 1992, homosexuality program Dossier where, for the first time in
the country, gays and lesbians were brought to
express themselves publicly. A few days after the
Adrien Welsh is the leader of the YOUNG COMMUNIST airing of this program, one of the interviewed
LEAGUE.

51
 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
people, Jeanine Mahs, was stopped, convicted,
and incarcerated. She was not allowed to see
her daughter for fifteen years.
This is one example of the repression
that affected several generations. Despite the
adoption of the Omnibus Bill, it remains that,
even though homosexualitywas decriminalized,
repression against LGBTQ+ people continues.
From the outset, in promoting the 1969 bill,
Trudeau defended himself as not authorizing
homosexuality, but simply stopping the
authorities from meddling in peoples private
lives. A grey area remains when it comes to
the public opinion on homosexuality, which
continues to be vilified by the Church and
regarded in medicine as an illness to be attacked
with a lobotomy operation.
In the 1970s, police raids on gay bars
and meeting places were common. There was
constant pressure on LGBTQ+ groups and
associations. For example, the Gay Liberation
Thousands of gay and trans people married in the 1920s, some of them holding
positions of high responsibility...
Front, founded in 1971 in Canada, lasted only
one year due to constant police repression.
In 1977, the Montreal police, armed and
armoured, raided the TruXX bar under orders
from Mayor Drapeau, arresting 145 people.
The first Pride marches in Canada took
place in 1981, after Toronto police raided bars
and gay saunas, inciting a movement that
mobilized solidarity with LGBTQ+ people. It
was these mobilizations which, among other
things, allowed a few gains that gradually led to
the legalization of same-sex marriage on July
20th, 2005.
In post-revolutionary Russia in the
1920s, gay marriage was legal, political rights
were guaranteed for LGBTQ+ people, and
changing of the sex marker was allowed on
passports and other ID. In addition, several
studies on homosexuality were funded by the
state.
Far from being a series of idiosyncrasies,
it was a conscious and deliberate policy. Grigori
52
Batkis, director of the Moscow Institute for
Social Hygiene, stated in 1923:
Soviet legislation is based on the following
principle: absolute non-interference of the state
and society in sexual matters. [] This means
that, in the case of homosexuality, sodomy or
other forms of sexual gratification, considered
offensive to public ethics by European legislation,
are treated as normal sexual relations by
Soviet legislation. Only in the case of violence
or coercion, as in any case of aggression or
violation of the rights of another person, are
legal proceedings instituted.
Two years later, in 1925, homosexuality was
considered perfectly natural and to be
respected socially and legally.
In fact, thousands of gay and trans
people married in the 1920s, some of them
holding positions of high responsibility,
including Georgi Chicherin, the Peoples
Commissar for Foreign Affairs who openly
declared his homosexuality.
Even if a few years later the advances
in LGBTQ+ rights in the USSR suffered a
considerable reversal, the fact remains that
the gains obtained following the October
Revolution are not simply due to a quirk of
history. On the contrary, if, in 1920, Soviet
Russia adopted policies which might in some
respects be considered advanced even today, it
is primarily because in its essence the Socialist
Revolution implies the overthrow of all
bourgeois institutions, including what capitalist
society conceives as the normal family.
Does this mean that the transformation
takes place automatically after the seizure
of power by the proletariat? We know today
that it does not. Even after the triumph of
socialism, the struggle for the emancipation
of women, members of an oppressed gender,
racialized persons and people of various sexual
 THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION & LGBTQ+ RIGHTS
orientations continues, and it is important
to mobilize and raise awareness among the
masses about this.
While it is true that several errors with
respect to LGBTQ+ rights were committed
by communist governments, but also by the
communist movement in general, sometimes
seeing it as a deviation from the ultimate goal
of the struggle, sometimes as a bourgeois
perversion in society, the fact remains that the
Communists have played and continue to play
an important role in the struggle for equality
and the emancipation of LGBTQ+ people. It
is no coincidence that Harry Hay, considered
one of the fathers of the LGBTQ+ liberation
movement and founder of the Mattachine
Society, was a member of the Communist Party
of the United States. Nor is it a coincidence
that Mark Ashton, the founder of the group
Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, was
the general secretary of the Young Communist
League of Great Britain. Nor is it a coincidence
that today, Mariela Castro Espin of Cuba is
one of the strongest voices of the LGBTQ+
53
movement.
Today, we see the struggle for LGBTQ+
rights as part of the struggle for socialism,
just as is any struggle for the advancement
of democratic rights. While it is true that
socialism does not automatically lead to the
total liberation of LGBTQ+ people, still it is
this transitional system to a classless society,
the communist society, that allows LGBTQ+
movements to fully develop their potential.
By contrast, capitalist society, rooted in
exploitation, enthusiastically pushes such
divisions based on gender, sexual orientation,
or skin colour. Refusing to bind the struggle for
the full equality of LGBTQ+ people, especially
in the current era, is giving a weapon to the
bourgeoisie and imperialism. To refuse to link
these different democratic struggles and take
advantage of their potential is to undermine
the necessary unity of the masses necessary
to build socialism, since the great majority
of LGBTQ+ people share the interests of the
working class and the masses. n
Mariela Castro Espin celebrating Pride in Havana. [Public Domain]
 ARTICLE

Wind power stations provide main and emergency power to areas located far from power lines. Solnechnogorsk region, Moscow Oblast, Russia.
(2005) | Ruslan Krivobok [Creative Commons]

THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY
OF WIND ENERGY & OIL IN
T H E U S S R & I N P O S T- S O V I E T
RUSSIA
Dennis Bartels

I
n 1920, Lenin spearheaded the establishment
of the State Electrification Commission
(GOELRO), and elaborated a ten-year plan
for the electrification of the USSR. Lenins
slogan, Communism is Soviet power plus
electrification, is well-known. What is largely
unknown, however, is that the GOELRO plan
Dennis Bartels is active in the renewable energy
community in Ontario.
included a significant wind energy component.
A 1925 poster shows Lenin with a hydroelectric
dam, electric power lines, and a wind turbine.
Among Lenins last letters [before his death in
1924] are correspondence with engineer P.A.
Kozmin in which the feasibility of using wind
turbines for the electrification of villages is
discussed (Patel 2013).

54
 THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF WIND ENERGY & OIL IN THE USSR & IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA

According to a 1931 Soviet elementary school 2007).

primer, entitled New Russias Primer: The
Story of the Five-Year Plan, wind turbines
for production of electric power were tested
at Moscows Central Aero-Hydrodynamic
Institute (TsAGI). The primers description of
Soviet plans for wind power is notable:
If we build windmills throughout the
country, we would capture more energy than the
whole world requires today. In time, of course,
the need will greatly increase. Then wherever
strong winds blow windmills will be established.
The entire country will be covered with a net
of electrical wires. And all electric stations, as
well as others, will work in this net. Windmills
will be placed in regular order like figures on a
chessboard. Special stations will be constructed
to collect and conserve the energy of the wind in
order that it may be used during calm weather.
But all this is a task of future Five-Year
Soviet plans for wind power were not
just theoretical. Thousands of multi-bladed,
small windmills, mainly for pumping water
and farm work (e.g., fodder grinding) were
produced and then deployed in rural areas by
the end of the 1930s (Badelin 2007). A high-
speed windmill was designed to produce
power at Arctic weather stations. From 1931 to
1942, an industrial-scale wind turbine with a
30 metre, 3-bladed rotor was connected to the
local electric power grid near Yalta (Elistratov
2014).
GOELRO planners and engineers were
aware that wind energy sources are intermittent,
and that energy storage would be necessary. In
1929, a wind energy storage system, designed
by Vladimir Vetchinkin, was built at Kursk.
Energy was stored in a 350 kg flywheel that was
contained in a vacuum.
Soviet wind power experiments were

Soviet plans for wind power were not just theoretical. Thousands of multi-bladed,
small windmills, mainly for pumping water and farm work [...] were produced and
deployed in rural area by the end of the 1930s.
Plans. The present plan sets the following task: curtailed by the Great Patriotic War/WWII. In
to replace the old inefficient village windmills the late 1930s, a 1000-kW turbine was designed
with the windmills of [TsAGI]. And during these and approved, but construction did not proceed
five years to raise the strength of all our wind after the Nazi invasion in 1941 (Elistratov 2014).
motors to 500 thousand horsepower (Ilin 1931: The wind turbine near Yalta was destroyed in
34-35). 1942 when Nazi forces occupied the Crimea.
Kursk was near the site of the largest tank battle
The primer mentioned above was translated in history in 1943. Presumably, this terminated
into English by members of the Teachers the operation of the flywheel energy storage
College of Columbia University of Columbia system.
University, and published in New York by Interestingly, the Nazi invasion which
Houghton Mifflin (Ilin 1931). At that time, largely destroyed early Soviet industrial-scale
many leftists in the West contrasted rapid wind power experiments had roots that are
industrialization and economic growth in the related to Exxon`s suppression of evidence
USSR with capitalist depression/crisis (e.g., see regarding greenhouse gas emissions and
Johnson 1940). global warming, and to Exxon`s subsequent
In 1935, wind energy research at TsAGI propagation of climate science denial. The
was transferred to the newly-established Baku oil fields in Soviet Azerbaijan were the
Central Wind Energy Institute. It produced an major objective of the Nazi conquest of Crimea.
atlas of Russian wind energy resources (Badelin The Nobel family were major owners of the

55
 THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF WIND ENERGY & OIL IN THE USSR & IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA
Baku fields before they were nationalized by
the Soviets in 1920. Anticipating an overthrow
of the Soviet state, Standard Oil of New
Jersey bought Nobel`s shares in the Baku
fields for $6.5 million shortly after they were
nationalized. The negotiator for Standard
Oil was Walter Teagle, who became a notable
Nazi sympathizer (Higham 1983). His pro-
Nazi activities may have been aimed, in part,
at actualizing Standard Oils stake in the Baku
fields after the Nazi conquest (Yergin 1992).
(The failed Nazi thrust toward the Baku fields
set the stage for the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad).
Standard Oil was the predecessor of Exxon
which concluded, after extensive research
during the 1970s, that the carbon emissions
from combustion of fossil fuels, were a major
cause of global warming. Exxon covered up
this conclusion and spent millions of dollars
propagating climate science denial (Banerjee
2015; Oreskes and Conway 2014).
During the post-war period, the Soviet
state produced more than 40 thousand
windmills for cooperative and state farms.
Several industrial-scale turbines were
produced, culminating in the Raduga 1 during
the 1980s (Elistratov 2014).
As economic dependence on fossil fuel exports
increased in the post-war USSR, and, later,
in post-Soviet Russia, interest in wind power
development declined. A 1999 proposal to
greatly expand wind power in Russia was
stopped by the Yeltsin regime (Eliastratov
2014).
It is only recently that there has been a
significant revival of interest in wind energy in
Russia. Alexey Lossan writes,
The government of Yakutia, is building a
[1-MW capacity] wind farm with the Japanese
[firm] Komai Haltec Inc .
The Russian Energy Ministry and the State
Grid Corporation of China are currently
studying the prospects of building a wind farm
in the Far Easts north. The project includes
the transference of electricity along ultra-high
56
voltage power lines to [heavily polluted coastal
areas of China immediately north of Russias Far
East] (2016).
The Russian Republic of Karelia, in partnership
with the Chinese energy company, Sinomec,
will build Russias first offshore wind power
complex in the White Sea (Wind Power
Monthly, 19 January 2017).
Rusnano, a state-owned firm which
mobilizes venture capital, plans to begin
production of wind turbines (Wind Power
Monthly, 7 Feb., 2017).
Rosatom, the Russian state-controlled
nuclear energy company, is rapidly expanding
into wind energy as part of a state-supported
initiative to increase clean energy capacity in
2018-2020 (https://renewablesnow.com/. 11
July 1917).
After the Bolshevik Revolution, there
was no privately-owned national electricity
grid, and there was no privately-owned wind
turbine/windmill industry which could
be nationalized. Instead, the Soviet state
mobilized resources to build a national grid and
to produce modern wind turbines and wind
mills, all of which were unambiguously state-
owned. In contrast, the Baku oil fields and their
oil extraction and distribution equipment were
privately-owned before the 1917 Revolution,
and subsequently nationalized by the Soviet
state. The wind power projects now operating or
under development in Russia have a significant
component of private ownership. The fossil
fuel industry in contemporary Russia is
characterized by a mixture of state and private
ownership (Goldmann 2008; Gustavson 2012).
The degree to which Russia will
transition away from fossil fuels toward clean
energy, especially wind power, will significantly
affect fossil-fuelled climate disruption. n
 THE POLITICAL-ECONOMY OF WIND ENERGY & OIL IN THE USSR & IN POST-SOVIET RUSSIA

Two Soviet citizens examine a light bulb during electrification. Lenins Lamp (1925) | Arkady Shaikhet [Public Domain]

REFERENCES
Badelin, Alexander. 2007. Large-Scale Integration of Wind Power in Russian Power Supply: analysis, issues, strategy. Kassel: Kassel
University Press GmbH.

Banerjee, Neela, John H. Cushman, Jr, David Hasemyer, and Lisa Song. 2015. Exxon: the Road Not Taken. Inside Climate News,
Brooklyn, NY.

Elistratov, V. 2014. The Development of the Wind Power Industry in Russia. Pp. 443-453 in Wind Power for the World: International
Reviews and Developments, vol. 3. Preben Maegaard, Anna Krenz, and Wolfgang Palz, eds. Boca Raton, FLA: CRC Press.

Goldmann, Marshall. 2008. Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia. Oxford University Press.

Gustavson, Thane. 2012. Wheel of Fortune. Boston: Harvard University Press.

Hau, Erich. 2006. Wind Turbines, Fundamentals, Technologies, Applications, Economics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

Higham, Charles. 1983. Trading with the Enemy. NY: Dell.

Ilin, N.P. 1931. New Russias Primer: The Story of the Five-Year Plan. NY: Houghton Mifflin Co. Trans. By G. Counts and N. Lodge.

Johnson, Hewlett (Dean of Canterbury). 1940. The Soviet Power. NY: International Publishers.
Lossan, Alexey. 2016. Russia and China Join Forces to Develop Green Energy. Diplomatic Courier (6 Sept.).

Oreskes, Naomi and Erik M. Conway. 2014. Merchants of Doubt. NY: Bloomsbury Press.

Patel, Sonal. 2013. The Russian Power Revolution. Power, official publication of Electric Power. (www.//powermag.com) 01/01/2013).

Yergin, Daniel. 1992. The Prize. NY: Simon and Schuster.

57
 EDITORIAL
THE WORKING CLASS &
SOVIET STATE POWER
Danny Goldstick
B
y 1815 revolutionary France had a king
again, and not just a king, but the official
Bourbon successor of the beheaded Louis
XVI. Naturally, republicans were distraught.
But in fact, historically, a page had been turned.
The unfolding nineteenth century had a few
more revolutions and counterrevolutions in
store for France, yet when the dust settled, the
country unquestionably had become capitalist.
One disanalogy with post-Soviet
Russia is that there the prerevolutionary social
system capitalism is unquestionably back
in the saddle, though the Russian capitalists
Danny Goldstick is the editor of The Spark!
58
The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917. [Public Domain]
appear still unsure enough of the permanent
stability of what they have that they keep
on moving massive amounts of their wealth
abroad. It is uncontroversial that they mainly
got their wealth by stealing. The question, then,
naturally comes up, how were they able to get
away with it?
Certainly there were very serious
problems in the management of the Soviet
economy. Anybody who spent any time in that
country will tell you it was a land of barter.
Spices, theatre tickets, but not only consumer
products. There was, for sure, an Economic
Plan. Say factory A was supposed to get
 THE WORKING C LASS & SOVIET STATE POWER
x-number of ball bearings so as to produce its
own quota of widgets in a given year. Suppose
that something went wrong, and it didnt get
that many ball bearings on time. What could
be done? The factory could discontinue
production for a week, a month or more, and so
be sure not to fulfill its assigned output quota.
But, if the manager knew somebody who knew
somebody who happened to have extra ball
bearings and needed something that could be
traded for them, a useful deal could be set up.
This wasnt in the Plan, and it didnt necessarily
involve any profiteering surplus value but
it was certainly illegal. It went unreported,
with the result that Soviet central planners
eventually to a considerable extent lost track of
what was going on in their economy.
And, even if these unofficial transactions
didnt necessarily involve any profiteering, by
the late 1980s they certainly opened the door to
The working class in the former Soviet Union has now to rebuild its fighting capacity.
We havent heard the last of it yet.
profiteering. Managers became capitalists. Not
all managers, maybe not even the majority. And
not all Party officials, not even the majority.
But for Marxists the big question
remains, how did it come about that the working
class let all this happen? Certainly the working
people never voted for capitalism. The anti-
Soviet votes in Ukraine and the Baltic states
were based on nationalism. Yeltsins popular
vote in Russia stemmed from the idea that he
was the man who could get things done like
Gorbachov earlier, and Putin later.
Canadas Future Is Socialism!, the
program of the Communist Party, asserts that
the question why socialism was overturned,
and capitalism restored, after more than
seventy years... demands the most searching
thought and discussion, and that discussion is
far from over. These thoughts are meant as a
contribution to the discussion.
In 1913 Russia was the fifth industrial
power in the world, but, relative to the whole
59
gigantic country, the working class was small.
The Mensheviks said it was too small to take
over the country. Trotsky said it was too
small to rule without support from successful
workers revolutions in the West. Seventy years
of Soviet power prove that these ideas were
wrong. But that isnt to say there were no grave
problems in trying to build socialism under
such conditions.
As Canadas Future Is Socialism! puts it,
Pre-revolutionary Russia was a sprawling
but economically underdeveloped country. ...
Poverty and illiteracy were rampant. In the
days before even radio and inexpensive travel,
peasant villages were cut off geographically,
and farm labour involved little collectivity
beyond the farm family. To care for society as a
whole, Russian peasants, thus isolated, used to
look to the Czar as their governmental father
figure; and, when they lost faith in the Czar,
they found other great men to look to.
It has been estimated that maybe half
of the 1917 Russian working class were killed in
the Civil War which followed the Revolution.
Those in the remaining half were needed in
large numbers to fill administrative posts in
the economy, state and Party. The infant Soviet
state was beleaguered on all sides. To defend
itself, it needed to industrialize rapidly and
collectivize agriculture, leading to new civil
war in the countryside between poor peasants
and rich peasants. All this required utmost
united effort on the part of militant workers
and communists, not prolonged dissention
over high-level policy. Then there was the
Nazi invasion, which put the countrys very
existence at issue, and which took the lives of
a population greater than Canadas. And then
came the stress of post-war rebuilding and U.S.
nuclear blackmail.
Throughout these years, in spite of the
serious crimes, the Soviet state consistently
 THE WORKING C LASS & SOVIET STATE POWER

continued to serve the people, and over time
working people got used to having things
done for them, rather than by them. So, when
the turning point came at the end of the
eighties and later, they really did not know
what hit them until it was too late. Canadas
Future Is Socialism! explains, Genuine popular
governance with open criticism gave way to
bureaucracy and commandism. Over time, the
connection between the Party and the working
class and people as a whole suffered. Inner-
party democracy was also eroded, too often
replaced by careerism and opportunism inside
the Party.
Even the Party itself scarcely resisted
its own overthrow in Russia. At the base
level, it had become something more like an
honour-society than an instrument of peoples
governance.
The working class in the former Soviet
Union has now to rebuild its fighting capacity.
We havent heard the last of it yet. Through
many battles over the twentieth century, the
Soviet working class and people achieved what
we in Canada did not. And they suffered defeat
also.
The struggle still continues. n

" M A N S HA LL NE V E R FLY"
William Blum-- American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy--
in Killing Hope (2003).

The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of
socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope
that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the
twentieth century-- without exception-- has either been crushed, overthrown,
or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had
life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or
movement-- from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from
Communist China to the FMLN in Salvador-- not one was permitted to rise or fall
solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against
the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It's as
if the Wright Brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because
the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-
fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences,
nodded their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly:

N
'-- Man shall never fly.'"

60
 BOOK REVIEWS

Lenin reading with tea. [Public Domain]

BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN

REVOLUTION
A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES--
THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VERY UGLY
Roger Perkins

T
he occasion of the centenary of the Russian
Revolution has resulted in an intensified
ideological struggle on both sides of
the class divide. Although a hundred years
old, the explosive events of October 1917 still
resonate strongly, if not always consciously,
in the political practices of the present day.
Capitalist ruling classes want to erase all
favourable memory of October from public
Roger Perkins is a long-time activist and student of
global class struggle, living in Surrey, British Columbia.
consciousness. The Yeltsin regime in post-
Soviet Russia changed the name of Leningrad
back to its original tsarist name St. Petersburg.
In the Russia of Putin November 7 is no longer
a government-promoted legal holiday. In the
Ukraine all communist symbols and images
are banned by law. Statues of Marx, Engels and
Lenin are defaced and then destroyed. But,
ironically, some survive. They are sold off to
foreign buyers. As Lenin pointed out, greedy
capitalists will sell anything for a profit even

61
BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES

62
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
the rope that may some day hang them. But
a new radicalizing and questioning young
generation must be diverted into various dead
ends. First a trickle of misleading half-truths
(somewhat believable to the gullible) followed
by a flood of carefully crafted outright lies.
The promoted capitalist road even gives one
freedom of choice. A fork to the right or a
fork to the left you choose! But a dead end
remains a dead end, whether to the right or to
the left.
The revolutionary left, in contrast
believe To Tell the Truth Is Revolutionary.
The glowing coals of October must, if not
fanned into flames again, be used to ignite new
conflagrations. The lessons of October and the
extremely important contributions of Lenin
to revolutionary theory and practice must be
relearned and creatively applied if we are to
organize new Octobers not yet visible over
the horizon. These new Octobers may look
...the explosive events of October 1917 still resonate strongly, if not always
consciously, in the political practices of the present day. Capitalist ruling classes
want to erase all favourable memory of October from public consciousness.
quite different from the October of 1917 but
the essence would be the same. The working
class has taken power, the capitalist state has
been smashed and all kinds of possibilities
have opened up. The road to the future must,
of necessity, run also through the past. Thus
the capitalist ruling class and the working class
must do battle over the meaning of October
and utilize all available weapons one of which
is the published and promoted book.
There are hundreds of new and
reprinted titles on Lenin and the Russian
Revolution to coincide with the Centenary.
Most of the books are hardcore propaganda,
academic duds or vacuous twaddle poop.
A few, though, are exceptional and may
themselves become the classical reprints of
the future. Only a handful can be mentioned,
surveyed or reviewed here. Establishment
publishing houses have vomited up new
63
editions of old anti-communist warhorses
with new brain-dirtying introductions. A full
marked deck from Richard Pipes who served
as Ronald Reagans Soviet expert, to the very
anti-Leninist liberal Orlando Figes. A PEOPLES
TRAGEDY: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION CENTENARY EDITION
by Figes expresses revulsion at the idea of an
organized workers revolution, emphasizing
instead a revolution propelled forward by
mobs of lumpen types rampaging through the
streets destroying all in its path.
With a selling price of Cdn. $99.46, the
unsold copies may end up in a landfill. Give
this book its true use value pulp it to save
trees.
Some books are so slapdash that what is
presented as fact turns into a risible moment.
For instance one book that may have been
of interest shoots itself in the foot by stating
that it includes writings by participants and
observers of the October Revolution Lenin,
Marx, Trotsky. As far as can be determined
old Karl who died in 1883, was not present in
1917 either as a participant or as an observer
looking down from on high.
A very ugly book is THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION: A NEW HISTORY, by Sean McMeekin.
The New in the title means a new orgy of
hate against Bolshevism and all things Marxist.
McMeekin is a reactionary conservative, a
somewhat eccentric maverick but not quite
a loose cannon. He believes that Marxism
so dominates academia that very few history
books are free from its evil influence, even if
written by conservative anticommunists or
cold war liberals. Thus, his passionate goal is
to write scholarly tomes unblemished by the
Marxist virus. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A NEW
HISTORY may indeed be free from Marxism but
its intended scholarly nature has been severely
eroded. A notch up from the ramblings of a
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
one issue crank but also murderous in intent.
Echoing Churchills famous statement, we
should have strangled the baby in its crib,
McMeekin gives Kerensky some advice: why
didnt you kill the Bolsheviks when you had
a chance during the July Days! But how does
one classify a work which ignores social
forces, classes and imperialist capitalism, and
concludes by putting forth the thesis that the
revolution of 1917 was caused by some sort of
nebulous German conspiracy?
As for 2017, McMeekin sees reds under
the bed. Marxism is growing rapidly and not
dead (a view contrary to most socialism
doesnt work, end of history establishment
propagandists). Be eternally vigilant, he warns.
Like a bad Hollywood movie, the monster is
going to rise again. This eccentric professor
from tiny Bard College may turn out to be
much more prescient than his more prestigious
peers. In any case, if not pulped, this book
should be compressed into fireplace logs and
placed in the fire sale loony bin.
Sheila Fitzpatrick is a well-known
historian of Soviet society. Her 1982 book THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (Oxford University Press)
has gone through a number of reprints and
revisions, including a new one for the 2017
anniversary. Fitzpatrick states that her views
were always cool about workers revolution
and its not in my nature to come out as a
revolutionary enthusiast. Nevertheless the
previously mentioned professor McMeekin
always and unjustly attacks her writings as
Marxist. Fitzpatrick however classifies herself
not a Marxist but a social historian. Right or
wrong her many books do sometimes have
insight and are vastly superior to the lies and
trash about October, Lenin and the Soviet
Union thrown at us.
REVOLUTION! SAYINGS OF VLADIMIR LENIN -
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2017.
This hundred-plus-page book is not the
Lenin equivalent of the famous little red book
QUOTATIONS OF CHAIRMAN MAO. Its format is much
larger and facing each page with a single Lenin
64
quote is a very beautiful colour reproduction
of a revolutionary poster, painting, or other art
work, with the occasional exception of a period
photo. A very good-looking and desirable book
indeed. But appearance is not always the same
as essence. Although most of the quotes chosen
are good ones, many excellent quotes were
overlooked, and some obviously selected and
arranged with nefarious intent. For example, a
group of quotations are arranged one after the
other and all try to portray Lenin as a violent
blood thirsty terrorist. Some of these are
indeed valid Lenin quotations but yanked out
of context. All Lenin was really saying was that
civil wars following a revolution are violent
events. A new revolutionary government has
the right to counter white terror with red terror.
White officers who order atrocities will be shot.
But some quotes dont seem Lenin-
like at all, thus necessitating the reviewer to
investigate. The introduction warns that there
are many unverified and dubious quotations
attributed to Lenin circulating on the internet
BUT this little volume is culled from the
vast 45 volume work THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
V.I. LENIN. If only this were true. Unfortunately
some quotes did not come from Lenins
COLLECTED WORKS. One George Legett produces
an alleged Lenin quote from his book THE CHEKA:
LENINS POLITICAL POLICE. THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE: THE
KGB IN EUROPE AND THE WEST manufactures more.
Another quote comes from the U.S. Library of
Congress, Russian Archives. Still another oozes
out of the pages of THE FLIGHT OF THE ROMANOVS:
A FAMILY SAGA by J.C. Perry and Constintin
Pleshakov. By utilizing these dubious sources
the Bodelian Library has seriously undermined
its otherwise positive publication. We ask this
question: was right-wing pressure applied to
include additional quotes not in THE COLLECTED
WORKS? Whatever the cause of this atrocity,
REVOLUTION! SAYINGS OF VLADIMIR LENIN can now only
be given a weak, visibly twitching, not quite
vertical thumbs up the art work is good.
Another quote book is MARX ENGELS
LENIN TROTSKY: GENOCIDE QUOTES: THE HIDDEN HISTORY
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
OF COMMUNISMS FOUNDING TYRANTS (2016) by one
James Demeo who claims to have a Ph.D.
(what university?) and was a former university
professor (what university?) -- no special
details given. So why stop to take a second
look. Well, for one, the book was intentionally
aimed at the 2017 window of interest. And two,
Demeos previous book was titled THE ORGONE
ACCUMULATION HANDBOOK WITH CONSTRUCTION PLANS
which indicates the author is a follower of the
tragic German Freudian-Marxist psychologist
Wilhelm Reich. Reich was the only person to
be expelled, for different reasons, from both
the Communist Party and the International
Psychoanalytical Association at virtually the
same time. His early work had some merit: THE
MASS PSYCHOLOGY OF FASCISM and SEX-POL: ESSAYS ON
SEXUAL POLITICS. But after he fled to the United
the capitalist ruling class and the working class must do battle over the meaning
of October and utilize all available weapons-- one of which is the published and
promoted book.
States to escape Nazi Germany his views
took on a more pronounced weirdness. His
cognition of reality suffered severe perception
problems. He claimed to have discovered
some sort of healing life force energy (he could
even see it) pervading the universe which he
called the orgone. He built a large box that
could concentrate this super energy, had
patients step inside and when they emerged all
ills even cancer -- would be cured. Reich was
arrested for medical fraud, imprisoned and
died ranting about a communist conspiracy
to impede his work.
Whether selling do-it-yourself
orgone accumulator plans or selling the anti-
communist GENOCIDE QUOTES, the charlatan
Demeo is not worth your time.
THE CATASTROPHE: KERENSKYS OWN STORY OF
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Aleksandr Kerensky
(originally published in 1927, now reprinted in
2016 by Gyan).
Kerensky was associated with the Social
Revolutionary Party, a party that was influenced
65
by Marxism but not Marxist the dominant
influence being left agrarian populism. After
the Tsar was overthrown Kerensky became
Minister of Justice and then Minister of War.
After the July Days of 1917 he held the position
of Prime Minister and then appointed himself
Supreme Commander in Chief. Kerensky was
applauded at first but his popularity declined
like a stone in freefall when workers, peasants
and soldiers realized they had been deceived.
The promised land distribution was put off
until some day in the future. Russia did not
withdraw from the imperialist slaughter of
World War I. Kerensky instead intensified
the war effort, hoping for eventual Victory.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers deserted,
many taking their weapons with them.
Bolshevik support and prestige rose rapidly as
the slogans Peace, Land, Bread and All power
to the soviets were welcomed like a breath of
fresh oxygen. In October 1917 (November 7
new calendar) Kerenskys government was
brought to an end. Lenin became the leader of
a new Soviet Russia. Kerensky went into exile
to the United States where he was employed by
the anti-communist Hoover Institution. The
book he then wrote uses the word CATASTROPHE
to describe the above events. But to millions
of Russians and millions of others around the
world the Russian Revolution was the most
wonderful and inspiring event in human
history.
This reviewer attended a public lecture
given by Kerensky at the University of British
Columbia sometime in the 1960s and was
surprised that Kerensky still considered
himself to be a socialist revolutionary -- it was
the Bolsheviks who betrayed the revolution.
His speech included much left verbiage
imperialism, bourgeoisie, etc. but Kerensky
always did have a talent for talking left while
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
walking (sometimes running) to the right. He
died in 1970 at the old age of 89. If only Lenin
(dead at 53) could have lived as long!
One new book about Lenin, and of the
what if genre, is LENIN LIVES: REIMAGINING THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Philip Cunliffe Zero
Books 2017. It raises the question: what if.
Lenin had lived long enough to see the global
spread of the Russian Revolution to Western
Europe and the USA? The answer given is
that socialist revolution in the most advanced
economies would usher in the era of global
peace, progress and prosperity. Right on! That
is the answer we expected and wanted to hear.
But speculation is one thing, actual reality is
another. What the author sets out to describe
is precisely WHAT DID NOT HAPPEN. The
key German Revolution, almost successful, was
defeated and European revolutionary upsurges
retreated. Instead the world revolutionary
process shifted elsewhere; it unwound from
the wrong end and instead travelled to less
economically developed countries China,
Vietnam, Cuba, and even reversed itself. The
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no
longer to be found on any up-to-date map of
the world. So what is and what ought to be
is a contradiction that must be very carefully
looked at.
Marxists are reluctant to describe
possible futures in any detail, even sketchy
outlines can prove to be blurry. This is so
because the contingencies of dialectical,
historical processes can and do affect possibility
becoming a reality. Even with Lenins steady,
wise hand on the tiller, chaotic rapids (with
hidden rocks), whirlpools, strong currents and
violent storms could throw the revolutionary
boat off its intended course. It might not dock
at author Cunliffes envisioned future. Perhaps
Lenin would have steered it to an even better
place, or perhaps not.
The words perhaps, maybe and
the expressions what if and if only and
subjunctive verbs enable the future to exist
within the present. If idealization of the future
66
can provide inspiration in the present for
tired revolutionary souls needing a recharged
revolutionary practice, then we have no choice
but to shout, along with the author long live
utopia.
BLOODSTAINED: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENINIST
COUNTERREVOLUTION -- AK Press -- 2017 -250pp.
The Anarchist Publisher AK Press
describes BLOODSTAINED on its website as follows:
On the centenary of the 1917 Russian
Revolution, paeans to the conquering Bolsheviks
will be sung. BLOODSTAINED highlights the darker
echoes coming from that event, with a mixture of
classic and new essays that expose a murderous
dictatorship as it developed, paving the way
for Stalin, Mao, Castro, and others to slaughter
and starve their opponents. The defense of this
criminal enterprise, later categorized as actually
existing socialism ends here. No more velvet-
gloved hagiography. No more Lenins.
The same description on some alt-right (read
Fascist) website would raise few eyebrows and
would probably garner a number of orders
from those who actually have the ability to read
books. How does one explain this conjunction
of anarchism on the left and the fascistic right.
That they both intensely hate Lenin and have
a common enemy is obvious. Are they just flip
sides of the same coin? Or have some strains
of mutated hypertrophied Anarchism become
so far out of time and so lost in space and so
disorientated that they have wandered to the
other side of the barricade? It is they who are
counter-revolutionary, and not Lenin. Most
unfortunately while a wounded bourgeoisie
staggers about, and flails wildly in the futile
hope of landing a lucky knockout punch to the
chin, its tag-team partners, the anti-Leninist
anarchists prefer dirty left jabs below the belt.
Usually looked-up-to Simon Fraser University
professor Mark Leier has joined them by
supplying an essay to this collection of smelly
anti-Leninist tirades. Leier, who in the past
has called for closer collaboration between
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
anarchists and Marxists against the common
enemy, obviously hesitates to extend the wish
to Leninists. Let us hope that reality forces him
to reverse himself at some future date.
AK Press has done a disservice to
the coming revolutionary possibilities by
dredging up this discordant, divisive, sectarian
fulmination against Leninism. The young
generation needs to discover Lenin afresh. A
new generation of Lenin haters will only bring
fascism closer and socialist revolution farther
away.
NO LESS THAN MYSTIC: A HISTORY OF LENIN
AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION FOR A 21ST-CENTURY
LEFT by John Medhurst-- Repeater Publishers
2017 while very similar in aim as the AK Press
book (Lenin and Bolsheviks = bad), Medhurst
takes a different tack. After establishing his
anti-Leninist credentials, he then devotes
an inordinate, excessive and voluminous
amount of space to the policies and actions of
opponents to Bolshevism the Mensheviks,
Socialist Revolutionaries, the Jewish Bundists,
67
Red guard unit of the Vulkan factory in Petrograd. (1917) [Public Domain]
the Workers Opposition faction inside the
Bolshevik Party, and of course the Anarchists.
The author identifies with the likes of Julius
Martov, Victor Chernov, and Nestor Makhno.
The book informs us that today we
should look to the Zapatistas, the Kurds, the
Argentinian Recovered Factories movement,
the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, the
intersectional feminists and so on, ad infinitum.
Anywhere and everywhere but to Lenin and
Leninism.
Leninists do take note of the above
movements, pointing out their positive and
negative aspects, absorbing what is useful and
strongly rejecting what is harmful. We often
find ourselves side by side fighting a common
enemy. But a left that only flies the continuous
loops of an anti-capitalist holding-pattern
will never land the plane, although it may
crash when its fuel runs out. Lenins great
genious and insight was knowing when, where
and how to land the plane. In addition loosey-
goosey utopian disorganizations obsessed
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
with authoritarianism and strong leaders
only dissipate the steam of revolution. What
socialists need is some sort of disciplined,
central coordinating body (call it a Party, or
something else if you wish). Capitalism does not
just collapse; it must be consciously brought
down. NO LESS THAN MYSTIC seeks reforms that
allow people to live in safe niches or cracks
inside capitalism while awaiting its collapse. It
does not project a valid strategy to bring the
system down.
Another book that slights Lenin is
Leon Trotskys HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION,
reprinted by Penguin for 2017. Trotsky was by
far the most vainglorious, egotistical, conceited
and arrogant revolutionary figure in history.
This extreme character defect could only
result in Trotsky inflating his own role and
shrinking that of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. So
much so that even one of his followers, Tony
Cliff founder of the International Socialists had
to criticize Trotsky by stating that THE HISTORY
OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION has a serious defect.
And what is this serious defect? According to
Cliff: The one thing noticeably missing is the
Bolshevik Party: its rank and file, its cadres,
its local committees, its central committee.
And again: Throughout his HISTORY the Party
is hardly referred to and once more: The
Party, alas, is almost absent. (all quotes, pages
x-xi, preface to LENIN- VOLUME 2 ALL POWER TO THE
SOVIETS by Tony Cliff.)
We ask this question: how reliable is a
book about the Russian Revolution in which
the Bolshevik Party is almost absent? Trotsky
entered the Bolshevik Party just before the
October Revolution with a long history of anti-
Leninist, anti-Bolshevik factionalism. Trotsky
always thought his intellect" was superior to
that of the slovenly attorney Lenin. Naturally
this led to delusions as to who was best fit to
lead the Russian Revolution. The result a very
heavy, over 1000 pages doorstop written by a
narcissistic egomaniac who looks in the mirror
far more often than he looks at the unfolding
revolution before him. Some critics, however,
68
praise the book for its literary qualities
which is not surprising, given that THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION by Leon Trotsky is a work of creative
fiction.
But we do have some good classic
reprints as well. The most classic of all classics
is TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, by John Reed.
Although never out of print, it is now available
from fifteen different publishers some adding
a horrid introduction.
Less known but certainly worth reading
is SIX RED MONTHS IN RUSSIA (1918) by Louise
Bryant wife of John Reed and now available
again in reprint. In the 1981 film REDS Bryant
is acted by Diane Keaton while Reed is played
by Warren Beatty.
RED HEART OF RUSSIA (1918) by Bessie Beatty
is another period reprint sympathetic to the
Revolution. As are two books by Albert Rhys
Williams. LENIN: THE MAN AND HIS WORK (1919)
reprinted by Forgotten Books 2017 and THROUGH
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1923 reprinted 2016 in
a deluxe edition with photographs and Russian
posters in colour).
THE SOUL OF THE REVOLUTION (1917) by
Moissaye Joseph Olgin has been reprinted by
Forgotten Books (2017). Olgin was an early
translator of Trotsky (OUR REVOLUTION 1918)
but chose Marxism-Leninism and later wrote
TROTSKYISM: COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN DISGUISE (1935).
Although Progress Books: Toronto was
a victim of revisionist liquidation, LENIN AND
CANADA by Tim Buck has been made available
again by Create Space.
ROSA LUXEMBURGS VIEWS ON THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION, by Clara Zetkin (212 pp) was an
unexpected but very pleasant find. Originally
published by the Communist International in
1922 in German and Russian, it is only now
(2017) available in English translation published
as a joint venture between Red Star Publishers
(USA) and Revolutionary Democracy
(India). Clara Zetkin was a leading German
Communist and close friend of Luxemburg.
Her book counters the misleading views of
Paul Levi (an ex-communist who returned to
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
social democracy). Levi attempted to prove
that Luxemburg was also anti-Lenin and anti
Bolshevik by promoting her views while she
was isolated in prison and unable to obtain
adequate information. Luxemburg did indeed
criticize the Bolsheviks for abolishing the
Constituent Assembly. But Zetkins book:
makes clear that, in the two months between
Luxemburgs release from jail and her murder (by
soldiers of the Social Democratic Government),
her practice and her articles in Rote Fahne
show that she had taken essentially the same
position as Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in favour
of the dictatorship of the proletariat and power
to the workers.
In other words Lenin and Luxemburg were not
antagonists but in essential agreement. This
book should be on every socialists to-be-read
list.
[Luxemburgs] practice and her articles in Rote Fahne show that she had taken
essentially the same position as Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in favour of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and power to the workers.
Books directed at young people are not
overlooked. THE CLEVER TEENS GUIDE TO THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION by Felix Rhodes is not clever enough.
Its cover shows a towering Lenin giving a
Nazi Heig Heil salute. Any clever teen knows
immediately that the cover is a fake. Lenins
right arm is about 50% longer than his left arm
a congenital defect common to all Bolsheviks
in the minds of anti-totalitarian Liberals
and anti-authoritarian anarchists. The books
message: Socialism is an unreachable utopia.
Any attempt to get there will inevitably end up
in totalitarianism. For even younger readers we
are presented with the bizarre and incredible
THE DRESS-UP RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: DISCOVER
HISTORY THROUGH FASHION. The publishers blurb
asks:what did the Tsar and Tsarina wear at their
engagement? Why did Lenin wear a red ribbon?
This reviewer doesnt recall (faulty memory?)
Lenin wearing a red ribbon. From black and
white photographs available it does appear
69
that he did always wear the same suit except
when he went underground and disguised as
a clean-shaven peasant after the July Days.
This colourful cut-out costume book is utilized
by cutting out pictures of printed clothing and
attaching them to the appropriate figures. By
dressing and undressing Lenin we do not and
cannot learn anything about Leninism. Even if
you are still curious about Lenins red ribbon,
pass on this one.
A third title, light years better, aimed at
young minds is: 1917: RUSSIAS RED YEAR by John
Newsinger and illustrated by Tim Sanders
(Bookmarks Publications 2016). Anything
written by socialist John Newsinger is enjoyable
reading. The publishers description of this
graphic novel is as follows:
A revolution made by ordinary people that had
the power to change everything that is the
story we follow through the lives of two young
people Natalia and Peter. In 1917, Russian
women workers poured out of their factories,
defied Cossacks armed with whips and took
control of the streets. The government brought
in the troops to restore order.
But soldiers, angry at the war, food
shortages and much more, mutinied and joined
the marchers. That is where Natalia and Peters
story begins. By October workers had taken
control. This fictionalized account of real events
follow Natalia and Peter through a momentous
year that changed those who lived through it
forever and has inspired millions since.
Recommended for all ages.
Another work very highly recommended
if it were not so expensive is the two volume
LENINS ELECTORAL STRATEGY by August H. Nimtz
(Palgrave MacMillan 2014 and 2016). But,
most unfortunately, with a price of over one
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
hundred dollars for each volume the average
activist or local library will not be able to afford
this book. Although not specifically writing for
the centennial, Nimtz convincingly refutes
the standard charges made against Lenin by
democratic socialists, anarchists, and the
plethora of anticommunist centenary books
Lenin was antidemocratic and totalitarian. To
the ears of a ruling class that has lost power,
these charges ring true. They no longer have
the democratic right to exploit and enslave
workers and peasants: They no longer have
the democratic right to launch wars of
aggression in search of maximum profits and
they no longer have the democratic right to
arrest and imprison even kill those who
oppose them. They have lost these rights.
But for millions the Russian Revolution was
the most democratic event ever. All power
to the Soviets was a vastly superior form of
democracy. A great contribution by Lenin
was to take democracy to a higher level the
new democracy of socialist revolution. As
for today, just how democratic are money-
controlled parliaments, rigged elections with
voting machines designed to be compromised
by the capitalist who manufactured them,
gerrymandered electoral constituencies based
on geographical areas only, restricted ballot
and TV access, and purged voter lists? Socialist
democracy and capitalist democracy are
vastly different entities, not just quantitatively
but especially qualitatively.
We now come to the traditional
English language left publishing houses.
The severely debilitated, but still afloat,
communist International Publishers (USA)
and the attenuated Trotskyist Pathfinder
Press (USA) survive from their backlists. New
October or Lenin books are absent. Lawrence
and Wishart, the publishing house of the now
defunct Communist Party of Great Britain,
totters on with a left lean that seldom ventures
beyond Labour Party moderates and social
democracy. Its contribution to the centeniary
is Menshevik, not Bolshevik. TWO YEARS OF
70
WANDERING: A MENSHEVIK LEADER IN LENINS RUSSIA
by Fedor Illich Dan (2016) translated for the
first time into English. Unlike Martov, Trotsky
or Plekhanov, who occasionally pulled back
from the extremes of Menshevism, Dan was
unrelenting. After 1917 and the ensuing Civil
War, his anti-Leninist views gaining little
traction, he left Soviet Russia and moved to the
United States, where he died in 1947. Ironically,
during World War II Dan gave verbal support
to the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, not
through any newly-acquired sympathy for the
Soviet Union, but in the belief that the Russian
motherland must be defended against foreign
invasion.
Monthly Review Press (USA) has been
publishing Marxist books for over sixty years
and still going strong. RECONSTRUCTING LENIN: AN
INTRODUCTORY BIOGRAPHY (2015) by Tamas Krausz
argues for Lenins continuing relevance today.
The Chicago-based Haymarket
Books, established in 2001, has now become
the largest radical publisher in the United
States. It publishes a broad spectrum of
quite useful titles alongside, of course, its
featured Trotskyist core. Haymarket is the
publishing outlet for the suspect International
Socialist Organization (ISO), whose variety
of Trotskyism is nasty indeed. The ISO has
been justly criticized as State Department
Socialists because they serve as cheerleaders
for human rights imperialism. Whether they
are useful idiots or outright paid agents, the
result is the same try to convince the left to
back the imperialist removal of the dictator of
the day- Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and now Syria.
They even criticized Obama from the right for
showing insufficient determination to remove
Bashar Al Assad. Imperialism is not really
all that bad unless it happens to be Russian
Imperialism or Chinese Imperialism. The
ISO runs interference for all US sponsored so
called colour revolutions and human rights
campaigns. So one must be leary of some titles
published by Haymarket. As for October, one
can find more than a few centenary volumes.
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
But it is Trotsky and not Lenin that is featured.
The expected reprint of Trotskys extremely
flawed HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is in
hardcover. LESSONS OF OCTOBER by Trotsky is now
available again. But the 440 page TROTSKY ON
LENIN is dishonest. This is a reprint of the post-
1917 YOUNG LENIN and LENIN, NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHER,
together in one volume and given the new
title TROTSKY ON LENIN. An honest TROTSKY ON
LENIN would include his writings and speeches
before 1917, which would reveal that Trotsky
was hostile to Lenin from day one. But, of
course, Haymarket will not print these because
Trotsky must be made to appear as a comrade-
in-arms of Lenin. 100 YEARS SINCE THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION includes Trotskys 1932 speech in
defence of the Russian Revolution followed
by Ahmed Shawkis (ISO) praise of Trotsky
and the attempt to fit him into our times.
EYEWITNESSES TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION edited by
Todd Chretien (ISO) includes contributions
by Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin, John Reed,
Louise Bryant and others. OCTOBER SONG edited
71
Detail from painting depicting the storming of the Winter Palace, 1917. [Public Domain]
by Paul Le Blanc is history from below
animated by the lives, ideas and experiences
of workers, peasants, intellectuals, artists and
revolutionaries of diverse persuasions.
YEAR ONE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is
written by the always-moving-on anarchist-
turned-Bolshevik Marxist-till-death, Victor
Serge. Today he is known more as a novelist
than a political activist. YEAR ONE OF THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION is a good read and does
have something to say that merits attention.
To conclude with Haymarket, other good
books do get reprinted. THE BOLSHEVIKS CAME TO
POWER: THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 IN PETROGRAD (1976)
BY Alexander Rabinowitch; RED PETROGRAD:
REVOLUTION IN THE FACTORIES 1917- 1918) originally
1983 Cambridge Univ. Press by S.A.Smith and
surprisingly REMINISCENCES OF LENIN by Nadezhda
Krupskaya (wife of Lenin). The fact that there
is no stand-alone collection of Lenins writings
on October is telling by its absence.
Leftword Books in India has two books.
They have RED OCTOBER: THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
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73
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
AND THE COMMUNIST HORIZON (1917), edited by
Vijay Prasad. The book provides us with the
assurance that a workers and peasants state
can exist. And they have also published RANK-
AND-FILE BOLSHEVIK: A MEMOIR (1917) by Cecilia
Bobrovskaya. The author (1873 1962) was an
early Bolshevik activist, and a member of the
Society of Old Bolsheviks. She worked tirelessly
helping build the Party for both the 1905 and
1917 Revolutions. This reprint consists of two
texts by Bobrovskaya: her own memoirs and
her short biography of Lenin. Bobrovskaya
describes what it took to make the Revolution
not one push in 1917 but tens of thousands of
pushes provided by people like herself, one of
the many rank-and-file Bolsheviks.
The remaining publishers are all British.
The long time left publisher Merlin Press has
issued OCTOBER 1917: WORKERS IN POWER with essays
by Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Ernest Mandel
and David Mandel with an introduction by
Paul Le Blanc who discusses recent scholarship
and debates.
Pluto Press has given us A PEOPLES HISTORY
OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Neil Faulkner.
Spokesman Books has a new and expanded
centenary edition of BRITISH LABOUR AND THE
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. In addition to the already
mentioned graphic novel 1917: RUSSIAS RED
YEAR, Bookmarks has published LENIN FOR TODAY
by John Molyneux who sets out to show that
Lenins main ideas remain valid and relevant
in 2017. Also RUSSIA 1917 by Dave Sherry which is
not confined to 1917 but starts at the turn of the
century.
Saving the best for last we finally
arrive at Verso Books, the largest independent
publisher of English language radical books in
the world. It has created a new series, Russian
Revolution 1917 with some good new titles. RED
FLAG UNFURLED: HISTORY, HISTORIANS AND THE RUSSIAN
REVOLUTION by Ronald Suny. This new volume
explores the historical controversies of 1917
and Suny ponders what lessons 1917 provides
for Marxism and the alternatives to capitalism.
LENIN 2017: REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING
74
THROUGH by Slavoj iek with selected Leinin
reprints. The controversial and puffed-up
political peacock iek has become a Star to
the broad left and many academic Marxists.
This reviewer is not at all impressed. Lenin
was down to earth and easily understood;
the fancy verbiage of iek is sometimes
incomprehensible and always somewhat airy-
fairy. Nevertheless his ideas should be looked
at and when necessary refuted.
iek postulates that Lenins true
greatness is not to be found so much in 1917
but in the retreats that were forced on the new
revolutionary government. In other words
the revolutionary genius of Lenin should be
even more remembered as the strategist and
tactician of survival in hard times. But todays
tasks are not those of post-1917 Soviet Russia.
Our long retreat is pregnant with the explosive
potential of advance. Read Lenin rather than
iek.
Unlikely events do happen. At long last
someone has begun to reprint some of Trotsky's
earlier writings. Thank you Verso! AGAINST LENIN:
THE PRE-BOLSHEVIK WRITINGS by Leon Trotsky,
introduction by Tariq Ali, contains a selection
mostly on organizational questions. There
is much more that remains to be translated.
The book is listed only as forthcoming, but
hopefully soon. Then there is the astounding
announcement that Verso will reprint Lenins
COLLECTED WORKS. Progress Publishers has been
killed off, Lawrence and Wishart is now anti-
Lenin and International Publishers seems not
to have sufficient funding to keep all of Lenin
in print.
But it is Verso that outshines the other
publishers with two Blockbuster Books: THE
DILEMMAS OF LENIN: TERRORISM, WAR, EMPIRE, LOVE,
REVOLUTION by Tariq Ali and OCTOBER by China
Miville-both very good but not beyond
criticism. DILEMMAS OF LENIN by the experienced
Marxist writer Tariq Ali doesnt make us wait
for his summation of the October Revolution
and Lenin. On page 2 he states; Without Lenin
there would have been no Socialist Revolution
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
in 1917. Of this much we can be certain. He
further tells us;
Lenin had been working on a revolution twenty-
five years before 1917. Twenty-four of those years
he had worked underground, in prison, in exile.
He had done so without imagining that he would
see one in his life time. In January 1917, still in
exile, he confessed to a Swiss audience that he
and the generation to which he belonged might
never witness success: They were fighting for the
future.
There is a lot of contingency in the authors
book:
Without the First World War and February
1917, Lenin would have died in exile, one of the
many Russian Revolutionaries destined to miss
the fall of the autocracy. Trotsky could easily
...todays tasks are not those of post-1917 Soviet Russia. Our long retreat is pregnant
with the explosive potential of advance. Read Lenin rather than iek.
have become a Russian novelist in the Classic
tradition.
Tariq Ali, once a member of a Trotskyist
organization in his youth, may be telling
us, consciously or not, that it was Lenin who
had revolutionary staying power, while the
dilettante Trotsky might have become a
novelist.
DILEMMAS OF LENIN is not a standard linear
biography nor an intellectual biography as
such. It is a focused biography concentrating
on the important dilemmas of Lenins political
life. Around these nodal points the necessary
history and biographical detail are added to
make a more complete biography.
The author begins with the very young
Lenin and the decision he had to make after the
execution of his older brother for terrorism.
Should he seek revenge by following in his
brothers terrorist foot steps or should he
embrace the new Marxism that was beginning
75
to make headway in Tsarist Russia. For Tariq
Ali and Lenin there was no real dilemma. It
was a no brainer that Lenin chose Marxism.
No matter how spectatular the propaganda
of the deed Tsardom was not going to fall.
Dilemmas are more complicated quandrys,
sometimes a no win situation.
The outbreak of the First World War
was a real dilemma for Lenin. How could
the German Social Democratic Party and
Lenins mentor Karl Kautsky, succumb to the
militarism and cries for imperialist war. Lenin
solves this dilemma by a very angry public
break with the German Party.
But Tariq Ali does not dwell on just how
shocked Lenin was and what he did next. Lenin
thought the newspaper he was holding in his
hands was a fake. It had to be! Socialists would
not advocate the slaughter of worker by worker.
Had not anti-war resolutions easily passed at all
International congresses? When reality set in
the next day Lenin realized that the Marxism
of Social Democracy had been hollowed out.
Its outer shell provided its appearance but its
inner core its rotten essence.
Lenin was probably the only
revolutionary in the world who did what
he did next. He went back to the basics of
Hegel, disappeared into the library for long
periods, and emerged with what became the
PHILOSOPHICAL NOTEBOOKS (Volume 38 of his
COLLECTED WORKS).
Another dilemma after the February
1917 Revolution was to find a way to Socialist
Revolution. Almost all the Socialist Parties,
including most Bolshevik leaders thought the
bourgeois democratic state would last for a
considerable length of time. The Mensheviks
and Socialist Revolutionaries were unmovable,
but most Bolsheviks came around to Lenins
view. But even then Kamenev and Zinoviev
leaked the exact date of the October uprising
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
thinking it would be cancelled.
Still another dilemma, at least in Tariq
Alis mind, was the affection of Lenin for Inessa
Armand the Bolshevik director of Zhenodel,
the womens department. Historians disagree
as to the nature of this relationship. Tariq Ali
believes she might have been Lenins mistress.
But this view may tell us more about Tariq Ali
than about Lenin or Armand.
The last dilemma mentioned in this
review is the period of Lenins stroke and
coming death. He was worried about the danger
of the Revolutionary Government being
weakened by the osmosis of the surrounding
bureaucratic Tsarist culture. He was also
concerned about who would be the next leader
of the USSR. There was no second Lenin.
All leading candidates had not insignificant
defects. This dilemma was never solved. Had
Lenin lived longer perhaps he would have
written a new WHAT IS TO BE DONE.
...many of the October and Lenin titles from left publishers are worth reading, time
permitting. But it is Lenin himself that MUST be read--
DILEMMAS does have the usual minor
errors. On page 103 the IWW is called the
International Workers of the World rather than
Industrial Workers of the World a frequently
made mistake. Over all, this is definitely a
thumbs-up book.
OCTOBER: THE STORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
by China Miville. This excellent book is a very
pleasant discovery, a real gem. Miville brings
the reader inside the Revolution. You are there!
With most books of history one reads until its
time to go to bed, sleep comes next. With this
book sleep becomes an enemy to be fought.
The subtitle claims that October is a story. It
is a story and a very fine history, thoroughly
researched with all the latest information, but
is not cluttered with academic footnotes. It
sometimes reads like an historical novel but
is not. Fiction can often bring out obscured,
profound truths better than a mere telling
of the facts. OCTOBER is a dialectical fusion of
76
history and fiction with the appearance of a
new quality an unquestionably nonfiction
book but one that reads and clarifies as only
fiction can.
What Miville has done by bringing
his skills as a novelist into the writing of
history is to find a better way to unite form
and content. His dynamic poetry tinged prose
advances not so much as a sparkling, sizzling
fuse slowly makes its way towards the bomb.
Instead it is propelled, like history, by the
complexity of contradictory forces pregnant
with inevitability, probablity and contingency.
Mivilles narrative gallops, slows down, trots,
canters, almost stops,twists, turns, veers, gallops
again and then explodes. The story moves as
Russian reality itself moved.
But Miville does not strut his stuff
like a postmodern show off. He writes for the
reader and not to impress other writers. The
general reader becomes oblivious to the high
quality of Mivilles writing, and becomes
absorbed into the story of history. The result
is not only better history, but a much better
history. What Gabriel Garcia Marquez did to
a stagnant literature by developing magical
realism, Miville has done to stagnant history
by making it excitable, readable and much
more truthful.
Miville is a world famous science
fiction/fantasy writer. He has received the
very top honours, the Hugo and Arthur C.
Clark Awards. He is also an ex-member of the
soft Trotskyist British Socialist Workers Party
and thus brings baggage with him. But this
background shows through only occasionally.
Trotsky is not excessively promoted but Stalin
had to be vilified as demanded by Trotskyist
theology. But the 1917 views of Stalin were very
little different from the orthodox Bolshevik
majority. To get around this barrier Miville
introduces, luckily only briefly, a Stalin ghost
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
Detail from Through the ruins of capitalism to the universal brotherhood of workers! (1920) | Nikolai Mikhailovich Kochergin [Public Domain]
from the future which allows Miville to
administer the required forty lashes. The
perfunctory punishment inflicted, the author
returns to the story he is telling. But by and
large the author takes care to portray the main
political leaders without hagiography or unjust
denigration.
Trotsky is described as hard to
love, charismatic and abrasive, brilliant and
persuasive and divisive and difficult.
The 1917 Stalin is depicted as a Georgian
ex-trainee priest long time Bolshevik activist.
A capable, if never scintillating organizer.
At best an adequate intellectual, at worst an
embarrassing one. The impression he left was
one of not leaving much of an impression.
A grey blur.
As for Lenin all who meet him are
mesmerized. To his enemies a monster,
to his worshippers, a godlike genius; to his
comrades and friends, a shy, quick, laughing
lover of children and cats. what particularly
distinguishes him is his sense of the political
77
moment an acutely developed sense of
when and where to push, how, and how hard.
Lenin of course did make mistakes but seldom
admitted them. Even friends would excoriate
him for the brutality of his take-downs, flint
and ruthlessness and intemperate polemics.
The Menshevik Martov was widely
respected, even loved but weak and bronchial,
mercurial, talkative but hopeless orator, not
much better as an organizer.
Miville, like Tariq Ali, tries to
compensate for the previous male bias in
the writing of history. Alexandra Kollontai
is presented as a provocative and brilliant
thinker on a range of issuesInessa Armand
is introduced as a feminist, writer, and
musician, Lenins close collaborator and
comrade. Nadezhda Krupskaya, wife of Lenin,
is mentioned throughout OCTOBER but only
described by Miville as seldom taking a
different line from Lenin.
Little known Bolshevik women are now
given names. Ludmila Stahl became an early
 BOOKS ABOUT THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION: A SURVEY & COMMENT ON RECENT TITLES
supporter of Lenins April Theses in opposition
to the majority of Bolsheviks. Lenins sister
Maria Ulianov became more than just a
family member but an important Bolshevik
who worked at Pravda. Bolshevik women
Elena Adamovich, Ekaterina Alexeeva, Liza
Pylaeva, Nima Bogoslovskaya and Yelkaveta
Kokshapova are not usually mentioned even in
left histories, but given their names by Miville.
The latter three once, disguised as nurses and
carrying Party funds and documents under
piles of bandages in baskets, were stopped by
government forces who demanded to know
what they were carrying. Pyalaeva grinned and
said jokingly dynamite and revolvers. They
all laughed and the Bolshevik couriers were
waved through.
OCTOBER is told chronologically with an
introductory first chapter the prehistory of
1917and an epilogue. All other chapters are
named by months beginning with February
and ending with Red October.
We end with a dust jacket promotional
quote by Barbara Ehrenreich with which this
78
reviewer is in agreement:
When one of the most marvellously original
writers in the world takes on one of the most
explosive events in history, the result can only be
incendiary.
In conclusion many of the October and Lenin
titles from left publishers are worth reading,
time permitting. But it is Lenin himself that
MUST be read there are 45 volumes to choose
from. A daily Lenin coffee break is good for
ones political health. May we recommend STATE
AND REVOLUTION written by Lenin shortly before
October but with publication interrupted
until 1918. As Lenin said in a postscript It is
more pleasant and useful to go through the
experience of revolution than to write about
it. n
Detail from painting depicting Lenin and crowd. [Public Domain]
GALLERY

Detail from V.I. Lenin Proclaims Soviet Power" | Vladimir Aleksandrovich Serov (1954) [Public Domain]

79
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